Hugh Jackman talks about making musicals and remembers loneliness during ‘X-Men’

The New York Times

“It was a bit of a miracle that I got my start in musical theater,” actor Hugh Jackman, 53, said the other day, looking back at the start of his career in 1995. “I had just graduated and my agent said the production wasn’t finding an actor to play Gaston [na produção australiana de “A Bela e a Fera”]. “I decided to audition. I got the part, but my contract required me to take singing lessons once a week. I felt like a complete outsider from the start.”

Now in contention for his third Tony Award for his role as the great American crook Harold Hill in “The Music Man,” the Australian actor recalled the feeling of returning to the stage for his first Broadway musical since 2003. (Although he didn’t leave the theater completely on the side: Jackman starred in “A Steady Rain” in 2009 and “The River” in 2014). In an hour of conversation in a midtown Manhattan hotel, he proved to be a curious actor who always opts for the affirmative; His charm, a mixture of consideration and confidence, disarms the interlocutor.

Despite his long list of accomplishments and accolades, Jackman seems as eager to please as he is to start new adventures. He has an inquisitive mind, which I got to see up close when the actor participated as a listener in a graduate course on film history I took in the second quarter of 2020. Annette Insdorf, a friend of Jackman’s, was the professor in charge of the course. and when the pandemic forced the cancellation of in-person classes, Jackman continued to participate via Zoom in the four-hour seminars.

“I have a lay understanding of cinema. I would ask directors to give me a list of five movies I needed to see before I died, and it was rare that I saw any of them,” Jackman said. “I asked Annette for help and she said the easiest thing would be for me to take her course”.

At the time, he was promoting “Bad Education,” a film he made for HBO in which he plays a real person, the former superintendent of a school district who pleaded guilty to stealing $2 million. mi) from the district, and starting rehearsals for “Music Man” with his costar Sutton Foster. Below are edited excerpts from our conversation.

You play crooks with expansive personalities in “Music Man” and “Bad Education.” Did one role influence the other?

I’m fascinated by the collective fascination with crooks and criminals, and I also see some influence in that from PT Barnum (the circus entrepreneur he played in the movie “The Greatest Showman”). I’m still not 100% sure where this is coming from, but I think it’s deeply rooted in a very American and individualistic philosophy of not doing what the men up there tell us to do.

You have lived in the United States for about 20 years. Already consider yourself an American?

I’m Australian. I think the United States is an extraordinary place, though – there are few places with such generosity of spirit.

Do you think that generosity is what makes Americans attracted to cheaters?

It all starts from that sense of individualism, and the ultimate expression of this is the cheater, who turns against everything and inverts the rules of hierarchy. Australia has some of that, but we’ve seen during the pandemic that Australians play by the rules. There’s a collective sense of “this is what we really should do,” and people fit in. And what we saw here is that there is no such impulse to fit in.

So what draws you to characters like these is sheer escapism?

What I love about working as an actor is exploring some aspects of people who choose to live their lives in a way that is opposite to the way we were raised, and who don’t seem to believe that everyone around them continues to play by the rules. So it’s not escapism; it’s just the fun of playing something that I wouldn’t, or wouldn’t, want to be in my life. I’m glad not everyone is like Harold Hill, but it’s a lot of fun to play him as arrogantly as I can for two and a half hours. Being self-deprecating starts to get boring after a while.

How do you feel in the role, now that the show has been running for six months?

For me, this great show, with a cast of 47 people, keeps growing. I have one of the lead roles, but it’s not as exhausting as my experience in past works has been. I think it’s the way these old shows were built. I spend a lot of time on stage, and my role is central in most of the scenes, but there’s something different: I go in at the beginning, sing the first number and leave for a costume change. I don’t smoke, but it feels like taking a cigarette break, which I’m sure is what a lot of actors did in those breaks back in the day.

There are days when I’m already tired, but when the third scene arrives, “wow, my energy is back”. There’s something about this show that invigorates me, and gives me an energy I didn’t even know I had. And when you work with Sutton…

Did she teach you anything about maintaining vigor? She’s a star, but she works like she’s someone battling for her first role.

She is a marvel. I sure need to always be in my best shape. Asking me to tap dance with Sutton Foster is like asking me to play tennis against Novak Djokovic. Rehearsals with her were fun, but it was kind of disheartening to spend 18 months working on it and then find out that there are kids who come in and learn everything in three hours.

You’ve never worked with so many kids, on stage, let alone in a show that features 21 Broadway debuts. Do you catch yourself being fatherly to them?

Things went a little bit in that direction, especially with the younger actors. I think some of them see me as Wolverine (the superhero he plays in the “X-Men” movies), so it feels kind of fatherly. I think, especially for the kids who are doing their first play, I don’t want them to lose that sense of joy. I try to protect them.

Did you ever feel that you were in danger of losing your sense of joy when you were on the rise?

There were times when I was making the first “X-Men” movie, my first big job in American cinema, when I was very lonely. I came mainly from the theater, and I could get that idea of ​​”hmm, this doesn’t smell good.” I don’t know exactly when things turned around, but it wasn’t until the studio said they liked what I was doing that I got that feeling that everyone was wanting to get closer to me. This saddened me. I realized that cinema was more individual, and not so much a collective work.

Theater lives from a sense of union, of ensemble, and if that doesn’t exist, it dies. There is no way to support rehearsals, or to do eight performances a week, without people supporting each other. So since that first film, I’ve always been very proactive in trying to create an atmosphere of support and openness. I want to ensure that, even under the pressure of a professional situation, those children remain children.

Have you watched any other plays this season?

No, but I wanted to see the Scottish play [Macbeth].

Do you refuse to say the name, even outside the theater?

I am a much more fearful person than others realize. I’ve forced myself to overcome many of these fears, and while I would have preferred, today, to have been less harsh on myself, I’m glad I got over them, because I don’t think fear is specific to the thing you think you’re afraid of. Before you know it, it becomes a cancer, and it grows until your life becomes smaller, without you even realizing it. I have a constant desire to break free from it, and to say yes to things.

Switching between theater and film, though — it’s one thing to say yes to a movie that ends up failing, and you move on later; theater, on the other hand, is a long commitment.

Well, if the show is really bad and everyone hates it, it won’t be long before it goes out of business. The way I live with these kinds of things is to be clear about my motives for doing any job. If I really believe in my choice, I did the job for the right reasons. I never read reviews, and in the case of “The Boys From Oz” I thought we were doing well until the producers told us they weren’t sure it would be possible to continue. In the end, we started to be very successful, and they asked me to stay for another three months. You need to hold on to that feeling that working in front of an awakened audience, and be honest with yourself about what you can improve in your work.

You said you were hesitant about doing “The Music Man” because you wanted to wait for an original work. What made you change your mind?

Whenever I went to the theater, when I was in school, I wanted to see something new. He wasn’t one of those musical theater fans desperate for a new version of this or that. I wanted to see something really good, something that moved me, and most of the time it was new works that had that effect.

When I later found myself in the position of people asking what I would rather do, I wanted to use that capital for something new. I tried to set some things in motion – a musical about Houdini, I did some workshops for “The Big Fish” – and I discovered how difficult it is to start a production. Then it took me eight years to produce “The Greatest Showman”, and that’s when I realized that “The Music Man” was an excellent show. The text is beautiful, the structure is beautiful, and I knew I wanted to play the role. But I still love the idea of ​​doing something original on stage.

How about a radical overhaul of an old hit? For example, “Hello Dolly” with the main character’s gender switched?

I think it would be fun. It would be something I would love to do. Sutton and I even talked about switching roles in the April 1st presentation. I certainly know her songs by heart. I hear them every night. But my soprano is not that good.