Forest Whitaker, Director Michael Grandage Talk Broadway’s HughiePosted by Wilson Morales
February 28, 2016
Currently playing on Broadway is the revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Hughie,” starring Oscar winner Forest Whitaker and Frank Wood, and directed by Michael Grandage.
For Whitaker, an actor, director and producer who won an Academy Award for his performance as Idi Amin in the 2006 film “The Last King of Scotland,” this is his Broadway debut. He’s following a number of legends who had previously play the role of Erie Smith- Jason Robards in 1964, Ben Gazzara in 1975, and Al Pacino in 1996.
Grandage, who won a 2010 Tony Award for his direction of “Red,” last directed the revival of “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” which starred Daniel Radcliffe.
The play is set in Summer, 1928. New York City. Beyond the bright lights of the Great White Way, a small-time gambler and big-time drinker named Erie Smith (Whitaker) returns to the faded hotel he has made his home. He encounters a new night clerk (Wood) at the front desk and as the early hours of the morning give way to another dawn, he continues to chase the American Dream in order to survive.
Right after its opening night, Blackfilm.com spoke with Whitaker and Grandage about their experience working on “Hughie.”
After many years of doing films and other projects, why Broadway now and why this play?
Forest Whitaker: It just happened that this play was given to me. I’ve been looking for an opportunity to continue to grow. I’m trying to become a better actor. When I read, I had a pretty strong degree of fear about whether I would able to do it or whether I could pull the play off. That was an indicator for me that it may be something for me I need to examine and look at. I then started looking at the play more deeply and all the themes inside of it and powerful some of the themes were. Slowly, we got director Michael Grandage coming onboard and we got Frank (Wood), who’s a great actor. It seemed like a perfect situation.
Can you talk about directing Forest Whitaker in his first Broadway play?
Michael Grandage: Well, he was up for it. That’s good news for a director. You don’t want to spend your time when you’re directing someone making their debut anytime that they should be. It was helpful to me that he was firing on all cylinders. He knew that he finally wanted to do this and he came to the project absolutely up for it. That made my life immediately easy. We had a number of weeks of rehearsals before we put it in front of an audience. We knew what we had to get done. He’s a method actor so I wanted to make he got to fully explore his process. The joy of that process for this play is that it’s effectively a monologue and so he had to completely inhabit the internal life of the character Erie Smith.
It’s been a privilege for me. I haven’t worked with a full American method actor. It’s a process I knew about but I actually never encountered before. Forest was open to all sorts of direction to help mold the play or mold the production around the play. It’s been a beautiful process.
How did you prepare for Broadway, which is new avenue for you?
FW: I had to start looking at the text because the text is really a big deal. I do a lot of research on my film roles so a lot of background issues (photos, images), I go to experience these. I did work with card sharks and crap people. I went to horse races but for me, the biggest thing was walking out on stage and seeing the audience there. There’s no escape. That’s the biggest difference.
What did you want to different from previous productions of the play?
MG: Well, I’ve never seem them before and a lot of my friends and colleagues haven’t either. I know the last production on Broadway was twenty years ago so I was very aware, joyfully, that we were effectively doing a new play for a generation who have never seen it. I tended not to worry about the past but to be respectful of the legacy of the actors who had played in it. What I wanted to do with Forest and Frank Wood was to mold something for the audience of 2016 and make sure that they got something that talked to them in the time that they are watching.
