What’s Up, Wallace Shawn? The Writer Weighs in on Marie and Bruce and the Marvelous Marisa Tomei

In addition to being a noted playwright (The Fever, Aunt Dan and Lemon) and writer (2009’s Essays), Wallace Shawn is also one of the most recognizable character actors around, having created iconic roles in films like The Princess Bride and Clueless plus voicing a timid plastic T-Rex in the beloved Toy Story films. His 1979 play Marie and Bruce, centering on the day a woman decides to leave her husband, is currently in previews with off-Broadway’s New Group, and during a rehearsal break Shawn chatted with Broadway.com about why he won’t choose a favorite film and his internal battle between Wallace Shawn: Playwright and Wallace Shawn: Actor.

Marie and Bruce debuted in New York in 1980. Why did you want to bring it back now?
I probably have a higher opinion of my writing than the average person, at least when I’m in a good mood, but I don’t really think of my plays as only being relevant to a particular month or year. I’m afraid that the passage of time is mostly lost on me. If you were to open up my head you would see that I’m still brooding about statements, songs and issues from the third grade. The years between 1980 and today went by very, very quickly.

You have a spectacular pair of leading actors in Marisa Tomei and Frank Whaley.
I do! I’m a very lucky man. It’s a beautiful thing for a writer, to see people allowing your words to enter their own unconscious and their souls. It’s marvelous to have such an intimate collaboration with actors like these, who are so skilled at bringing mysterious parts of themselves to light.

You’ve been equally successful, if not more so, as an actor.
I’m in a dog-eat-dog battle with myself, but it’s not what most people would consider a tragic problem. Sure, I resent the greater success of my minor character actor self. There are times when people I don’t know like me for something I did in a movie and I think, “But why don’t they also like my plays?”

Which movies do people mention most?
The Princess Bride is by far the most popular film I’ve ever done. I don’t think I’ll ever top it.

Even though you’re tapping into a new generation of pop culture lovers playing Blair’s stepdad on Gossip Girl?
A lot of people do recognize me for that, which is fine, but The Princess Bride is somehow in a special category.

Your most famous roles are quite comic. Do you think of yourself as funny?
Since I was a boy, people have found me funny. A lot of the time I’ve tried to be serious and people have still laughed. My writing is both serious and funny at the same time. The word comedy is a total puzzle to me; I don’t really like things that are designed just to make people laugh.

That seems odd, coming from someone who has been in so many funny movies.
Sure, Clueless is funny and The Cosby Show was very funny, and I felt very comfortable acting in those. I guess I don’t know what the word funny means, but apparently it exists and I have something to do with it.

How did you get started in film acting?
Woody Allen’s casting agent came to see the first play I ever did, The Mandrake, and she thought I should meet Woody and be in his next film. That’s how I ended up in Manhattan.

You’ve been in so many memorable movies; do you have a personal favorite?
I don’t think I want to get into that one. I’ve probably been in 100 films and if I said “Well, the one I like most is The Electric Hot Dog,” then the other 99 filmmakers might feel hurt.

That’s extraordinarily diplomatic of you.
Originally I did plan to be a civil servant/diplomat. But people told me I would have been bad at it.

Why make the switch from civil servant to playwright?
The short answer is that there was a time when I though being in an artistic field was immoral, and then there was a subsequent time when I realized that people have problems of a spiritual nature and a writer might have something to offer them.

Do you still struggle with that?
Yes, I still go back and forth about it, and sometimes I feel that I should have tried to devote my life to benefitting humanity in some direct way. And then sometimes I feel that I am.