Brooks Ashmanskas on Why The Prom Feels 'Like Recess,' His 'Disgusting' Last Name & More on Show People

Tony nominee Brooks Ashmanskas is a musical comedy stalwart. With 14 Broadway credits to his name, he has landed huge laughs in productions like Something Rotten!, Bullets Over Broadway, The Producers and more. Now Ashmanskas is starring in The Prom as actor-turned-do-gooder Barry Glickman. In addition to the laughs, Ashmanskas appreciates the depths of his character. He sat down on Show People with Paul Wontorek to discuss his cumbersome name, sexiest roles and more.

1. PERFORMING IN THE PROM DOESN'T FEEL LIKE WORK
“It’s wonderful. It’s a great group of people, which is the most important part. It’s a great piece. I’m so glad people are responding to it in a positive way because I really love it. We’ve been working on it a long time. It’s thrilling to go to work every day. It’s not like work. It’s like recess."

2. HE'S AWARE THAT HIS LAST NAME IS A MOUTHFUL
“It’s a nightmare. I went into audition for The Producers way back when. Literally, Mel Brooks was like, ‘Your name! I love the first name. The last name is disgusting!’ He was right! He was absolutely right. If I were to change it, I would make it into like Brooks Glitterati. Something fun!”

3. "BARRY'S GOING TO PROM" WASN'T ALWAYS THE SHOW-STOPPER IT IS TODAY
“The moment was always there. It used to just be a scene. Casey [Nicholaw] said, ‘I think he needs to sing. I think he’s earned a song there.’ Matt and Chad wrote the song very quickly; it’s astonishing how quickly these guys write. It was certainly not long before we were presenting the show. Casey and I went into the smaller [rehearsal] room. I didn’t know the lyrics yet. Basically, we were trying to figure out, ‘OK, what does this guy do when he’s alone in a hotel room and feeling celebratory?’ So, I asked Casey, ‘What would you do?’ And he said, ‘Well, I would eat. Like go to the minibar and get some chips or something?’ I said, 'Well, I'm in.' Obviously, the song is very joyful. But it's also very regretful and sad. He works his way to a triumphant moment at the end. I love doing it every night.”

Other must-read highlights:

ON WHAT HE LOVES MOST ABOUT PLAYING BARRY
“It’s a pleasure to play a more fully realized human being. I think there’s nothing wrong with being funny or making people laugh. There should be more of that. I’m pleased that people sometimes find me funny. But in a really wacky, crazy character, if you can find one moment of a little humanity, it makes all the funny stuff even funnier and also deeper on the other end. This part really offers quite a few opportunities for that. It’s lovely.”

ON HIS REAL PROM DATES
“I went to both my junior and senior prom with friends. I went to my junior prom with my friend Kelly Jones. She was a great pal of mine—beautiful blonde. She was the most beautiful, and I wore a dinner jacket and tried to look like James Bond and didn’t. I went to my senior prom my friend Valerie Kline. We were in a show together.”

ON HONING HIS FAMILY FUNNY BONE
“When I showed interest in the theater at a very young age, they leapt on that. My father was wildly funny. My parents were both funny. Mom was pretty direct funny. She was a teacher when I was younger, and then when I went to college, she opened up her own florist shop: The Enchanted Florist. I call her The Enchantress. Dad was very dry. He was a federal judge. They were wildly smart people. The dinner table—my brother is very funny. My sister is very funny. I’m the youngest, so I would sit and listen to them and try to figure out what my in was. I was probably four or five years old, and I remember—because my family was so funny and their friends were funny—I can remember sitting around the campfire and I took over the conversation with some bad impression I was doing.”

ON COMING OUT TO HIS PARENTS AT A YOUNG AGE
“I came out to my parents when I was very young. My father, being a judge, he had a stenographer who was gay. He and his boyfriend would come over for dinner. My mother, being the sweetest woman, would sit the three of us kids down and say, ‘They’re like your father and I. They’re just both men.’ I apparently said, ‘Oh, like me.’ My parents were stunning people. They made it very easy for me.”

ON WHAT HE CONSIDERS HIS BIG BREAK
“In a way, there were three. One was Paper Moon the Musical at the Paper Mill Playhouse. It was heading to Broadway. The marquee was up and everything. It did not make it in, but that was sort of the first musical I did. I had done a lot of plays off-off-off-off Broadway in the early ‘90s. And then I got into Neil Simon’s London Suite off-Broadway. I was the bellman at the hotel. And then Songs for a New World. It had a lot of energy with Jason Robert Brown and Daisy Prince. [The people in that production] are still some of my best friends in New York.”

ON WHAT HE WANTS TO BE WHEN HE GROWS UP
“I’d like to own a nice bed or breakfast in Maine or somewhere in New England and grow tomatoes and be away. I could do that a couple of days a week. I’d like to find that balance as I get older.”

ON WHICH ROLE HE WAS SEXIEST IN
“That’s a really good question. The easy answer is all of them.”

Watch the full episode of Show People with Paul Wontorek below!

Interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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