JOSHUA MALINA

Makes Triumphant Return To Broadway

By Adam Kluger

Why Leopoldstadt?

I would have done any Stoppard Play sight unseen without reading it sight unseen had I been offered it. I'm a huge fan of his work. To get this particular play is meaningful for me as a Jew, somebody whose core identity is as a Jew. It's a pretty epic play in scope about a large intermarried, which is to say an interfaith family in Vienna at the turn of the century and their fates of the next 56 years it just speaks to me and when I read it I was just knocked out by it and I was particularly intrigued by the part that I was being offered.

Tell us about the character Hermann. Hermann is a textile factory owner, and a well-to-do Jew, although he has converted to Catholicism for reasons of greater upward mobility in Vienna in 1899. Somebody who wrestles with his own identity and a character who can be judged ...it's one of those plays where we can sit in the audience and we have the hindsight that the characters don't have. We know what's likely to happen to this family over the next decades and it's easy to judge Hermann for being complacent but it hopefully also sends people out of the theater hopefully questioning their own sense of security and complacency because you can't really see the shifts of history as they are happening and at the top of the play, things are pretty good for Hermann and family in 1899 Vienna.

'LEOPOLDSTADT'

As a Hollywood actor (Television & Film), and now back to the theater, starring in a piece that takes up the fight against anti-Semitism, that's quite a responsibility, beyond being an amazing artist and actor. Thanks, I do feel it. The director Patrick Marber is brilliant in this and has been so helpful to me. I got offered the role and flew to New York to see the play. I knew I was going to do the play. He said to me subsequently after I took the job that," If you decided the play wasn't for you I would have told you it's your responsibility to take this job and you have to take it." So it does feel like a privilege and a gift and a responsibility because as you say, anti-Semitism and other forms of senseless hatred do not go out of style and in fact, they sometimes surge, and now is such a time.

What else will audiences get out of the play? Sometimes when you talk about an important piece of theater it sounds like it is not enjoyable to see and there's great joy and laughs in this play and you feel the absence of many of the characters by the end of the play because you've seen them in good times and you can feel the pain of the loss. But now is a time of increasing ignorance about the Holocaust and increasing hate crimes against Jews and against others so I think .maybe the two are connected perhaps ...and so I do think it is a very important piece of theater and a very apt time for it to be produced and I'm very happy to be part of this ...it speaks to me.

How does it feel to be back on stage again after being one of the busiest television and film actors we've ever spoken with?

Thanks, I love it I don't want to talk down about TV and film because it has been my meal ticket for the past 30 years and I thoroughly enjoy it and it has its own thrills and challenges and excitement but I did a play this past summer before Leopoldstadt for the first time in 30 years before I did Leopoldstadt, another natively Jewish play, Nathan Englander's play, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank," and it was my first time back on the stage, in full production in decades and maybe it sounds hackneyed but it was like oh yeah this was the thrill... this is what got me...like when we were in high school together (Horace Mann) and I was doing plays...

The Mikado, Guys & Dolls!

Yes! So truly I am returning to my original love...theater and the challenges and the upside are very different from doing a film. You are on a TV show and you might spend 16 hours shooting 7 pages of material over the course of a day in a play it does not stop and start and stop and start making sure you get one decent take...you get up in Leopoldstadt and two hours and 10 minutes later you leave the stage and you've either delivered the piece and it's happened for that audience that night or it hasn't and I like that challenge. It's daunting and I look forward all day to doing the play and then there's a moment when I step on and I think what? why did I choose this for a living but then I walk out and there's that immediate...the other thing is you work on a TV show and sometimes 5 months later you find out if anybody liked what you did and theater you find out right away you can hear and feel whether the audience has connected to what you are doing or not.

Aaron Sorkin has been your biggest champion in Hollywood how does his writing compare to Tom Stoppard's?

They both are hyper-articulate and incredible writers whose language I think has a musical nature to it and for whatever reason I've always felt very comfortable with Aaron's writing and I felt like I knew how he heard it and he described it that way where he liked the sound of language as much as the meaning and import of the words and I feel like Stoppard is similar and for me I'm just like every other actor, desperate for good material because if you work long enough much of what you do is not very good material that's the nature of the thing so when you have opportunity to do something that Aaron Sorkin has written or Tom Stoppard, it's just a joy. I'm one of those actors who feels like the words are the star and if I can just stay out of the way of this incredible writing then it will make me look better and I'll have done my job.

Over 30 years as a very popular working actor in Hollywood. Have you gotten any acting lessons from some of the biggest names in Hollywood? What was it like to work with Jack Nicholson?

My first big movie job was Aaron Sorkin and A Few Good Men, as small a role as you could have and claim to have a speaking role, I played Tom in A Few Good Men and Jack Nicholson played Colonel Jessup. I literally had 5 words in the movie...three of them are "yes" and two of them are "sir"...but when it was time for me to say "yes sir" to him and it was time for them to just shoot my single with me at the door, Jack Nicholson stood off camera and gave a really long speech at 100 percent performance level just so that I could say yes sir to him properly and I remember just thinking oh wow this is how that works and that no matter that you could be Jack f*cking Nicholson that you have to give 100 percent when you are off camera so that somebody who is saying "yes sir" to you has something to play off of. So, I was always like I am never going to have any kind of attitude as an actor myself, so that was a big lesson that I've tried to carry with me.

How about Clint Eastwood?

I worked on In The Line of Fire with Clint Eastwood who couldn't have been nicer to me and he spoke so softly and did so little that there were literally times when I was thinking is it my time to say a line did Clint even say his line? Then I saw the movie and thought wow that all really works and when you are on film you can be really small and the camera reads your mind...I felt like I got a nice little lesson in film acting from Clint.

The West Wing, Sports Night are just two of your other wellknown TV shows. Both were large ensemble casts. There's a real similarity between what I am trying to do in Leopoldstadt and what I tried to do in The West Wing. Both of them were already hits so I take no credit for their success either they were these plum jobs where they were both stellar ensembles with incredible actors who were already on projects that were a hit that they made a hit and both of them feel like trying to jump onto a moving train and trying not to be the person who drags down the entire endeavor. So with West Wing, it was like I am going to try to play up to these people's level and try to drop into this great ensemble and that was a very positive experience then when I came and saw the play and had been offered the job my first feeling was oh my god do I belong on stage with these 38 people because the cast is fantastic, even though it is largely people I had seen before but also many people making their Broadway debuts but brilliant actors so I felt the same sort of pressure like I need to get more rehearsal time than the original cast did because I need to get up to speed quickly so that when I land I don't throw the whole thing off...so I guess I'm comfortable being one cog in a bigger machine. I like working in a bigger ensemble and I feel very welcomed by this cast.

Future acting plans?

I would like to continue doing theater but if someone wants to offer me a juicy role in a TV show I'm not going to turn it down. For a lot of years, I needed to make a living and so it's either make a living in TV and film than in theater also I had young kids and it was like if you are in a play then daddy's working at bedtime every night. Now my kids are 20 and 25, I've done two plays in a row and if somebody's got another play for me I would love to continue doing theater I don't know what's next but I would love for it to be another play.

Final thoughts on what audiences will take away from Leopoldstadt?

Hopefully, what people take away is while you are sitting there thinking about these characters in 1899 and the 1900s being so complacent about where their lives are, that you should look at your own life and your own sense of complacency and security and that you too might one day be swept up in some shifting history that you are unaware of at the moment... and that antiSemitism is on the rise and it's with us as are other forms of hatred. I think all minorities and hated groups need to be allies for each other. Not just looking out for ourselves but against all forms of hatred.