John Benjamin Hickey on The Inheritance, Directing Sarah Jessica Parker & Matthew Broderick in Plaza Suite & More on Show People

John Benjamin Hickey is back on Broadway in a big way this season. A Tony winner for The Normal Heart, he has lent his talents to many seminal productions on Broadway, including his 1995 debut in Love! Valour! Compassion! and the 2017 revival of Six Degrees of Separation. Now, he is starring as the troubled Henry Wilcox in Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance. In addition, he will make his Great White Way directorial debut this season with Plaza Suite, starring his close friends Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick. Watch him talk about his illustrious career, directing his starry pals and more on Show People with Paul Wontorek.

Here are some of the highlights:

INEVITABLE COMPARISONS
“A lot of people have talked about The Inheritance in relation to Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, one of the great masterworks of the 20th century. I’m a student of that play. It was my generation. All my friends were in it or wanted to be in it. Matthew [Lopez]’s play is not a political play. It reminds me a lot more of Terrence McNally’s voice in Love! Valour! Compassion! Matthew is incredibly funny. It’s a deep play. It’s a profound play. It will absolutely rip you to shreds, but it will make you laugh your butt off.”

HERE'S TO THE LADIES WHO LUNCH COCKTAIL
“Patti LuPone is the best person to be out of town with. She loves being on the road. She’s a gypsy. [When we were both in London last year], I would be like, ‘I can’t believe it. We’re here another year.’ She’ll go, ‘Doll, we’re in London! Let’s have a cocktail!’”

CHECKING INTO PLAZA SUITE
“[Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick] are longtime friends [of mine]. We’ve done several rough readings since we announced it because we’re all so excited about it. We did a reading a couple of years ago at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side in front of an audience. It went gangbusters. It was a thrill. Two nights later, we went to dinner, and they were foolish enough to ask me if I wanted to direct this, and I was foolish enough to say, ‘Yes.’ I just love them both so much as actors as much as friends.”

HEY, OLD FRIEND
“One of my best friends is the great actress Julie White. She’s the reason I came to New York. Whenever something good happens to one of us, we’re the first ones to call each other.”

'THE GREATEST GIFT'
“I’ve been the luckiest actor on the planet because I’ve gotten to do these plays that are not just seminal works that speak to the gay experience but seminal plays in the history of the American theater as far as I’m concerned, real gamechangers. And so when The Inheritance came across my desk, it felt like the greatest gift I’ve ever been given—both as an actor and as a gay person. There’s an enormous amount of pain and suffering in the play, and there’s an enormous amount of self-hatred and really, really messed up people, but none of them are messed up simply because of their sexuality.”

Did you know Show People with Paul Wontorek is available as a podcast? Check it out on iTunes and Spotify.