Tootsie's Andy Grotelueschen on Having a Blast as a Tony Nominee & His Early Gig Playing Dead on a Steamboat

Andy Grotelueschen is currently giving a Tony-nominated performance as Jeff Slater in Tootsie, based on the 1982 film of the same name. Growing up in Iowa, Grotelueschen began his musical theater journey in middle school, a choice that would eventually lead him to the 2019 Tony Awards. Tootsie marks Grotelueschen's second Broadway bow (he first appeared in Cyrano de Bergerac), but it is his first musical on the Great White Way and only his second on a New York stage. Broadway.com sat down with the recent Tony nominee to talk about his first theatrical experience, working on a steamboat, feeling like "a fish out of water" and more.

Over the Rainbow
Grotelueschen grew up in Clinton, Iowa, a city that has a population of about 25,000 people. "It's small, a little suburban spot," he said. "I would literally go and play in a cow pasture. There was cornfields that I could walk through on my way home from school. All those very ideal Iowa things." With not a lot to do in the town, Grotelueschen turned to the stage. "My first proper stage time was in seventh grade when I decided to audition for The Wizard of Oz," he said. "I was  cast as Joe, a farmhand. Dorothy sings 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' to Joe. And she says, 'Joe, what do you figure is over the rainbow?' Then I would say, wearing my father's overalls, 'I never gave it much thought, Dorothy.' For the rest of the play, I pulled the curtain.

Master of the Lawn
For Grotelueschen, growing up in Iowa meant being miles from the world he was most interested in. "We were so far away from the business. We didn't even have a major regional theater that was that close, and we would take spring drama trips into Chicago," he said. "The first musical theater show that I saw was Les Misérables at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. It was crazy. I didn't really know what it was but I got the cast recording. I would mow lawns for money and sing along to 'Empty Chairs and Empty Tables' and I would do the 'Master of the House' dance as I was mowing."



All Aboard!
Attending Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin gave the young actor a new perspective on his future career. "I really didn't discover that I could be a professional actor until I got to college," Grotelueschen said. "I did every play I could and sort of figured out that this was what I wanted to do, but I wasn't sure where I wanted to go." His first professional stage experience was in his hometown at a summer stock theater called the Clinton Area Showboat Theater Cast. "It is a dry-docked, old steamboat with a paddle wheel that's down on the Mississippi River. It seats 99 people, and they do a full summer rep. The dressing rooms are in the galley way. The costume shop is in the captain's office. I did Pirates of Penzance and played the dead body in The Lucky Stiff. I had to keep my eyes open forever because I was, even at that age, a method actor."

A Grand Fiasco
After moving to New York after college, Grotelueschen joined Fiasco Theater, an ensemble company that offers actor-driven productions of plays and musicals. "I've been a company member with Fiasco for 10 years. Our first show was Cymbeline," he said. "In terms of balancing Tootsie and Fiasco, I'm going to a workshop after this [interview] for the next Fiasco project. Fiasco will always be my artistic home. It's great to be able to have a place to go back to."

Swimming Upstream
Tootsie, garnered 11 Tony nominations, and the one Grotelueschen was most shocked by was his own. "This whole thing is crazy," he said about awards season. "It's all very new waters for me. Here I am now, in this big, big, big machine show. I'm really feeling like a fish out of water in a lot of ways. But I'm having a blast."