Video: Brian d'Arcy James Is Still Smelling the Roses

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It's the Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon. Well, oh my goodness, Broadway world, do we have a treat for you

There are legends. There are Broadway icons. There are voices that are unforgettable

and there are a moment in theater that I had growing up that are so impacted by this next performer

I'm Robert Bannon. Thank you for being here. I'm so excited that this Roundtable Edition welcomes Brian Darcy James to the Roundtable

Oh, my. Well, last week we talked, we talked Mary Jane. This week we're going to be talking Days of Wine and Roses and the Tony Award nomination that Brian received

Speaking of Tony Award weekend, I'm performing Tony Award weekend at 54 Below

And so I don't only host, I can give a little diva disco pride anthem night

If you want to join me and hang out with me, you can grab your tickets at 54Below.org

And for more information about me, go to Robert Bannon.com or follow me at Robert M. Bannon on Instagram

Yes, he's worn green makeup and he's not been Elfaba. he's been on a sinking ship

he has had a cow with Sarah Borellis and he is far from rotten

am I done yet? Did I, did we get the point? Brian Darcy James was just here

Take a look and listen. Well, we have known our next guest and watched him

and I don't know, we're going to ask him how many Broadway shows because I started to count but my fingers don't get up that high

We are really excited. and Brian Darcy James from Michigan to Broadway to Hollywood to the Tony Awards

His performance in Days of Wine and Roses broke my heart. It was one of the most gorgeous scores, one of the most gorgeous relationships on stage

And Brian Darcy James is just a gem. We've enjoyed him so much. Welcome to the Roundtable

Thank you for being here. Hi, Robert. Thanks for having me. I am so excited for you this award season

Congratulations on your nomination. And what a beautiful, beautiful show. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's super exciting. Yeah, it's always exciting. And this one in particular, just because, you know, I agree with what you said. It's a beautiful show and it's a glorious score and getting to have that relationship with Kelly O'Hara as Joe and Kirsten was, oh, look at that. Boom, right on cue. Yeah, it was one of the highlights of my career

you both have sung practically the entire score and had this very beautiful, tumultuous, serious relationship that goes on

How did you do it eight shows a week and go home and have a family and have a life

It's a heavy, it was a heavy performance. Yes, it was. And I think just having had the experience of similar experiences, similar shows that required a certain kind of psychological

challenge, let's put it that way, or just things that are hard to carry around. Just the experience

of having done it before helped me navigate that balance. Because you're right, it can infect

your real life in ways if you carry it around improperly. So thankfully, I have a beautiful family

and as does Kelly, she's got kids to take care of. And so, you know, there's that great

kind of reality that you're you're kind of going back to to to remind you of what's real

So that's super, excuse me, please. It's the morning. Welcome to our morning chat here

I hope you have a good editor. We do. As I was saying before I almost died, it's nice to be able to go back home

and have that, the grounding of your reality surrounding you with a family and other responsibilities

So, but the doing of it took some navigating because you really don't know what kind of effect it's going to have until you do eight shows a week

And so there is a certain kind of, it's like a chemistry set in a way of, you know, knowing how much you can, you kind of exert and how much you can't

and where you are in the week and what's required with just the trajectory of it all

So it does take some trial and error to figure out how you're going to get through this over an extended period of time

I can only imagine. Well, it was beautiful. It's a beautiful show to watch

In my head, sitting there at Studio 54 at that theater watching the show, I thought, oh, these two, they get the score

They probably sit home. they nail this music, they've got it down

How did you learn this score? It's not an easy score to sing. It is very intricate and beautiful

So what's your process to get the music into your body? Well, in this particular case, we've had quite a long ramp of an on-ramp up to the show in the development of it

So there was a lot of time to get things under the belt. So by the time we got to the production at the Atlantic and then subsequently on Broadway

Things were pretty baked in in terms of familiarity and execution. But when you're learning something that is intricate and doesn't necessarily just

it just takes a little, a moment or two to understand what Adam's doing

either musically or technically, what you have to do to achieve the score

singing the score that is. That takes some time. And so I guess the boring answer is just wrote repetition and just literally trying to put it into your voice and sing it into your voice to understand the musicality of it to understand what your voice can and can do for particular passages

I know for myself, I've never had to sing a score like this that has been more challenging for me personally

I always embarrassed Kelly by saying the best education I ever had was being five feet away from her

literally watching her sing the score so effortlessly. We're both different kinds of singers and have different educational backgrounds in terms of how we've been taught to sing

So I was always in awe of and amazed by her ability

And she was always super helpful. If I got stuck with something, I would be able to say, hey, can you explain what you're doing here

And can you kind of just break it down for me? Like a great teacher would do

So anyway, to put it this way, I had to make sure that I could sing the score as beautifully as Adam had written it and at least try to in terms of my participation

And I was very, very aware of that. And I wanted to honor that

Well, I think you both sure did. You sung this score down and around

And your chemistry together is something really, really special to see. I don't think the show works if you guys don't have this amazing chemistry

It's built around your relationship and the trials and tribulations. How was it to, I guess you kind of summed it up, but how was it to work with her

It was the best. It was truly the best kind of duo relationship that I've ever had

And I think a lot of that is defined by obviously the characters, first and foremost

what the characters are needing and wanting from each other. And in this case, they're dealing with a titanic love for each other and also this crippling addiction

which at first brings them together and bonds them, but also is their destruction in the end

So the drama of their attraction and the drama of their own personal challenges and roads that they have to travel is, it defines and helps create the chemistry, as it were, in terms of their need for each other and their need for the substance, in this case, alcohol

And then, of course, there's the other layer of the two actors who are doing it and what they can bring to it

that will suffuse the relationships on stage, the characters with anything extra

And in this case, Kelly and I have been friends for over 20 years. And we're both like-minded in the sense that we were just crazy about this show

and this score and this book and the people that we were working with

And from the very beginning, I think we've always wanted to try to really plumb the depths

of these two characters and bring them to life in a real, real special, unique way

So our like-mindedness are, and I'll speak for myself, but I love Kelly

She's just a fantastic person, a beautiful friend, and an extraordinary artist

So all of that going into the combination of my feeling and my friendship for her, my appreciation

respect, and offer her, and then also just what the characters are doing and how they have to

behave on stage. That combination of things hopefully lent to something that seems special

Well, we're so grateful we got to see it. And this packed season, this season is jam-packed

and this is some singing and acting up there on stage. I said before I ran out of fingers

Do you know what Broadway show this was? Do you keep track? Well, I was introduced yesterday because I was honoring, I was lucky to be honoring Michael

Grife at the New Dramatist Gala. And I heard it in the intro

I heard two things that were kind of shocking to me. Number one, I can answer that

It's 16 Broadway shows. And then in the introduction, they said in a career that spans over 30 years

I thought, wait a second, you've got the wrong person. I just started a couple weeks ago

At least that's how I feel. I feel like I should be at the outsiders, you know

at the table with all those young guys with the outsiders. But no, in my mind, that's where I live

So, yeah, it's, it's, I've been around. for a while, I guess

Yes, well, I was going to say, I was, I've learned a lot about Michigan because my partner is from Detroit

And Michigan's its own interesting state and you growing up in Saginaw, I, your family, political, law, all of these very non-artistic jobs

What was it that led you to the arts? You're not the governor of Michigan. Now you're a Tony nominated actor

Not yet. Hey. No, you're referring to my grandfather, who was the governor of Michigan

My father was a lawyer. And to answer your question, it was my parents' appreciation for the arts

They were always taking us to either community theater productions or driving us down to Detroit, which is about a two-hour drive from where we lived, to go see Broadway

touring shows in Detroit at the Fisher Theater. And so I was exposed to a lot of great theater and a lot of great news

My parents loved music My mom you know I remember she had songs in the Key of Life by Stevie Wonder playing all the time in our house So you know that not a bad thing to have kind of circulating you know in your head and your heart as a kid So um so those are the two things that got me interested And then more specifically my older sister Anne she a couple years older than me She was really interested in theater A long story short she came to New York to visit my my aunt and uncle and she saw Pirates and at Penn Zanz in the park with Linda Ronstadt and Kevin Klein And she fell in love with theater And she came back I think this was eighth grade for her And she was just mad about the theater

So she started doing theater. And I would watch her in the high school musicals and just think, well, I want to be up there with her

So that was the other kind of direct link for me is just watching my older sister, Anne

who is now, by the way, an extraordinary teacher of theater in Nutriar High School in North Shore of Chicago

So that family thing is the reason why I do what I do

It was such a touching story. Even just reading it from a bio was just I could just see the lineage of and how you came to be

But you didn't go to college necessarily for musical theater. Well, I studied theater at Northwestern University

But my intention wasn't necessarily to go to school there to study theater

I went there. I applied and I said, well, you can be in the school of speech, which is one of their division

you know, the way they break it up, College of Arts and Sciences, School of Speech. I said, that's no problem

And then when I got there, I had no idea that I was going to have to choose which lane I would be in within the school of speech

And I'd been hanging out with the theater people all week. And so by the time, by the end of the first week, when you're just being kind of introduced to everything

they said, okay, all the theater people over here, all the speech and pathology people over here

radio, television, and film people over there. and I thought, I have to decide now? So I became a theater major that day

And so it wasn't until my sophomore year when I started acting classes that I realized

oh, this is something that I want to do for the rest of my life. I thought I would just go to college

and take advantage of the theater program there like you do in high school

when you do the spring musical. And, you know, every time, all the while else

you know, through the year, you're just doing your regular school stuff. But then there's the musical

and you can maybe get, get in it and be in it. And that's what I kind of thought college would be. But I ended up kind of

burrowing a little bit more deeply into it. Well, spoiler alert, it works out pretty well

16 shows and 30 years later. This show right here at Make a Broadway debut, which was Blood

Brothers. Speaking of a show kind of outsiders-ish, young kind of show with that kind of energy

do you remember the moment you booked? Do you remember making the book? Do you remember making the

Of course. Of course. Well, to bring it back to my sister, Ann again

My sister went to Boston College and she did a semester in London. So she had seen this show

And she sent me the cassette tape of Blood Brothers because she said, oh, you're going to love

this score. It was very poppy, a really pop score by Willie Russell

And I did. I loved it. It was great. So I knew the score very, very well

And by the time it came around to the Broadway production, they did a, they did a

pre-Broadway tryout in Toronto. And a really good friend of mine, Sam Samuelson

was in the production in Toronto. And we both were newcomers to New York

and just starting to make our way. And we both knew each other from Chicago and had moved to New York around the same time

And he got this Broadway show right out of the gate. And so he was in Toronto and he called me up

and he said, hey, listen, one of the guys that's in the show, an actor named Philip Lale

great actor named Philip Lale, who I've worked with subsequently, he's leaving to go do a Broadway play, the Kentucky cycle

before we come to Broadway, or sometime thereafter. I can't remember the timing exactly

but there was a spot opening up for the Broadway production. And so I kind of had a little bit of a beat on it

and I was able to get to Pat McCorkel, who was casting it, and just kind of said, hey, look at me, look at me, look at me

I want to audition. I don't remember how I got in, because I don't think I had an agent at the time

But at any rate, I got an audition and I got it. And the last thing I remember just to kind of give it a little Tony bookend

I remember watching the Tonys. And it was that, you know, the Blood Brothers was nominated

Khan O'Neill was nominated for his role, the role that I would end up going into be the understudy for and take over for it for a little bit

But I was watching this show knowing the next day I had my first rehearsal as a put-in to that show

I just was, I couldn't really believe it. And so that was a really interesting and beautiful moment

The last story I've told this before, but it's, it always makes me smile, is that I remember

when I was going to do the show for the first time, literally walk on the stage, I was

I was really nervous about it because here it was this Broadway thing

And what was that going to be like? And I remember walking out for the very beginning of the show

There was a bit of a tableau song where the ensemble comes out and sings

a song called Tell Me It's Not True. And once I got on stage, I realized, oh, this is the same thing I've been doing since

ninth grade in high school. You know, you make an entrance, you stand, you say your line or you sing your song

Obviously, it's a different thing because it's a Broadway show. And the excitement of that was definitely there

But the doing of it, the work of it was very familiar and very comfortable to me

It made me feel like, oh, I know what this is. I've done this. And there's nothing, there's no surprise to the fact that you have to just have to do your work

and make your entrance, stop, say your lines, and tell the truth

That's always going to be the same. It's never going to change. It's just the building and the expectation we're different

Oh, that's such good. Someone once told me no matter what level you are in theater, if it's community theater

if it's high school, if it's Broadway, it's just a group of people trying to tell the truth

and tell the story. And that's important for all the theater. students out there who are listening and watching that it's just to go out there and tell the truth and do the job

That's exactly right. Well, I've seen you. If you did 16 shows, I've probably seen a good 14 or 15

and I have a couple of our faves that we would like to talk about I remember being in sixth grade and going to see Titanic which was at that time the biggest most glorious over musical that you could possibly be in

That was a big show. It was a big show. Yeah. Well, I was going to say big show for the reason of the subject matter, obviously

Big show, big ship. And so, but what really sticks out in my mind is

the cast, this ensemble cast of just killers, you know, everywhere you turn. It was such an

amazing group of actors. And, you know, to this day, we're all, we're all, I think, safe to say

we're all real good friends and have a high regard for each other. It was a really great

great experience. And Mori Yustin's score, of course, and Peter Stone with the book

the whole thing was, it was fraught because it was, it wasn't a smooth

ride to get there. But what really stands out for me is the respect I have and the luck I felt

for being included with that group of actors and making that show that way. Yeah. Well, that wasn't

the only big show you've been a part of. I mean, if you look at, if we look at Hamilton

if we look at something rotten, if we look at Shrek, if we look at Into the Woods, you have been a part

of some of the greatest pieces of musical theater that we have seen

some of the biggest juggernaut shows and some iconic scores. When you look back, when you, you know, when you, maybe people are listening to

Sirius Radio, Broadway and there's Brian Darcy James, or you turn on the television and

you see spotlight, or you see 13 reasons why, or you're at the airport and someone comes

up and tells you that your work means something to them, how do you take it all in

How do you look at a body of work like this? and do you realize the amount of joy and art you created for us

That's very kind. I, in some ways, yes, in some ways, no, in the sense

no, in the sense that I'm a person that likes to kind of keep my head down

and not look back too far, because I feel like for me, I'm a pretty sentimental person and pretty nostalgic person

and I can probably get caught by wanting to stay there and wanting to just kind of live in, you know, the glory day

you know, as it were. So in that sense, I think I'm, I'm nervous about spending too much time

you know, kind of celebrating the things that I've done. It doesn't mean that I'm not

I'm not appreciative and immensely grateful for having been able to do it. But I am always

always touched by by people who have, who feel compelled to want to say anything nice about

the things that I've done. It's so important to be reminded that, especially in the theater, it's true throughout

whether you're on a television show or in a film. But in theater, there is such a, there's a literal connection between the performer

and the audience in the sense that you're in the same place. And there's a visceral kind of relationship that's happening

So to have an effect and to be in a show that has any effect at all, because sometimes it doesn't

you know, there are varying degrees of success in terms of all the shows that I've done

But if there's any kind of impact that it has and it makes people feel a particular way or want to even go further to say, hey, thank you for doing this because X, Y, or Z, that to me is the most gratifying thing. And it's a great reminder that, you know, what we do as artists is not done in a vacuum. And it is important because, you know, not to get too grandiose, but it is the connection and it is the thing that keeps us feeling alive. And, uh, it's

It can teach us. It can make us feel. It can make us move forward. It can change things

It can do all kinds of things, art. And to be a small cog in that big machine sometimes is, and to be reminded of that is a feeling of that I have

The feeling that I have is of immense gratitude. Well, that is gorgeous

And that is exactly right. Art, it makes us feel seen and remembers where we are and place and time

And you being a part of that, where all the better for. it. June 16th is around the corner. We marched through award season. I hope you have a fun

award season with all these incredible shows on Broadway right now and everybody needs to go

support art and artists right now. And we can follow you on Instagram and keep up to all

the speed and dates and everything. I looked, when I look up on IMDB and all of that stuff

there's more projects. You have you have things this year and and, and, and, and, and

on TV shows and movies and doing Broadway. You just, come on, Brian, stay booked. Let's go

Like I said, don't look back. Just keep your head down and keep swinging. So we'll be on the lookout

We can't wait to see the next stage, the next TV show, the next movie. And again, thank you so much for being with us

And thank you for all the work. It's my absolute pleasure, Robert

Thanks for having me. Well, there you have it. I had a moment where I thought about being that 12-year-old kid at the Launfontein seeing Titanic

in the height of my musical theater love in sixth grade, where I wrote in my sixth grade yearbook that I wanted to be Barbara Streisand and Funny Girl

and I used to wear King and I polo to gym class

Very, very straight. But the love of art started for me then

And Brian Dorsey-James and his performance in Titanic is definitely one of those memories that I have as a kid growing up

What a joy to see his career and lead these shows and be a part of television and films

And what a great guy. What a really great guy. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us

We're every single day. You can listen to us on the Broadway Podcast Network, and we're here every Friday on the Roundtable

I love being here with you. I hope you can stop by and say hi. Remember, there's more love than there is hate

There's more joy than there is sadness. And there's more good than there is bad. Sometimes you just got to look for it

The best is always yet to come. Go see a show. Go support local theater and arts right now

And I'll see you next week right here on the Roundtable. Bye, everybody