Paul Hilton on the 'Palpable Connection' of The Inheritance and More on London Calling with Imogen Lloyd Webber

For the past two years, Paul Hilton has been impressing audiences with his portrayal of both Morgan and Walter in The Inheritance, which began at London's Young Vic before transferring to the West End and Broadway, where it can now be seen at the Barrymore Theatre. Although Matthew Lopez's play, which re-envisions E.M. Forster’s Howards End as a modern gay epic, marks Hilton's Broadway debut, he is no newcomer. With over 40 productions credits to his name, and an appearance on Netflix's The Crown, Hilton has built a strong London career. To celebrate his long-awaited Broadway debut, Hilton sat down with Imogen Lloyd Webber and talked all about playing two characters, how The Inheritance is "the closest thing to church" he has and more on a new episode of London Calling with Imogen Lloyd Webber.

What should audiences know before seeing The Inheritance?
People are gonna be in for a surprise. You don't have to know Howard's End, you just arrive and there's these young men on stage trying to tell a story. Our principal character refers to Howard's End's E.M. Forster as a great hero of his and he's trying to find a way to tell his own story, and then Morgan [played by Hilton] appears. Together, we're trying to marry these two worlds together and then we realize that we're telling a template of Howard's End through the perspective of a young gay man in New York in the 21st century.

The Inheritance is a quintessential New York tale. How does it feel to be telling this story on Broadway?
Because we played it in London and because I know the power of this piece, I've been inside it and drove it for so long. I was so excited about playing it in front of a New York audience—there was this enormous release for me. We're finally here, this is where this story is meant to be told.

Your character Walter has quite the emotional monologue about living through the AIDS crisis, how do you cope with hearing the audience sobbing and reacting?
I hear it, I listen to it, I feel it and I try to pay due reverence to that. For me, this is the closest I've ever felt to church. Theater and a communion of souls, a congregation. In that moment where we're evoking the spirits of all those beautiful people that we lost in the AIDS crisis, it's the closest we ever get to a kind of memorial. There is a sense of people palpably connecting with the spirits of the people that they loved and lost. You have to acknowledge that, you can't skirt over it. That's the center of the play—the kind of love and connection with our past and those that we left behind.

This being your Broadway debut, how are you finding the Broadway community?
In London, I don't like stage door encounters. But in the Broadway community, you have to meet the stage door and hear their stories. I've never done that before, so to get something back off an audience in that way on a nightly basis, it's like food. That's the thing that's getting me through these lonely days. The audiences are just so generous.

Watch the full London Calling episode below!