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Video: Aaron Lazar Is Embracing His Impossible Dream and Staying Positive in the Face of ALS
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Aug 9, 2024
Two and a half years ago, Aaron Lazar, star of such beloved Broadway shows as Les Miserables, The Last Ship, The Light in the Piazza, and many more, was diagnosed with ALS. When he went public with the news in January, Lazar was met with resounding support from the Broadway community that has become a second family. Now that family has shown up to make a dream come true. Watch in this video.
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Well, first of all, my friend, I am thrilled to be sitting with you
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Oh, my God. I'm so thrilled to be sitting with you. It's been way too long. Yeah. But, you know, I have known you since your Broadway debut in the Phantom of the Opera
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seeing you first in the ensemble, and I just talked to your dad before we started this
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I was there the night you actually made your Broadway debut as Raul
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Yeah, I can't believe that. So it was like 2002. Yeah. And I thought my family was coming to see the show, and I went to meet them for
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dinner at this restaurant Lundee's or Linde, I don't know, it's still there
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But you had to take an elevator up. So I take the elevator up and the doors open and I see my high school chemistry teacher
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and the rabbi from my sin. And then everybody, I see this, and then they're all wearing t-shirts with my headshot
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on the back. And it dawns on me that my parents have taken over at this restaurant and bused 200 people
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from my hometown up for me and the Phantom of the Opera. And you were there, which is crazy
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And so we go back 20 plus years. Yeah. Because I remember sitting in there was like, where do these Aaron Lazare T-Shart T-Share
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It's come from for Phantom. Oh, I still have some. Oh, man
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You can get those on eBay for like three, four bucks, I think, at this point. I'm going to get one
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It's a hot ticket, hot item. Yeah, I get you one, Rich. Come on. You know somebody
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Yeah. I got you one. So how magical was that night? That night? Yeah
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Oh, my God. I mean, it was magical and it was also terrifying because I was, you know, I dreamed
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of being on Broadway my entire life and I was understudying Raoul, but now, you know, so I was
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going on to play the part. and I made the mistake of sort of staying in touch with Hal Prince
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So I auditioned to play Raoul for an earlier spot that it opened up in the show
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I didn't get it. And then they called me, you know, six months later and said, well, there's an understudy slot that's open to Zarin want to do it
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I was like, you're kidding. It's my Broadway debut. I was 24 or something years old. So 26, 26 years old
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And I invited Hal to come that night. So I wrote him a letter
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you know, Hal, I'm going on for Raul. I want you to see me do this
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Come. And I'm like, he'll never come. And, you know, half hour, knock on the door
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Aaron, have a great show. And it's freaking Hal Prince. And then I'm like
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oh, my God. What have I done? So, I mean, it was terrifying. I did well
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I mean, you know, it was crazy. I had 200 people. Yeah. You know. And Hal Prince
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And you. And you. And me. Yeah. Well, my friend, I've known you that long
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But like I said, two years ago, you were diagnosed with ALS. When you first found out that you had this, what went through your mind
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and how were you able to process just hearing that? Well, yeah, I mean, it's been two and a half
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years at this point. What went through my mind, this is the worst possible fear coming
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true. I've been dealing with symptoms for eight or nine months at that point, not knowing what it was
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and it was a terrible, terrible time in my life. So this was like, okay, this is what it is
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But pretty quickly, you know, after a couple days of just sort of crying it out with the people that I love
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I just was like, I don't want to be afraid anymore. Like the lead up from first symptoms, muscle twitches to the diagnosis was just the most terrifying time in my life
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so dark. So I was like, I don't want to live that way anymore. And just starting to make that
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shift was the beginning of a transformation for me that's lasted for these last three years and
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has totally changed my life. I've felt a soul sort of calling from the beginning that I'm going to
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beat this and heal. And the journey has taken me on the most, you know, it's been an awakening
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Because how do you do it? How do youse heal a broken nervous system when medicine doesn't have the answers yet
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Although they do have some. If you have genetic ALS, there's an amazing drug called Toferson
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And this is important to share because there's a lot of people out there that what is ALS
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You know, we lost the great Rebecca Luker and my aunt passed away when I was in my early 20s
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And I still, you know, getting diagnosed, didn't really know what it was. except this thing that just inspires so much fear
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Collective consciousness around it is so bleak. And I just thought it doesn't feel like the way I'm going to go
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You know, I feel like I've got something to do here and to heal myself
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I don't know how to do that. So I just started reading books and I started to approach
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I learned very quickly from, you know, research and health is more than physical. It's also mental, emotional, and spiritual
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So I thought, if I can work on these other parts of myself, the physical will follow. And so
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you know, look, it's really hard. It's hard to maintain that belief. It's hard to cultivate that
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belief and have that kind of faith as the physical progression of ALS continues for me. And at the same time
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How do I do it, right? I mean, I accept that I have ALS
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I don't accept that it's going to continue to progress and go to tumble that way
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I just don't accept it. Maybe that time will come It hasn come yet There certainly days where you just go I don know if I want to live this way You know I need a lot of help A lot of people have to you know
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the most amazingly supportive family and friends. But when you can't enjoy your life physically
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what kind of a life is that? And that's a question that I've been having to navigate
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So, you know, the mind is very, very, very important. I mean, one of the things I've learned over the last couple of years on this journey
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is that we're so much more than we often conceive ourselves to be
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and that our concepts of ourselves and our beliefs around things create our lives
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So if I want to believe ALS means death sentence, you're in that box. If I want to believe I'm going to beat it, and I don't know how or
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you're in that box. And that box to me just feels so much better than the other one. So I just
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stay in that one. And that takes work. So what is the day-to-day-like view? How do you stay
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positive on a day-to-day basis? Yeah, it's, I've spent two and a half a year
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now working on myself and teaching myself the skills for how to do that that I really wish I
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had you know and I'm grateful I get to teach my kids and I'm grateful that I get to share this
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with you and with the public and share my story and I travel as a keynote speaker you know with
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a speaking platform called the impossible dream because I wish I could have learned
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everything that I've learned without ALS but as I say to audience is
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maybe you can. 종. And that's really the mission. So staying positive is, it's a choice
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When the impulse comes up to get negative about something or complain or get scared
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you know, I snap my fingers and I go, can I still snap today? Because that feels a little bit
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weaker than before and now my thumb is a little bit frozen. And then you can go, all right
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that the finger doesn't stay. You can start to spin on all the ways ALS is having
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you know, this degenerative effect on my body. And then you just have, I just stop it
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You got to stop that train right there. Because that train doesn't
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you know where that train. I know where that train goes. That train ultimately ends in anxiety, insomnia, depression
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I mean, you're miserable. So I stopped the train. And I go, okay, well, focusing on that
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it's kind of like we have this brain, we all do, this supercomputer. Is your mind working for you
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Is it working against you? So how do I navigate the fact that right now my hands feel
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you know, this weird thing's going on in my hand? And just ignore it and not catastrophize the future about it
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and not connect that to all the thoughts that then want to come
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which is like, oh, well, what about the healing protocol that I've been on for the last five weeks
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Does that mean it's not working? And your mind will just go and go and go and go
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But if those questions don't help me get to where I want to go
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which is be whole and be healed, then they are not in service of my mission
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And so it's discipline and it's work and it's choice and it's practice
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And that's how I do it. I'm not great at it a lot of the time and I'm really good at it enough of the time
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that I am on the right side of the coin. But you get good at whatever you practice
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Because I know you kept it secret for a little bit. for a little bit, which anybody would have done because you're an actor, you're a performer
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you use your body, use everything to work with. Yeah, it also just felt like the thing to do
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Yeah. I mean, I told people that I needed to tell if I was in a show and I needed to tell the
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director or, you know, some of my co-stars or whatever. And my family and my kids did not know
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but enough people knew that I was surrounded by love and support
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And I also was like, let me just go on this journey and see what I can do to heal myself
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And then it got to the point where I really only told my kids because I had put together this platform
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this kind of TED Talk style performance, if you will, but it's not really a performance
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And I was like, well, before I do this for anybody, I've got to tell my kids what's
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going on. And so, you know, it had been a year and a half at that point. So it's now a year ago
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that I told my kids. And it was just time. And then, you know, six months later, it became
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now the public knows because I talked about it on a podcast with a friend of mine that I thought
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nobody was going to hear. And everybody heard it and here we are. But I'm, I was at the point
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where at least I knew how to talk about it publicly and know how to be okay with that
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know how to be like to receive all the attention as opposed to have it all feel like
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what it used to feel like, which was pressure. You know, I would sit in an interview like this with you and I'd have fun but I'd be like
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really in my head about it. It was like what does this interview mean and I'm a leading man and
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does this help me get to the next thing and the next there was just this part of my career that was obsessing about how to try and get more and do more and have more so that I could provide more for my kids and for my family
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in a business that we're actors. We have no control. Somebody likes you for this thing. You get it
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Somebody doesn't like you for the thing. You don't. And you got to keep your head above water
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in the meantime. And I, you know, that's not particularly human thing to endure that amount of
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rejection and hustle unless, I'm listening to a book now called Cured by Jeffrey Rediger
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and it's a study of spontaneous remissions. And he talks about stress causing disease
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And that they studied a number of nurses who were in a pediatric unit for children with terminal
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disease and rare disease. And they studied how stress affected them. And the nurses who perceived that
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stress as a negative, as pressure, as survival, fight, or flight energy, got sicker
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And nurses who perceived it as a challenge or inspiration did not
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And that's really a lot of what this is too. We can control, we can control is the wrong word
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We can create our lives. We do create our lives based on our perceptions of ourselves and the world
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And so most of what I've been doing over the last couple of years has been changing those perceptions
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so that I can change myself and change my life and change my destiny
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Yeah. Well, you opened up to the entertainment community, and there's so much outpouring of love
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from all of your friends, which now has led to your incredible album called Impossible Dream
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which drops on August 23rd. August 23rd? Yeah, there's an album. It's my debut album
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And my buddy I used to do concerts with, Jonathan Estabrooks, is a producer and works for Amitha Studios
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And he asked me when the press release came out, do you want to make an album
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And I said, sure. He said, well, whatever it is, we got to make it in five months
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I was like, well, okay, but it's a big idea. I want to sing songs of hope and inspiration with some of my friends
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some of these, which ended up being some of the greatest artists in the world
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And people open their hearts and souls to this project. Here we are, we've got nine tracks, eight duets
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and then a huge We're the World-style group performance of the song that's been the anthem of my life for the last couple of years
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The Impossible Dream. And it really is a dream come true. started for me 24 years ago singing the Impossible Dream as Don Quixote in the Man of
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M tscha in grad school. And my impossible dream at that time was my childhood dream
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right, to be an actor. And it was coming true as I'm on stage. And I'm, you know, I'm at CCM
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one of the great musical theater prep schools, and there's critics and agents from New York
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in the audience. And, you know, I remember walking off stage after, you know, that show and bursting
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into tears because I knew my impossible dream was coming true. And now my impossible dream
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is to heal and to beat this disease. And this album has been a huge part of that
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And to be surrounded by so much love. And the Brabic community just..
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I mean, that was one of the most special things. We had 100 people in the biggest recording studio
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in New York on June 13th. And to have all these friends, Brian Stokes-Mitchell and Kristen Channowitz
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Lynn Manuel Miranda, and Kate Baldwin. And, I mean, everybody came. Corey Cotton
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I remember friends would say, this is amazing what you've done bringing us together because the Broadway community
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when it shows up it shows up and we don't get enough of an opportunity to do that
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and man did they show up the duets you have are amazing on this album and one of them is
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with the late great Rebecca Luker who both of us knew we lost her to ALS talk about
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why you wanted to do that and how that came about well I was I asked
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I enlisted the help of the great Seth Redetsky to, you know, toss ideas around about what songs would be good for this album
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And Seth said, have you thought about singing with Rebecca? And it was just this light bulb moment
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I called Danny Burstein her husband, and I asked for his blessing
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And he, of course, was just, you know, so moved by it and so in support of it
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And then it was like, you know, how do I want to honor Rebecca's memory, her artistry
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and my experience of having worked with her and known her? And she was just all love
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I mean, her voice, her instrument to me is pure love coming through a human
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And so I want every, I wanted the songs on this album to be hopeful and inspirational
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but I also wanted to be all about love. And so Rebecca made a Cole Porter album in the 90s
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and there's a track called I Am Loved. I just loved it and I was like, let's do that
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It's so full of joy, it just captures Rebecca for me. And Concord, her label, digitized the tapes
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and I got to sing with Rebecca again and it was awesome And talk about some of the other duets I mean that would be like That for you pinch me moments Like here I sitting They all pinch me moments I mean Josh Grobin wants to do a duet with me
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I mean, so the single is Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot and, I mean, you know, I've listened
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to Josh and imagine what it must be like to have that, to be that kind of recording artist
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you know, for decades. And then I've been a fan of Josh, and I've seen him and shows
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And then I got to spend, you know, time in the studio
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working with him, learning from him, and making real music with him
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I mean, Josh is an artist in the truest sense of the word
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So we just got around the piano and we found a reinvention
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of this amazing Sting song. And the lyrics of the song speak so poignantly to the journey that I'm on
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Let your soul be your pilot. You know, you got to listen to that thing in you, whatever
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you want to call it. And yeah, I mean, there's, there's, you'll never walk alone with Lauren Allred, the great anthem
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from Carousel, when you believe from the Prince of Egypt, which Norm Lewis and I are doing
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Leslie Odom Jr. and I do get happy. Neil Patrick Harris and I think Fight the Dragons from Big Fish
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Cape Baldwin and I'd give it all for you, Jason Robert Brown song
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Kelly O'Hara and I make our Garden Grove, Bernstein song. I'm excited
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I'm so ready because making this has been such an incredible experience
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But it's all about giving the music now to the world, right? And sharing it so that people can hear what I hope they take away
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you know, this message of hope and this message of resilience in the face of adversity
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and empowering people to know through this music, you know, that we all have the power within us
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to make the impossible possible. I mean, they're doing it at the Olympics right now
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and every three seconds a Toyota commercial is coming on, and what's the Toyota slogan
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Start your impossible. So let's go. That's what we're doing. And I'm honored to have my mission speak to so
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many people. And a portion of the proceeds will go to the ALS network. Yes, thank you for
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saying next. So the ALS network is an incredible charitable organization out of my town. I live in
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L.A. And they called me when they heard about what was going on with me well before anybody
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and said, hey, whatever you need, we're here. And here's a care manager, my care manager, Emma
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And before you need anything, they're just there so that you know somebody's there
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And in the time since, if I've needed a walker, a walker shows up at my door and I don't have to pay for it
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A wheelchair shows up at my door, power wheelchair, a transfer bench to help me get in and out of the bathtub, you know, that kind of stuff
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These organizations, I can't speak enough to how important they are. And Sherry Strahl, who's the CEO of the ALS Network, is just a special human
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And I thought, let's support them. So when you purchase this album, you know, it'll be streaming everywhere, of course
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But between now and August 23rd, what I'm asking everybody to do is to please, I'll just ask people, will you, hi, will you guys please pre-order the album
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Because pre-ordering it is actually buying it. I think it's like $12 or something
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And that money goes to me and it goes to the ALS network. And so you're directly supporting us with your contribution
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And you can buy, you know, you can get the album digitally or you can get physical, copy, CD, vinyl, whatever you want
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We've got all kinds of options. That's the link in our bios on social media or on my webpage allow you to do that
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And so we got three weeks to try and rally as many people to pre-order the album and in support of me and this mission
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And thank you, everybody, for doing that. Yeah. My final question for you is you've told your story and continue to tell your story across the country to help people
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How has that empowered you? It's a, you know, performing is a big part of who I am
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So when I started writing this thing, I was like, how do I share everything that I know
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And I thought it was a memoir. So I wrote like 70 pages of something. something. And that 70 pages became this eight page kind of 30 minute performance
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It's the most intimate story I've ever told. It's my story. But I get to get in front of audiences
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and sometimes I'm able to stand and sometimes I'm in my wheelchair
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And I get to share my story and inspire people, educate people a little bit and have an impact
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We just did it last month in San Diego at one of the biggest biotech conferences in the world
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And I've been traveling the country doing it. So that's another way you can help me and my mission is go to my website
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And if you click, I think it's book, Aaron, you can learn about this speaking platform and what I'm doing
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Thank you for doing what you do because you're saving lives. Oh, thanks, man
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My friend, it's great to see you as always. It's so great to see you, Richie
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