Bebe Neuwirth Revels in Playing the Macabre Matriarch in The Addams Family

If you expect to encounter someone uptight and humorless when meeting Bebe Neuwirth, you will be surprised. She is not half as harsh as the characters she plays. With her loose curls (as opposed to the tight bun her character Lilith wore on Cheers and Frasier and the severe black wig she sported as Velma Kelly in Chicago) and easy laugh, the two-time Tony winner looks fresh and relaxed and she sips a Diet Coke on a chaise in her dressing room at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. It’s obvious that the recent newlywed is reveling in her return to Broadway in the deliciously fitting role of Morticia Addams in The Addams Family. The new musical, in which Neuwirth stars opposite Nathan Lane, opens on April 8, 2010. The actress took time out of her busy schedule of rehearsals and previews to chat with Broadway.com about being a dancer first and foremost, imagining how cartoonist Charles Addams’ macabre matriarch might move and the possibility of a wardrobe malfunction.

You seem born to play this role.
I have loved this character ever since I was a kid. I think I probably was exposed to Morticia via the sitcom first because I was a little girl in the ‘60s and watched it. Then sometime when I was a kid, I also saw the cartoons, so it’s thrilling for me to play this part that I’ve always wanted to play.

Did you look at the original Charles Addams cartoons a lot as you thought about playing Morticia?
Yes, I did. I tried to see what I could emulate about her physicality and what I could find that is useful in informing me of who she is. A lot of actors work from the inside out, but I think—probably because I’m a dancer first—that I’m an actress who works from the outside in. Frequently—not always. In the case of Morticia, I think it’s been very helpful to me to see how she sits and how she holds her arms [in the cartoons]. It makes you wonder how she would move.

Morticia looks statuesque and even dancer-like in the cartoons. What do you think when you look at them?
She’s got elegance and poise. I guess maybe she seems dancer-like because she’s so thin. In the cartoons, she’s thin; on stage, she’s not quite as thin. [Laughs.]

As someone who often works from the outside in, your costume and wig must have been very informative.
Well, they imposed some limitations, certainly! [Laughs.] I actually did a lot of rehearsals with a giant rubber band around my knees. I did have a rehearsal dress, but I didn’t wear it very much. Sometimes I would use the rubber band to see how fast I could move. They’d say, “Just exit left over there.” And I’d go, “That’s all the way across the stage!” I could get there very quickly, but in that costume?! There certainly are some limitations, but let’s call them opportunities, to discover more about her via her clothing and hair. The hair is just hard to dance in. When I turn, it’s hard to spot.

It looks like you could have a wardrobe malfunction at any moment with that low-cut dress.
I don’t want to reassure you that I won’t [have a wardrobe malfunction] because it adds to the tension of the evening! Actually, I’d like to point out there’s a little modesty panel: there’s about a quarter inch of black lace edging the whole neckline. I refer to that as my modesty panel.

This is the first time you’re originating a role on Broadway...
People keep saying that, but I have originated roles before. Just not on Broadway.

Well, this truly feels custom-made for you. Your Fosse training, for example, is on display.
Good, my plan worked!

Is that something that you were purposefully wanting to show in this piece?
Yes, [the writers’] job is to write the music that she sings and find the words that she says, and my job is to embody that and to be her. It seems like a nice dovetail between a lot of the stuff that I feel comfortable doing. I’ve never danced professionally as a ballet dancer, but all of my training is ballet, and I am a Fosse dancer. There’s something about the combination of those two aesthetics that suit Morticia, I think.

Are you enjoying the process of creating something new and being able to see the changes as it evolves?
I have a certain amount of dialogue with [the creative team] about what I think about her, but it’s really up to them. Hopefully, they work off of what they see me bringing to it. Creating a role is an interesting thing—each show or each situation is different. I’ve created roles where it’s been an entirely different process.

When you were a little girl watching The Addams Family TV show, what drew you in?
I don’t know that I would have been able to tell you when I was six years old exactly what I liked. I’m sure it was something like, “Oh, I like her dress and that ring that she wears.” Or, “I like her hair!” I have very curly hair, but I wanted long straight hair when I was a kid. Well, it was the ‘60s—everybody wanted long straight hair! I have spoken with other women about playing this part, and Carolyn Jones playing that part of Morticia on TV really had an effect on many, many women. That tells me there’s something archetypal about her. So that’s the short answer. She’s a female archetype, and we are all drawn to different female archetypes. I am certainly drawn to this one as a strong and elegant and feminine woman. She’s elegant and funny and she loves her husband very much, and he loves her very much. That’s an attractive thing, to see someone be loved and be worthy of that love and love in return.

They were a very passionate couple on the television show.
Yes, and they really cared about each other, too—they weren’t just hot for each other. They were also tender for each other. That’s very attractive.

You have said that it was inevitable that you would work with Nathan Lane at some point because the Broadway community is so small. Tell me about working with him.
He’s very funny. You see him on the stage—he is a very, very funny guy.

How do the two of you feel about leading this cast? Is there a great sense of responsibility?
You’d have to ask Nathan about how he deals with that. I try to be very conscientious about it. I try to do the best I can, but I don’t always succeed. I have my moments once in a while where I just can’t. I think for the most part, I do a pretty nice job of leading a company. I can’t have this conversation without saying that I learned this from Debbie Allen when I did Sweet Charity. She is a great leader and the way she led the company was just brilliant and really inspiring. I have tried to emulate that all this time. That role of Charity in Sweet Charity, I’ve played that part and I don’t know of any role in musical theater that’s harder. She was learning and playing that part and all the pressures that go with it, yet she always had the company’s interest at hand. The way she had a friendly, cheerful hello for every single person in the company all the time was really remarkable.

How does it feel to dance again after hip replacement surgery?
I had both my hips replaced. I only had one steel hip when I did Roxie [in the Broadway revival of Chicago in 2007], and now I have two steel hips. I’m a human tuning fork.

It must have been very frightening, as a dancer, to go through that.
Yes, and because of what happened to me—I’m the vice president of the Actors' Fund—I was able to found a program there called The Dancers' Resource. Anybody can get injured, and anybody can get arthritis and have a terrible time with it. When you’re a dancer who is injured, you are at the bottom of the food chain. We are so replaceable.

After your surgery, what was it like to go back into the dance studio?
Thrilling. That was my physical therapy for both my replacements. I did actual physical therapy—you start the next day in the hospital doing some things. Eight weeks in, I went back to ballet class. That became my physical therapy. I was in so much pain for so long with that first [hip], I had three separate dreams that I was doing a grand plie. It’s the simplest thing, the first thing you do in ballet class: You stand at the barre and do a grand plie. Now if you say to a dancer you dreamed about a grand plie, they would laugh because usually dancers dream about doing leaps that don’t come down or 15 pirouettes or something. I didn’t dream that. I just wanted to do a plie, and I couldn’t. That’s how pathetic it was. So the first time, when I went back to class, I stood at the barre and I did a grand plie. I was like, “I’m not dreaming, I’m really here doing this!” It was truly thrilling.

Do you see a throughline in the characters you’ve played?
Yeah, sure. I think most of them are strong and honest, most of them are funny, a lot of them have something sexy about them. And many of them have been originated by Chita Rivera!

Morticia—like most New Yorkers—is devoted to wearing the color black. Do you think after playing this part, you’d ever wear, say, yellow?
[Laughs.] No! I never do, and I don’t imagine I ever will.

See Bebe Neuwirth in The Addams Family at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.