In 2014, Jessie Mueller won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for her portrayal of Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. Along with her 2014 win, Jessie has been nominated for three additional Tony Awards for her Melinda Wells in the 2011 revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, originating the role of Jenna in the 2016 hit Waitress, and most recently, her Julie Jordan in the 2018 revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel.
Jessie Mueller’s distinguished career has also included appearance on shows including The Family, Blue Bloods, Madam Secretary, Evil, and Candy. She can currently be seen in Tracy Letts’ Tony Nominated Best Play, The Minutes, playing at Studio 54 until July 23rd.
We are very grateful that Jessie took some time between shows to answer Twenty Questions with a Tony Award Winner.
Jessie Mueller in Beautiful (Joan Marcus).
1. What were your first thoughts upon being nominated for a Tony Award?
When I was nominated for Beautiful, I was thrilled. I was so proud of all the amazing work everyone had done putting that show together.
2. What were your first thoughts upon winning?
Honestly? Walk and talk fast and don’t fall down. It had been a long night!
3. Do you have any fond memories from the night of the ceremony?
I remember seeing Nick Cordero perform from Bullets Over Broadway, and thinking who IS this cat? He’s amazing.
4. What is the biggest change you experienced after winning?
It opened a window to professional opportunities I’d never had before.
5. Where is your award now?
In a box still from a recent move!
6. Who has been a mentor in your career?
Oh gosh…I try to pick up a little from all the wonderful people I meet. Steal what I admire and learn from what I don’t. Harry Connick Jr. was certainly a mentor for my early days in NY. He took me under his wing during Clear Day. He’s someone I know I can always come to if I need advice.
7. What is the best advice you have received in your career?
“Do your thing and don’t worry about other people.” -HCJ
Not easy, but very sound advice.
8. Do you have any pre-performance rituals?
Lately, a little yoga beforehand helps me get my head in the game and start breathing.
9. What is the last book you read?
I don’t remember. But the last one that really made me laugh was Phoebe Robinson’s Don’t Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes.
10. What is a dream role of yours?
Being an animated Disney character…I will be a tree stump. I’m not particular.
11. What previous role of yours had your favorite costumes?
My costumes as Melinda Wells in Clear Day were pretty fabulous. Cathy Zuber made me feel like a million bucks. There were hats and matching shoes. It was so fun.
12. What is the best prop you’ve used?
Ok, I have to say the first thing that popped into my head was prop baby dolls. They’re always hilarious. They’re usually very scary looking, and you spend most of the scenes when they appear trying to look lovingly into their dead eyes while hiding their face from the audience at all costs.
13. Which of your previous roles did you feel most similar to?
Probably each one as I was playing them. I think that’s where I start. I use what I have, so each role brings something out in me that is particular to that moment in time.
14. Which of your previous roles did you feel most different from?
Maybe Adelaide in Guys and Dolls. I loved that. It was a fun departure.
Jessie Mueller and Joshua Henry (Julieta Cervantes).
15. Is there a role that you would like to revisit?
Not a role really, but I think I’d like to do Into the Woods again at some point.
16. What has been a challenge you’ve faced in your career?
Juggling life and work. It’s really hard. Live theatre work especially is extremely demanding. It seems like you only work a few hours a night, but it’s no joke.
17. What is a song that always makes you smile?
Sunshine On My Shoulders by John Denver was the first thing I thought of!
18. What is your favorite cocktail?
Oooooh. Spicy margarita or a vodka martini up with a twist, honey!
19. What is a place you would like to visit?
Ireland.
20. What is your favorite show tune?
I like the overtures.
Jessie Mueller and Noah Reid in The Minutes (Jeremy Daniel).
In 1962 at the age of 22, Elizabeth Ashley won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her portrayal of Mollie Michaelson in Phoebe and Henry Ephron’s Take Her, She’s Mine. Along with her 1962 win, Elizabeth has also received two other Tony Award nominations for originating the role of Corie in Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park and for her Margaret in the 1974 revival of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
She has been featured in more than 30 movies, including the 1964 film The Carpetbaggers, as well as dozens of TV series, including the currently running Netflix original series, Russian Doll.
We were fortunate enough to speak with Elizabeth and get Twenty questions with a Tony Award Winner.
Elizabeth Ashley and George Peppard
1. What were your first thoughts upon being nominated for a Tony Award?
“To say it was a shock is to underestimate the effect it had on me. You have to remember that I was very young, and I gotten the part in this play because it was just – at the time when Art Carney had left The Honeymooners and the part was not originally that big, and George Abbot kept rewriting and rewriting to the point where my part got much bigger and showier. It became a play more centered on the relationship between Art and my character. It had never even occurred to me but being nominated was a big deal and I felt like the hottest little twinkie on Broadway… I was nominated again for Barefoot in the Park, which was surprising to me. I remember I was supposed to present but had some teenage drama, you know, so I wasn’t able to present… For Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee wanted his original version done, and that was directed by the brilliant Michael Kahn. It got a lot of national press and Roger Stevens brought it to Broadway and then the Opera House… Because it was such a huge success both critically and in every other way it could be, it was totally expected.”
2. What were your first thoughts upon winning?
“When they called my name, I mean, it was like a mental, emotional, and psychological explosion because I was so young and inexperienced. I couldn’t really grasp the meaning of it.”
3. Do you have any fond memories from that night?
“I remember Charles Nelson Reilly won also that night, and I remember he and I sort of walking out together and Charles grabbed my hand as we were trying to cross Park Avenue and he said, ‘Well look at us, we’re the newest stars around here’.”
4. What is the biggest change you experienced after winning?
“I think I was being paid maybe $100 a week and I think I got a raise to $125. The thing I remember most clearly was being offered star billing, and my brilliant young agent, Stark Hesseltine, said ‘Absolutely not. In the Theatre, once you go above the title, you must never go below it again.’ And he was saying that to someone who was 22 years old, so of course I did what he said, and I took my $25 raise and was utterly happy with it. Because I was so young and it was considered unusual at the time for a young actress to be considered funny, so that got a lot of attention and press, and I think that opened many many doors to me. Overall, let me just say, no one that I know of was luckier than I was at the beginning of my career, and it all happened so fast. It was years before I could begin to start to look back and think what it meant…I remember it was the first time I was sent pages, and they were from Neil Simon and he wanted to write a play for me to be in, which would lead to Barefoot in the Park… I didn’t realize how unusual and remarkable it was.”
5. Who has been a Mentor in your career?
“The great Roger L Stevens, the man who built the Kennedy Center. He had the playwrights company that represented Tennessee Williams. When I was an understudy in a hit comedy called Mary, Mary, and I wasn’t even a standby, I was an understudy where I had to be there all the time and that’s where I met Roger Stevens. I suppose the next great mentor or the man who made me a ‘star’ was the great George Abbott in the play that won me the Tony, Take Her, She’s Mine.”
6. What is the best advice you have received?
“There is a brilliant director named Michael Wilson that I owe a great deal too. Any actress goes through those times when no one wants to hire them for anything. For many years, Michael was the Artistic Director at Hartford Stage and put together an extraordinary company of actors and designers… On stage, because I was physical, I always tended to move around to much. I’ve never been known to underact. Because Michael and I clicked so well that he went right at all the bad habits I had. He went right for every psychological grab bar or comfort we had, which over all the years, has made me a better actress than I would have been.”
7. Who is one of your favorite playwrights you’ve worked with?
“Tennessee [Williams] and I had an immediate affinity. We became close. Tennessee loved actors. My God he loved actors. He was amazing and extraordinary… His plays are operatic. The soliloquies are like arias in a sense and his use of breaking the fourth wall was remarkable… If I ever became known for anything, it was Tennessee Williams plays. We became very close friends. If one wants to know about Tennessee, they should read the book by John Lahr who spent 13 years writing the biography. Tennessee has never written a play that when I read it or saw it, I didn’t immediately identify and understand the soul of it.”
8. What is a play you would like to re-read?
“I look forward to re-reading The Visit. I haven’t read it in years and I would like to read it again to see if it still applies the way I have always thought. I’d like to re-read Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. I would also like to re-read some of his [Shakespeare] comedies. I can pull out my big, fat book of Shakespeare.”
9. What is a show you look forward to seeing?
“The play I am really looking forward to seeing after my knee heals is Tracy Letts’ The Minutes. I had the privilege of being in August: Osage County.”
10. What is the last book you read?
“I tend to read an awful lot of peculiar history and detective novels. Give me a good Michael Connelly book any day and I’ll go for it.”
11. What is a dream-role you want to play?
“The one Tennessee I never played was Streetcar Named Desire because by the time I could’ve done it, it had been done brilliantly by several actors… The one part that I lusted after and longed to play and have never had the opportunity is The Visit. It needs a great translation… I knew that woman. I knew that situation. I knew that was me.”
12. What previous role of yours had the best costumes?
“I think when I played Isadora Duncan in a play called When She Danced at Playwrights Horizons. I’ve had brilliant costume designers, but Jess Goldstein, those were the most gorgeous costumes I’ve ever had. One of the first things I did after coming out of retirement and coming back to New York, there was the designer Peter Joseph for The Enchanted by Giraudoux at the Kennedy Center. Those costumes were ones that I kept and loved forever… This sounds very diva-ish, but one of the things I won’t work without is a Paul Huntley wig.”
13. Which role of yours did you feel most similar to?
“For Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, what can I say, this will sound like arrogance, but that’s not in the least in the way I mean it, but that part [Maggie] had my name on it. I knew Maggie. There was not one thing in that play that I hadn’t lived or known or experienced in my life of in the lives around me. In part she was my mother.”
14. Which role of yours felt the most different from you?
“Well, this Netflix series, Russian Doll. That character was, in many ways, quite distant from me. Much more contained. I had to approach it in a totally different way. Also, Isadore Duncan in When She Danced, I had to really stretch out for that.”
Elizabeth Ashley at the Russian Doll Season 2 Premiere
15. What has been a creative challenge you have faced in your career?
“Probably Ceasar and Cleopatra. I didn’t know what I was going to do with that play, because it was Shaw, but the first famous scene you are kind of on your own in a sense. I had done so much research and I knew her age and that she was exiled because they wanted her dead. She was like a feral child that had grown up in the sewers, which led me to make a more radical choice in how she looked so you would see the story of a powerful man creating a queen. Developing it, towards the end, became a challenge because I had to age her and tame and teach her. It was challenging to find the truth and comfort zone of that without ‘acting’ it.”
16. What is one of your favorite theatrical experiences to have been a part of?
“I think my best work ever and the part I identified with the most was in Sweet Bird of Youth. I think that’s my favorite role I had the privilege to play. Again, under the direction of the wonderful Michael Kahn.”
17. What is a song that always makes you smile?
“Desperado by The Eagles.”
18. What is your favorite cocktail?
“Straight gold tequila in a shot glass.”
19. What is a place you would like to visit?
“The most joyous and happy times of my life were when I was retired and became a sailor and lived in the Caribbean on an ocean raising sailboat. When I went, the islands were a secret. There were no roads, no electricity, no phones. The one thing I have done is travel all over the world and lived all over the world… I think where I’d like to go again is the Scandinavian countries. There are islands off Norway that I’d like to see what happening there.”
20. What is your favorite part of theatre?
“The theatre is my home, you know. A stage, it’s instinctive. There is something in my DNA that understands it, respects it, adores it, loves it, and damn well knows what to do on it. The thing I have always loved the most is the research. Basically, I’ve always said I’m a mechanic. I like to go under the hood and take it apart and put back together and make it go like a race car. Good directors have helped me when I need to make it into an old Plymouth and not Ferrari.”
Elizabeth Ashley in The Best Man (Photo: Joan Marcus)
Imagine having a true life “in the theater”, what would that mean? Austin Pendleton, now celebrating his 60th year in the theater can tell you. Pendleton, the prolific actor-director-playwright, currently appearing prominently in Tracy Letts’ The Minutes at Studio 54 has just been honored this Spring with the New York Drama Critics Circle Special Citation for his 60 years of work in the theatre, The Actors Equity Foundation Richard Seff Award for veteran actors and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
Pendleton, now 82 years young, developed his love for theater when he was as a child, as theater rehearsals were happening in his living room. You see, he grew up in Warren, Ohio. After WWII–it was an industrial hub–but the people wanted to begin a community theater. They came to his mother, actress Frances Manchester for help. “She told them to raise money and she helped them and they pulled her into directing and acting. Their early productions were rehearsed in our living room and I got so into it,” recalled the actor, director and playwright. “I grew up with theatre literally in my own home. There are all kinds of wonderful advantages to theatre, where you get to do the play every night. Once theatre is a bug in your system it stays there, you just keep wanting to do it.”
It’s not surprising that when he went to school he got involved in school plays. But, it wasn’t just being bitten by the bug that inspired him to be involved in theater. “What attracted me to acting was when I was a kid, I stuttered very badly and I found that when I would act in school plays that went away. That was before there was a sophisticated approach to treating stuttering. I escaped into acting,” Pendleton shared.
Pendleton began his professional New York acting career in the 1962 Arthur Kopit sensation, Oh Dad, Poor Dad Momma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad. Now six decades later he is on Broadway in The Minutes.
The Minutes, about a City Council meeting that goes awry, beginning as, The New York Times declared, an “expert comedy” then morphs into “jaw-dropping horror”. Pendleton plays the character of Mr. Oldfield, a stick in the mud. He’s been on the City Council year after year and he has views that are not with the times. “I want them to find that amusing, but I also want them to feel like what it would be like to be that person. That’s what you want with any character, you want the audience to know what it would feel like to be that character,” Pendleton added.
Looking at his journey with The Minutes and the pandemic, Pendleton reflected, “We got within three days of the official opening night two years ago. We got it together, we were working on the day of the night the press was coming, then came the lockdown.”
Austin Pendleton’s 1964 breakout role on Broadway as the tailor Motel Kamzoil in the original cast of Fiddler on the Roof.
Pendleton has had the privilege of working with some of the crème de la crème of theater. And one opportunity has led to another. He began his career in Oh Dad, Poor Dad…, which was directed by Jerome Robbins. His performance led Robbins to cast him as Motel in the Original Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof. Later Pendleton played the role of Leo Hubbard, in Mike Nichols’ famed production of The Little Foxes. Pendleton is quick to admit that while playing the role, he feared getting fired and was saved by simple advice from his co-star Anne Bancroft. “There was something not working about my performance. Anne Bancroft gave me the key–she said you walk the wrong way for the character. Lillian Hellman was so impressed with the way my performance suddenly turned, that 14 years later she thought of me to direct a revival of Foxes, which also served as the Broadway debut of Elizabeth Taylor.”
Pendleton developed his acting craft while training at HB Studios with Uta Hagen. He was also in the Lincoln Center Training Program and worked with theater legend Robert Lewis. Pendleton has found over his six decades that while acting was fulfilling, he also had the propensity for directing and playwriting. He found himself writing musicals, while an undergraduate at Yale. He wrote the script for Tom Jones and Booth Is Back In Town! in his Junior year. He later made Booth Is Back In Town! into a straight play called Booth, which is still performed today. He wrote a dark play called Uncle Bob, which is his most produced work. Reflecting on how he came to New York, he recalled coming to pursue being a writer due to the two musicals he had done at Yale. “I got ambushed into doing Oh Dad…,” he mused.
Directorial opportunities came about due to Robert Lewis, who also taught at the Yale Drama School and saw something else in Pendleton, something that he shared with Nikos Psachopoulos, who ran the Williamstown Theatre Festival. “There was something that I did in a scene as an actor and Robert said that is an idea a director would have. Lewis told Nikos that I had talent as a director. I knew about directing because I would watch rehearsals of the community theatre at home, and there were three directors, including my mother. I would watch how they worked. Nikos invited me to Williamstown and the first two shows I directed there were huge hits. I was able to direct three shows on Broadway that got Tony nominations. When I worked with Jerome Robbins, I watched the clarity of his storytelling. He was unmatched at that.”.
Pondering the role that the audience serves to inspire him when he’s on stage, Pendleton said, “The key word in putting on any theatrical piece is suspense, which is much more important than the laughs. If you feel the audience literally and figuratively leaning forward wanting to know what’s going to happen next that’s what you look for. If they are not leaning forward, then you know that’s something you have to fix.”
In his six decades Pendleton shared that he’s had ups and downs, but he’s stayed the course. “There were a couple of times my acting was pronounced officially over. I had a late lunch with Lynn Redgrave, I had career killing reviews and she said you just have to keep acting, it will take seven years. In those years you can’t stop acting. Act in showcase productions, theaters outside of town and that was a professional life changing conversation. So that’s what I did. When they were able to come back around to me I was ready. So that led to this longevity. If you stop for too long, you’re going to be afraid to do it again and no one will want you to. You will fade from the memory. If you keep doing it, it’s just one long continuum.”
Whenever Pendleton takes on a role he brings such an authenticity to it. Talking about his process he shared, “It’s kind of different with every role. You keep reading the play or the script and look at how your role contributes to the storyline. Sometimes you feel an immediate identification and sometimes you don’t. You find a small thing you identify with and you build on that. Like with The Little Foxes, I started with the walk. Anne said angle your body differently when you walk and she was totally right. I had no way of identifying with the character, nothing in my life identified with his. When I changed my walk things began to happen.”
Madeline Kahn and Austin Pendleton in What’s Up, Doc?
For 60 years Pendleton has not only acted, directed, written plays, but he also has taught directing at The New School and teaches acting at HB Studios. He has been a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble since 1979 and served as Artistic Director of Circle Repertory Company. He simply lives an all-encompassing “life in the theater”. When asked why, he said, “It just fascinates me. There are vast numbers of things that I don’t know. I can’t understand how they operate. I stick with this because it’s the only thing I have any skill at.”
Over the years Pendleton has received accolades for his work. In 1970 he won both an Obie Award for Performance and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance in The Last Sweet Days of Isaac. In 1981, he received a Tony nomination for Best Direction of a Play for The Little Foxes. Other Tony nominations for Direction included Shelter and Spoils of War. In 2011 he won the Obie Award for Directing for The Three Sisters. In 2015 he was nominated for both The Lortels Outstanding Director Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Play for Between Riverside and Crazy. He was also honored as a Legend of off-Broadway in the same year.
Accolades are still coming as Pendleton is the subject of “Starring Austin Pendleton,” a documentary film about his life and legacy, in which many of his famous challenges reflect on their friend including Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Olympia Dukakis, and Ethan Hawke. Pendleton, while epitomizing a life in the theater, he has also appeared in 100 films and television shows.
Linda Armstrong is a theatre critic with the New York Amsterdam News, Theatre Editor for Neworldreview.net, A&E Editor for Harlem News Group and has written for Playbill Online, had a Theatre column “On The Aisle” for Our Time Press, Network Journal Magazine, Show Business Weekly Newspaper, Headline Magazine, Theatre Week Magazine, Black Masks Magazine, and the New York Daily News. Lincoln Center Performing Arts Library interviewed her for their “Critical Perspectives” series, and she was cited on the Jeanne Parnell Radio Show in March 2021 as a Woman Making History.
