Video: Will Brill Is Living His Best Tony Nominee Life

Welcome to Backstage with Richard Ridge

I'm here at the legendary Sardis. I'm sitting with Will Brill, one of my favorite actors of all time

He's brilliant in everything he does. And he is back this season with a Tony nomination for his brilliant performance as Reg in David Adjmi's Stereophonic

How are you, my friend? I'm so well. I'm very thrilled. I'm very tired, and I'm very happy

That's a great way to be three great things today. Yeah, it is really, you know, I got really good advice from Beth Marvel

I was asking her about award season, and she was like, take it easy, but take it

Yeah. And I was like, great. This is great advice. No, but this must be a wild time for you because your show is a little over three hours

Yeah. Right? Yeah. And then you have to do award season and everything else

all these parties and all these luncheons and have to sleep somewhere along the way

just catching it as I can. It's really exhausting, but also so fun

It's such a weird liminal space to be in. What does this Tony nomination mean to you

Oh, gosh. It's really trippy. I mean, you spend your whole life in the business sort of like telling yourself that it's about the work

and it's about the art and like, I don't need awards. What even does that mean

And then all of a sudden you get nominated for one. the seven-year-old in you is like, oh my God

It's really, it's a wrestle. It's a crazy experience. It's so exciting

And to do it with this play is such a dream. It's a play that I've been hanging around for eight years

Wow. Yeah, it's really cool. I mean, what a journey you been on with this

because you were in the room with Davey when he wrote, like the first few pages of this

Where were you guys? So before I ever even met David Adjmi

I saw him talking about. about his process of the last several days

It was at New Dramatists, which is an organization that I adore and they do so much for young playwrights

He wrote like seven pages of this play and he was like, I'm not gonna share it with you guys

because there's nothing here basically. And Gail Rankin was in that workshop

so I followed them to a nearby cafe because I was like, these are the cool kids of theater

And I introduced myself to David and we got to talking and in the middle of a conversation, he sort of spaced out

And he said, I think you're going to be in this play someday. And then he came back and kept talking to me

It was so wild. And now that was in 2015. Yeah. So now here we are, which is, he texted me the other day

And he said, can you believe that we were at that cafe and now you nominated for a Tony? It's bizarre

This play has this incredible mind of its own, right? Yeah, exactly

Yeah, the play sort of decides what it wants. He wanted to write an hour and a half long play as an experiment that would maybe never go anywhere

where, and now it's a three-hour, 15-minute play that wanted to be on Broadway

and chose all of the actors who it wanted to have in it. It's such a profoundly weird experience, but so cool

What's it like living in this world that he's created? It's a stereophotic

It's very, it's such a comfortable room to be in, but it is

Reg is a really difficult person to be. He lives at the absolute extremities of human experience

and abuses himself all along the spectrum. So it is not an easy play to do

but there is a lot of joy and a lot of learning that comes with it

So I feel very lucky to be doing it. He's such a complex man

Yeah. I mean, as we all are, I feel like, you know

we've all been in a lot of the positions that he's in of, you know, making really bad choices

and hurting somebody you love. and, you know, abusing a substance because you're trying to run away from something

and run towards something else. And David has somehow given all of these moments

to Reg in this very impactful way. You know, Reg has the least amount of stage time

of anyone in the show but you kind of never know it because he is such high impact whenever he on stage which is a thrill and exhausting With all the demons he goes through

was he hard to find for you to do this eight times a week or to discover him

You know, no. I, weirdly, the first time I did a reading of this play

his voice sounded exactly like it sounds now. I never had to go looking for it

He was just already there in my head. And what's weird is when we did the first workshop of it in 2016

I was engaged to be married and I was also drinking very heavily

And I am now sober and divorced in the same way that spoiler alert

Reg is at the end of the show. And so I've done that whole journey

And so to live it out on stage was really painful in rehearsals

and is actually really beautiful now. It's really a fun thing to do

Like cathartic? Very cathartic, yeah, yeah. And gives such great fodder for me to talk with my therapist about

No, but isn't it great, though, with creative work that you get to do, you actually could put real feelings like, oh, my God

I had a lot of Regisms in me already. Yeah, I think it's a common thing that actors feel like they don't get to choose roles

The role chooses them, and I really feel that way with Redgeism. working with this cast

Because you all sing and play instruments. You never play the bass before, did you

No, not at all. I sort of had to fib and say that I knew more of the base than I did

in order to get into the room. Did you really? Yeah, yeah, no

Daniel Oaken, so I left the process for years, and then when they brought me back to do another reading

Daniel said, well, have you been learning the bass in the intervening years? And I said, yes, of course

And I hadn't at all. And so I went out and I like really drilled it and God bless Justin Craig and Will Butler

They like believed in me and they had faith in me and they let me come into the project

And I just got to say, there's this amazing thing that Justin Craig has done

He took a group of actors with very disparate musical abilities and he and then took these rock songs and he arranged the rock songs in such a way that this group

group of actors can perform it beautifully and believably, but also like, you know, according to our abilities

It's such a feat. Interesting. And I think it's something really, it makes me so thrilled that he's nominated

for best orchestrations because I think it's a really unique kind of orchestrating that most people don't do

That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. But also, like, who would have thunk that, like

those three singers blend as beautifully as they do? I mean, we didn't have chemistry tests

anything. It's just, it's mind-blowing how well this group of people came together

So when you all finally got together, you're like, oh, now we have to do one of the songs. What was that by first? You were playing the bass that you were supposed to have learned years ago

I was so bad at it. I was so bad at it. And I thought that everybody else was going to be bad, too

Juliana and I had been DMing on Instagram, and she was like, oh, it's really rough. My piano's so

rough. And I got there and she was like, no problem banging out on the keys. And Tom was like

Tom was really like working hard and like looking at the thing, but Sarah already had the voice

I was just like, and Chris Stack is a real drummer. So he was like drumming like no problem

And I was like, I am a mess. Justin Craig is going to have to play for me offstage

Like this, there's no way. So that was really difficult. But then Will Butler believed in us so much

He was like three weeks into rehearsal. He was like, will you guys open for me at my CD release party

And the girls said no. and I said, don't you think you will regret this

like 20 years from now? And so we went and did it and it was like so fun

You're like a rock band now. It's crazy. We're like a real band. It's really, it's crazy because people say

they're always like, what's it like being in a fake band? And we're like, well, we're a fictional band

but we're a real band. Totally. You know, we're playing those instruments

And you also got to record the album. Oh, my God. So is that like a moment out of time

like going into a show. to a recording studio like a rock studio Yeah I didn think it would I mean there was such a disconnect I was like oh we sitting here playing And I kept thinking like the real recording will happen at some point

And then all of a sudden, the album came out. And I, you know, there's the story about Tom York listening to OK Computer for the first time and weeping

And I always thought, oh, so ridiculous. And I fully wept when I listened to Stereophonic the first time

I just thought it was so beautiful. and, like, thinking about how far we had come on this journey

It's really moving. It's really special. Talk about journeys. You've had the last few years of your life, what you've worked on

I've had such an exciting. I cannot believe that I've had the last few years that I've had

I mean, I went from a case for the existence of God with Sam Hunter and David Cromer

and my college roommate, Kyle Beltran, straight into playing Roy Cohn in fellow travelers

which was mind-blowing. Then straight into Uncle Vanya with a bunch of friends in a loft that blew up

straight into this. I've been having a very, very blessed, very crazy moment

It's really fun. But for Vodda, you met someone in the airport. Yeah, so I met..

So actually, when I was in tribes 12 years ago, we had auditions for replacements in the show

and Julia Chan was one of the actors who auditioned. And I said to David Kromer, I was like, this woman is, she's so beautiful

She's so talented. How can you not cast her? And he said, she is too beautiful to be a part of this family

And he's like, no one will buy it. But I really loved her, really adored her

And so we followed each other on Instagram. And then it was literally 10 years later, we ran into each other

And she said, we should do Uncle Vanya together. And I was like, okay, I'll ask David Kramer about it

And David said, can I play Vanya? And I said, heck yeah, dude. I don't know this play

I've never seen Vanya before. And then we put it together as a lark

We just like, we put it together as a group of friends doing a thing

And it was, it has become one of the truly, like, most fulfilling experiences of my life

That is so crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And then Oklahoma, too. And then Oklahoma, I mean, Oklahoma

Yeah, I've had like, I got to see Daniel Fish for the first time in a long time yesterday, and that was such a special experience, such a weird experience

My first sort of brush with the tonious experience, because we got to perform on stage at Radio City Music Hall, and a bunch of the actors were nominated, and Allie Stroker won

It was really such a cool experience. It's funny story. This is a lot of pressure

but I've had in the two previous plays that I've been in

where I had romantic interests, both of those women have won Tonys for those performances

It was Ali Stroker and Annalie Ashford for You Can't Take It With You, which is I told, which I did tell Juliana at some point

And she was like, cool, no pressure. That's wild. That is great

Yeah, yeah. I have to talk to you about CMU. Oh, yeah, of course

So, I mean, what do you remember, what were some of your favorite memories of being there

That set you on your path to the kind of career that you have today. You know, the teachers there are a really beautiful mix of, like

very, very supportive and also kind of brutally honest. Like, they will, I had always heard that college was going to be

you're going to go in, rip you apart. They're going to tear your ego down. You're not going to know who you are anymore

just so they can build you back up. And it was not like that at all. It was very loving. It was very

caring. And also, it was brutal. There was a lot of the, there was so much rigor required of all of the

actors. And so you built this incredible camaraderie with all of the other students there. I mean

it's really a family that you come away from that place. with And I mean Barbara McKenzie Wood just came who is my acting teacher all four years that I was there just came to see Stereophonic and it was so moving to have her there She just just retired from teaching at Carnegie

But yeah, it's amazing. And I should have known better, but when I heard that a very young person was going to come in

and play Diana in the show, even though it was a CMU actor, I was like

oh, it's her first place since college. like what's this gonna be like and she is I mean transcendent like there's no actor like her and

it just it makes sense to me that she also studied with Barbara and that she probably got some

really great support and some really great tutelage yeah so she was the takeaway teacher for you

oh yeah yeah Barbara and this other woman Ingrid Sonicson who just was like nothing but love

and light and support for me. She was always really like just all about gassing me up

It was really fun. And I got to play so many roles that like I don't know if I'll ever get to play again

I got to play the anarchist in accidental death of an anarchist, which was a mind-bending experience

It's like some of the most fun I've ever had. And then I also got to, I did this production

of Don Carlos, which I think is the least successful thing I've ever done on stage. And it was a really safe place

to fail miserably around your friends. Are there specific tools that you've taken away

that only CMU offered you that you use in your craft? Oh, for sure

I mean, the sort of vocal warm-ups that I do in order to stay fit and healthy

a lot of the movement exercises, if I feel really lost with how to approach a character

I'll think through some of the movement techniques that we learned throughout the years

There's always script ysis that you can return to that Barbara was really gung-ho about

there's a ton that I still return to. Yeah. That's amazing. Talk about arts education and the importance of arts education

Oh, man. I mean, it's a shame that there is not more money

in the arts because it's such a great way to encourage young people to express themselves

and to learn about each other, and to learn about other cultures, even if you don't wind up in the arts per se

like having the experience of kind of passionately driving towards something and building something collaborative is invaluable

And I think everybody can relate to needing each other. And if you have the tools to express that need healthfully to each other

like you've kind of got the world on lock, you know? It's, um, so for that reason, I think it's a really amazing thing

And that's what CMU offered you, right? For sure. I mean, in spades

It was just such a safe place to, um, do anything with anyone

Yeah. If you could sum up the best part of the experience now of being in stereophonic, what's it for you

Oh, gosh. It's a big question, because I'm sure there's so much. A big question. Yeah, there's so much

I would say, um, gosh, if there's one thing that is like

the big takeaway from Stereophonic. I think it is, this is so meta, but the heartbreak and the fulfillment that coincide with making

a piece of art is ineffable, it's inexpressible, and it is the reason for the pursuit

Yeah. Have you chosen a Tony outfit yet? I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I'm very excited

It's like between a few things. It's between a few things. There are some, like, key inspirations that I'm drawing on

There's a bunch of designers' names. But, yeah, it's very exciting and also very nerve-wracking

I've never really had to do this before. But you'll know when you see yourself in something, you can be like, that's me

I think so. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Congratulations, my friend. We'll see you Tony Knight

Yeah