Ryan Murphy Has Big Plans for Broadway: The Tony Nominee on Bringing The Boys in the Band, The Prom and More to the World

Ryan Murphy has big plans for Broadway.

Sure, the Hollywood hit-maker was long linked to the theater world. He directed the Emmy-winning HBO adaptation of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart and has made a practice of casting theater actors, ever since he plucked Lea Michele and Matthew Morrison from the Broadway world to headline his musical TV series Glee a decade ago. Time and time again, he has provided fantastic opportunities for stage favorites to break out (a small sampling: Sarah Paulson, Darren Criss, Andrew Rannells, Billy Porter, Cheyenne Jackson, Jackie Hoffman, Denis O’Hare) on his various TV phenomenons like American Horror Story, American Crime Story, Feud and Pose, which kicks off its second season on June 11.

At the 2019 Tony Awards, he’s nominated as a producer of the revival of Mart Crowley’s tricky gay classic The Boys in the Band, which he shepherded to Broadway last summer with director Joe Mantello and co-producer David Stone. That acclaimed staging featured, for the first time, an stellar ensemble of actors who all happen to be openly gay: Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells, Charlie Carver, Brian Hutchinson, Michael Benjamin Washington, Tuc Watkins and Robin De Jesús, who is Tony-nominated for his memorable turn as Emory.

But with his much-reported $300 million deal with Netflix, Murphy intends to bring Broadway projects and stars to a mammoth, international audience. A film of The Boys in the Band, under the direction of Joe Mantello and bringing the revival cast back together, starts filming in July. And soon afterward, cameras will start rolling on a big-screen version of the current Tony-nominated Broadway musical The Prom, which will reunite the show’s writing team and mark the directorial film debut of Casey Nicholaw. Also set for a fall bow on Netflix is The Politican, a new series that Murphy custom created for Tony winner Ben Platt after being wowed by his performance in Dear Evan Hansen.

Broadway.com caught up with Murphy and learned how working on The Boys in the Band healed the cast and crew, why he thinks The Prom can shake up the 2020 Presidential race, and how casting Broadway stars can be like "lightning in a bottle."

Big congrats on your Tony nomination!
Thank you! I was nominated before for the revival of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which I did for my great friend Jessica Lange. But I wasn’t that involved. For Boys in the Band, I was very involved. It was my idea—I bought the play, I went to [director] Joe Mantello and [co-producer] David Stone and worked with them on casting for a year. It really was a labor of love because I loved the play so much and felt that it was ripe to be rediscovered. It was really the first play in the canon to talk about gay lives and gay relationships, and I felt it had gone unloved and undeservedly overlooked.

You’ve made playwright Mart Crowley a very happy man.
The amazing thing is, from what I understand, Mart is now the oldest first-time Tony nominee in history! I’m really proud to have put that man and that play back center stage. It was a real privilege.

It felt like The Boys in the Band had a bit of a funk on it before this production. The characters were see as being negative, bitter and self-loathing. Do you think that was a misperception about the script, or something that was fixed in this new adaptation?
I don’t think we fixed anything. I always felt the play got the short end of the stick in many ways. It premiered in the late ‘60s and then Stonewall happened. And I think the attitude was, “Well, we don’t want to be like those guys—we don’t want to be like the boys in the band. We want to be more heteronormative; we want equal rights.” The guys in the play—they had to have this birthday party in a private home because they could be arrested holding hands on the street. It was still a criminal offense to be gay. I think people forget that. Because of the gay liberation movement, and the AIDS crisis, we’ve been a little slow to acknowledge the true groundbreaking merit of the play. This production launched discussions in the gay community about self-loathing and acceptance of different types of gay people, and the classism within the gay world, and the hierarchy, and racism and sexism. Those conversations happened just among those of us who were making the show—we had to examine our own gay shame and question our own feelings. The play was a huge healer for all of us.

When it was announced that you were producing the play, I remember rattling off a list of amazing talents from the Ryan Murphy troupe of actors who could star in it. And many of them wound up being in it on Broadway!
It was an amazing company. It was a very interesting becuase Joe came from the Broadway world, and I came from my Hollywood world. But I was stunned at how many of our friends and first-choice people intersected when we were casting it. We had a great time.

The boys are reuniting this summer for the upcoming Netflix movie. How does it feel to be jumping back into it?
When we did it last year, it was a limited run because we only had some of our actors for a short amount of time. But it was an amazing summer together where everyone became like family and got really close. And it was very important to all of us that we cast out, successful gay actors. That was an unusual circumstance [to work with an all-gay company]. It’s rare to be surrounded by like-minded people—we were all talking about the issues of the play and sharing our own lives with one another. By the end of the run, it felt like everyone was just really starting to go deep. Now that we're filming it, I think that level of intensity and conversation will just continue, and it will go even deeper. What I love about the Netflix platform is that it will be instantly accessible to 150 million people worldwide. I know when I was growing up, The Boys in the Band was literally the only thing that I had! I had The Boys in the Band, Paul Lynde and the rumor of Rock Hudson! [Laughs.] As LGBTQ people, we don’t have a lot of recorded history because so much of our lives, until recently, has been cloaked in the shadows. This is an important thing to document—not just for the play, which is amazing, but for the fact that were we finally able to, for the first time ever, cast all gay actors to be in it. 

Speaking of Netflix, I'm thrilled you’ve fallen for The Prom. Sounds like it spoke to your roots of growing up gay in Indiana!
It did! The thing I loved about The Prom was how good it made me feel and how real it was. It’s a broad piece, don’t get me wrong. And it’s very funny. But I loved that even the so-called villains in the piece were not villains. The conservative characters were handled with great care and nuance and are not bad people. They’re just people who maybe were ill-informed and didn’t get the right information. And by the end, everyone comes around and realizes that, you know, love is love. That’s the message of it. I’m interested in making a movie musical that’s something kids can watch with their parents.

Word is you’re moving quickly to get this made.
It’s going to come out in September of 2020 in movie theaters. And then it’s going to be on the Netflix streaming platform in October 2020, just in time for the election. I’m excited, again, about the conversations and the awareness it can launch. It’s interesting in this next election cycle how you have two opposite ends of the coin—You have “Mayor Pete” [Buttigieg], who’s from Indiana, and you have Mike Pence, who’s from Indiana. I think doing some broad piece of popular culture that looks at both of those worlds is a fascinating thing. I'm a big fan of Broadway, and I’m at this point in my career where I’m starting to produce more work. I’m getting ready to do original Broadway work—hiring Broadway writers, commissioning them to write pieces. I want to keep supporting the community. And part of my Netflix deal is going to be bringing Broadway shows and Broadway talent to the world.

I love that! So thrilled to hear it.
I’m really trying to be an ambassador to the community because I think there are so many amazingly talented people and I want the world to see them. So that's what I’m doing.

You’ve already given so many of our favorite Broadway stars huge opportunities on television. It’s launched a sort of golden age of theater actors being afforded more opportunity. Didn't it feel like Hollywood saw Broadway talents as something separate before? 
I don’t know why, but it did feel that way. What I like to do with talent is say, "What do you want to do?" Here’s a perfect example: When I went to see Dear Evan Hansen, I was so blown away by the show and Ben Platt. I took him to lunch and said, “I want to write something for you. What do you want to do?” And he told me what kind of character he wanted to do and I wrote the show. It’s called The Politician and it comes out at the end of September! I’m interested in identifying people that I think are extremely talented and giving them a platform to show what they can do. I think when you empower people like that, it’s like lightning in a bottle. Same thing with Billy Porter on Pose. I said, “The whole world needs to see you, not just Broadway. What can we do to show you off to your best example?” So, I wrote him that part on Pose and he kind of exploded. That’s what I like to do and I’m going to continue to do it.

Please keep doing it! Finally, I know you've brought Patti LuPone into the cast of Pose. We're dying to find out what kind of character she's playing. Are you ready to reveal that to the world?
Not yet! I’ve always been the biggest Patti LuPone fan and one of the great privileges in my life is that I get to be friends with her! I can never believe that I’m friends with Patti LuPone. I mean, I grew up in Indiana singing along with the Evita original cast album! Patti’s done a few things for me now and for Pose, I wrote her this great, juicy part. I don’t want to say much about it yet, but it’s a tour de force. Get ready—You're going to see Patti LuPone in all her 1990s realness!