Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the exclusive cosmic current interview with Robert Petkoff. I'm Brian Kitson, head writer of the Cosmic Circus and the Cosmic Circus Broadway. Robert Petkoff is starring as Harold Zeidler in the north american tour of Moulin Rouge, which is making a stop at the Detroit Opera House September 17 through October 6. In this interview, Petkoff talks about the challenges and excitements of bringing a character such as Harold Zeidler to life, how his past as the shakespearean actor has influenced this role, and how he balances the different tones that Moulin Rouge offers. Enjoy.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Thank you so much for joining us today. I know that you're busy on tour with Moulin Rouge. How's it going so far on tour?
[00:00:41] Speaker C: Oh, my gosh. It's fun. You know, we're coming up on a year. I'm coming up on a year doing the show. I just got a text this morning from our thread of the people that came in when I came in saying it had been one year since we finished in the rehearsal room in New York and before we went to Washington, DC, to rehearse for another couple weeks and join the tour.
It is amazing to me that it's been a year because I'm having so much fun doing the show. My part is so much fun. The show is so much fun that I cannot believe, as a matter of fact, I just recently signed on for another six months because I'm enjoying it so much.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Congratulations on a year. And that's awesome that you're going to be on for another six months.
I kind of grew up on this movie, the movie that this is based off of. But for those who aren't familiar with it, can you tell us a little bit about Moulin Rouge and how your character, Harold, fits into the story?
[00:01:34] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, Moulin Rouge takes place at the famous Moulin Rouge in Paris, France.
On the evening we join the show and the movie, Harold Zeidler, who runs the Moulin Rouge, my character is trying desperately to save it. He needs an influx of cash, and so he's using his star, Satine, who's an incredible performer, former, but also a courtesan, to try to seduce the Duke, who is very wealthy, to invest money in the show. And all will, that's their pattern. All will go well if it all works out that way. But unfortunately for Harold, and fortunately for Satine, she meets a young man named Christian, who is in our production, a songwriter in the movie. He was a writer.
And they fall in love as they, and that creates the complication, of course, because Satine would do her job like she always does, except in this case, her heart gets in the way. And so it's this rollicking, wonderful, romantic, tragic, dramatic story that at its heart has over 70 pop songs that everyone knows. It's amazing things like Elton John and the Rolling Stones and Sia and Rihanna and Adele, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears. I could go on and on and on. And so it's this wonderful story that it's really fun for me to watch the audience start to recognize the songs and sometimes sing along.
It's just, I've done so many shows in my life. I've done multiple tours.
It's so much fun to do a tour of a show that people are just beaming from ear to ear during the show.
[00:03:20] Speaker B: You know, I've seen both the movie and I saw the musical in Broadway and the changes of, like, they added quite a few songs, but it was just, it is very interesting to see the whole crowd just, like, especially, like, the song shut up and dance with me and then. Yeah, with another song, I can't. But, like, people just shut up and raise your.
[00:03:39] Speaker C: We call it, yeah, we call it shut up and raise your glass because it's raise your glass and shut up and dance with me and it's cool.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Because, like, that's such a, that's like a now song, you know?
[00:03:49] Speaker C: Yeah. And also the opening of the second act, I think, is just amazing and it is a bad romance and it's just, you know, it's some Britney Spears and some lady Gaga, and it's just phenomenal. And again, you know, combining those two songs and the dancing, Sonia Taya's choreography, these amazingly talented dancers, I think it's one of the best openings of a second act I've ever seen. Because it starts with just Santiago and Nini and their little pas de deux, and then it enters this giant rehearsal scene and it's just a great show to be a part of. And it's just so fun. Like I said, to watch an audience so happy at the end of a show.
We do this megamix at the end and the audience sings along and it's really fun.
[00:04:46] Speaker B: It is an incredibly fun show. I remember when I went to New York the first time and I saw, we did ten shows in, like, seven days. Like, we just went. And it was one of the last ones. Yeah, it was one of the last ones I went to. And I just, it. I went in there expecting it. I was like, this is going to be the movie. And it shot up to my number one on the list because it was just, the energy is so electric in that. That theater that, like, I've been talking about seeing this in Detroit for months now. I'm sure everybody's sick of hearing me talk about. I was like, this is the show that if you're going to see a show this season, you have to go see Moulin Rouge.
[00:05:18] Speaker C: Yeah. I think one of the big changes I love is that, you know, in the movie, the Duke is such a silly character. I mean, he's dangerous, and you see that he's dangerous at the end, but the actor playing him is very much in that Baz Luhrmann world, and he's just sort of over the top and rather silly. And in the musical, they try to make the Duke a little more of a real contender for satine. He's seductive and he's sexy, and he's so well performed by Andrew Brewer, who plays it in our production.
But that I think that Alex Timbers and the entire creative crew wanted to make sure that he was someone that the audience could maybe take seriously, maybe go, hey, why not this guy until the end, you go, oh, okay. That's why not. Because he's not a great guy, but that you should go, oh. It's a serious rivalry between the man with all the money and the young guy who's penniless, but his heart is full of treasure. And so it's. I really like that change the most in the big changes of the musical.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: Speaking of those changes, with this being an adaptation of a movie, how do you feel that it sets itself apart from the show? Cause it's not. It isn't. It is like a pretty straightforward adaptation, but it also isn't, if that makes sense.
[00:06:39] Speaker C: Yeah, no, absolutely. It does. A. It sets itself apart in that they did the very wise thing of saying, okay, that movie was from 1999, and we need some pop songs that speak to audiences today as well as the classic pop songs. So I think that change was great.
And again, as you mentioned, you know, you can hear it in the audience in their response as they start to pick up the song that they hear. And, you know, some of these. Listen, I say 70 songs. They're not doing 70 full songs. Our show is not 8 hours long, but it's snippets of little songs. And, like, in the introduction to Christian, you know, we hear just a little bit when they're asking, like, where you come from? Why are you here? What are you doing? Have you ever written a love song? Sing one of your love songs right now and he's like, never going to give you up. And everyone in the audience just starts laughing because they recognize a song and they know it. So that change, I think, is really great and really smart. And the change I mentioned with the Duke, I think they tried to make the story have a little more gravity, a little more seriousness, because Baz Luhrmann's movie is this explosion of anarchy in the opening, and it's very much his style, pop out and they all, I think, I don't ever think he has too many notes. Someone said that once, and I was like, not at all.
It's this crazy world he creates. That at its core, is this very serious story. And I think the adaptation to the Broadway musical, the story just has more gravity to begin with. I mean, it certainly has got silliness.
But we welcome you to the Moulin Rouge. In the opening number, Harold welcomes you to the club. And they have this whole introduction. He explains what the club is, and he talks about it, and we see the patrons mingling with the people who work there.
But it just has a little more weight to it throughout so that it feels like it has more substance, the musical, not that the movie doesn't have substance at all. I don't mean to say that at all, but I like that feeling that there's a heavier heart to it at its core.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Absolutely. It definitely is a different experience. You know, as a movie, there's limitations, but in a live show, there's. The possibilities are relatively semi endless.
[00:09:11] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: So what was the casting process like to be cast? What was that like for you?
[00:09:18] Speaker C: You know, it's interesting because my first audition for it was a call that went out for Broadway replacements, and I mean, future Broadway replacements and future tour. And so I had auditioned for it, gosh, almost a year before I got into it.
An actor named Austin Durant, who's actually on Broadway now playing Harold Zeidler, got the rule then and went out on the tour initially. And I thought, oh, bummer, because I had seen the show in previews with Danny Burstein, a friend of mine. I love this guy. And I remember watching it and thinking, oh, that would be really fun. To play. That role is the one that I would love to play in this musical. So when that call came out, I said, course I would love to audition for it. It didn't happen. And I went on and did other things, and then about a year later, I got another call saying, are you still interested in being a part of it, in auditioning again? And so I went in and they said, you can either go straight to Alex, he knows you, and do your audition again, or you can have a work session with Maddie, the associate director. And I said, I would love a work session. Any actor who turns down a work session, I think is rather foolish because you never know what it is. They've decided for this character how they want to shape it, where they want to go with it. I certainly have ideas, and I will bring those ideas in, but it will obviously help if they're like, oh, we kind of see him more like this now. And so I went and had that work session with Maddie and then a week later had an audition with Alex and Justin and the group, and then like a week and a half later got a call saying, we'd love you to do it. And I said, well, I'm very happy with that news. And so that's when I signed up for a year and went out on the road for it. So it wasn't a very long process for me. I know that they have, like, a camp now for ensemble members to learn the dances. I don't know if you audition to get in the camp or not, but once you're in it, they teach you all the choreography so that when the time comes to audition to actually be in the show, you've experienced, you know, kind of what they're looking for, what they're doing. It's sort of like a giant work session for the dancers. So that path in, I think, is different, obviously, if you're a dancer, an ensemble member. But for me, I was glad that it wasn't a callback and a callback. And, I mean, I've done those things where you've had, like, four callbacks for something, and that, to me, is just annoying.
I'll just admit you want to go in one time, have them look at you, and actually you dream of getting this, the call saying, we'd like you to play it. The next dream is that you go in one time and then they go, yes, you're the guy and you've got it. But sometimes, of course, they're seeing so many people, they need to see you and see a bunch of other people winnow it down and then see them all again, you know, sort of side by side, maybe winnow that down or just, you know, hopefully that be it. So it's nice that I only, I only went in a total, the very first time, the work session and then this time, so a total of three times for it, which is, which is nice because, you know, I, there's a experiences that actors have where they've auditioned for something and they've gone back six months later because the process, the casting process has gone on so long. Six months later, they come back in for their second callback. And by then, nothing that they did in the first audition is still there in their heads.
Even their lives have changed. So what they bring to it is different. Very famously in that documentary, I think it's. Is it every single step. It's a documentary about the casting of chorus line when they did the revival. And Rachelle Rock, I think, is this great, great performer. And in there, she nails it in the first thing. And they keep talking about her. I think she's it. And she comes back and she's like, so many things have changed in my life. I can't recall what it was they saw in me before that they want. And they're frustrated because they're like, the thing we saw before isn't here now. She goes, yeah, because I'm a different human being than the day I walked in six months ago. If you had just given it to me, then you would have the thing. And so that does happen, you know, long, long things. My very first Broadway musical was the revival of Fiddler on the Roof. And I was very fortunate that my first audition for it was seven months into the process, and they had been looking at this for this character for seven months, the role of Percyk. And I have no doubt, but in the first week, they probably saw a guy who could do it to their absolute satisfaction, but they thought, oh, we have seven months. So, well, put them in our filing cabinet and we'll come back to them. I had the very great, good privilege of coming in toward the almost, you know, in the last couple weeks of the process when they were like, okay, now we have to decide. And so when I walked in, they were like, oh, okay, he's. He's good. Let's. Let's use him, you know? And so that.
It's timing. The timing of that. It was so lucky. Same thing happened to me when I did the revival of ragtime. I came in for. I came in for a session with casting, and then I came in for a session with everybody on the very last day. And Marcia Milgram Dodge, who directed that, tells me, she goes, it was the last day. And she said, I never cast someone anymore without having at least one callback because I had a bad experience, and I don't want to do that again.
Marcia, this is it. This is the day. So she said, well, then send him away and have him come back, like, an hour or two from now, and that'll be his callback. And that's how that worked. So again, very lucky that I came in at the very end, because if I'm always convinced if I came in, you know, months before, it's very possible they said, oh, he's good, but maybe we can find better, you know, and then they find someone else. So you never know.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: You had mentioned that this is a very fun character, and, you know, that's, you wanted to do that. But besides just being fun, what drew you to this character? What made Zedler want to be that one for you?
[00:15:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Harold Ziedler is so complex.
Of course, first of all, what we see, he's the showman. He's delightful, and he's fun, and he's bubbly, and he's inviting everyone into this great place, and he's saying, please welcome to the Moulin Rouge. This is not what you expect. This is a lovely place. But that underneath that is this desperation he has to keep this whole thing going.
And so he's got this intensity underneath him that is driving him throughout this desperation that causes him to veer from. He loves Satine. Satine is like a daughter to him. They've been together for years, from when they were both on the streets, entertaining on the streets until he could build up into the mouldin Rouge. He's always been his star, and he loves her like a daughter, but he's also desperate to keep it going. So there's times where he lashes out at her. There's times where he's not so nice to her. And there are other times where he is, you know? But. But I love a character that isn't one thing, because no one is one thing, right? And oftentimes, as an actor, you have to bring the other things that weren't written in in this. It is definitely written in. And he's just deliciously, he's just got so much going on with him from his intellect, from his drive, his sexuality. All of these things are at play, and they're working. And so it makes it this really complex thing. I liken it to. We all love ice cream. You know, who doesn't want a little bit of ice cream or cotton candy as a treat? But when you sit down to an amazing nine course meal that an amazing chef has prepared, you think to yourself, oh, my God, there's so much here that I will still be processing this meal, this experience.
Weeks later, I'll go back and go oh, my God. That one dish had that one bit of umami that I didn't expect. And the same thing with a complex play or a complex character. You know, we love a straightforward person who just makes us laugh. But if you can make us laugh, you can make us cry, you can make us angry at you, you can make us sympathize with you. That's. That's the goal. You know, every actor loves those kind of characters. And that's Harold Zeibler, I was going to say.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: Yeah, the story of Moulin rouge is quite dark and also full of light. You know, there's that hope and there's that darkness. And you kind of are one of the, you know, Harold Zeidler is one of those connective tissues from start to finish, of exploring both sides of that.
[00:18:17] Speaker C: Right? He straddles both those worlds. He brings us along.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: You actually get to start off and end the show with these, leading these big musical numbers that quite. They bring down the house, you know?
What is that like for you?
[00:18:31] Speaker C: Oh, you know, it's a joy, I tell you, you know, because I do have this complexity and this darkness in the middle of the show. It is so delightful to start the show by going, hello, chickens.
And to end it with this, like I said, this sort of mega mix. Sing along with the audience.
It just, when you're taking the audience and going, hey, hey, let's go. Let's all stay up. Let's get up. Let's get ready for the show. That's the beginning, is me going, hey, everyone, come on, let's go.
Let's set the tone for the whole evening. And by the end, me saying, okay, let's remember the joy. Let's remember the joy that we have felt tonight and not maybe the tragedy that we experienced most recently.
And so it's. That's a lot of fun to do. And, you know, it's. It just. It's still funny. It's still fun. You know, there's laughter to an actor is like heroin, you know, it's. It's. It's cracked, you know? And so anytime we get a chance to do that genuinely, and I say genuinely because I think there, to me, there are story laughs and there are. I'm a funny person laugh, and I will try to sacrifice. I'm a funny person laugh to a story laugh every time. When I was younger, no, no, no. Anything that would get me a laugh was important. But you start to learn as time goes on that, yeah, I'm getting a laugh here, but they're missing this story bit because I just made them. I took them out of it to make them laugh at me, but they lost what was happening in the plot because of that. Or there's a laugh that's written in for someone else, but I've done something funny and I've made them laugh at me. And that other laugh isn't getting someone isn't getting a laugh on something that the writer wanted because they wanted them to propel the story forward. And so I think of story laughs and personal laughs. It's delightful for me that the opening and the closing have that, you know, things that are both story and personal laughs. And so it's just nice to just be a straight up entertainer sometimes and not wring your heart either.
So that's the opening and the closing are just. That's ice cream. That's cotton candy.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Absolutely. So what is your process into getting into character, then? Do you have a specific, like, set of things you have to do to become Harold?
[00:21:02] Speaker C: You know, it's interesting. I don't know that I may not be. I may be doing it, but not be conscious, you know, as I'm putting on my makeup. Of course, some of the makeup is I have these exaggerated eyebrows and I have to wax up my mustache. I have to do those things, all of those things sort of take me into it. And, of course, the final step, once I put the costume on and I put that red velvet jacket, the sort of ringmaster type red velvet jacket, those things, and the top hat, once I put those on and I see myself in the mirror, I recognize that guy. And it does change who I am as Harold. When I'm in my street clothes in maybe a rehearsal, helping someone understand the new movements, bringing new people in, that's different than the herald I am. When I'm in full makeup and costume, it does affect, I think, my journey deep into him is very much done in the process of turning into him on the outside.
Every night, as I'm putting on the makeup, as I'm putting on the costume, mentally, I'm not aware of it anymore. I'm not consciously doing it, but I am becoming more of that guy, if that makes any sense. It's not something that I think that I have to consciously think about, like, how do I become Harold? The fact that he's got a very different sort of dialect than I have.
That also is one of those things that, as I speak like that. And I do find myself, maybe annoyingly so to my other character, my castmates, that once I have all that on, especially in the beginning of the show, you know, I am sort of walking around talking like this, you know, hello, darlings, how are you? I have a great show tonight. You know, that that just comes out naturally because I'm sort of becoming the guy, right. And I really hope my castmates aren't like, oh, my God, please. You know, but I'm not even, again, I'm not consciously doing that. I just sort of see, hello, chickens, how are you today? You know, and it just happens. And I realize, oh, yeah, I'm sort of becoming Harold.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Now, what has been maybe like the most challenging part of bringing Harold to.
[00:23:15] Speaker C: Life on stage, you know, just vocally, I would say my biggest challenge was vocally.
He talks so much and when he talks, it's usually not just an intimate little quiet conversation but it's very bombastic and very boisterous and just loud. He's just a loud person. And vocally, that was a challenge when I started the show to make it through a whole week. We all have mics and I have to remind myself I have a mic and I don't have to hit the back of a 2000 seat house.
My initial training was Shakespeare unmiked Shakespeare in big houses and outdoor theaters. And so I had to use my full voice and reach the back of the house. And so I still, by instinct, do that when I'm playing a character like this and I've had to modulate it. I've had to remind myself, let the microphone do a lot of that work. You still need the energy. You still need the diaphragm behind the vocal energy. But rather than really projecting to the back of the house I can project to, like, the fourth or fifth row and the rest of it is taken care of. And it takes a while to do that. And one of the most interesting things I've encountered is we've had a couple of layoffs periods where we haven't done have a theater booked for a week between two cities. And so you go home and you have a week off and you come back. Or I took a vacation. So I had a two week layoff and came back and I struggled again because I had sort of, it is a marathon that I run every night vocally. And I had stopped running. And so when I came back, the muscles of the cords were just like, we don't know how to do this now.
You didn't run at all for two weeks and now you're expecting to run a marathon again.
I was so surprised how I struggled with that and so I think that's the biggest challenge.
All my years in the theater have prepared me to play this role.
I'm a master of my ability to do these things. I don't think I'm a master actor, but I have mastered my body's ability to move the way I want it to do, to vocally speak the way I want. But the tackling, the challenge of doing the 2 hours and 45 minutes every night vocally has been the biggest. I think the biggest challenge of this thing is to discover how do I do this eight shows a week and still have a voice at the end of it. And so, yeah, that's, I think, my biggest challenge.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: As I say, that's a lot of shows every week. That's a lot of time and effort into not straining your voice and taking care of yourself.
[00:26:11] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: So how do you feel your background in shakespearean works has helped you with this role?
[00:26:17] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, very much. I mean, he's a shakespearean character. I mean, he's larger than life in moments.
I think sometimes the way we characterize a Shakespeare shakespearean character is Shakespeare wrote these people who have emotions that are as human as we are, but sometimes they are all turned up a little bit. They are larger than life in a way. And that's not to say that when you're acting Shakespeare, you act larger than life. It's just that if you're going to watch Hamlet, if you're going to watch Lear, any of those things, you're going to see the gamut of human emotions from a to z. You're not going to go from a to Daeze, you know?
And so that's what Harold does. Harold. Harold goes through everything in one evening. And so that, and just the ability to speak in a way that isn't pedestrian, you know, you could very easily play any character in, I say pedestrian in a way that is just very natural and very there. But if I came out every night and I was like, hello, chickens. Yes, it's me, your own beloved Harold Zeigler, in the flesh. You know, as opposed to hello, chickens. Yes, it's me, your own beloved Harold Zeidler, in the flesh. You know, there's a variety there. There's a whole thing. And I feel like I learned that doing Shakespeare's verse to play with language. I love language. I love words.
I love Shakespeare's use of words, and I love our use of words here. And so that definitely crosses over. I think if there's a character who's the most shakespearean in the play, it's Harold Zeidler. And so all of that work with language really comes through with Harold because he does. He delights in the language. He delights in using words that you might not use in your average, everyday speech.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: He's a showman.
[00:28:32] Speaker C: He's a showman, exactly.
[00:28:35] Speaker B: So you have had an incredible career on Broadway with tours, Shakespeare. What is the difference as an actor between shows like Fiddler on the Roof and ragtime and being on a tour such as Moulin Rouge?
[00:28:46] Speaker C: Well, you know, with the tour of any show, the last tour I did was Fun home, which a very different show.
And talk about something that is reduced in how you present it.
Fun home is to be as realistic as possible and as grounded as possible.
And so the big component is the traveling every week or every two weeks or every month.
So first of all, you have external effects. What is the climate like in the place that you're coming? Are we moving to a frozen area? Are we going from, you know, I think it was.
Oh, gosh, where were we? We went from Florida to Michigan, I think, in the winter. And so you go from this, you know, you're in your bathing suit on the beach in one city and on all the attendant allergies and things that happened there. And then you go up to frozen climate, very, very cold climate. And so that does change your health. It changes what happens in your head and your body. So that component is big.
The other thing that happens is when you're like in the Broadway production of Moulin Rouge they have what we call a passerelle. It's a little stage that goes out into the audience and comes around and that allows an intimacy, especially for a character like Harold Zeidler who talks to the audience. That allows an intimacy that you don't necessarily get when you're out on tour in a two or 3000 seat house and there's a big orchestra pit between, you know, you and the audience. Connecting with the audience is a little more of a challenge in that respect.
There are literally nights where, between the spotlight and the distance I literally cannot see the people in the front row that I am that I'm talking to and saying things like your fantasy, sir, you know, well, I better pick a man when I say sir. And it has happened a couple of times where I have said, your fantasies, sir. And as I'm saying the word sir, I realize I'm pointing to a woman because I just suddenly made the shape out and I'm like, oh, no.
So there's that challenge of going bigger theaters and there's a. When you're playing like something like the fabulous fox in St. Louis, almost 4000 seats, you know, there is. You do want to expand a little bit to take the entire theater in.
And that is the element of what life on the road is like as opposed to life at home. You know, you go to work and you go home. When you're on Broadway, when you go back to your family and when you're on the road, you know, your cast is your family, you know. And so I find that out on the road or if I'm doing a regional theater production the cast tends to go and do things with each other more because we have each other. We're all we have, you know? And there's a lovely quality to that. There's a lovely quality to this family. This cast, every cast I'm in becomes a family in its own way. But it happens in a more social way more often. It's not that a cast on Broadway doesn't go out and do things. Of course they do. But you do things more often and on the road. And so you bond in a way that I think is really kind of wonderful.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: That's awesome. And kind of leads into the last question. You know, being on the road, going to different cities, I know you're coming to Detroit for like three weeks. Do you have specific traditions or things you like to do in these cities? Or, you know, is it just. You kind of just take it all in when you get there?
[00:32:33] Speaker C: Yeah. You know, when I. My first big national tour was Spamalot and Michael Siberi was playing the king in that and he.
He knew how to tour because he said, you just have to be a tourist in every city. Otherwise you're wasting this incredible opportunity. You're being paid to go and see America.
And that's a great attitude, it's a great way to look at it so that you could very easily go from city to city and sit in a hotel room, surf on the Internet, do what you might do at home.
But what an awful waste that would be to not go to a new city and go, okay, what does Detroit have to offer that I can't find anywhere else? Sure, you don't want to go from Applebee's to Applebee's to Applebee's.
Nothing wrong with Applebee's. But that sense of what's the thing that Detroit has that no one else has.
Obviously, it's easier in a city like Detroit. It's easier in the bigger cities because there's just going to be more.
More often, there's chances to say, hey, what's the unique thing? And so right now I'm in Oklahoma City, and like, okay, what does Oklahoma City have? What restaurant? What site? What thing or things exist that I can't do in New York City. And you have to take advantage of that. And then the touring is just an adventure. Otherwise, it's very easy to get isolated and lonely and feel like I'm just going from hotel room to hotel room. I think of it like salesmen, business people who have to go on the road all the time, if they're just going from a hotel room to a conference to a hotel room to another sales meeting and stuff like that, and they're nothing. Experiencing the cities they're in, that can feel like such a drudge, and I don't want to feel like I don't want that drudgery, you know? And I know that. I'm sure business people, salespeople, who are doing at the top of their game are the people who understand when the work day is over, I need to go see the city. I need to go see what's going on, because it just makes me better at what I do. Right. It doesn't matter what business you're in, but especially for acting, so much of what we do as actors is informed by our own personal lives. It's informed by our own experiences. We can bring new ideas and new experiences to everything we do on stage with every new experience we have. So to be on tour and not have those new experiences, not see things, not do things, is just like, you're just wasting an amazing opportunity to not only see America and meet people in America, but to hone your craft, to become a better actor. And on that note, on that idea of meeting people in America, this is one of the most wonderful things in touring is this sense that I think when we get into our own bubbles and we get into our own media bubbles, we really do believe that there's two americas, right? We really do believe there's this right and there's this left. And we absolutely should not be mixing. We shouldn't, you know, we should hate each other. We should not.
And then you get out and you tour and you see and you meet people every day who, you know, do not necessarily have the same political ideas that you have.
And yet we talk to each other and we like each other, and we have a good time. We make each other laughter.
We exchange little moments where we both acknowledge we're human beings and we're living in this country. And it's a great, great thing to see that we are not as divided as the politicians really, really want us to be.
We're all human beings who want our families to be happy. We're all human beings who want to have happiness in life ourselves. We want to help the people that we feel like are not doing as well as us. You know, we all have these same common desires, and politicians take advantage of trying to tell us that we don't have the same common desires. That only helps them. It doesn't help us. And so it's delightful to be out in America and realize we have so much more, and this is such a cliche, but we have so much more that connects us than divides us. And I get to experience that city after city after city on a very personal scale. And it's nice to get out of the bubble of New York and see America and see that there's these values that we all, that politicians use the word, but we actually experience in real life. There's these values that are common all across this country.
And so that's really one of the greatest treasures of touring.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: That is fantastic. Well, we are so excited to have you in Detroit, and from Moulin Rouge to be at the Detroit Opera house. It's a beautiful theater, and we're just excited to see it in the next couple of weeks. So thank you so much for your time.
[00:37:47] Speaker C: Absolutely. Thanks so much.
[00:37:49] Speaker A: Bye.
