Interview: Brian d'Arcy James of Shrek

After cutting his teeth in musicals like Carousel and Titanic, Brian d’Arcy James got the Broadway seal of approval in 2002, when his turn in Sweet Smell of Success earned him a Tony Award nomination. Since then, the 40-year-old, Michigan-born actor has proved himself much more than just a song-and-dance man. In the past year alone, he’s appeared off-Broadway in the quirky musical Next to Normal and in Conor McPherson’s trilogy of monologues Port Authority before tackling the title role in the eagerly awaited Shrek the Musical on Broadway. Skilled with accents and transforming himself physically, James is undergoing his most extreme makeover ever as the titular green ogre. Chatting in his dressing room at the Broadway Theatre, the friendly and personable star gave a step-by-step breakdown of his pre-performance ritual (making it clear why his dressing room looks like a dentist’s office), the benefits of having a/c pumped into your head and the fun of being flatulent in public with Sutton Foster.

The last time I saw you on stage was in Port Authority, so I did a double-take seeing you now.
Well, Dermot was such a slob. In hindsight, he was like an on-ramp to Shrek, in terms of style and hygiene.

That’s funny. A lot of people would assume a Conor McPherson play and Shrek the Musical have nothing in common.
It’s a longshot. But it works in in the physical sense—the shape of both characters, their roundness, they way they move. Their attitudes are very different, though. Dermot’s this put-upon, lost soul, and his lack of self-esteem was such that he didn’t really care how he appeared. Shrek views the world in a similar way, but he has a great opinion of himself and doesn’t care how he looks or smells.

You’ve got a lot of fat suits in here.
They’re interchanged throughout the week. You noticed all these fans as you came in, right? The suits make me sweat so much, they really have to be aired out. During the show, I’ve got a couple of fans blowing on me, too, when I come offstage. It’s like an airport in here.

What’s that metal-box thing under the mirror? A World War II-era torture device? 

That’s a great addition I didn’t have in Seattle. Technically, it’s an airbrush machine used for makeup. But they can take the hose and stick it up the back of my neck and blow cold air into my cowl. They came up with that four or five days ago, and it’s changed the whole show for me. That’s where all the heat is trapped: in my head. It’s been a lifesaver, actually.

Have you ever gotten overwhelmed by the costume, or felt like you were going to pass out?
The first time we ran through the show in rehearsal. I had a bit of a dehydration situation with a terrible headache. Again, I was still in Dermot-land [in Port Authority]. I wasn’t exercising, and I was eating cheeseburgers and shakes every other day, just because I could and it was helpful.

All for your art, right?
I know, I know. It’s such a lame excuse to be lazy: “It’s for the play.” But after all that junk food, I was not physically prepared for what’s required to play Shrek. To be honest, I never expected it to be that challenging, but once you put this thing on and run around for two hours, it’s a real wakeup call. Just because Shrek is a big oaf doesn’t mean that I can be as well. There can’t be a Shrek underneath the Shrek.

Start to finish, how long does it take you to become Shrek?
Two hours altogether, give or take 10 minutes. It’s about an hour and a half of putting makeup on, and then I take a half hour or so to myself. During the makeup part, there are three people in this room at all times—two makeup people and my dresser, Jack—and a lot of activity going on, which is a new thing for me. I’m used to having my own time to get ready, so I have a few moments to myself and then I get into the costume.

The fat suit must feel easy to slip into after having your head glued on.
Weirdly enough, the thing that takes up the most time is the shoes. They’re two shoes in one, with the shoes I wear inside of bigger Shrek-like boots. They need to be really tight or else I have no support. So it’s this process of tightening and pulling up and tightening and pulling up. That takes a while. And by then, I’ve got the fat suit on. I’m like a pregnant woman with sextuplets in my gut.

What’s it like on two-day shows?
I stay right here, on the couch. I’ll have some food ordered in. My wife will come down if she’s around. My daughter [six-year-old Grace] will come by if she doesn’t have an after-school activity. I take the costume off, but it doesn’t make sense to take off all the makeup.

So your wife and daughter are basically hanging out with Shrek?
They just laugh because it’s so bizarre. I mean, I put this robe on [points to a velour robe on the wall] and I look like Hugh Hefner on acid. I’m used to it now. I don’t forget that it’s on, but I do forget how it looks.

So with an hour and a half in the chair six times a week, how do you pass the time?
We’ve got this great DVD player that I haven’t really started using yet. I’m still listening to music. I say I’m still listening, since I imagine there’ll come a time when I want to switch it up. But I’m happy with my iPod shuffle. See that box of CDs? Many members of the cast have made mixes for me to listen to, which is very generous and very thoughtful. You can learn a lot about a person from the songs they pick [laughs].

Do you prefer mellow songs or something more upbeat?
I’ve been staying with classic rock and pop stuff. The 80s are getting a lot of rotation these days, actually. There’s a lot of solid, meat-and-potatoes pop tunes that hold up really well. [PAGEBREAK]

You project lots of emotion through all the latex, particularly during your scenes with Sutton Foster [Fiona]. Have you been concerned about the costume upstaging your performance?
It’s an ongoing experiment. What the movie allowed for was close-ups. You really got a sense of Shrek’s feelings. The costume is designed specifically as a hybrid. It’s an ogre and it’s also me. But in terms of getting beyond the makeup, it’s a matter of going with my instincts, and not being preoccupied with what I’m wearing or how I look. I’m just “in the moment,” to use actors’ slang.

How does Shrek the Musical compare to your other Broadway gigs, like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels?
Everything’s similar in the sense that it’s athletic. Any part in a show requires you to be up for the game. I played a lot of sports when I was growing up, but there’s no better team than the theater. You really have to put your body out there.

Who knew the day would come when we’d see you and Sutton Foster engage in a battle of bodily noises on a Broadway stage?
When we were rehearsing that scene, Jason Moore, our director, told us he didn’t want to dissect it too much. He wanted to just let it be what it was, and people would either get a kick out of it or they’d turn their noses up. No pun intended. Obviously it’s not high art and maybe it’s an easy laugh. But people are getting a kick out of it.

Backing up, how were you introduced to performing?
My uncle was Brian Kelly [points to a movie poster on the dressing room wall]. That’s a spaghetti western he did in Italy around 1968. And he was the dad in the TV show Flipper. Remember Flipper?

Totally.
He was my door into this world. I was always interested in it. I sang a lot growing up; I always loved music. But along with my older sister, who fell in love with theater when she was in high school, my uncle Brian was the most influential person in my life. He was a tangible link to this thing I was so curious about. I’d see him every summer. I was very young so we didn’t necessarily talk about the entertainment industry, but I would hear stories.

Like what?
He was also the producer of Blade Runner. I remember seeing the scripts laying around our cabin, when the movie was still called Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? To me back then, it was just another thing he was working on. Later on, he gave me an autographed picture from Harrison Ford, and his stories got more and more fascinating. I remember him talking about how [director] Ridley Scott was such a perfectionist, and how they had to reshoot scenes because a tower might’ve had two red lights on and Ridley only wanted one of them on.

And to have an uncle who worked with Indiana Jones—how cool was that?
He was a fascinating guy. After Flipper, he did a movie with Dyan Cannon called The Love Machine and was well on his way to becoming a very successful actor. Then he was in a motorcycle accident that left his right arm and leg paralyzed, and that stopped his acting career. But it was a great lesson to watch him be so tenacious and just plow through all that. He wanted to stay in the game, so he helped create this incredible movie.

You met your wife, Jennifer Prescott, when you were castmates in the 1995 revival of Carousel. What’s it like falling in love while performing in a big, romantic Broadway musical?
You know, that’s a beautiful way of putting it, and it’s probably the writer in you looking for that big-picture context. Truth is, the most we did together during the show was dance during “June is Bustin’ Out All Over,” which was a terrible fate for my wife, to have to dance with me. There was definitely something in the air, but actors live in that world. It’s not uncommon to walk into work and sing a song of pure love and joy to someone you’ve never met. That happens all the time in our world.

So when you finish a run, do you fall into a funk?
No. Not at all. In fact, I’m really good at being able to walk away, go to the beach and drink beer. I don’t know where I got that, but I’m happy I have it—the ability to stop and sit and watch TV for a couple of weeks, especially after knowing you worked really hard. There are times when that’s not the case, when you have less of a sense of your accomplishment and it’s easier to get neurotic about stuff. But it’s been a good stretch for me these last couple of years. Who knows how long Shrek will last, but we’ve been working hard and I doubt I’ll be freaking out.

You won’t be wandering around the backyard, painted green, wondering what happened to your purpose in life?
Maybe driving over to the school, saying “I was Shrek” while wearing a green hat...

I’m sure you’re daughter would love that.
She would [laughs]. Actually, she and my wife like the fact that I’m pretty good at not freaking out.

See Brian d’Arcy James in Shrek the Musical at the Broadway Theatre.