This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Ben Rimalower: Broadway Podcast Network presents Giants in the Sky, How Sondheim and Lapine Went Into the Woods with me, Ben Rimalower.

[0:08] Ben Rimalower: Today's guest, Douglas Sills, Rapunzel's's Prince on the National Tour.

[0:12] Douglas Sills: Once upon a time.

[0:18] Douglas Sills: I played Rapunzel's's Prince on the National Tour of Into the Woods and Carl Magnus in A Little Night Music at the Kennedy Center. I received Tony and Drama Desk nominations for originating the role of Percy in The Scarlet Pimpernel, and also appeared on Broadway in War Paint, Living on Love, and Little Shop of Horrors, as well as national tours of The Addams Family and The Secret Garden, and the Encores! productions of Mac and Mabel, Lady Be Good, Music in the Air, and Carnival. I can currently be seen as Monsieur Baldan, aka Borden on The Gilded Age.

[1:02] Ben Rimalower: Oh my gosh.

[1:03] Douglas Sills: What an interesting question. Now you're gonna have to roll with my memories, because this is now 35 years ago.

[1:14] Ben Rimalower: Right?

[1:15] Douglas Sills: Yeah.

[1:17] Douglas Sills: Um, I don't know. I just can't answer that. I don't know how I became aware, but I would say, as a student of the theater, I let's see. So I had graduated from graduate school at ACT in San Francisco.

[1:36] Douglas Sills: Uh, four years earlier.

[1:41] Ben Rimalower: No.

[1:42] Douglas Sills: Yeah.

[1:43] Douglas Sills: And, uh, this would have been, um, a first big job for me.

[1:53] Douglas Sills: Yeah. Um, although I had certainly been involved in, you know, heavy hitting. I got my equity card, I think, several years earlier at the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera, and they had, you know, they had a great organization, and Kathleen Marshall was there that summer. I mean, I had been involved, but I had also made a shift towards straight theater and was not really, um, auditioning for musicals.

[2:26] Douglas Sills: Um, part of that journey for me was finding some resolution between keeping two separate resumes and having a unified career, because at this point, this was the heyday of Sam Shepard and David Mamet, and those players in that game were not really having musical people.

[2:51] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, right.

[2:52] Douglas Sills: So you better believe they certainly probably were not having gays. So, I mean, I'm not saying that there was any kind of cabal or, right, um, organized obstruction, but, um, that was my feeling, right on the right.

[3:14] Douglas Sills: So, I mean, this is the era of casting directors saying, "Oh, don't read too light, don't be flamboyant," that kind of feedback to people, right?

[3:22] Douglas Sills: I don't even think they would say it. You would just, if you were lucky and your agent had a good connection with the casting director, they might say it to them, and then it was up to your manager or agent to say it to you.

[3:35] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[3:36] Douglas Sills: I don't think they would say it to my face. They would just say you would hear if you were lucky, "He read too light," or, um, "They were going in a different direction," or, uh, um, it would be, um, more obscure than plain that way. Maybe it would be plainer in LA that stuff.

[4:08] Douglas Sills: Um, mind you, that stuff still goes on, of course, whatever.

[4:14] Douglas Sills: Um, so now you were trained for acting in plays at ACT, I assume.

[4:22] Douglas Sills: That was not a musical theater program by any means.

[4:24] Douglas Sills: No, no, so I didn't even tell anybody there for two years that I sang.

[4:30] Ben Rimalower: So how did you wind up? Like, obviously, I guess you'd done what, like high school musicals and stuff, so you could go to like Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera and be ready to roll.

[4:40] Douglas Sills: You know, no.

[4:43] Douglas Sills: I sang in high school a little bit. I had voice lessons there, but it was more choral stuff. I was in a smallish private school for high school, and it was more theater-y. There were some musicals, I played Nicely-Nicely, there's a big song, and, you know, everyone kind of went, right, you know, when someone's a singer in that sense, they're like, "Oh, yeah."

[5:11] Ben Rimalower: Um, were you a Sondheim nerd? I mean, had you been like knowing every word to like Company or Sweeney Todd or anything?

[5:17] Douglas Sills: No, no, I was more interested in, no.

[5:22] Douglas Sills: Yeah, no. I mean, I think at 15, I saw, 16, I saw Chicago, and I saw, um, A Chorus Line, you know, those things sort of changed my perspective on what I wanted to do. Then the big shift was during college at the University of Michigan before that program existed.

[5:48] Douglas Sills: And, um, really got, you know, in the mix and heard real singers and all that shit, and, uh, took a term off college and went to New York with friends and spent a term there.

[6:01] Douglas Sills: And so, um, just to see if I was, you know, am I able to do this? And, um, I got in a play, um, I got in a musical, uh, by the guys who had written something called The Lieutenant, huh? Which was sort of a big deal at one point. Anyway, they wrote this crazy musical, and, uh, they, I was not in the union yet, and, uh, I got a sense that, yeah, I can compete.

[6:33] Douglas Sills: And I, I think I auditioned for the Radio City Christmas show, and they were looking for eight singers or something, and I got down from like a thousand men down to nine or ten and then didn't get it.

[6:46] Douglas Sills: And, um, I think when you don't get something like that, it's like, "I'll show you." Yeah, if I had gotten it, I probably would have gone, "Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm done with this."

[6:54] Douglas Sills: So I was aware and seeing musical theater, but I wasn't a nerd, no, no, no, and I wasn't really even a theater nerd. I was involved, I was involved in other things in school.

[7:08] Douglas Sills: Um, so, uh, no, I didn't really fall into that category.

[7:15] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[7:16] Douglas Sills: Um, I'm trying to think the first Sondheim I would have seen. Sunday in the Park with George, maybe. Is that the first one? Was it '84?

[7:25] Ben Rimalower: So maybe you were here.

[7:28] Douglas Sills: Yeah.

[7:29] Douglas Sills: Yeah. That was pretty striking for me. That was pretty. That was a, you know, and I also known that, um, Mandy had studied classically at, um, Juilliard. So I, you know, he was one of the people I could sort of see as a crossover artist.

[7:52] Douglas Sills: Yeah, absolutely. That I sort of wanted to model myself after. Um, Jerry Orbach was certainly one. Um, Kevin Kline was one. But in general, people weren't crossing over. There wasn't so, although of course when you said David Mamet, I thought of your, uh, War Paint co-star Patti LuPone.

[8:14] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[8:15] Douglas Sills: Well, she and Kevin were in that first class together.

[8:18] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, right.

[8:18] Douglas Sills: At Juilliard, yeah.

[8:20] Douglas Sills: Right. Romantically. Um, so I, I think it must have been just, um, my, who would have said to me there's this audition.

[8:39] Douglas Sills: Um, I don't know. I mean, did you see Into the Woods on Broadway before you went in for the tour?

[8:46] Douglas Sills: No.

[8:46] Douglas Sills: No.

[8:47] Douglas Sills: No. I went in once it was, I went to see it when it was offered, or when the audition came along.

[9:00] Douglas Sills: Yeah. And, you know, I was going through a really tough time in my life. Um, my brother was killed in an accident, and it really, everything, as anyone who's listening can imagine, everything collapsed. And, um, I was really going through a tough time.

[9:22] Douglas Sills: The first, my first, uh, experience with anxiety or anxiety attack, and then trying to find some therapy to help, and, um, it was a really tough time, and, um, it came along. I was nervous about doing it because I was really suffering depression, and I said, you know, I don't know if I can do this, go out on the road and do this job and, and, um.

[9:22] Ben Rimalower: You had never done a tour before at that point, right?

[9:56] Douglas Sills: I had, I had done a tour of Shakespeare.

[10:00] Douglas Sills: Oh, okay.

[10:00] Douglas Sills: In, in mostly in California from the Cal Shakespeare. Um, one of my professors at ACT was Dak and Matthews, who's a, uh, big presence on Broadway now. And they inspired me at the Shakespeare. But no, I had not done a big tour, and, uh, I went to see it, and you know what? I'm gonna be really honest. I sat there and it brought up a lot of what felt like primal cellular, uh, energy of nervousness and anxiety, seeing the way that music struck me at the time, and I don't know how to describe it, except the stuff around the wolf particularly was very, um, disturbing for me in a, in a sort of primal way, and I thought I'm not, I'm not ready to go to work. I, I don't feel good about this, and the music was disturbing for some reason.

I went ahead anyway. I think I just thought I, I need to get on with things, yeah, and this is too good an opportunity to pass up. If, if I fail or bomb out or can't do it, they'll figure it out. So, um, I did do it and, uh, I just remember sitting in the audience on Broadway seeing "Hello, Little Girl," yeah, those testicles, and it was scary, and it was, um, I don't know, it was primal. It was, um, there was something about the minor key and, and the thing that everybody was going through that was bringing up a lot of stuff about death, and I just wasn't ready, yeah, and, uh, but I went.

[10:25] Douglas Sills: Yeah. I remember in rehearsal with Steven and James, and, you know, they had already been through it, yeah, but it's a great chance for people to really get back in and fix things that they weren't happy with, so, and we had some interesting folks. We had, um, shh, oh my god. We had Charlotte Rae.

[12:20] Ben Rimalower: I mean, the second you started laughing, I think we all knew what name you were gonna say.

[12:25] Douglas Sills: She's so funny. You know, she had a really big important career.

[12:30] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[12:30] Douglas Sills: Yeah. She did a lot of important plays.

[12:33] Douglas Sills: She's not, she's not a lightweight.

[12:35] Douglas Sills: No. Um, but she was this tiny little thing. By the time I, you know, she, I'm telling you, she was like a pocket, and she was doing her best to get, she was trying to catch her breath and get in there on those, yeah, I can do it.

[12:54] Douglas Sills: Steven, I can't, I can't do it. I'll get it, I'll get it, I'll get it. I need to bring, are we at five yet? Are we, um, she was so cute, and we just were all rooting for her, you know. Every time she'd start those patter songs with the uneven rhythms, it was all this modernism going up against somebody from the golden age of musicals. It was priceless. Um, and she just reeks comedy. She's one of these people like Blake Hammond or like Brad Oscar or like Nathan. I mean, it just comes out of her pores. She can't help it when she does something; everything seems ridiculous and funny. And she's with this sort of strapping, handsome, kind of sexy Jack, Robert McNeil, who was kind of dumb. I'm not, not him, but his character.

And it was just a wonderful pair. There was a thing that drew you to them. You wanted them to succeed, uh, the characters. Um, but it was such a delicious kind of Jack, you're such an idiot! You're starving here. But there was also this sense of playing it for real, you know. You know? Yeah. They were very clear on don't make fun of them. Don't, we don't need you to laugh at them. We'll do the laughing. Just play it straight. When you're a prince, don't go. You wouldn't even dare in front of them to go to sort of mocking it, or yeah. Right? Because you were a prince, and you would put, and of course I was into this Stanislavski and the, yeah. I'm trying to find the right. And you know, musicals, they don't want that.

You gotta do that on your own. They don't want to do that shit. So, um, I mean, did you have a sense that, well, if any musical is going to hold up to my Stanislavski training, it's a Stephen Sondheim, James Lapine production, or did it, was it just a musical at the end of the day?

[15:03] Douglas Sills: Well, you know, Chuck, who was playing Cinderella's Prince, had played my part and brought a little bit of scrutiny about that. Like, I had to start like, okay, I don't have to be like him. And to be completely honest, I wasn't thinking of him because the one time I saw it, there's so much to see. Rapunzel's just not. I mean, it's a wonderful part, but it wasn't. Yeah. If you're thinking of the prince, you're thinking of Cinderella's Prince. Um, so no, I don't remember thinking like, oh, I just do your work and bring it in. Yeah. And feel the room. Yeah. Play the room, you know, and um, Steven was extremely particular about rhythm, very particular. No liberties, yeah, none. And um, you know, you would get a note like, Douglas, that's a dotted sixteenth.

Right? And I'm like, part of me is like, did you all hear that? Like it's crazy, right? Yeah. It's like, oh, Steve, yeah, I'm for sure. Forgive me. I don't know what got it. I don't really read music. I'll get it right, I promise. And feeling very lucky to be in the room. Um, it wasn't Broadway. We knew we weren't, but at the same time, we felt like we were given this torch to carry forward and to take this thing, which may very well be his first successful enterprise commercially, yeah, to take it into the hinterlands. Yeah. You know, it's not the frogs. So right? So we, I think everybody thought, oh, this could. I mean, especially when you talk to the younger generation, you know, the millennials and everything, like, and every, and younger than that. This is the Sondheim show they think of first.

[16:55] Douglas Sills: Right. I agree. That, well, listen, when we sat in the audience post-pandemic or during the pandemic of the revival recently, and you know, it was like you thought you were at Madison Square Garden at a Billy Joel concert. Totally. The people were going crazy, and I'm looking around like, are we in the right theater? What's going on? Yeah. They were screaming before the song started, right? They hear the intro, and you're like, okay, where did this seed get planted? What, so um, but they were very particular, they were very present, they were there all the time. Um, there was none of this associate director putting it together and them coming in later. Yeah. Um, the comedy, um, that thing between the baker and the baker's wife, it was so delicate.

You know, they have to want each other, they have to want each other and need each other because if you're like, I don't know, honey, I got the cape, I got the golden what what? Where are, if you're at that point, you have to want this baby, you have to want each other. Yes, there's a break, but it's a break from something. You, if you don't have that, it's like Gomez and Morticia. You've got to have that love there, right? So, and that, and yet they're both very funny. But you can't, you gotta be careful where you take your laughs, otherwise you're cashing in chips that you're gonna need later for the ending when you have to care about what's happened to them. You can't make fun of it. So, anyway, it was a delicate tonal balance, and um, just fantastic.

And we had the grace of knowing what worked in that these tunes and already having seen them played in front of an audience, so we didn't have that lack of certainty about how it was play. Is this gonna work? So had that been sense watching it on Broadway. Uh, this is a show that works. I'm stepping into like, uh, you know, uh, a well-oiled machine kind of a piece. Yeah, to some degree, but you know, it's not Fiddler on the Roof, it's not Oklahoma. I can't send my parents to this. Right. You know, they're gonna be like, yeah, you know what they were saying in this year. They'd be saying, I can't hum anything. It's so complicated. You know, oi, you know, give me a, so yes, they had already worked out a lot of stuff, but we were taking it to less sophisticated places where the tastes were even, um, you know, perhaps more, um, middle of the road, less eager for modernism.

[19:56] Douglas Sills: Yeah. Was that, did you feel that there was a sensitivity to that and a sort of, uh, uh, preparation for that in the process? I mean, there wasn't anything to be done. We were sort of just going into battle with new weapons. There was nothing to be done. We were sort of ready to go out and explore, like Lewis and Clark, you know. And we felt like, well, it's on Broadway. I don't know. So when we went out, had they won their Tonys, or yeah. So you can always say that, and people go, oh, well, it's won a Tony. Come on, have to go see this, Estelle. We need to know exactly. Well, it's won some Tonys, you know. We started in Palm Beach, I think, yeah, at the Parker Playhouse. Yeah. Um, um, where I had a near-death experience.

[20:44] Douglas Sills: Oh my god, with the set? No, I was, I was on a day off or something, and I was swimming, and uh, I got caught in a riptide, and yeah, I was, I was, I couldn't, and then suddenly in the distance on the shore, I saw somebody going like this. They saw that I was having trouble and they said, swim this way. But if that person hadn't been there, and I was gasping for air, I mean, I made it to, I, I just, it was, anyway, and no one's there, so you can't really tell somebody, I almost died just now. Um, but we were all coming together, and that Ray Gill is just so funny. You know, you on a tour, you always have the lead players who hopefully lead the cast. Um, it was, uh, it was exciting, and like I said, I knew how it had affected me.

What I experienced was, you know, a lot of depression on the road that I was trying to push through and figure out how do you handle this on the road, and you know, having stage fright in the wing right before I go out, and um, it was interesting for me. It was a real life's journey. But I was, I could also, you know, say to my parents, see, I'm, I'm in a national tour of a big Broadway show.

[22:07] Douglas Sills: Yeah. Um, then I think we, we did make it to Detroit where I'm from, and I think we played. I want to say we played the Fox Theater, but maybe that's not right because there's the Fisher there and the Fox Theater and Orchestra Hall. But I think, I think we played the Fox Theater, which is this enormous house, and um, it was just a really wonderful experience, and playing with real savvy people that know where their jokes are and hit it every time, and sure-footed voices, and what it means to take on the responsibility and not missing your shows, and whatever you're doing at night, you know this thing has to happen. It was a little bit of a different sensibility perhaps than what's going on now from what I understand.

Yeah, it's a, it's a dicey subject I, I know, but I understand from others that there's a different sort of feeling going on right now, but it was that tradition and maybe we were the end of it. Um, and I just felt really lucky to get to watch them and learn my craft sort of on the road and um, I think I had an agent in a guy who just passed away, Jim Wilhelm at DGRW, and Jim had picked me up from, um, I got an agent right out of ACT in Michael Bloom on the West Coast, but I think Jim wanted to represent me on the East Coast. I think he saw me at, um, Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera and offered to represent me.

[23:55] Douglas Sills: What did you do in Pittsburgh with Kathleen? We did, at this time, I'm not sure what they do now, there were six musicals in eight weeks or something. So, and they hired six, um, dancers for the course and six singers, male and then six female singers and six female dancers, and that chorus did every show. So while we're doing one show, you rehearse the other one the next day during the day, and we did, um, oh my god, we did, um, we did the Student Prince, Kiss Me, Kate, South Pacific. Um, Student Prince, South Pacific, Kiss Me, Kate. Um, Promises, Promises. Um, Brigadoon and, yikes. I can't remember. And you know, they would job in the leads, and I met Mark Jacoby. He came into the Student Prince and Meg Bussert, and there were just these wonderful pros.

Yeah. Um, who you got to witness. And I had finished grad school, and so every time there was a little part with a line or two, I would say to Susan Shulman, who was the director of most of the shows, Susan, you know, I, I was very eager to sort of create a character, a drunk for Promises, Promises, or, you know, a doctor, whatever it was.

[25:34] Douglas Sills: And um, you know, I was trying to do, you know, Ian McKellen on the and these little walk-ons. And um I just uh she I'm sure she had her fill of me trying to be. But that said, she cast me in the tour of Secret Garden. That was my next gig. So obviously she knew that I had it in me and was ready to do it. Yes. Now, okay, speaking of your eagerness, I think when you played Rapunzel's's Prince, you were also understudying uh Cinderella's Prince and the Wolf, right?

[26:14] Douglas Sills: Right. So were you have were you scared to go on extra scared because of the feeling you'd had watching it, or what was you know?

[26:23] Douglas Sills: Yeah, I mean you're s yeah, sure. Sure. You know what? I I have a feeling that I didn't understudy the wolf. I don't know why they split it up. So if Chuck was out, I I would go on as Cinderella's prince, but I think somebody else was the wolf. Maybe it was just for ease for the transition. I don't know. Um my big concern.

[26:45] Douglas Sills: So you don't you don't think you played the wolf at all?

[26:48] Douglas Sills: No. Oh wow. I do remember Chuck. Chuck is a very unusual guy. He took the wolf very seriously, and the prince, but in like an unusual way. Like I can do this, Prince. Like he had it in him. Like he was born to be a prince. And he also carried the mantle of the original Broadway production because he was in it. Um and there was a point on the road where I this is the way I remember it. They decided they couldn't have testicles. Ah. And um, I don't know. Was there also a wolf's penis? Yeah, yeah. I think the testicles were what showed more because anyway, we're getting in we're getting into the weeds, so speak. But um, I just remember the day they cut Chuck's testicles off, and ha ha ha he was there watching, and he was literally inconsolable for the day.

He was just there, it's not right. You can't do this, it's just not right, and he just felt neutered. Um so no, I never got to play the wolf, but I did play his part. Um, and uh what I was worried about was the low notes. I mean, I have a high timbre to my voice now, but then I mean, you know, I let's just say Cleo Lane, who was playing The Witch, yeah. Her speaking voice was lower than mine. Wow. I was trying to get down here, but hello little, you know. Nothing, nothing came out, you know. Nothing, nothing really came out. So you're trying your best to get it out. Um, but it was uh it was a responsibility that you took very seriously, and you knew at any time this could happen, it was going on all around you, somebody would miss.

[28:50] Douglas Sills: Now, there wasn't the ease of missing. I mean, ever you did it if you could. There was a different you were doing it. So, but things came up. He was married, he had kids. Um, I'm sure he didn't miss very often. He's a killer, you know. He yeah, so I don't remember doing it very often, but I did do it. Um, and I think I remember being more eager for our understudies to get on, so it was more like you wanted them to get a chance. Um, so you knew that you'd get in trouble if you sort of massaged the rules, but you really wanted to give those guys a shot to go on, specifically if they were in a city where their parents were, yeah. Right. Um, but you know, there were big penalties for you couldn't call it sick.

Um, and also on the road, it's a whole different thing. You're not going home at night to your home. Everybody's going home to each other, essentially. I mean, you may have to go and do something together, but you're all you have. Yeah, you don't come into work from your life. Your tour is a very different thing.

[29:57] Douglas Sills: So it especially must have been different then before uh the internet, because I think now people are able probably to maintain some level of like virtual connection with their normal life on the road, and there, other than long distance phone calls, you you kind of cut off. I love how you say that before the internet. You know, somebody would start by trying to make a fire before we all got into our sleeping bags around the campfire. Then we somebody would throw a bone in the air. Um, yes, it was very different before cell phones and the internet, everything was different. Now we weren't missing, I'm sure there were places we bust, but in general, it was a first class national tour. Um, but yeah, you're talking about payphones, yeah.

To call people, nobody had a phone in their dressing room. Um, none of this, no texting. Um so you missed people, you missed them, and you tried to use your calling card from the phone in the butt, and if you miss them, you miss them, they're not yeah. I think we had those voice voicemail things with like it was a box next to the phone, and you turn it, it's beeping. I know this is gonna be prehistoric for some people, but yes, when you were on tour then, you were going away from home with little to no um tether to the homeland.

[31:29] Douglas Sills: The other thing that we did not have on the road that subsequent years brought to roadshows is um easy hookups. I mean, no grinder, there was no internet, so if you wanted to find company on the road, you know, you had to really you had to hunt it down, you had to find the bar, you know, you had to get to the bar. I didn't know what you were gonna find when you got there. I mean, it was hoop some of the places you went with some of the people in the cast and uh who were like your going out buddies from the Into the Woods cast. I guess Jonathan.

[32:08] Douglas Sills: Yeah, yeah. And uh um I mean there was a there was a woman in that show that I was intimate with. Wow who shall remain nameless. Um I know that it's Charlotte Rex. Um, but uh who else did I go out with? Uh they were all straight. Right. I was hoping you're gonna blow my mind and say like Rex Robbins or something.

[32:44] Douglas Sills: Oh god, it was so sweet. It was so great to have an older person like that on the road and Rex who'd done so many things, he was such a sweet soul. Um God, he was sweet. Just great having that presence. Having that intergenerational thing in a show is just it's so important. I mean, I don't know, maybe people don't want to hear about it now, but I was a student of it. Oh well Ray Gill, a little bit with gay. Um I don't I can't think of any of the other men being gay. Um the other standby uh no, he was straight. And uh Chuck and um Cinderella's father straight and uh they were all yeah so no uh maybe uh maybe no I was thinking on the crew but no well that's a small posse that's something you weren't alone right but now you're never alone now you're never alone at the end of the internet so that makes touring life very different yeah so it makes touring life very different because I went I did a tour several years ago of the Adams family and uh oh with Sarah Gettelfinger right yeah and that tour was you know wonderful and interesting and there's so it just makes it so much better just finding great food yeah you know I know the tour was pretty successful at least in terms of uh how long it ran and you stayed for I think like six months or nine months or something my recollection you may have better information my recollection is a year so okay but I think then maybe it went on for a whole other year after that but were you were did you consider at all staying longer or were you like yeah done or did you have a job you had to go to that's an interesting question I think I was done yeah I think I was done um okay so this probably would have been fall of eighty nine yeah and I think um I'm trying to remember what my next gig was.

[35:02] Douglas Sills: I think at this time I had a residence in Los Angeles because I had gone to grad school in San Francisco. And um I think I went back there and I might have got my first TV gig. And I also had another Shakespeare gig. And my classmates from ACT were starting theaters and had other theater jobs, and that we would call each other for hey, can you come do this? So I should have really, before you and I talked, Ben, I should have sort of looked ahead to see what the next job was and how that came about. But um, oh I know. What was it? I think what happened was Le Pine asked if I would come into Falsettos on Broadway. I don't think that happened for two more years, or like at least oh, maybe it was the um Hartford Stage Falsettos.

Oh no, that would have been Graziela Danielle. Oh, Falsetto Land off Broadway would have been the right timing. Okay. That makes sense. It was already going on. Yeah, at the Lord. Where was that where it was? Yeah. Thank God for you. You're a real nerd.

[36:14] Douglas Sills: I'm the biggest nerd, yeah. Except, you know what? This is my sweet spot. I don't know anything after like 2003. Then no. Well, I think he asked me to do it, and I said, Yes, but I had to be like the assistant stage manager as well. And I said, Okay, okay. And I was understudying Wizard, I think. Yeah. And uh then the producers of Into the Woods wouldn't let me out.

[36:49] Douglas Sills: Oh wow. They wouldn't let me out to do it. Um, so that was the next job offer that I had. But it was a good sign that, oh, they wanna he wants to work with me again. He sees something there. Um yeah, I have now I have to go back and find out. I'm gonna have to ask my friends, my sister, what happened to me next. Um, I feel like I'm in New Jersey in the old folks' home. Tell me what happened next. This is why I have to do the podcast, because literally everybody has huge gaping holes. And I mean, people there's like I don't I still beg your pardon? Yeah, you heard me. I still don't even know who played the witch in the reading at Playwrights Horizons. Nobody knows. Um, and um, I mean, they did a workshop there with Betty Buckley, and then they did another workshop with Betty Buckley and the Ellen Foley.

I mean, there's a lot that I have been able to find out. But there was the first reading at Playwrights in 1985. It was a crazy cast with Christine Estherbrook, was the baker's wife. They had no music, but they no one knows who played the witch. Um, but surely James knows.

[37:55] Douglas Sills: No, no clue. He James told me that Ellen Foley never did it on Broadway. I mean, he doesn't know anything. I have played. That sounds so right. Um but but so here's my question for you. With that uh year behind you, and the here you've got James Lapine wanting you to come do his next show.

[38:15] Douglas Sills: What were you thinking, okay? This is right, musical theater is, you know, a place for me to succeed. I'm gonna focus on this, or, but it sounds like maybe not if you were going back to LA and doing Shakespeare and TV. No, I think it reinforced my mind that I see now if I can keep this double path going, how I can continue to work more than somebody who isn't, but not in terms of synthesizing it into one actor. So that's why, sort of for my career, there was a duality to it on the West Coast. I'm sort of, I feel like I have a stronger reputation as a straight theater actor, a straight theater actor.

[39:01] Right, right.

[39:02] Douglas Sills: Actor of plays. Yeah, thank you. On the East Coast, more of musicals. After Pimpernel happened, it was just all musicals. So, um, and that I realized as time went along that, um, people were appreciating the originality of what came up as you start to, um, create a character from the ground up, literally putting seeds in the ground and creating the character, which I think that background from a theater training helped me do. I was never afraid. I wasn't copying somebody from a movie or from another production of Oklahoma that I saw. I was sort of saying, okay, this character is in this position. What are the given circumstances? You know, and, uh, and doing it that way. And I think people appreciate it, especially if they didn't really know what the character was.

They often, I found, turned to me and kind of went, I'm not sure what this is, but you're kind of funny, and you're sort of the leading man on the outside, and sort of Woody Allen on the inside. What do you think? I just was gonna continue on in that way and be able to work in both places?

[40:06] Now, what I didn't understand that I know now is I was giving up momentum. Uh, when you move from one area to the other, particularly if there was a geography split, you know, you gave up momentum. Like, where is he? Oh, he's not here. I think he lives on the West Coast. Right. He's doing, oh yeah, forget it. He's not available. So let's talk about Stokes, and so you give that up. Um, if Berkeley Rep was look, you know, they, oh no, he's on the road with Secret Dark. Yeah, he's, so was there nobody? Is that not a thing that like Jim Wilhelm would have said to you, or you just not listen because you were young and whatever? You know, I don't think they analyzed it that closely. I think they thought of it as a, yeah, he does both.

Yeah, I think they saw it as a plus. I don't know that, you know, the physics of momentum of a career were in focus. I think that, you know, I think there weren't that many people doing it, and, um, I was sure-footed about what I wanted in that regard. I knew that I liked singing and that stuff, but I was looking forward to a deeper, um, examination of characters, and there weren't, oftentimes in musicals, they're not, there's no time or they're not interested, um, unless it's a new piece, and even then there's not time. So, um, I knew that I was only gonna get to do that in straight theater or theater plays, and, um, so I was content to keep doing it. Um, then there was, you know, I, there was the duality of place for me, New York, LA, there was the duality of plays and musicals, and there was the duality of being gay and not really being accepted that way.

[42:03] How did that compare between New York and LA?

[42:20] Douglas Sills: Well, I think I don't think that anyone ever mistook me for, um, you know, Vincent Dinoffrey. I just wasn't like, you know, I know, I know that I come across the way I come across, but they would say he can pass sometimes, right? And other times there were other performers that didn't. That's in LA.

[42:50] Yeah, and I would say in LA they would just say he's too light or, um, no, or, uh, the, you know, my fellow actors, so a lot of them were lying. They would bring pictures of kids in, yeah, that didn't exist. They would wear wedding rings. They would be careful with their pronouns. Um, I don't think I was heroic. I just knew that in terms of the economy, the physics of having a life, I wasn't going to be able to remember, yeah, who I said what to. So I just said the chips will fall where they're going to fall. And the first time the new, the LA Times said, you know, I'd like to do an article, and they said is it okay if I come to your house? And I'm like, okay, and my partner was there, and they did a whole thing, and I don't remember people doing that before me.

[43:38] And then Mitchell Anderson sort of came out on Party, so it just, it was a door that was creaking open and then slamming shut and creaking open. And we all knew that you were never going to be an important singular movie star. But if you could continue to work, um, you know, then Frazier happened. There were characters like Niles, you know, where you're like, okay, but I didn't really look like that. So I had a different problem.

[44:05] Yeah.

[44:06] Douglas Sills: Right. So it is, you have resentment toward the actors who were just kind of lying and having the double life at the time.

[44:14] No.

[44:14] No.

[44:15] Douglas Sills: No, I feel so lucky. And I think everybody's on their own journey. You do what you can. I think I have a sort of, we're all just doing the best we can.

[44:28] That's, I mean, that's a wonderful kind of wisdom. Did you have that so early in your life and career?

[44:34] I certainly was like, oh, uh, should I wear this color?

[44:39] Right, right.

[44:40] Douglas Sills: You know. Um, so no, I'm not saying I was, you know, decades past that.

[44:48] Yeah, right.

[44:48] Douglas Sills: I mean, I think I was like anybody in the business, um, how light am I?

[44:54] Yeah.

[44:56] Douglas Sills: You know, my heroes were British actors.

[45:00] Yeah.

[45:00] Douglas Sills: And when you're Brit, everybody's light.

[45:03] Right.

[45:03] Douglas Sills: Yeah. You know, I'm talking about Ralph Richardson and John Gilgun and Lawrence Olivier and these transformational actors, and it didn't really matter. With, there was a different aesthetic.

[45:14] Yeah.

[45:15] Douglas Sills: Um, I think I was, we were all just trying to find our way.

[45:21] Yeah.

[45:22] Douglas Sills: And if somebody said, hey, there's an audition for you, just did you did your best. You read the material and you're like, I have a great idea. I'm gonna go in like this, or I'm not gonna go in, or I'm gonna, or I'm gonna wear those jeans that are ripped, and yeah, I'm gonna be dirty and smelly. I mean, you know, I don't begrudge anything, but it would, I think it's just fascinating how different it was or than it is now, and it was such a short time ago.

[45:52] But it was very, person was Paul Lynn.

[45:57] I mean, on the center square of the, what about at that time, like in New York, did you feel that it was less of a, um, sure because there were just a lot of gay people around, but still the product had to be straight.

[46:10] The product, yeah, straight, and it had to be straight proof, and you know, I think you'll hear this from other people. You can't, you can't be successful, and I would say I was successful beyond my dreams, and at the same time, I never hit some of my goals, but you can't be successful without, uh, the cheering on forward of casting directors, but they are the gatekeepers, and I always found that my biggest fans were, um, women casting directors.

[46:43] It was never an issue when it was a gay male casting director who knew I was gay.

[46:48] I think what you'll hear from other gay performers is often we felt that they laid their personal issues onto us about, oh no, I can see it, he's gay, it's obvious he can't play that part. And women would just say, he's fantastic, he's sexy as hell. I want to sleep with him, send him forward to the studio.

[47:06] Yeah, I'm sure you've heard this before.

[47:09] Douglas Sills: Um, but we, we were aware that it was the gay men gatekeepers who were in some ways your, I don't want to say your enemy, but they express the internalized homophobia, yeah, onto you when the producers or directors were like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see what you're saying, you know, yeah, right. So I didn't have resentment, no, do I have regrets, no. I knew what I was getting into. Um, and we have this, um, when you're that age and you wanted to be in the theater, you have this rocket fuel behind you of ambition and drive and nothing is gonna get in your way, and you said, you know, until tragedy strikes or you have to feed a baby and you have to go find, so you just kind of push forward the best you can.

[47:28] I mean, when those in the early 90s before you did Pimpernel, when you started seeing Falsettos, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Jeffrey, Angels in America, um, you know, the whole spate, you know, and then all those kind of off-Broadway comedies that were happening, did that, how did that play out in terms of being an actor at the time and going into casting?

[47:28] Douglas Sills: You know, I think I was frightened of it but eager to see it going on and having it come to for you. I was like yes, that's what I want to do. I was ready to do it and, um, I was just hoping for the chance. So when I saw those shows, Jeffrey particularly, um, Angels, Angels was just seminal in every way. It was just, it was just life-changing.

[49:02] Yeah.

[49:02] Douglas Sills: And, um, I, you know, at the same time, I think Liaisons Dangereuses was going on with Alan Rickman.

[49:14] And he, he was a straight man, but he was projecting a certain style and elegance in this period.

[49:22] And you know, his voice was, yeah, I didn't even say I'm going to fuck you into next Friday. You know, so there was this dynamism of, um, sexual tension, even though there was not the traditional masculine, um, pushing forward the pretense, the show.

[49:42] Um, so all kinds of things were going on around you.

[49:47] Douglas Sills: Um, and I was just looking, you know, to grab the brass ring, um, and getting close.

[49:56] Um, and you know, just so close on so many things, and then, and you, you never know what's said in those rooms, yeah.

[50:06] You know, he's right, or I don't believe it, or yeah, it doesn't match up, or what are you talking about? It's great, or, um, oh no, I slept with him, or I was at a bar with him, or no, no, no. I mean, I, that's not good. I don't want, I'm not putting a million dollars into that.

[50:22] So you just never know. All you can do is, um, is do your best, and, um, when the business is through with you, if you can't make it, you can't make a living, you take a break or come back later, or if you're lucky enough to push forward, um, you know, every actor has his issues, like I'm not gonna get in a chorus, I knew that no one's gonna let me stand in the chorus. I'm too big.

[50:46] Um, that my voice was, it's just I don't get that shot. Some people can do both, you know.

[50:55] Douglas Sills: So I didn't really there were other areas where I was limited in that way, but um I just kept working on my craft and pushing forward.

[51:07] Ben Rimalower: And is there some sense of gosh, I wish that wish that was me.

[51:11] Douglas Sills: I wish that were me, excuse me. Um yeah, absolutely. If you don't have that, you didn't want it in the first place. So yes, that's there. But I I think at least now I'm trying to think of at the time if I was sanguine about it and thought, listen, we're all just doing the best we can here.

[51:29] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[51:30] Douglas Sills: Um I think uh that that's probably come with maturation. I don't know that I was uh so Buddha-like when I was young.

[51:42] Ben Rimalower: Well, you were working a lot also, so you probably didn't have a lot of time to be bitter of other people's jobs.

[51:48] Douglas Sills: No, that's true. But you know, you always I didn't have a real breakthrough until Pimpernell, and I had given up in a way at that point. I had I had decided, you know, the roles I'm getting are not equivalent to my ambition. I am working, but it I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life doing these parts.

[52:09] Ben Rimalower: I'm surprised that before Pimpernell you were never in Le Miz or Phantom.

[52:14] Douglas Sills: I would have thought those shows or even Jekyll and Hyde, like I would have thought those would have all been were they offered to you and you just had other jobs at the time.

[52:23] Ben Rimalower: I think when would the 10th anniversary of Le Miz be?

[52:29] Douglas Sills: Like right at the same time as Pimpernell.

[52:32] Ben Rimalower: Oh.

[52:34] Douglas Sills: Because he offered that to me, but at that point, Le Miz was really tired, and it was just tourists, and no one, no one thought, and I was like, I don't want to be in the 10th anniversary and be told, okay, this is where he picks up the picture and take the candlestick and you do that was my nightmare.

[52:53] Ben Rimalower: Sure.

[52:53] Douglas Sills: So I didn't I said no, thank you, you know, to Angel Ross. That I just thought you can find somebody do that. And um and otherwise I was probably out, you know, at wherever doing, you know, whatever you do. And uh I probably wasn't around enough having you know some career activity on the West Coast, and um saved you from the mega musical replacement track.

[53:21] Ben Rimalower: I think I was into it when I first saw Le Miz in London. I was yeah, I was knocked out. I wanted to do it more than anything. Um so it just didn't happen for me. I don't know why.

[53:36] Douglas Sills: I think I thought I wasn't uh old enough to play Jean Valjean, yeah, and I wasn't baritone enough, base enough to play um Javert, yeah. Um so I just thought, oh, that's not really the right part. Uh Raoul probably would have been the right part. I think they wanted to see me. I don't remember what happened, but it had been running a long time, and again, I I thought I would be locked in in something that was sort of like maybe so we do this and this.

[54:09] Ben Rimalower: Did you do anything else with Hal Prince?

[54:11] Douglas Sills: No, no, did you do any more Sondheim?

[54:15] Ben Rimalower: Not that you can remember. Were there any other Sondheim moments for you after Into the Woods?

[54:20] Douglas Sills: Um yes. Shit. There were a few. Oh.

[54:31] Ben Rimalower: Soy Ben, I should have.

[54:40] Douglas Sills: Wait, I think I'm failing in my homework. Did you do something in the Kennedy Center festival?

[54:44] Douglas Sills: Yeah, I'm trying to think something before that, but um I did at the Kennedy Center, I did um a little night music. I played um Carl Magnus opposite Randy Graf.

[54:59] Ben Rimalower: Right. Yes, yes.

[55:00] Douglas Sills: Right. And um like uh I want to say Judith Ivey was Desiree. Is that right?

[55:06] Ben Rimalower: No, Blair Brown.

[55:07] Douglas Sills: Blair Brown and John Dossett. Amazing. Amazing. And um Kristen Bell was in it as the last before she was a huge TV star.

[55:19] Ben Rimalower: Then I don't know what to do.

[55:21] Douglas Sills: And I say, I'm gonna tell you what you're gonna do.

[55:23] Ben Rimalower: Yeah.

[55:26] Douglas Sills: No, no, I would be lost. Listen to me. You need to go to Los Angeles now.

[55:30] Ben Rimalower: Yes.

[55:34] Douglas Sills: I saw her not long ago. She lives near me in LA. Um, yeah, that was pretty remarkable. And you know, I haven't said this publicly, but something odd happened with Steve there, and um I never got to do another one.

[55:55] Ben Rimalower: Um trying forgive me, Ben. I'm trying to decide if I want to tell this story.

[56:01] Ben Rimalower: No problem. You can tell it and then tell me to cut it if you feel as it comes out that it's not uh no.

[56:09] Douglas Sills: No, this is a genius and a great man, yeah. Um, and a Jew and I and a gay person, and I felt uh extremely lucky to be alive while he was alive, and just lapped up everything he did. Um he closing night I I don't think it's a secret to anyone that he was um enjoying alcohol during the Kennedy Center, and um our closing night, he said something really rude in front of everyone to me, and I was like, I was leaving, and he was like, Hey, Douglas Sills, there's a mirror right over there on your way out.

[56:56] Ben Rimalower: You guys and everybody was like, what was that about?

[57:02] Douglas Sills: I get home and there's a letter of apology from him.

[57:05] Ben Rimalower: Oh yeah, right.

[57:08] Douglas Sills: You think, oh, but see, he was so embarrassed that never I was never allowed in again. And um he I looked at it again after he passed, and he said something in it about I don't know, I'd have to pull it out. A childhood crush, or I was behaving like a child, or teenager, you know, there was some reference to attraction. And uh I never got in again.

[57:46] Douglas Sills: And I maybe I should have written him back and said, please, I understand. No, but uh I I would have thought he just wanted to let it die and move forward. And I was like, Yeah, let it die. I just want to work, yeah. My butt I realized that something happened during the run. He came into my dressing room when I was getting ready for the show, and he sat down, and it was my own private dressing room there. And I mean, it was after a half hour, and I'm like, Steve sometimes, this is my chance. I'm alone with him. So I started asking him every question about that I ever wanted to know about, certainly about little night music, and um I'm having a stroke again. My Mitch McConnell moment. Who wrote the film?

Uh the director. Right. And I was like, How the hell do you and listen? I'm not um, you know, Matthew, I wasn't pretty, I'm not beautiful, but my shirt was off, and I was trying to dress and also talk to him, and I was looking in the mirror and looking at him in the mirror while I was trying to deal with him and get ready and ask him the questions I've always wanted to know about what happened with, and he was telling me these great stories about Bergman and then he left, and that was probably 20 minutes, 25 minutes. And I thought, wow, I just sat with the genius. I mean, there was a fire burning in my room. This guy was sitting there. It didn't occur to me why he was there, or what was going on, or what I wasn't picking up on signals.

I was being I was just living, I was a kid. I just didn't it never would occur to me that somebody that he would he could have been it, just and I realized now that was connected, and the mirror thing was connected to what he said and the apology note that he sent on his great little paper. You know, you've seen those notes, I'm sure a thousand of them that every fucking person posted on Instagram after he died.

[1:00:01] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, so when he died, it was I had very mixed feelings about it. I felt like listen, he's a human being, I get it. I just feel like boy, I saw shows that I should have done, you know.

[1:00:15] Douglas Sills: Yeah, so I love him. And I asked, I know this is gonna sound crazy. You thought you were I have a person that has been remarkable who can communicate with the other side.

[1:00:28] Ben Rimalower: Wow, I didn't really think we were going there, right?

[1:00:32] Douglas Sills: And uh she's a remarkable person, and um she I know I'm I listen, part of me is all science, and then part of me is is just a hopeful believer in all things wonderful, and I I was really torn about this Stephen thing. I the letter brought up a lot of stuff, and I was looking back on my career, and I realized maybe I wasn't good enough for some of those parts, but I couldn't even get in the room when when I had been doing his shows, yeah. And I said to I I said before I had one of my readings, I said, Steven, listen, I'm having a reading tomorrow. It would be great if you could come and just talk to me for a second about am I imagining this or what? And so we we have the reading, and we're coming to the end.

She said, I said, is there anybody else there? And I said, Well, there's a somebody I want to talk to. Um, and she said, Hold on. She's Israeli. And she said, There's someone who's there's so much music. I can't personally say he's showing off. It's like, okay, I get it, I get it. She's saying, Wow, he's a real show up. She wants me to see, and he has all these awards. Now, this is a person who has no idea what I do. She has no connection to theater. And she says, He's got all these awards, he wants to make sure I see them, and he's playing the music so loud, and um, he's very full of himself. I said, Okay, and his name is Steve, and I was like, Okay. Wow. And uh he says, Um he's having a great time.

He's here with, and she named two other names that I didn't know. You would be the person. I I could go look at my notes. Um, she doesn't let you record it. No, the electric, something about the electric. Yes, this is all by phone, by the way. He says who he's sitting there with, and they're telling stories, and he's having a good time. And he says, he says to you, you think I had much more power over what was going on than was true. Yeah, so just go live your life. Anyway, so that's my Stephen story. So according to his ghost, he would have loved to work with you again, and there was other people, whatever reason they just think I think he he would say, you know, listen, I'm not that powerful.

Yeah, but I don't know. Like there was a tribute to him that I went to and I sang at, and um I tried to shake his hand, and he it was much later in our lives, and he just couldn't look at me. I shook his hand, I said hi Steve. And he's like, well, hi Doug. You know, kind of like I mean, was sometimes an awkward person, but very friendly other times. So I just think we, you know, I just had bad luck with yeah, that thing, and um that happens, you know. Now they would call it sexual harassment or whatever, or you know, but it's all guessing, but yeah, I I remember one fun day in rehearsals, his brother came to rehearsal, and when he walked in the room, you could not he looked so much like Steve.

[1:03:54] Douglas Sills: It's like Peter. This is so scary. And his brother came in to watch rehearsal, and I remember sitting down with him, and I said, I'm just what do you do? What do you do for a living? And he said, I'm a nuclear physicist. I was like, of course you are. Of course, of course you are. Um but other than Steven being very particular about tone, and um I think my voice was fine, they wouldn't have let me do it if it wasn't. He was very peculiar, uh, very particular, not peculiar about rhythm, as you can well imagine. But I mean, down to the things that um so when he was there you were nervous, but yeah, you you know, had to do it. Um what was the big song of his that you did in that tribute you mentioned?

[1:04:53] Douglas Sills: I don't remember. Was it um like the thing at the New Amsterdam? Or like was it like at Symphony Space, the wall-to-wall Sondheim? No, it was um I think he was getting a big award, but I think someone asked me to sing from Pimpernel with like ten guys or something. Oh oh. So they had already picked. I I I think it was just people doing their stuff.

[1:05:24] Douglas Sills: Yeah. Um I didn't get to choose. Yeah, yeah. Um, but I would say all in all, the way I look back at Into the Woods is um it was a healing thing for me to make it through and find my feet under me psychologically and and to either cope with depression and push forward or to have it abate to some degree and understand that after the death of my brother that I could move forward, and it was through these fairy tales that you know you recognize that they're both allegories in terms of passing along morality, but also you could infer real people into them, and the music just took the whole thing to a different level of reality as music was sometimes so apt, and there's something about the keys that when I hear some of those chords and the chord progressions, it brings back a certain um joy and sadness, and uh was a real crucible of pushing through a difficult time in my life and coming out the other side with flaws, but hardened to move forward, especially with the example that older players like Chuck and Ray Gill, bless his soul, and Mary Gordon Murray, who was just a comedic genius, um, and Kathy, um, and Charlotte, and mostly Cleo.

[1:07:01] Douglas Sills: Yeah. Cleo Lane. Cleo Lane, I mean, she this her voice was like a like an oboe, like a like a glass oboe. It just it just was just remarkable, and unlike anybody that I had ever listened to before, and um she brought a certain age to the part, you know, and because maybe she was this beautiful exotic woman, a mixed-race woman, beauty and the witch, and when the witch is ugly and when the witch is beautiful, she already had that stuff in her as a person. Not that there was anything ugly about her, but but perceptions about what beauty is, and um she was just uh a remarkably elegant special person.

[1:07:57] Douglas Sills: So I look at that as uh in some ways a you know, a springboard forward into everything important that came. That was an imprimatur saying, you know, we we Steven and James say he's good enough to be amongst the best. Yeah, so and I could also say to my parents, or they would see, oh, I guess.

[1:08:22] Douglas Sills: Yeah, and everybody. I mean, there's that, you know, how however the experience was at the time, there is just certainly now just that kind of imprimatur of like a Steven Sondheim production, you know, that is just even Andrew Lloyd Webber would give his, you know, his kid cut off his balls to have the uh that, you know. The other thing to recognize is he was not legendary or mythical at that point.

[1:08:52] Douglas Sills: Right. It never had a success. He was the oddball that wrote oddball music. Mm-hmm. Right. We were sort of nerdy fans of well, but this is special. You have to you have to let it hit you. You know what I mean? It wasn't at everybody's taste. He wasn't praised by everyone. He had never had a commercial success. He was just he was that oddball guy that yeah.

[1:09:14] Douglas Sills: Come on, give me something hummable, you know. So it's important to recognize back then everybody was taking a chance happily. We felt like we were going out on a limb on on a you know, one of those rickety bridges that crosses a chasm and we were ready to traip through it as all theater people are. If you give them a chance, you know, theater people will kill themselves for you. They just will. They just want to be together and make something more important than themselves and do it, you know, as a group.

[1:09:46] Douglas Sills: Yeah. Um I think it's it's really important to understand about Into the Woods that he was not thought of the way he is today. No, but it's a part it's a big part of the reason why he is. And and I really like what you said about the allegorical nature of those stories and that music.

[1:10:01] Douglas Sills: And I'm really happy you shared that experience you had with him at the Kennedy Center, because just like you were saying about the character of the witch, I mean, this is this human being who has created all of these things, and there the humanity in that work comes from him being a three-dimensional flawed person with longing. And I mean, if if I can relate, if you can talk about your experiences as a gay man trying to work in Hollywood and Broadway in the 90s, what he went through decades and decades earlier, you know, that that has to have uh a cost somewhere, and you know, an inappropriate sort of um lashing out under the influence, like at a handsome young, you know, actor.

[1:10:52] Douglas Sills: Like that, it it it all is like part of that whole, you know. And I think if we only tell these like sanitized stories about the greats, it's not it it's not really helping anybody understand where anything came from. So I really really appreciate you sharing that.

[1:11:08] Douglas Sills: I think you know, you couldn't be more right, and I've talked about that with somebody else of what he wasn't able to experience, but it was going on all around him at that point, right? The whole side was going through an upheaval um uh uh jacket. Um Will and Grace had happened, and that really shifted the whole, and he didn't get to have right, and um the pressure around him on that was has pres been present for everyone, but more for him because of the time he was in and his mentors were in, the pressure the thing that squirts out when it's under pressure are those shows.

[1:11:54] Douglas Sills: That's what's if without the pressure, I just don't know if you have those bursts of genius and heart. And when the chords move um in a way that you've never never heard or never heard that way, you know, all those genius things. Um, I think you're absolutely right that he had to watch other people having the youth that he didn't get to have.

[1:12:27] Douglas Sills: Um but I I you know, I don't mean to put this on him, but because we're guessing, yeah. I don't think it's a huge leap now to the room.

[1:12:35] Douglas Sills: No, he clearly was a regular guy in many, many ways in terms of wanting and desiring and yeah, so um yeah, yeah. In in some ways, I was very close. And I think there were a couple other things between um Into the Woods and uh and the Sondheim Festival, but even being asked into the Sondheim Festival was wonderful, yeah.

[1:13:03] Douglas Sills: I mean, in a way, that was kind of the moment when he was transforming from uh the esoteric, uh I forget the word you used, but you know, the kind of fringy, like nerd musical theater cult thing to the kind of unequivocal master, just hands down everybody agrees, you know.

[1:13:26] Douglas Sills: Right. I think everybody there thought um it was a nexus in a lot of ways of of great young performers. Um it's fun to be in that kitchen on the Gilded Age with Cerberus, you know, we're stuck in there, it's so funny. Um and to be in the nation's capital, it was just what what Eric did a pretty remarkable thing.

[1:13:57] Douglas Sills: Um and I think your observation is astute and right. I think that was the a real shift took place then.

[1:14:06] Douglas Sills: Um, and he was, you know, eminence grise after that. Totally. I mean that because that was also the same time period where there was like that New York Times thing with like all the songs he wishes he wrote, and his favorite songs of his, and and Barbara Cook, and the there was the Library of Congress, and the um the New York Philharmonic was doing Sweeney Todd, and there was the um it was just a lot all at the same time that was all kind of like above the level of just like a Broadway show, but just mission.

[1:14:39] Douglas Sills: Right. The establishment, the the institutions which are sort of our establishment were joining his work to themselves, and they're sort of elevating him.

[1:14:51] Douglas Sills: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um yeah.

[1:14:57] Ben Rimalower: Well, thank you so much for this, Doug. This is really wonderful. I I I had I almost given up hope that I get to talk to you, and our our wonderful mutual friend said, Oh, you gotta talk to Douglas Sills, we'll make this happen.

[1:15:10] Douglas Sills: Sure, no problem. Um I admire people like you that uh you know invest time and energy and their thought process into the art form and and elevate it in the same way. Um, so I was happy to be asked. I wish I I wish I could remember more, but like I told you, I'm sure you've heard wonderful things from the others from our show that you did get to talk to.

[1:15:31] Douglas Sills: And I think I don't know, I I mentioned Jonathan Hadley, right? I think Jonathan talked to him.

[1:15:35] Ben Rimalower: Yeah, I'm trying to get to Cleo Lane, actually. That's who I really want to talk to next.

[1:15:44] Douglas Sills: I I could stop recording.

[1:15:54] Ben Rimalower: Thank you for listening to Giants in the Sky, how Sondheim and Lapine went Into the Woods on the Broadway Podcast Network. Look out for episode 39 with Tracy Katz Paladini, Little Red on the National Tour.