Preview of Dulé Hill interview on Geffen Playhouse UNSCRIPTED

LIVING THE DREAM is taking a hiatus for now, but you can still listen to Rory interview theater artists on the GEFFEN PLAYHOUSE UNSCRIPTED podcast! Here is a preview of his talk with Dulé Hill. Subscribe to UNSCRIPTED so you won't miss any of these great conversations!.. Read More

From the show: Living the Dream with Rory O'Malley

2 mins

3/6/19

Guests

Dulé Hill

About

Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Rory O'Malley: Hey guys, Rory O'Malley here, your host for the Geffen Playhouse UNSCRIPTED.

[0:05] Rory O'Malley: My guest this week is Dulé Hill. He is so awesome. We talk about his starring role right now on the Geffen stage in *Lights Out: Nat King Cole*. He plays the title role, Nat King Cole himself, and he is so good in this performance. That's the joy of doing theater. Let's try something different. Let's not just go from cradle to grave and then at this age, he wrote this song, and then he met so-and-so, and he sang this song.

[0:35] Rory O'Malley: Yeah. Like let's try to do something that's different. That, uh, like just use a different device to tell the story and to pull back the mask and to get a deeper look into things. Because yes, his music is very lovely. It is warm, it is embracing. But there is a cost to that.

[0:53] Rory O'Malley: That's true. I mean, that's the gift that Nat King Cole had was to still, in the midst of everything that was coming against him, right, to still have that grace in his tune that would spread love, spread warmth to all those who heard it. I got to ask him how he took on this role, and I even got into the *West Wing* psych suits, all of his TV stuff. He's a great guy, and I got to share with him that I still have my DVD collection of *The West Wing* unopened. I'm a really big fan.

[1:24] Rory O'Malley: Um, he's got a lot of great stuff to talk about. Uh, how he picks a project, which I love hearing an actor tell me how they decide what projects they're gonna do. Uh, so listen to some of my interview with Dulé Hill.

[1:41] Rory O'Malley: We've all had things come against us that we've had to take pause and decide how do we respond.

[1:46] Rory O'Malley: Yeah. We all have. So yes, it is about Mr. Cole, but his journey is not uncommon to man. It really is not.

[1:53] Rory O'Malley: No. Uh, people can apply it in terms of, yes, it is very applicable in terms of race in America.

[1:59] Rory O'Malley: Right. But it's also applicable to women's rights. Uh, trans, LGB, TQ, you know what I mean? Immigration.

[2:08] Rory O'Malley: Yeah. What's happening right now? You can apply it to anything, anything that's not of you.