Funny Lady Gina Gershon Shows Off Musical Chops in Birdie

Admit it: When you heard that Gina Gershon was playing marriage-minded secretary Rosie opposite John Stamos in the Roundabout’s revival of the wholesome-as-Sweet-Apple-pie Bye Bye Birdie, you thought, Does she have that kind of range? Well, let’s see: She’s sung and danced on Broadway (as Sally Bowles in Cabaret); she can rock out (as front-woman for an all-girl punk band in Prey for Rock & Roll); she toured with the indie rockers Girls Against Boys; she does a credible Italian accent, as a flight attendant in a Broadway farce (Boeing-Boeing) and as a Chihuahua-carrying cosmetics magnate (ABC’s Ugly Betty); she can steal a scene from Larry David (witness her horny Hasidic dry cleaner on Curb Your Enthusiasm); she co-authored a children’s book about a haunted sleepaway camp; she writes songs about boogers and chocolate-chip cookies (for a kids’ CD, not for her own amusement); she can do minor plumbing repairs (Bound). And if she can keep a straight face during Showgirls, well, the woman can do just about anything. Beautiful as ever (even—sigh—without makeup), the actress took a break to talk about growing up in California (“I’m a real original Valley Girl”), her junior-high production of Birdie and her love of juggling genres.

I understand this isn’t the first time you’ve played Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie.
I saw pictures the other day! I was 14. I was wearing the ugliest, flattest shoes. All I remember was being pissed off that I couldn’t wear heels because the boy playing Albert was too short. I was also mad that I wasn’t playing Conrad [Birdie]. I really wanted to play Conrad. And then I got a short Albert.

Your school wouldn’t let you cross-dress?
I asked, and I think [the director] said, “Who’s gonna play Rosie?” I didn’t care. I didn’t read it. I just said, “Ooh, I want to play the Elvis Presley part!”

What’s it like having the composers, Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, around for this Broadway revival?
I feel my heart swell up when I see them. It’s such a beautiful score. And when I’ve done a number and they’ve really enjoyed it, obviously I feel pretty good.

Have you guys made any changes or updates?
I’ve tried! [Laughs.] I didn’t know who [1950s nightclub singer] Abbe Lane was—it’s one of my lyrics in “Spanish Rose.” I kept saying, “No one knows who Abbe Lane is.” But we couldn’t think of a better one to fit the rhyme. At some point Lee says, “Oh let’s just rewrite the whole song.” He had all these different verses, but the original verses were so much stronger. So we had to keep the whole thing intact. The truth is, once you change one thing, it becomes like the thread that starts to unravel everything. Where do you stop? I think Bobby [Longbottom], the director, really wanted to keep it very much a time capsule.

Did you know early on that you wanted to be an actress?
Before high school, I went to San Francisco to study at the American Conservatory Theater. I lied about my age and got in. Then I lied to my parents saying that I was living with someone when I wasn’t. I came out of that experience with two things: I really wanted to go to college, and I really wanted to leave L.A. I wanted to go East.

You and director Tina Landau worked together when were you were in high school together, right?
She was my best friend in the world at that point! She was a fellow student [at Beverly Hills High School], and she wrote and directed a musical called Faces on the Wall. It was in the vein of Runaways—monologue and song, kind of about kids’ angst. She wrote a part for me. Then she went to Yale and I went to Boston.

Superior Donuts, the play she’s directing on Broadway, opens two weeks before Birdie.
Good, maybe we could see each other again. She never calls back! She’s so talented; she was very influential with me with musicals. We used to just play piano and sing. Tell her to call me!

So you only stayed at Emerson College for about a year.
It was OK. I majored in theater and I got leads. I ended up doing Runaways at a theater [in Boston] But I wanted to go to New York.

Later, at NYU, you got to study with David Mamet.
He was great. It was a big class, and then he chose 20 students to go up to Montpelier, Vermont, for the summer to do a workshop with him. That’s what became the Atlantic Theater Company. Bill Macy was one of our teachers. I had a blast that summer.

With all of your theater training, it took you a while to get to Broadway—you didn’t make your debut in Cabaret until 2002.
I had given up all my musical theater; I was in a band before that. A lot of my family is in the music business, and for some reason I thought, Oh, I’ll be a “serious” actress—I’m not going to do that anymore! I don’t know what I was thinking. When I started singing with Patrick [Vaccariello], the musical director, I thought, why have I given this up?

Then you really threw yourself into music.
[Film director] Alex Steyermark saw me do Cabaret and cast me in Prey for Rock & Roll to play this punk rocker. So I started singing and playing guitar again. Then I started writing music, and from that I ended up making an album and doing my one-woman show, In Search of Cleo. And then I got Boeing-Boeing.

Something completely different!
I actually auditioned and didn’t really want to do it, but [director] Matthew [Warchus] talked me into it. I didn’t quite get how funny it was. I left saying, “Good luck!” And he had me come back, and went [in a British accent], “No, no, I don’t think you’re quite getting this. Thank god I did it.

That kind of comedy requires such precision.
We only had three weeks to rehearse. The night we opened, I think all of us were backstage going, “Okay, shut the door on this line, come out on this line.” And it got better and better. Once we really got into it, it was great. But Matthew—he’s a motherfucker of a director. He’s amazing.

Lately you’ve also been doing a lot of guest spots on TV shows—Ugly Betty, Rescue Me, Numb3rs, Life on Mars, even animated stuff like Family Guy.
The one I love the most is Curb Your Enthusiasm. And Eastbound & Down. TV is great to pop in and do a character and pop off. I was on Rescue Me was when I was doing Boeing-Boeing; Denis [Leary] is a friend of mine. They work around your schedule, and it’s fun to do all these different characters.

You didn’t do much TV early on, though.
It wasn’t a goal of mine. When I first started out, if you did TV, it really kind of kept you in one place. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. TV has become the new independent film in a way. It’s so much cooler.

What do you watch?
I really love True Blood. And Curb Your Enthusiasm is one of the best shows on. I like The Colbert Report, The Daily Show and SNL, when it’s new.

I have to ask about one of your early, lesser-known credits, the 1992 Sinatra miniseries, in which you played his first wife, Nancy. You got to meet Frank!
How awesome was that? That was my stipulation—which, of course, was crazy, because I would have done it no matter what, but I really wanted to meet him. Then the night [Sinatra’s daughter] Tina and I went to go see him sing, I think at Radio City, he had laryngitis! I had these big fantasies of going out drinking all night with Frank, and he ends up canceling the show. But he was [in a hoarse voice] talking like this and smoking, like, “How’s the picture going?” and I was like, “Oh, it’s going great.” I wanted to go back and meet him after we were done, and his wife [Barbara Marx] wouldn’t let me. I still don’t understand what happened. She didn’t seem to quite realize I was an actress and not really Nancy.

What’s next for you?
I just wrote a children’s album with Leroy Powell; it’s called The Good, The Bad, and The Hungry. It’s like for three-year-olds. It starts off with a song called “Poop.” It’s really dictated by my nieces and nephews and things that made them laugh.

You also wrote a book, Camp Creepy Time, with your brother Dann.
That was for kids eight years old and up, but I think adults enjoyed it. It’s about a very smart, alienated kid who doesn’t play well with the other children, so his parents send him off to camp. Then he finds out all the counselors are aliens and he basically has to save the world. The boy who plays Randolph in Bye Bye Birdie, Jake Evan Schwenke, is reading it. He’s really loving it.

Do you think you’ll keep writing?
I’m working on another children’s book—a picture book for really little kids. I enjoy writing, whether it’s in music or in a script—especially if I can write my own part [for a future film adaptation]. I definitely wrote my own part in Camp Creepy Time; I’d like to be Nurse Knockwurst. No one could play Nurse Knockwurst like I could!

See Gina Gershon in Bye Bye Birdie at Henry Miller’s Theatre.