THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Robert, first of all, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. I didn't want to make this weird but I just want to say Dead Poets Society is the first movie I ever cried at.
Robert Sean Leonard: Wow. You must not get out that much!
That's true! What's it like to still be recognized for that, and for people to still come up to you and talk about it?
Robert: Well, I have three daughters now and someone told me the other day that my daughter gave money to a homeless person. I wasn't there but it makes me feel really good to know it happened. And that's how it feels whenever people are moved by that movie, which is another way of saying it's very nice to hear, and it makes me feel like I did some good things in this world for people. It really does feel great to hear that.
This is the last thing I'll mention about that period of your work. I moved right on in high school to Swing Kids, which was pretty inspiring. [If Robert Sean Leonard is feeling weirded out, he does not let on, that's how good a guy he is!] Is it strange to be still recognized and still spoken to about work that you did when you were essentially a kid?
Robert: No, it feels removed on some level. Because the work that you do makes ripples throughout the world, if you're lucky. Roy Scheider used to say this about Jaws. He said, 'Jaws to me is a bunch of weeks on that island with Richard and Robert Shaw, waiting mostly. You know, the shark not working, and Robert Shaw fighting with Dreyfus. So what Jaws means to you is very different from what it means to me.' So there's always a weird remove to it. There's a line in The Seagull. Nina asks Boris what it's like to be a famous writer, and he says, I don't know – and I guess Chekhov would have known this – he said, it's one of two things, either I'm not as famous as you seem to think I am, or it's just something you don't feel. That's pretty right. Like, you talk about House or Dead Poets or Swing Kids or whatever it is, it feels sort of ghosty. Just like telling me you saw my daughter do something great. It doesn't feel like me, but I love to hear it, and it makes me feel proud. But I don't have your experience of Dead Poets, so I don't know quite what you're talking about, because I never had that. I never saw Dead Poets, as someone who didn't know anything about it, that was just affected by it. I made it, which is a whole other thing. So there is a remove. I mean, I've been to movies, like Ordinary People, and other movies that have meant a lot to me... I'm sure if I complimented Jimmy Stewart on Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or It's a Wonderful Life, he'd feel the same way, and I'd be in your shoes. I do know what it feels like, I just don't know what it feels like regarding the specificity of my own work. But it's always great to hear!
You've played London a few times, most recently as Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird.
Robert: Yes! That was at the Barbican!
What excites you about performing here?
Robert: Oh, many things. When I was younger, I was a bit of an Anglophile. I was a bit of a standout from my other friends in their 20s, Ethan Hawke and Steve Zahn and Calista Flockhart and Josh Hamilton… everyone has those people in their 20s, in their college years, but we didn't have college so we were just New York actors. But I obsessively watched Brideshead Revisited with Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons, and I, Claudius with Derek Jacobi. And I would see the RSC whenever they came to town. I'll never forget watching Much Ado About Nothing and Cyrano with Sinéad Cusack and Derek Jacobi – it was a double bill – and then a few years later my Broadway debut was with Derek Jacobi. It was in an import that he was in called Breaking The Code, about Alan Turing. I've always been a big fan, Nicholas Nickleby changed my life. I was a very, very big fan of English work, much more than other people my age. I noticed even at that time.
So I think there's a romance to being here, to me, that maybe other actors in New York wouldn't feel as much. And also, Our Town I did with Alan Alda and Jemma Redgrave in, I don't know, must have been '92 or something [1991 – ed], and that was an extremely beautiful, meaningful job for me. And then Mockingbird at the Regents Park and then a couple years later at the Barbican, was maybe even more meaningful and powerful for me, because there were kids this time, nine children – a triple cast, playing three kids. To be in a production like Mockingbird with three kids, some of whom were eight years old, is an incredibly beautiful gift to be given as an actor. It's so fun. Vanessa Redgrave said to me one time, 'You learn a lot when you work with an eight-year-old.' They will bend down and tie their shoe on your most important line, their fucking shoes are untied, so of course! And there's something not precious about them that is, that is incredibly precious, ultimately and ironically. So I have an incredible pull, a very strong pull, to London for many, many reasons. And I really love being here.
Mockingbird is a very different play from Interview. What drew you to this story?
Robert: Oh, I love the play. I've never done a two-hander. I've never been in a psychological thriller. The way this is paced and written. My wife's very into Ani DiFranco lately, I don't know if you know her...
I do.
Robert: My wife won't let me go to her concerts. She says, 'You can't go, they'll kill you.' It's a very feminine energy at those concerts. And we've talked a lot lately about where the Me Too Movement has landed everybody. My wife doesn't read everything, but she read this play, and she said, when women see this play, and the lights go down at the end, they're going to rip the roof off the theater. She said this play is so incredibly powerful for a woman to see. And I'm a man so I can only quote her and trust her, and I trust her more than anyone on Earth. So I think this play is pretty special, and it was fun to read and fun to imagine doing, but all of it depended on my co-star, Paten Hughes, who I didn't know at that point. So if she was a very, very bad actor, that would have been very bad for me and the production, but luckily I met her, and she makes me look like a bad movie of the week actor. She's awesome, and she's great, and she's incredibly up to the role of playing this part, which is way, way, way harder – and luckily for her, more fun – and that was it. London was a big draw, the play's well written, and it's a psychological thriller.
All very sound reasons, but you're probably associated with more wholesome parts usually than this one.
Robert: Yeah, this guy is not Atticus Finch! He's a complicated guy, and I'm struggling to figure out who he is. Every day I come in here, and I am nowhere near having an answer for that, but I don't know how to play him. I'm hoping to try to figure that out by the last production, last show. It'll be a work in progress, I think! He's not the best guy, and that's my lot in life, to bring that to the stage, but I think it's good casting, because I usually play nice boring guys, so it'll be fun to kick that around.
I couldn't imagine how you begin to prepare for that. Is there a part of Robert Sean Leonard in Pierre?
Robert: Sure. He has a devotion to some things, you know? He lets them slip and he fails himself and everyone else around. He's a sad character but, oh God no, there's a lot I can grip onto that I relate to. Yeah, we've all got some Richard III in us somewhere. I think there's a way to play those parts.
You mentioned the potentially explosive impact that this play will have, particularly on women in the audience. If you can do this without spoiling anything, how is it going to challenge our ideas about celebrity and our perception of the media?
Robert: That's a great question for Paten, because she plays the celebrity, right? It's not so much about celebrity as it is about assumptions, earning intimacy, you know, earning getting close to someone, and earning the right and the gift of them opening themselves to you. It's very complicated. I think 'celebrity' is too limited. That's really not what the play is about. She plays a very well-known influencer that he's never heard of. So I think it's much more about people and trust and deceit and things like that.
The place that the play goes, it starts with her – with her thinking she's a pretty hot tomato, she's very well known. And I'm a very well known political commentary writer and analyst from a very popular, very important newspaper. We both have import, and we both think we have weight and notoriety in this world. But it's not really a battle between us about that. It's more just about trust and simpler stuff, just trust and interest and respect and disrespect and boundaries, and just a lot of human territory is covered in this 90 minutes.
Sounds potentially very intense.
Robert: I think it'll be good. We really like it. I think we're both really... I don't know the right word for it... it's like a wild ride. But it wouldn't be a good ride without good actors in it, and it's the writing. You need people to take control of it and not let go. And that's not easy to do. And so I think it's going to be very unique, and kind of a surprising and cool evening for people who come to check it out.
Is it harder to produce art and to be an artist in America now than it was before the election?
Robert: America's a very big country, you know? A lot of people don't like Donald Trump, and a lot of people do. I don't live in New York, I live in New Jersey, and I haven't done theater in a while. I don't know what effect this administration will have on the arts, or if it'll kick it into more action than it's ever been. I don't feel it's something I've really felt, because I live in a small town with three kids and drive everybody to gymnastics most days. I'm not in the heat of the Lincoln Center and Broadway so I don't know how what's going on in Washington has affected the arts.
I noticed when I was doing my research that we both are from the same area of New Jersey. I was born in Valley Hospital in Ridgewood.
Robert: That's crazy! I was born there! We were from Washington Township, but I was born in Valley. I spent more time in the hospital than I spent in my kitchen. Wow. Every, every major occurrence in my life has happened in that building recently. That's so funny. Were you born in Ridgewood?
I was born in Ridgewood. I was raised in Midland Park and Oakland.
Robert: My sister taught in Ramsey and Park Ridge but I live in Ridgewood now. I would go to Graydon Pool. I never left, actually! My brother lives in Midland Park. Yeah, I'm in Ridgewood – there's a great 7-Eleven there.
Yes, yes, there is!
Robert: That's my favorite 7-Eleven, the best Slurpees in Bergen County! So I was there when you were there – that's kind of crazy, what a cool thing.
What is the best thing about being Robert Sean Leonard right now?
Robert: The actual answer is my wife and kids. Irene lost a tooth two days ago, and she got $25 from the tooth fairy, which I would not have OK'd, so I got a picture of her holding up the 20 and the 5 grinning like the Cheshire cat! I would say that's the best part of being Robert Sean Leonard right now. But that's probably a boring answer.
I don't think so.
Robert: And being in London is really exciting. It's giving me a real 'Nicholas Nickleby' jolt, and I'm loving working with the young lady in this play, and I'm loving the play, and I really do think it's going to be a very interesting evening. I felt that way about Mockingbird, too, because we just wrote that ourselves from the book, we did it on our feet, and it's the same way about this. I really don't know what it's going to be. It changes every day. It might change every night on stage, but I think it's going to be interesting and unique. I don't think it's going to be like anything anyone's ever seen before.
I think there's something quite powerful in not knowing.
Robert: I think Vanessa Redgrave would say, 'Not knowing is all there is, and really all that matters and all that makes something exciting is not knowing.' So if that's the case, we're in because we don't know anything!
Robert, thank you so much. If Paten is still there...
Paten Hughes: Pete, hi! [Aside to Robert Sean Leonard] Hey, that's so cool!
Are you just finding out about our common heritage, myself and Robert being from the same town?
Paten: Yeah!
It's kind of crazy. Now, can I ask if your name is pronounced like 'Leyton' (where I live in London) or like the General, Patton?
Paten: That was actually my nickname in college, "The General." It's a constant struggle! It is 'Pay-ton', so thanks for getting it right. I live in New York, but I spend a lot of time here in London. My first job was actually as a tour guide with my high school English teacher. She had started a little company to take students over to London and teach them British history and literature, Shakespeare, and so that was my first little jump into London. And then I spent some time at RADA, and then I came back over and did the US/UK exchange with the Old Vic Theatre, which is how I met the adapter and director, Teunkie Van Der Sluijs, eons ago. I have godchildren who live in Surrey, so I try to be an active part of their lives.
And Teunkie is the one who did this adaptation of Interview?
Paten: Yes, we had been trying to find a project to tackle together for a little while, and I was over in Amsterdam with my husband watching his opening night for A Raisin in the Sun, and Teunkie took me by the original apartment of the actress character, Katja, where the original Dutch film Interview was shot. I had seen the Buscemi movie several years prior, and it had always stuck with me. I thought it was like the craziest, kookiest thing I had seen. I think I was 18 or 19 when I saw it, and I remember watching it twice because I felt like I had fallen asleep. I was like, 'Wait, what just happened between these two people? Did I miss something? Did they sleep together?' So I was immediately interested in working on this content and figuring out how to tell the story and what to do to bring it forward.
That's amazing. I'm feeling weird and a little bit meta doing an interview about Interview...
Paten: Oh, don't even get me started. There are so many layers of metaness going on in my life right now!
I've read somewhere that it's been adapted for our current era, our current zeitgeist. In what ways?
Paten: In the original films Katja, the character being interviewed, was a sort of soap opera actress, a Pamela Anderson kind of figure. She was a sex symbol for sure, with a 'male gaze-y' thing going on, and she was never taken seriously as an actor. It's my understanding that that's a little bit of where the content stemmed from, in terms of the film's director Theo Van Gogh wanting to give her an opportunity to show chops as an actor. To that end, we've brought it 20 years forward, and made Katja an influencer, which is arguably our version of soap opera acting. These days, you're seeing a lot of people come up on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube, and there are some that are trying to pivot into actual films and actual movies and actual Hollywood and box office, and some of them are very talented, and some of them are pushing through, and it's happening, and then others not so much. So it just felt like the right place to drop Katja, the character, into.
It feels so interesting, because from when Teunkie and I started working on this a couple of years ago to where we are now, the landscape has definitely shifted a lot. I feel like we've seen the falling apart of even more institutions and barriers. You've seen more attacks on the media, on truth, on fact. I do think at the base of this story is very much a sort of interesting scope at what is fact these days. Who defines it? You know, Robert's character kind of comes at it as a New York Times stand-in, like, 'I'm the most reputable paper. I'm fact. If it's not in my paper, it doesn't exist'. Versus my character, who is very much like 'I got 15 million followers on Instagram, what's happening right now?'
It sounds as though Robert's character is very much of the Edward R Murrow style of old-school journalism, hanging on with his fingernails to traditional media versus moving on and adapting. There's a few threads there actually, like Pamela Anderson herself has become increasingly known as someone who is quite intelligent and adept at using the media.
Paten: Yep, one hundred percent.
The other interesting thing is that increasingly we have influencers and films that are adapted from Twitter threads now.
Paten: Exactly! Day one of rehearsals, we were starting on draft seven. And something I was sitting with and reflecting on was how it's very much about how an online persona develops an identity within it too, and the difference between what you're putting out there in the world, the crafting of it all, and what version of yourself you're putting out there, and authenticity. There's so many different themes in this play and so many different threads that I think one of the things that Bob and I have so much fun doing each time we're running little chunks is finding how some of those other threads are coming up to the surface, even just based on what's happening in the news every day. But also he says a line a little differently one time, and my response is a little different, and then it just kind of snowballs from there, and suddenly we're in a different play than we were the day before. Which is really exciting. And I think if I was working with someone else, it would be really scary, but it's actually just the most thrilling thing in the world.
That's fascinating because you have a person whose reputation is staked on the very curated, very mediated version of her existence. You've got a play that is an unmediated physical experience.
Paten: That's a really good point. Thank you. That's a little bit of what I'm feeling right now.
It just strikes me as a really marked contrast, which is going to mean you don't really know what you're going to get on the night. And that's potentially quite powerful and exciting.
Paten: For sure. That's one of the things that's super exciting about live theater, that you find it's harder to pull off once you get to a very static Broadway show, where there are so many production elements going on and there's so many people and so many dance numbers and so many things happening that you have to be quite calculated about it. But for us, and it's not to say we don't have blocking or things we're doing and have to do and hit on stage, but we can go a little rogue with it, and we can just be in the moment and pay attention to each other and listen, see what's popping up. And that feels like a little bit of a luxury within a play these days.
The other thread that you mentioned that is really interesting is there's this generation gap between the characters and that's also going to affect their discrepancy of understanding.
Paten: That's actually just apparent. And Bob and me too. I'll be sitting there and I'll be telling the story, and he'll be like, 'Oh my God, you're so frustrating.' It's very difficult when I have to sit here and explain what YouTube is.
He's not started a glossary yet?
Paten: No, it's so funny because he has three daughters too. There's some stuff that he's very aware of, but there's others, and I'm just like, 'I can't believe he doesn't know some things.' It's been fun.
You've lived in both the US and London. Do you think we as Americans are lagging behind culturally?
Paten: It's difficult to say that for me, because I think I've really only spent significant time in London. I've been to other places, of course. But New York is different from Kansas or Oklahoma. It's just different to live in a big city. One thing I will say that is a marked difference: it's very apparent in the cultural life, especially within theater, that there's government subsidizing of productions and art here in the UK as opposed to in America, and I think especially in New York, time is money and everything is so expensive, that no one wants to waste time, right? And so, because of that, producers are forced into playing it safe, going with a writer, a director, an actor, something that means money, that means dollars to them, rather than taking chances on new creatives or new ideas. That's why Forrest Gump, the musical, has been kicking around probably for 30 years.
Oh, wow.
Paten: Oh, my God, it's hilarious. But people are just looking for something to pin their hat on. That can mean followers, audience, ticket sales, like blah, blah, blah, blah. I suppose, compared to here, you can slow down a little bit, and you have the sort of luxury of space to be able to really think about relationships and moments and what's interesting. At the end of the day, those are the things that make a theater experience special and meaningful. The luxury of being able to create them is something that you'll find more in London than in New York.
I also think the thing that I have in my life, in New York now, which I'm so grateful for but took me a really long time to find and develop, was who your people, your creative soulmates are, who's your team? And it was much easier for me in London, and I don't really know why. I do think there's a little bit more respect here towards people that make theater. It's a little more integrated into the cultural zeitgeist, cross-generationally, cross-class, cross everything. There's just more respect towards someone who is doing that with their life, and there's more knowledge and conversation around it. Whereas in New York, you go to a cocktail party and you say you're an actor, and someone looks at you and goes, 'Are you on Broadway right now?'. They don't know how to talk to you. They don't go to Broadway all the time, and they don't go to Off Broadway, and they don't even know what is happening in a tiny little coffee shop that's the most interesting thing, or like David Cromer's Uncle Vanya, which happened to an audience of 38 people, and was the best production of that show I've ever seen in my entire life, and probably ever will, you know. There's just not a language, and I think there's a hunger for it, but I just don't think we've fully figured out how to reach each other in America.
You've reminded me that I've been here 20 years, and the best play I've ever seen in London was when I paid five pounds to see Blood Wedding under a pub near Baron's Court tube station.
Paten: Yes, yes!
But you're right, of the actors I've spoken to here, American actors in particular, when they get into conversations with people here, generally, theater is more a part of the conversation.
Paten: People know actors. People can talk about them. People know things about their lives. People pay attention a little bit more. There is just a different respect towards it.
What's exciting about working with Robert Sean Leonard?
Paten: Everything! He's the funniest human I've ever met. I'm just having a ball. I can just step on stage, and I have absolutely no preconceived notions of what I'm getting ready to do, and I'm just very in the moment with him, and even if it's me driving the scene, sometimes he'll just get this look in his eyes, and I can tell he's getting ready to crack up at whatever I did. We're just having a good time.
Sounds like a lot of natural trust there.
Paten: I've never trusted an actor so much in my life, it's the biggest gift. He's so respectful, so generous, so encouraging, so aware. It's just nice to have a partner where it's like, 'Can we run that little exchange one more time and get that rhythm actually perfect?' Those kinds of things. That's also the nice thing about a three person creative collaboration. It's really just Teunkie, Bob and me and it's so different to dig down into every little minutia of detail that's happening for all three of us. I think the closeness of that collaboration is going to be really interesting once we put it up on its feet.
Sounds like the luxury of time you were referring to earlier?
Paten: For sure.
There is some parallel in the way in which Katja is an influencer and has made her career online, and you've developed a web series, Heirloom.
Paten: A couple of people have mentioned that to me. I had this whole plan. I don't know whether I should be telling you, as I might still do it – I'm still trying to do it, I just have not had the luxury of time for this – but I was going to start an Instagram account for Katja.
Oh, wow.
Paten: My whole plan, which I've had support on, but I just have not been able to grab the assets, was to sort of be posting a picture on my Katja Instagram that would be an influencery-type picture. For example, the perfectly manicured fingernails holding that cute, perfect coffee in a lovely little cup with a little flower on top. And to put that image out, copy it on my grid, too, in collaboration. Then on my grid, only have the sort behind the scenes of what it took to what was actually going on behind that image.
That's awesome.
Paten: It took us a long time. That was my big meta thing.
You just felt like you weren't satisfied with the level of meta?
Paten: I know! I needed to go one step further. I am still kind of toying with doing it. I would love to, it might have to be something for the production later on if we move but maybe it's something that I'll be able to get into once we're in performances too. There is a little bit of metaness going on!
I'm going to look out for that Instagram. One last question: what's the most exciting thing about being Paten Hughes right now?
Paten: That's a great question. I can't tell you how happy I am to have known Teunkie for so long and to be putting something of this scope together and tackling this; being able to have that collaboration come to fruition is why I went into being an actor. I can take a job. I can do that. Well, blah, blah, blah, I have two film offers for after this ends and I haven't even read the scripts. That's not what the meaning and the work is. I just feel like I'm living my dream right now. I'm waking up and the start of my day is just like I'm taking a second on the way to the rehearsal studio to pinch myself and be grateful for this life. But then I show up and Bob walks in, and I'm like, oh, God, Nightmare now! Ha!
I'm just pinching myself, even the moments that are hard or miserable or frustrating, or where Teunkie's throwing me a new line, like he just threw me three new lines today, and I was like, Dude, my brain does not work as fast as yours. Even those moments, it's just a dream come true.
That sounds like a pretty perfect way to put it, and a pretty perfect way to end it. Enjoy the rest of rehearsals!
