THR Tony Nominees Roundtable: Hugh Jackman, Ruth Negga, Jesse Williams, Mary-Louise Parker and Sam Rockwell on Broadway in the Time of COVID

Ahead of the 75th Tony Awards, which will be held at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, The Hollywood Reporter gathered five of this Broadway season’s acting nominees for a conversation about the challenges and rewards of working on Broadway, generally, and specifically this season, in the middle of a global pandemic.

Two already have Tonys to their name: Australian Hugh Jackman, a best actor in a musical nominee for The Music Man, in which he plays a conman who brings trouble to small-town Iowa (the Hollywood A-lister, who played Wolverine in the X-Men film franchise, previously won for the musical The Boy from Oz in 2004 and received a special Tony in 2012); and American Mary-Louise Parker, a best actress in a play nominee for How I Learned to Drive, in which she plays a woman recounting childhood molestation at the hands of her uncle (the Weeds Emmy winner was previously recognized for the plays Proof in 2001 and The Sound Inside in 2021).

They were joined at PMC’s New York offices by three first-time Tony nominees: Ethiopian-born Irishwoman Ruth Negga, a vet of stages in Dublin and London, who is up for best actress in a play for her Broadway debut in Macbeth, in which she plays the conspiratorial wife of the title character; American Oscar winner and theater stalwart Sam Rockwell, a best actor in a play contender for American Buffalo, in which he plays a small-time hustler who is also plotting a crime; and American Jesse Williams, best known for his 12 years on TV’s Grey’s Anatomy, who is in contention for best featured actor in a play for his first show on Broadway, Take Me Out, in which he plays a baseball star who comes out as gay.

Below, you can listen to the entirety of the conversation or read excerpts of it (edited for clarity and brevity).

Each show represented at this gathering is a revival — in other words, a show which has been performed before, in some cases many times going back decades or even centuries — and all have previously been done on Broadway except for How I Learned to Drive, which was done Off Broadway. So I’d like to begin by talking about what led you to sign up for these parts, and why now was the time to revive these particular shows.

Hugh, you last starred in a musical on Broadway nearly 20 years ago, in the now-legendary production of The Boy from Oz, for which you won a Tony. You’ve since been back in plays, but this show — first performed on Broadway in 1957 with Robert Preston — is your first time back in a musical.

JACKMAN The first show I ever did was The Music Man in high school. I was 14 and I absolutely loved it. After I began acting for a living, for many years the idea of doing The Music Man at some point was bandied around, but I didn’t know when. But about four years ago, I don’t know, I went “The Music Man! Damn, I’m almost 50, I might have missed the boat!” All of a sudden, I felt an urgency, so I rang my agent, who, weirdly, had had a call that day inquiring about me doing The Music Man. So that’s how it happened.

Mary-Louise, you’ve been acting on Broadway since 1990, most recently, prior to this show, in The Sound Inside, for which you won a well-deserved second Tony. But it was Off Broadway, in 1997, that you and David Morse first starred in a production of Paula Vogel’s semi-autobiographical play. Here you are, 25 years later, reuniting in the same parts, along with the original’s director Mark Brokaw and company member Johanna Day.

PARKER I have a picture of myself standing on the street right after the last show [of the original run], and from that day, I think, I wanted to go back. I just wasn’t finished with it. I don’t know if I ever feel finished with any play, and every time I’ve gone back to do something — I’ve done many plays more than once, one three times — I’ve had a fear that was there won’t be there, but it actually always seems to distill it into something stronger. I was concerned that there might be a slightly different response to this one this time because we’re so polarized right now — everything is so black and white, and this play is all about the grey area — so it’s really moving to me that the audience has seemed to allow for that.

Sam, you made your Broadway debut 12 years ago in A Behanding in Spokane, a then-new Martin McDonagh show. I was lucky enough to catch you seven years ago in a Sam Shepard revival, Fool for Love. And now, in David Mamet’s American Buffalo, you are walking in shoes first occupied 45 years ago by Robert Duvall, and since by the likes of Al Pacino and Richard Jenkins.

ROCKWELL: You want to chew on the big parts — my mom or somebody told me you have to play the great parts if you want to be a good actor or, if you can get to there, a great actor — and I outgrew Hamlet, so this was one of the ones that was left.

Ruth, this is your Broadway debut, but you’ve done plenty of theater before in Dublin and London, including multiple productions of Shakespeare. But to come to New York to do the 48th production of Macbeth on Broadway, did you have to know that you guys would approach it in a way different from the others?

NEGGA No, I’m not really interested in doing something different just for the sake of difference, you know? And with Shakespeare, he doesn’t need anything gimmicky, the language is so beautiful. For me, Shakespeare cracks you open as a person and as an actor, so I just thought that to do my favorite playwright on Broadway would be extraordinary. I literally haven’t stopped smiling, it’s been such a joyful experience. It is everything I hoped it would be and more.

Jesse, you are best known for your 12 years on Grey’s Anatomy. But Take Me Out — which was previously performed on Broadway in 2003 — is not only your first Broadway production, but your first professional theatrical production.

WILLIAMS It’s my first play, yeah. I mean, I did a one-act play, to be fair, Off Broadway, with, of all people, Edward Albee, who directed us at the Cherry Lane — we did The American Dream and The Sandbox — but that was the only time I’d been on stage. Theater was something I always admired and respected, and it seemed like this really daunting mountain that was over there. When this one first came across my lap, it was a little too scary. I would have had to quit my job [on Grey’s Anatomy] to come out and try this amorphous, mysterious thing. And the lead headline was, “Do you want to be naked on Broadway this gay baseball play?” And I was like, “I don’t think I’m ready to pack up everything I know for that.” I wanted stability and it just seemed too intimidating. But in 2019, when it was sent to me again, I had a new perspective. I think I was just a little more emotionally mature. The story moved me. And the role was terrifying, and I knew that’s what I needed.

I believe that all of your shows except for Ruth’s were already in motion, to some degree, when COVID shut down Broadway on March 12, 2020. Mary-Louise, Jesse and Sam, your shows were coming up on your first previews.

PARKER We hadn’t moved into the theater yet.

WILLIAMS We were beginning our third week of rehearsals — we hadn’t gone into tech yet either — and rehearsals were going really well when we shut down. Those first couple of weeks, we thought, “This is just going to last a couple of weeks more.” So we were on Zoom running it every few days.

ROCKWELL Yeah, we were doing that too!

WILLIAMS The day that was supposed to be opening night, we did an opening night party on Zoom.

PARKER I did that too! I forgot.

WILLIAMS We kept up with each other until a certain point when I put it away because it had turned the corner into sadness. Like, “What if I don’t get to do this thing?”

ROCKWELL Yeah, I had the same exact experience — we were about to go to tech — except we felt we weren’t quite ready. Laurence [Fishburne, his costar] and I would FaceTime, and he had done this movie Contagion and knew some of the scientists, and I remember, we were running lines and I said, “Did you talk to your doctor/scientist friends?” He says, “Yeah, man, it’s gonna be two years.” I said, “Two years?!” But I felt we weren’t ready [before the shutdown], and I’m so glad it fermented like a wine. I don’t even know if the world was ready. There’s something about the play that is more relevant now.

Hugh, your show was going to begin previews in July and open in October.

JACKMAN In March when it all happened, we had a few months, and I had planned a bit of time off, so I had nothing except The Music Man. I actually had never had a summer without working for as long as I remember. Luckily enough, Warren Carlyle, who is our choreographer, and I, we got into a room, and we just danced four days a week for a year and a half. He would sit in a far corner yelling at me with a mask on, and I danced for three hours and sweated, because I didn’t know when I was coming back. And I sang every day.

When Broadway reopened last September 2021, audiences were, understandably enough, hesitant about coming back, but things really started to come back to life in December with The Music Man, which drew greater numbers of people and revenue than any other show. But I know that for The Music Man and all of your shows, COVID did not stop being a daily consideration just because you were back in a theater.

JACKMAN We have 40-something actors in our show — I’d never been part of anything with half of that — and there was one night when we had 14 people off because of COVID, and we still managed to do a show. My friend texted me, “I think you should change the lyric to ‘7.6 trombones.’” [laughs] We used understudies, swings, everybody — there was even one point when our assistant choreographer said, “Can I fit in a costume?” People were taking on roles that they hadn’t studied. Sutton’s [costar Sutton Foster’s] daughter got COVID and, of course, then she got COVID, and I knew it was only a matter of time for me because I’m kissing her every night. But when Sutton was off, the swing, Kathy Voytko, came in that day and they said, “Oh, you’re on,” and she’s a swing, so she’s covering eight or nine tracks, and she said, “Which part?” And they said, “Marian Paroo.” She had never had a rehearsal. They handed her a little mini script with just her scenes highlighted, and luckily she’d been at rehearsal watching, but she’s watching nine tracks, not just Marian. It was 12 o’clock when she found out she was on, and from 1 to 5 she went through every scene, and she went on that night.

ROCKWELL It really is a heroic time for understudies.

WILLIAMS Oh, my God, what a skillset.

NEGGA Our director [Sam Gold] went on one night! It was really weird.

ROCKWELL Who went on when Daniel [Craig, Negga’s costar] got it?

NEGGA I think if people had showed up to see Dan Craig in Macbeth and he wasn’t playing Macbeth, there would have been riots, so we just shut the show down. But Sam went on one night with a book in his hand and a microphone, and it was like performance art. It was surreal.

I’ve got to ask you about how audiences are behaving during this time. All of you have audience members right up in your face, none more so than Sam at Circle in the Square…

ROCKWELL Yesterday, Laurence went like this [motioning to an audience member to pull her mask up]. They’re in our lap, man.

WILLIAMS Yeah, you’ve got the whole cross-breeze of an audience.

I think the vast majority of people are doing what they’re supposed to do and adhering to the instructions of the ushers with the “Masks Up” signs at the front of the theaters — but most theaters are still selling concessions during intermission, and patrons are permitted to consume them from their seats, which means “Masks Down”…

ROCKWELL I like to think that we’re getting slow immunity. [laughs]

PARKER We don’t have an intermission.

ROCKWELL We do.

JACKMAN Yeah.

WILLIAMS We do, but you can’t bring drinks into our theater.

Setting aside the stuff that’s going on around you while you’re performing, what do each of you find the most challenging or daunting about playing the characters you’re playing at the moment?

PARKER That it has to end.

JACKMAN Yeah. These old musicals — I’ve done Oklahoma! as well — were built in a way that was a little more actor-friendly than the modern musical. With The Boy from Oz I had 22 songs and was never offstage, but with The Music Man I have five or six songs and Sutton has five or six songs, and there’s a couple of moments that feel like a smoke break. [laughs]

NEGGA Totally! That’s exactly what it is!

JACKMAN “Let’s give Robert Preston 10 minutes here.” I remember that with Shakespeare too.

NEGGA Yeah, totally. Maybe it’s the time that we’re in at the moment, but there’s just this delicious energy that I feel super buoyed by. Everybody just feels utterly grateful to be on stage. It’s like we’ve been let out of jail — and we kind of have. Those two years just drove it home that this is a very special thing to be able to stand in front of people who have paid a lot of money to sit in a dark room to see people shout at each other.

PARKER And they’re risking something too. I feel so grateful and moved when I look out — I have a direct address — and there’s just a sea of masks. It’s so moving that these people bought these tickets that cost more than they probably should and are risking something by coming out and sitting in a crowd.

WILLIAMS For me, it has been the emotional turmoil and trauma and pain that my character experiences, and figuring out, as a human being, how to metabolize that and not let it take me into a downward spiral. That started to really beat the shit out of me, honestly, over a period of time.

ROCKWELL My character is a bit of a monster, so you kind of want a neurotic energy, and it’s sad to say, if I’m not having a good day, the performance is better. And that’s not necessarily a healthy way to go through life. It’s also funny when you’re angry in real life, but you can’t access that on stage.

You’ve all done screen work as well as stage work. Do you find that your experience with each helps you with the other, or are they just totally different?

JACKMAN I find both inform the other in really good ways.

PARKER Me too.

With Broadway productions, you guys perform the same show as many as eight times a week for months on end. To many non-actors, that sounds masochistic — people assume it must get old, it must get stale, it must get boring, it must start to drive you crazy. And yet, almost uniformly, actors say that’s not the case…

NEGGA Oh, no, it is.

ROCKWELL Well, that is the case — it is masochistic, it is all that — but then it’s also something else. It’s also glorious. When it’s great, it’s fucking great. And when you see Chris Walken do the monologue in Pulp Fiction — or Laurence Fishburne do Morpheus [in the Matrix films] — the reason he can do that is because Chris Walken has also done Coriolanus, he’s done Hamlet twice, he’s done Romeo, you know? And so that monologue in Pulp Fiction? Of course he can do that. It’s like butter. Definitely the stage informs the film work, I think. With George C. Scott. Viola [Davis]. Whoever.

WILLIAMS I’m super excited to see. I do feel like I’ve been on steroids. I feel like I’m using every molecule in my body in a way that I wasn’t. On stage, you’re shooting the master and the close-up at the same time all the time. Everything matters. Everything is communicating something to the audience. The amount of times I’ve had somebody who’s seen the show come up to me and comment on what my hands did? You wouldn’t have seen that on screen.

NEGGA The spatial awareness that you get as an actor on stage really helps, for me anyway, during screen work.

JACKMAN I love two-show days because you don’t have to wait and sleep to come back the next night and try to get it right. With film, you’re never really happy with anything.

Playing off of what you just said, Hugh, and knowing what you guys know from the inside: if you were a ticket-buyer on a two-show day, would you buy a ticket for the first show because the performers are fresh, or the second show because maybe they’ve worked something out from the first show?

JACKMAN Hmmm. I always go to a matinee.

NEGGA Me too, I love a matinee.

WILLIAMS Wow.

ROCKWELL Oh, interesting. And some heavy cats will show up on Tuesday night, almost every Tuesday. I’m like, “Why are Matt Damon and Chris Rock here? It’s a Tuesday.” But Tuesday shows are really good because you’re coming rested.

Is Broadway doing enough to make shows accessible for people who aren’t older, white and wealthy?

PARKER No.

ROCKWELL The tickets are so fucking expensive, that’s the problem.

JACKMAN It’s more affordable in London.

NEGGA Oh, yeah. When I heard what it costs here, I couldn’t believe it. It’s prohibitive.

JACKMAN I really have given this a lot of thought, and I find it very disturbing and worrying what is happening, this idea of market forces being predominant and “whatever the market can bear is good for the whole” — I don’t think that’s true, and I wrestle with it because, of course, because I know I’m getting a wage which is not what the other kids are getting in our show, and that probably impacts on ticket prices as well. We have a ticket initiative for people, and I give a portion of my wage to people who have never been to the theater, but it’s not really getting to the root of the problem. We have to be very proactive about this to protect what the theater audience looks like 20, 30 years from now. And if we’re only really making it accessible to people who have a lot of money, or the very few lucky ones who get a free ticket somehow, which is probably three percent of the audience, we’re going to end up where people are not coming.

PARKER How is anyone going to even consider coming to the theater if its $125 for a bad seat? There’s something about the not-for-profit theaters. They draw a lot of people who want to do a limited run, they attract people who haven’t done a lot of theater, sometimes people who are TV stars or whatever, and I think there’s some flaw within that system also that doesn’t feel quite right.

WILLIAMS I know that ours offers, like, $30 tickets for people under 30, and a student ID gives you half-price, and things like that which people are taking advantage of.

NEGGA Like with anything at the moment, it’s really important to keep questioning the status quo. And in terms of getting people into the theater so that it’s not just a sort of playhouse for the elite? People will come to see themselves on stage. I want to see people like me — and I want to see people who are different, as well, but I want to see me occasionally. So I think it’s about encouraging all different kinds of people to be involved in our business — to be playwrights, to be actors, to be directors.

And that’s certainly the case with your show, Ruth. Lest anyone think they’re in for something stuffy, there’s an actor in a wheelchair, there’s colorblind casting—

NEGGA Intentional casting, not colorblind. That’s very modern. But you know what, I feel like Shakespeare is modern. It’s the language of the people. It wasn’t an elitist artform. The theater was the kind of place where people ran amuck and you caught some of the speech but you didn’t catch the rest of the speech. He’s actually really democratic as a playwright, and I think we forget that that’s where the origins of theater come from.

PARKER Sometimes they do the student matinee thing [where a performance’s audience is comprised primarily or entirely of students], and I felt like our show was not a good show to do a student matinee for, but I wanted to have students there, so I said, “Can we please have them in, talk to them about their lives, spend more time with them, actually, do some scenes from the play, and then they can go home?” I had to push really, really hard, but they did it. And I went out early and just sat and talked to them. I think there should be more student programs like that.

JACKMAN That’s inspiring, that’s great.

WILLIAMS That sounds awesome. So they didn’t just watch the play, you sat with them, did a couple of scenes, and talked about what brought you here?

PARKER Mhmm. And we had them write scenes and we performed them. It was so great.

The vast majority of Broadway attendees conduct themselves as they should. But Jesse, on the same day that the Tony nominations were announced, which was probably one of the happier days of your life, you experienced what I would imagine was a very different sort of emotion when someone anonymously posted to the Internet a naked photo of you that they had somehow snapped during a performance, even though the theater had required people to store their phones in locked pouches. Did that make it harder for you to go back out and keep doing what you had been doing before?

WILLIAMS No. I still am processing how I feel about it. Sometimes you need some remove from some of this stuff. There were things that came out that and, if you can be lighthearted about it, you can laugh it off. But then also you think about what actually happened, and what it took [from the perpetrator]: You walked in and agreed to put your phones away, and you agreed that you would not film what we were doing — it’s a private, sacred space where we’re doing something — and you violated that, and you didn’t just violate it, you violated it and then said, “Fuck it, let me put it on the Internet for the world” — so that’s not good. But I’ve got a show to do tonight, and people came from all over the world to see this show, so you push through. So I have to be of two hearts about it: One is it’s not the end of the world, I have to do a terrific show eight times this week, and I can’t let it pervert or seep into that experience. It’s not me on stage, it’s the character, and I’m looking at my scene partner, and we’re in a different world; there’s no penetration — that’s a really poor choice of words here. [laughs] So it’s unfortunate, but whatever. It has not affected the performance. But it certainly improved ticket sales.

Let’s close with something we call “rapid fire” — just the first thing that pops into your head after I say something.

How you feel about entrance applause…

NEGGA It’s hilarious! What is this?!

JACKMAN Uncomfortable.

ROCKWELL It’s not great.

PARKER You can shut it down, I’ll tell you how. With Heisenberg [a Broadway play in 2016] — this was my idea, this is how much I loathe it — I entered with the stage manager, in my costume, who gave the cell phone speech as I entered. Never got it. Dead Man’s Cell Phone [an Off Broadway play in 2008], had a hat on, other people talking, lifted it up, nobody saw it. The Sound Inside, started speaking in the dark. This play, started speaking in the dark. I saw Paul Newman do it once.

ROCKWELL Oh, that’s clever.

NEGGA I want to know how you get it! [laughs]

WILLIAMS Exactly!

ROCKWELL It’s a good problem to have, but it’s distracting.

PARKER Because then you start the play feeling like you’re an actor in a play, and what’s worse than that?

JACKMAN I feel uncomfortable with it, but actually on this one, Harold Hill, who’s the greatest conman, would dig it.

PARKER That works.

JACKMAN And that’s actually informed my whole show. But I did get an “I love you, Wolverine!” [laughs]

Most annoying thing that audience members do…

WILLIAMS Let their phones ring, and the long crinkle of what-in-God’s-name-are-you-unwrapping?! They’re trying to be quiet, but they’re making it take 20 minutes.

JACKMAN Commentating.

NEGGA Commentating, yeah.

JACKMAN “Oh, he’s left-handed! That’s interesting.” [laughs]

WILLIAMS Just having a conversation—

JACKMAN Like they’re watching TV.

NEGGA We had a “This is boring,” and then they left.

What you do on your day off…

NEGGA Sleep.

WILLIAMS Say “no” to all appointments or calls.

ROCKWELL Beer, chips, gym. Maybe a movie.

PARKER It just depends on my kids, really.

JACKMAN Same.

Most superstitious thing you do each show…

PARKER I’m so superstitious I couldn’t even tell you. I’m superstitious about my superstitions. [laughs]

JACKMAN I grab my suitcase — the prop guy has it out there behind the train, I’m there and I grab it, I flip it once, and I give it to him. And when he was off, and there was another prop guy, it was almost impossible to go on without him.

ROCKWELL I loathe superstition so much, but if I’m being honest with myself, I probably am superstitious about certain things. If I didn’t do a vocal warmup, I’d be scared.

WILLIAMS I stand in the wings before every show, while the house is chattering, and just take my hat off and just say a prayer of gratitude for everything in my life.

NEGGA I’m playing a woman who laughs in the face of superstition, and I’m really superstitious usually, so I’m kind of using this as an opportunity to surrender a bit.

Most unconventional thing in your dressing room…

JACKMAN This is easy for me and I keep it there because it makes me laugh. On opening night, I walked in and Ryan Reynolds had two massive portraits of himself [laughs] — on my makeup mirror was Gene Kelly’s famous kick with Ryan’s face superimposed on top of it and “Good luck with your little show.” I didn’t stop laughing for about a minute, and then I turned around to go to my bathroom, and there was another one of him, literally framed.

PARKER My son gave me some Ethopian incense. I have an alter.

WILLIAMS A papier-mâché box for bad feelings made by my niece and nephew, three and four.

The person whose attendance at your show has meant the most to you…

ROCKWELL We got excited about Holly Hunter.

PARKER Jill Biden.

JACKMAN A bunch of people come to mind, but one is Barbara Cooke’s son-in-law. Barbara Cooke was a really great mentor of mine, and she was incredible, and she was in the original production. One of the great actors of all time who just happened to be an incredible singer.

The number of shows per week you wish you had…

WILLIAMS I’m okay with our usual number — although we’re going to do seven shows in the last four days before we close this week, which I’m a little worried about, but it will be fine.

NEGGA For me, it’s just about stamina. You here [in America] have your dark day on Monday — I’m used to it being on a Sunday — so that means you’ve got your Friday night show, your two shows on Saturday and your matinee on Sunday. That’s tough. That’s four shows in less than 48 hours.

WILLIAMS I like having the Sunday matinee and then having Sunday night and all day Monday and Tuesday.

ROCKWELL Yes. I would say seven would be the way to go. [Bryan] Cranston had that for Network.

JACKMAN I don’t mind eight, but if I had my way there’d be six matinees and two evening shows.

ROCKWELL Oh, that’s cool!

NEGGA That’s such a good idea.

PARKER What a great idea.

ROCKWELL That’s a great idea. The evening thing is tough.

JACKMAN It keeps a lot of actors away from the theater who’ve got kids.

Hugh, you will be in your show through January 2023, having started in December of 2021, meaning 14 months, just like you did with The Boy from Oz, never missing a performance…

JACKMAN Yeah.

WILLIAMS Insane. Insane.

NEGGA How do you keep the stamina?!

JACKMAN I don’t know. I’m feeling good. I think it’s a lot to do with the show and the company. I feel different than I did on The Boy from Oz. I’m really excited about it.

ROCKWELL But let’s face it, you’re a beast.

Mary-Louise, what’s your number? Again, you’ve had different shows in back-to-back seasons…

PARKER I actually was supposed to go from The Sound Inside right into How I Learned to Drive. I shipped my stuff from one dressing room to the other. But seven sounds great. And I love some version of Hugh’s idea.