Peter Gallagher
What drew you to The Country Girl?
Anytime you get to saddle up with Mr. Nichols, it's an experience to be treasured. I worked with him the first time 24 years ago in The Real Thing, and I'm so happy I'm having the opportunity to do it again. This is the best part I've been offered as an adult. It's nice to finally have a part that's not a plot device. Things happen as a result of his actions, and that's not usually the kind of part I get. The cast is pretty wonderful and the play is pretty wonderful. We're in previews and trying to find our way, which I think we're doing.
This production has already made it into the press. Are you aware of that?
No, I'm not, actually. I stay well away from it.
The idea was that the scene was removed because Morgan Freeman can't learn his lines.
The old-fashioned style of this play is tricky. How do you three approach that?
How challenging is it for three well-known stars with distinctive styles to create chemistry together?
The romantic triangle storyline seems to be downplayed in this production. What is the play really about, from your point of view?
What's it like to work with Mike Nichols?
Can you believe 30 years have passed since you played Danny Zuko on Broadway in Grease?
You must have a lot of fans who don't know about your Broadway roots.
You've done musicals, classic plays, all kinds of movies and TV roles. Your career is hard to sum up, which is a good thing.
And you still enjoy it.
What is your happiest theatrical memory?
With Jack Lemmon, no less.
How did The O.C. change your career?
It's one of the only teen shows in which the parents were just as interesting as the kids.
Your son, Jamey, will be going off to college in the fall. Were you recognized on your college tours?
Did your kids grow up in New York?
How old is she?
That's pretty amazing.
And your son wants to be a director?
They have to know While You Were Sleeping.
You and your wife [Paula Harwood] are about to celebrate your 25th wedding anniversary. What's your secret?
Well, the two of you should pat yourselves on the back.
Is your wife in California working? Wasn't she in the film business?
For years, interviewers have obsessed about your good looks, especially your eyebrows. Is that dying down now that you're over 50?
See Peter Gallagher in The Country Girl at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.
Oh, we were just playing with that. That's been back in for a while. This is what you do in previews, and if you have the freedom to do it out of town you don't get killed for it. The first act is largely expository, and Mike was thinking there was no new information imparted in that scene. It's essentially a domestic scene, and he was curious to see if the play would suffer by losing it. But when he took it out, we realized it would mean rejiggering the rest of the play and at the end of the day, we put it back in. He had also moved up the act break. We thought for about five seconds, "Wow, we'll get all of this information in and then we'll just burn through the second act and it will be great and exciting!" It didn't quite work out like that, but you can't know until you try.
That's complete and utter bullshit. We could all be tarred with that brush, but that's not true. What people don't understand is that we do a tremendous amount of work on the show every day. Up until half an hour before curtain, we're changing the opening, we might cut a word here or shift a word there or change the entire blocking of a scene, and when you have nothing but changes day-in and day-out, the once-familiar landscape can become frighteningly foreign. For a while I likened it to putting on a pair of pants and finding three other people in there and being asked to win a dance contest. But, in fact, I think the show has really turned a corner.
I don't really worry too much about how to approach it. That's Mike's job, and I have complete confidence in him. I'm just trying to do the best job I can with Bernie Dodd and enjoy every second up there with every member of the cast, not just Morgan and Frances but Chip [Zien] and Lucas [Caleb Rooney] and Remy [Auberjonois] and Anna [Camp] and Joe [Roland].
You know, we're discovering that [chemistry], and with any luck, we'll continue to find common ground. I think we're heading down the right road. In my heart of hearts, I feel that we are very close to setting this thing on fire.
What's cool is that it's about people who are in the theater. They're us in a way. And it's about the redemptive power of a hit. Because the reality is, once a show opens, salvation is at hand for a good five minutes for all of us; the black dog [of insecurity] has stopped barking. I think the play is beautifully observed and really accurate about what it's like to be an actor in a show, and how civilians don't realize how, for us, it is life and death in a way. I like to say we're all oddballs on this [acting] boat; thank god there's a place for us.
He's one of the few unbroken threads to some of the greatest traditions of acting and theater history. He came from Berlin, he studied with Strasberg and he embraces such an extraordinarily broad spectrum of both improvisation and theater techniques. I feel very lucky that the people responsible for starting my career were part of this long tradition and this movement toward more realistic work, and of course Odets is the poster boy for a lot of that. It's wonderful to be working on an Odets play with Mike; the experience is something you treasure.
In this same theater [now the Jacobs; then the Royale]! No. I'm still entering that stage with a cigarette and a Zippo, in a play set in the 1950s, and I don't feel I've changed at all. I'm shocked to see how much older the crew has gotten [laughs]. One of my dear buddies from that time is still on the crew.
Not that many people are interested in ancient history [laughs]. I've always gone back to [the stage]; it's been a place where I've gotten some of the best parts in my life. As an actor, I always say that it's the best place in the world because you get to be there when it happens. Of course you've got to be there when it doesn't happen too, and that really stinks [laughs]. But when it does, it's magic.
I think so. It keeps things interesting and preserves the chance for surprise along the way, even at my late stage of the game.
It's impossible to generalize. If you're in a musical that works, there's nothing greater, and if you're in a play that works, there's nothing greater. If you're in a musical that doesn't work, it's challenging. If you're in a drama that doesn't work, it's challenging. If you're in a comedy that doesn't work, that's just awful. There's no doubt that the hardest work you can do as an actor is in the professional theater. It's hard in ways that people who haven't done it can't imagine. I always smile inside when an actor say, "Oh, I can't wait to work on Broadway!" And I'm thinking "O-kay!" Because when you get that call to do something [onstage] that you can't say no to, you know it's going to hurt. But it's also one of the most profound privileges.
Oh yes. You know, in this day and age, you can say, "What relevance does the theater have with the internet and all this stuff?" I figured out once that I'd have to do eight shows a week for 400 years to reach the same number of people who saw one episode of The O.C. If you look at it in those terms, theater can seem like a selfish little pastime, a hobby. When we were doing Noises Off, we started rehearsal on September 11, 2001, and a month later, there was real concern as to whether Broadway would survive. Everybody lost friends, me included, and here I was practicing getting a rubber cactus up the ass. I couldn't have felt more irrelevant or more heartbroken. When we opened our doors, we honestly didn't know whether anybody would come—but people filled the theater, night after night, and I had never heard laughter like that. For that moment, there was a sense of community. I was struck by the relevance and power of this most ancient of rituals, story-telling, and how fortunate I felt to be part of it. I feel fairly confident that's how I'll breathe my last breath—somewhere on the stage.
The original Broadway company of Grease. I was making almost $500 a week, and I never felt richer. Boy, did we have fun—I was working with my best friends in the world. They're still some of my best friends! Beyond that, I'd have to say The Real Thing, because it was the first time I worked with huge talents and my first time in a runaway hit from the beginning. I was the eighth Danny Zuko or something like that. But the very happiest was Long Day's Journey, by far.
Lemmon was like a father to me. Edmund and Sky [Masterson in Guys and Dolls] were two parts that I'd always dreamt of playing, but Edmund was the first great role I ever had.
I don't know that it did, really. It certainly exposed me to a global audience; the show is still huge around the world. It also gave people who were aware of my work a reason to feel good about being aware of my work.
Right. They found a winning point of view for the show, and that's why I was astounded at how quickly they were to abandon it. I thought we started to go off the rails in the second season. Remember the episode where they were stuck in the mall overnight, playing street hockey? Oh god. How hard do you have to work to screw up a good thing?
Yeah. But I'm remarkably oblivious about most things, including that. I would say, "We got through there with no problem!" And my kids would say, "Dad—they were chasing you!" But knock on wood, it's all been fine. I have nice kids.
We raised them in the city, and then about three years ago, we brought them out to L.A. I commuted for the first year of The O.C., then brought them out so the family could be together, which was not something they were looking forward to. I said, "At the end of the day, we gotta admit to who we are—and kids, we're gypsies. So it's time to go." Ultimately [L.A.] has been a wonderful thing for them. My daughter [Kathryn] has been doing lots of shows. She just played Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray at [former Broadway actress] Janet Adderley's school in Santa Monica. I flew back during rehearsals to see one of her first performances. The kid's got it—she's a wonderful songwriter, and she's working on a record.
She's 14.
Well, that's the way it is nowadays. One song she wrote that I love is called "I'm Okay," which is really a response to me telling her, "You have one chance to be a kid." She's wanted a record deal since she was two, and I would tell her, "I know very few child performers who reach adulthood intact, and I don't want you to be another casualty." Of course, that's all a father has to say to stoke the fires of a child's dreams. But she's really good.
Yeah. A teacher at my son's school saw something in him and has given him a lot of opportunities. He's assistant-directed two productions at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland and two mainstage productions at school. None of these things had anything to do with me.
I mean, it's certainly in the environment [they're grown up in], but it's not like I could ever get them to go see a play with me. They don't even know one tenth of the movies I've done. Why should they?
I don't think either of them have seen that one. I swear! They've got lives; why would they want to see an old movie? And I'm fine with that. They don't need to be spending time on my career; I spend enough time on my career. What's already made this [Country Girl] experience worthwhile is that during spring break, my son was able to sit in with Mike on rehearsals, watch the tech rehearsals, go through all the previews and listen to the note sessions. To be able to offer that experience [to my son] with our greatest living director has been wonderful.
We're very stubborn [laughs]. I don't want to jinx anything, but I just got very lucky. To bring it back to this play, she is my country girl. I don't know that I share all the same demons that [Morgan Freeman's character] Frank Elgin has, but I'm an actor. I'm pretty confident that I'd be living in a hole in the ground if it weren't for her.
Oh boy, if I do that, I'll just be inviting trouble. I'm not going to wear my arm out that way! Maybe I'll pat her on the back. It's just—you don't take anything for granted. For years, we had a two-week rule—we were never apart for more than two weeks, especially when the kids were young. This is the longest we've been apart ever.
Yeah, but she sold that company when our daughter was quite young. Now she's doing interior design. She just designed a big loft here in New York and she's doing two houses in L.A. She's a really brilliant person business-wise as well as creatively. We all totally lucked out.
I would hope so. I'm always astounded by that, I really am. Listen, I thank God I'm no longer 20 because I couldn't stand the sight of myself. I can still barely stand the sight of myself [laughs]. But I hope so. You know, [the emphasis on looks] lowers expectations, regardless of what I've done in the past. It's funny to hear, "Wow! You're good!" after 30-some-odd years of doing this. But it sure beats the alternative.