May 26, 2026 • 51 mins
Melissa Errico is a Tony-nominated actress, singer, recording artist, and writer. She is known for her iconic Broadway musical roles such as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady and the title role in One Touch of Venus. She is also recognized from her roles on TV series such as Billions, The Jim Gaffigan Show, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, Law & Order, A Gifted Man, Ed, and Miss Match opposite Alicia Silverstone. In addition to her work on stage and screen, Errico is highly regarded for her recordings of musical theater classics, including albums of songs by Stephen Sondheim and Michel Legrand. Her 2018 album “Sondheim Sublime” was described by the Wall Street Journal as “the best all-Sondheim album ever recorded”. In a review for her 2024 album “Sondheim in the City”, the New York Times described Errio as “one of Sondheim's deepest-hearted yet lightest-touch interpreters.” Errico’s interpretation of Legrand’s music is equally highly praised, so much so that she was asked to write his eulogy for the Times and was the only American singer invited to perform at Legrand’s memorial at Le Grand Rex in Paris. In recent years, Errico has become a contributing writer to The New York Times and served on the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is a Tony
nominated actress, singer, recording artist, and writer. Melissa Rico has
graced the Broadway stage in iconic roles like Eliza Doolittle
in My Fair Lady and the title role in One
(00:25):
Touch of Venus. She is also one of the most
celebrated interpreters of the work of composers Stephen Sondheim and
Michelle LeGrande. Her twenty eighteen album Sondheim Sublime was described
by The Wall Street Journal as the best all Sondheim
album ever recorded. In addition to Sondheim, Erko's interpretation of
(00:47):
Michelle Legrand's music was so profound that she was asked
by The New York Times to write his eulogy and
was the only American singer invited to perform at his
memorial in Paris. In addition to her career on stage
and in the recording studio, Erico is a recent contributing
editor to The New York Times and was the only
(01:10):
American singer invited to perform at his memorial in Paris.
As a native New Yorker, and performer with a long
career on the Broadway stage. I was curious if Melissa
Erico was a frequent theatergoer herself.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, I pursued tickets today to Ragtime. I don't go
to the theater obsessively. I don't, not in recent years.
I don't exactly have a good reason. If it's a
Sondhim musical, I'll never miss it ever, nothing even a gesture.
And yeah, I never miss a thing. I'm gonna. I'm
gonna check out Ragtime. It's merely because I'm a parent,
(01:46):
I think, you know. But if it's a have to
you know, the Irish rep you know, or Bill Irwin
is in it, certain things, I'm going to check it out.
But so no, not obsessively. A lot of my friends
are Tony voters that we're getting to that age, or
everybody I know is voting.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So he started. And you've made a name for yourself
doing you know, the standards. The big chips have rolled
into town.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Absolutely, and when you became.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Famous, and as my recollection, you became famous when you
did My Fair Lady with Chamberlain, that's when you really
really made your name in New York as one of
the princesses of.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
The Yeah, I did like miss before that. I did
actually added Karenina with the creator of Circle in the
Square with Ted Man, and I did make a bit
of a stir in that for some reason, maybe because
it was such a misguided show and I sort of
stood out as something that was positive. I remember John
Simon saying he wished that the entire cast had gotten
hit by the train and other memorable lines. Way late
(02:39):
in my career, he asked me out to launch and
he started to love my work. That is a little
novella in itself, like my relationship too. Well, there's always
a novella, right, but I could just track that relationship.
It's a beautiful, crazy shape. But he came to love
me with Boy did he make life complicated in the
early days. Who John Simon?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Simon? Oh Simon, the critical?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Oh sorry, I'm asus.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
When you say that about Simon.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Well, we'll get into critics for a second, and that
is not even critics. I'll never forget this guy, who
I really adore. He wrote an article about me. He
wrote about an article about me in The New Yorker,
and he had the greatest line. He said, Alec Baldwin,
who resembles an NFL linebacker in his broadcast years.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
That's so good, that's so bad, it's good.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
And I was like, wow, that's spot off.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I remember the day's rice too, you know. Well, first
of all, do you remember the days where the New
York Times got printed and everybody would run get it
and bring it to the opening night party at Tapana
the Green?
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Right?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Oh my god, So I remember those days where they
were hot off the press. They would go forty fourth Street,
they would run to the party, and you'd be in
this unbelievable dress from Bendel's.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Which would go to the Times Building and get go.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
To the Times Building, grab the paper, bring it to
the party, and you just done this twelve million dollar musical.
This happened so many times, luckily and well unluckily. But
in my fair lady, I was in a green dress.
Tavern on the Green was completely packed. I bought it.
Its Fran Weisler came up to me and said, you're
gonna be a star, like really quietly, and I guess
(04:05):
it said the beguiling newcomer like, and then whatever the rest.
But they race with their eyes to the you know,
the first assessment, which is it's a disaster or it's
just you know, a gut punch is the worst. Fortunately,
unfortunately this show just opened when the show.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Was done in nineteen forty three, This and the Unfortunately
they look for.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
That right away in the first paragraph and then they
just run up to you at the party. So that
was a good a good party. But yeah, I do
remember those days. But there I also remember the days
where the magazines would come out later, so you'd get
the New York Times, Stephen Holden if you were Cabaret
or Sunday remember how he used to do this second
review on Sunday, you'd get Frank Rich, then you'd get
Stephen Holden's possibly on piling on your telling a double wham.
(04:45):
You know, Thursday to Sunday you'd just be dying. Then
the magazines, and that's where John Simon was. The magazines,
so you'd walk by New York Magazine, New York Magazine,
and then the Variety. You look for Jeremy Garrard, things
like that, you know, And I'm definitely not somebody who
is like studies reviews, but I was young enough to
just want to get the just so I would look
quickly for one of those unfortunately or you know, houch
(05:07):
kind of words. And I saw dishpan face, Erico, dishpan face.
That was I think that's where.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I think it.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Later Tony Walton said, my face is like a moon,
so maybe I have a little flat face. It's good
for theater.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
No, don't, don't. I would employ this. I would employ
none of those words.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
And as I said later in my career, he went
got more and more and more complimentary, which I don't
remember any of the phraseology. I only remember the bad things.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
But I did streetcar and I go to the party
and I'm going home and I don't want to read
the paper and I just wasn't in the mood if
it was. I'm assuming I'm going to get some kicking
the balls there or whatever.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And I go home and.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
I pick up the paper on the corner and I
get the paper and I'm reading. I'm like, holy shit,
I mean he was really very kind to me. And
my ex wife turns to me, not the reason she's
my ex wife, but contributing.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
She turns me, shees, you don't believe any of that,
do you.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
It was like, well, okay, maybe I shouldn't believe any
of that.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, it's like my mom says, you know, like, well finally,
you know, so it's like, got a great musical, so
you're in a hit. Well, finally just puts your entire
past in somewhere weird light.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Just critics, I think, But I.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Think the critics. I'll give you two examples. I think
the critics in film and in the theater. Here's what's
missing and that and that is that if you've got
somebody who's as talented as you are, you're so talented,
you're so talented, and you're so gorgeous, and you get
up there and you play these parts and you can sing.
So if the show doesn't work, it's not your fault. No,
(06:39):
it's a director or the reader. And they don't want
to do they feel they have to dish out. And
in the and in film, what they do is they
pile up on the person who's not doesn't have that
much power. So if the person so if the star
of the movie prints money for the studio, they get
a little whisper who goes, don't you touch him?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Or business of it. I don't have a lot of business,
you know, like tentacles, like people like pushing away the
complexities of these things connecting you. Yeah, I don't have that.
So my life has actually been quite natural. I sort
of feel like I'm actually in the jungle, and like
experiencing the actual jungle. There's no cages, there's no monitors,
which has made it interesting and very lively. To answer
your question, by the way, I do go to the
(07:18):
theater like I'll see Audra or i'll go in if
I'm in London, I'll go see John Lithgow and go backstage.
In both cases, so it is friends, but it was
also like masters, like when I feel like there's a
master thing just FAI would never miss it. When you
called to do a play together last summer, what's the
first thing I.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Said, Well, you said yes, yes, right, I made it.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
I made it happen.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
But I want to lose the opportunity to mention to
people here on the show that it was really a
big moment in my life in terms of work, and
that is you see people you obviously are you know,
like I said, one of the great great leading ladies
of the Broadway musical stage, and you did Gorgon and
I had never done anything with you dramatic correct and
we're doing this thing, and again I remember going, holy.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Shit, like you can do that? I thought you weren't
that into that, And that's more musical musical saying right,
you were fantastic. I was top material.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, I connect to things, and I have a kind
of unguardedness I always had, and you know, it probably
hasn't served me in other ways, possibly though I won't
regret it. But I do feel like artistically, like I'm
available to what's why jazz is feeling so good in
these cabarets and things. The parts that I had for
until I was forty six, I was playing all the aws,
(08:30):
was playing all the lovely characters, and just to sort
of tap the tuning fork back to this critics thing,
I was always called lovely or lovely appeared in a
lot of reviews because I had to be. I was
sort of in Brigadoon or I was in my fair
Lady high society. So many of these shows were the charming,
young sweet character. And I went to Harold Guskin at
one point. Do you remember Harold. Yes, Harold is an
(08:51):
acting coach who wrote a book called How to Stop Acting.
I told him about the reviews. He looked at a
bunch of them always said lovely, something like lovely. He said,
We're going to get the word lovely out of these reviews.
I'm going to teach you how to shit on the stage,
he said. And it was so gross. I was like, oh,
you know, Glen Close had just left and I like
bumped into you know, all kinds of people in the
(09:12):
in the lobby, which shows that particular show would have
been Dracula. I think, okay, who did you do Dracula
with Tom Hewitt? Was Dracula? He was wonderful. That was
a tricky sell for me. I was not sure that.
See Christopher Hampton wrote it, who wrote Lele And I
loved him and I knew him socially and part of
(09:35):
that kind of uh royalty of the British theater, and
I knew a lot of people exactly. And Christopher is
such a high vibration, and Frank Wildhorn was a composer,
and it was unclear where the balance was going to be.
There's a bodice ripper kind of you know, in obviously
a Dracula musical, there's also another kind of inferred, passionate, strange,
(10:00):
illuminating Sasbo's world whatever. There's everything women walking around in
there in there, but yeah, you know, like there's just
those all these Victorian dresses. And I was saying to Kelly,
maybe O'Hara, maybe we should be attracted to each other
over the waiting of the monster. And she was like
she was looking at me like monster, Like we can't.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Fix that free way with the monster.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
She was literally looking at me like, Melissa, you care
so much. I was reading bram Stoker in my dressing room,
was having you.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Went to Yalees, You're meeting bram Stoker.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I was having paranormal experiences in the theater. I feel
like this is going to get quirky. I feel like
David Blasco full on was aligned with me because you
know he he haunts the theater. Have you heard about that.
David Blasco is a lot is a ghost. He's the
most famous ghost in Broadway history. He had an apartment
(10:53):
above the Blasco and so I visited the apartment multiple
times with somebody who was Dracula's understudy and had lots
of extra time. I'm and he got the key and
so we would sneak up there, you know, on between
the shows. Remember his name is a big guy. He
was a little old. We'd actually look around for for
signs of the paranormal. He was kind of nerdy in
(11:15):
his buff way. We had wonderful times up there looking
for the paranormal.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
I think I found the paranormal. It's right here. It
doesn't stick your hand in my pocket, it's here.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
This has gone wrong. No, anyhow, David Belasco, I'm sure
I saw him. I turned around looking at my dressing room.
I saw a man in a black coat go into
the mirror right next to the dressing room, not the
star dressing room. If you probably he walks through, it's
probably your dressing room is the bottom floor. I'm the second.
I was a second dressing room. Have you played the Belasco? Okay,
(11:50):
so I'm up a flight and there's that really old mirror. Beautiful.
I saw him walk into the mirror. I saw him walk.
I know this sounds like I'm making this up. I
actually turned around. I saw a man walk into the mirror.
Another experience I had was we were in previews and
the show was not going particularly well. There's a woman
in a blue dress who also haunts the theater and
when the previews were happening. They don't know why, but
(12:13):
all the pipes broke and there was a flood. Everything
was dumping down on millions of dollars of set, and
the fire department came and literally I heard these like
handsome Irish guys go David. Blasco strikes again. Like while
they're walking around, they know the place is haunted and
weird things happen there. I feel that when I went
back to get my coat one day in my l
shaped dressing room, and I went around the corner. Once
(12:35):
I got around looking for the coat, it was too
dark to see my coat. Someone turned on my lamp.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Blasco strikes again.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
He turned on the lamp. Mm hmm. I was freaked out.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Turned it off, Christine and Christine.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Maybe it's all the powers, suggested, I look, I'm old
enough now. Maybe I'm just cuckoo. Oh you're singing the
Phantom of the Ore. I've passed on that role. Why
to go back to Yale?
Speaker 4 (13:00):
But I want to.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I want to.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
I want to. We're going to get there.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
But let me just ask you this, which is that
when you do something, because I'm sure you get offered
a lot of things simultaneously when you do something like
Dracula Beyond, because many people don't understand this a paycheck
and I want to go to work. People say to me,
why did you do that? I go, I looked at
my calendar and I hadn't worked in two months, and
I was an anxious to go to work.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
This is what I do. And so I go and
do this movie or this play or TV thing.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Whatever, and find did I do it?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Like, we'll pick one, Well, we're going to pick a couple,
So pick Dracula. Why that? Why did you want to
do that?
Speaker 4 (13:30):
Well?
Speaker 3 (13:31):
It was the draw.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Well, I'm get into my mid thirties at that point,
and you know, I had a ton of positivity around
what I was doing in a sort of third revival
of my career, and I started super young. I had
just finished working with some Time and Michelle legram and
had a Tony nomination. I had really awoken a kind
of vision of a sort of intellect meets actress singing.
(13:55):
I actually it was almost like straight acting the way
I think about things. Forgive me for saying barbistur. Samda's
a great inspiration to me, because every half sentence is
smart in her prime. There's just no She's the Gilgood
or the Laurence Olivia of music singing. And I was
starting to think like that. I was starting to animate
music like it was a play. And the Laburn thing
(14:17):
was so interesting and beautiful. I worked with James Lapine,
he was the director, and Jeremy SAMs wrote the words.
It was beautiful, and obviously Sondheim was Sunday in the
Park with George. I did that and it was like
my brain went wild. It was an art hist.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I loved it.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
But that was right after so it's just like it
was like there was like a wind pushing me. And
I just thought, maybe because it's based on a beautiful novel,
maybe because it has so much undercurrent of social it
was actually kind of looking at sexuality and repression, and
it does a Victorian novel, and I just thought, well,
it's another corset thing. So I'm gonna look all right,
(14:55):
and you know, it's gonna look really nice and most
incredible clothes. I was my friend is missing, you know,
Oharah goes missing, and I'm just so well dressed. When
I was dressing out, I came out in these coats
with a lamp. I had hats, like in my in
my dress, looking for her in the cemetery, and she
comes out with the glow in the dark contact lenses
and snakes in her hair and throwing up, and I
was like, so well dressed. I was like, oh, honey,
(15:16):
where have you been?
Speaker 3 (15:16):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
It was also silly, but it didn't have to be,
you see, it was I was trying to make sense
of it, Alec and so I thought, because it was
Christopher Hampton and it was Bram Stoker, I thought there
was hope. You know, maybe I complicated, you know, it
turned out to be kind of like I was lost
in a sort of kitch maze, and I had to
(15:37):
make sense to the audience. After lots of weird stuff
would happen. I'd be left with Kelly O'Hara had like
sort of thrown up and went down, you know, somebody
stabbed her and she was throwing up, and she had
the snakes and she disappeared, and then glow in the garden.
She had the fangs and stuff, and I had to
I had to do a lot of stuff, and then
you respond to things or I had to bite Dracula
(15:58):
or something I don't I had to kill him at
the end. But here's the thing. Often I'd be left alone.
And the way the set worked was they were instead
of sending the set this way or up, like sideways
are up, they had a concept that all of these
pre Raphaelite style buildings, these large, large double story two
hundred feet way down there's a great depth in the glasco.
(16:19):
The set would go down, and so we would be
left with these precarious holes around us. People were very upset.
I actually spun Stephen McKinley Henderson. I spun his jacket
in previews and you can look it up. He's often
says I saved his life. It just was odd and dangerous,
and I felt responsible. And so after all the set
(16:39):
would close, you'd feel everything closed. I'd be left alone
with these solos. That's how it felt. It felt like
I'd been left with this weird like it could be funny,
but like I'm going to try to fix it for you,
and I just you know me, I didn't. I didn't
get giggles or phone it in. I just kept trying
to fix it. So it felt demanding.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
You know, It's interesting that there are people I know
myself included, where periodically I didn't do this all the time,
but periodically, especially when I was younger, I felt responsible
for a lot of what was going on around me,
rather than keeping the focus on my own performance.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Like as I moved along in film, I began to
be like you know, I would do the scene with someone.
I said that to Paccino one time. I said, are
you doing a scene with someone and you're at the
net here playing tennis and the other person.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Isn't that good?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
You got to the director and say, said me. Even
Pacino said, oh no, no, no, I never gon't get involved.
I keep my focus on myself. If you're not an
equal partner to me, I don't look at it that way.
I mean, you're doing your thing. I'm doing my thing.
Now I tend to be much more like you know.
I don't bother. I just come to work.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
When I do a scene, I try not to leave
the set when we're doing that scene till all the
coverage is done. Then I can take a break. Cruise
said the greatest line to me once, Tom said the
greatest son he goes. He said, I got to give
them their money's worth, I said, who he goes? The
people that are paying me and the people that are
buying the tickets. Hm, I gotta get man. He's hard.
Everybody knows he's the hardest working person in the movie business.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
He's not totally He's not wrong, Oh no.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
And my point is, I thought to myself, he's going
to take this to another level of really really committing to.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Just doing life my thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I kind of learned that a long time ago, and
maybe not in the most positive sense at first. Which
I worked with Bill Cosby when I was seventeen. I
played a young student Cosby whare I was on his
television show. It was called The Cosby Mysteries. Do you
remember that?
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yes, my friend David Black wrote on Cosby Mysteries.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I was in it as a teenager, and he used
to do his part and then leave and he'd leave
me with nobody a piece of tape or his stand
in and he'd say, that's what you went to Yale
drama school. I was going to Yale, that's what you're
going to yell for. Yeah, And he'd leave me alone,
so I'd have to act opposite him, but without him.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
There, he didn't give a shit.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
He was busy or something. He did ask me out
for lunch, you know sometimes, well, yeah, exactly. I came
to wonder about I misunderstood a lot of lunch invitations
in my career. I actually went to lunch and was
a total lady at a million lunches, and I.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Realized, that's why were you this that where you were there?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
I misread so many lunches you didn't wear it. I
didn't know. I didn't even know. I didn't even think
of it. I thought people wanted to have lunch and talk.
I once had a Saturday night audition called with Harvey Weinstein,
and I remember it was like why Saturday night, you know?
But I went and I wanted it so badly. It
(19:30):
was for never Land, and I thought, I am never Land,
Peter Pan, I get me in there. I just wanted
it so badly, and I showed up so prepared, so
profoundly prepared, and I ended up being very ladylike and
going on about my young family on my marriage. Never
heard from him again. So maybe being stranded, unfortunately, is
(19:51):
a little bit of a not a familiar feeling. I
know I'm not victim or something, but artistically I don't
always have the Alec Baldwin opposite me. Here's one of
the beautiful things. Partnership took on a whole other meaning
when I started making my own work and the twenty
years I've been playing with this piano player, Ted Firth,
(20:13):
many masters as well are now playing with me. I
have about four or five of the most profound musicians
you can imagine. But what I've discovered in cabaret and
jazz is that we create these shows. I come up
with these themes. Everything has an arc, a story, a
costume of feeling. Every show there's one moment where I
(20:35):
stop the band and I just work with Ted and
we have a ballad of some anyone can whistle, I
can dream, can't I send in the clowns. That's not
the best example because it's very hard to reinvent that one.
It doesn't need much reinventing, But we do something that
the audience is absolutely riveted in the band or the
Bad and the Beautiful From my Noir record, this song
(20:56):
it's actually not called the bat of from the Call,
No it is called the bat of the bum It
is in this It is one of the most difficult
melodies I've ever sung. Tony Bennett couldn't learn it, and
that's why Bill Evans plays it as a solo on
their record. It just stops and it's out of the
blue solo, I'm told is because Tony was just flummoxed
by the melody. Yeah, oh, I love it. I worked
(21:17):
really hard on it. It's these moments that are chromatic,
super difficult and full of rich, evocative language. It's emotionally
improvised as well as chords and extended bars and what's
happening in my later you know, sort of in this
life process. All the handholding of Barbara Cook, it's your turn,
(21:40):
Rosemary Claar, You're wonderful, all these women who've held my
hand and said, just do it, do it your way,
just do it. Robirt of Flack putting all that love aside,
and there's a lot of it. I sit with Ted
in these moments and I'm not trying to sing a
song anymore. I'm trying to sort of let the song
teach me something as it's happened. There's so much beauty
(22:02):
and wisdom in the American songbook from the thirties through
Joni Mitchell, honestly through sound times. I'm sure, and I'm
sure if I would just start learning Sarah Burellis's music.
There's others, but I am so engrossed in the worlds
of Jerome Kern and early Oscar Hammer sign all the
seed bed of what became Sondheim. So when I work
(22:23):
with Ted, I'm so safe and we don't even talk.
It's like you with a great actress or actor Glenn Gary.
All the beautiful movies you've given us that are so masterful.
I bet you had partners where you didn't have to
talk about it. It was best to come out of
your trailer full of life and just face another person
who's full of life and don't talk. That's me and Ted.
(22:46):
We don't talk at all. I might say something that implies, God,
this kills me, or boy, that's a lonely song, or
dreaming saves your life. I'll say like a sentence like that,
and he'll go like mm hm, and then he'll start
playing what sounds like my subconscious like sounds like a
dream anyhow. So we just made a record called I
(23:06):
Can Dream, Can't I, And it's just the two of
us doing those moments. It's just an album full of
those moments. And I don't know if it's overkill in
terms of piano solos and meandering non arrangements. But it's
that's just what it is.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
When you talk about that, that kind of battery you
can have with someone. Mine was so unlikely the greatest
example of that, even though there's other things I did
where I had this connection with someone, I'm acting with
somebody I'm really thinking. It usually begins often in the
theater where I'm doing the piece over and over again.
So when I did street Car and I had to
come out and I had to and I would tell.
I told Ed Harris, I said, I never loved a
(23:45):
woman more than Amy. When we were doing she was stella.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, you lock horns.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Yeah, you just like that person. You have the same
thing going on.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
And it's about the work actually, you know, I often
asked my mother about you know, always Ted. You know,
we don't we don't talk about. We don't talk about
you know, it's very hard to get work. Every day
is a struggle to get these concerts, to design the concerts,
to promote the concerts. I do so much by myself
and sometimes it's just unwieldy. And then I say, well, mom,
Ted doesn't push it on social media. He doesn't. She says, Melissa,
(24:15):
stop looking at ted, look together at the music. And
by the way, my mom's not, you know, not a boodhut. Anyway,
I mentioned her twice as so she was. But it's
the idea of just we both look together passionately at
the music. And I'm sure that's what you mean when
you have all the.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Person and the person.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I had the most strange connection that way was it
was Julie Harris played my mother on a TV show
and I go to do this TV show Not's landing,
and I'm like, I don't know. With the show's in
the top ten, my agent said, you're going to be
a cast addition to.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
A hit show.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I go in there and all of them are lovely people.
I mean, I had a lot of fun. But Julie
Harris plays my mother, and it was like you'd sit
down with her and do a scene and she just
pulled it out of you.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
You didn't have to do anything.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
May seconds for me look her in the eye, and
there you were, and she.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Just took you on this magic carpet. She was so
empathic and so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
You know, I want to be like that. Please help
me get later. I want to be like that. Yeah,
as a person large, I really want to be that
for younger people and for any artistic process.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Actress and singer Melissa Raco. If you enjoy conversations with
the leading ladies of the Broadway stage, check out my
episode with Patty Lapone.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
I knew when I was a kid that I had
a Broadway voice.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
I wanted to be a rocker because I grew up
in that era of transistor radios at the Beach.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
You know, the.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Rascals we started in the fifties, Little Anthony and the Imperials.
I mean all through the fifties and sixties and seventies.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I knew I didn't have a rock voice, though I
knew I had a Broadway voice.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
To hear more of my conversation with Patti Lapone, go
to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Melissa
Rico talks about how her two musical north stars, Michelle
Legrand and Stephen Sondheim, shaped her artistic life. Hi'm Alec
(26:21):
Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. Melissa Raco's stage
career began with the national tour of Les miserab, which
she joined while a freshman at Yale University. It was
the first of many iconic roles, including her star turn
as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady opposite Richard Chamberlain
(26:41):
in nineteen ninety three. She earned a Tony nomination for
her performance in Michelle Legrand's Amour in two thousand and three.
But it's Eerko's later work on the stage and in
the studio interpreting the music of Sondheim and La Grand
that has truly set her apart as a singular voice
in American music. Equally praised for interpreting both composers repertoires.
(27:06):
I wanted to know which of the two Melissa encountered first.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
It was Lagron.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
How did you intersect with him?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Because I was living in la a whole long period
of my life in which I used to call you
as were old friends and ask your advice and things.
And I was doing lots and lots of television pilots,
and as I told you, I was. You know, there
were about seven of them. One of them involved them
cutting all my hair off and firing me the next day,
and I had no hair. They wanted me to look
like a French actress, they said, But they took twelve
(27:34):
inches off my hair and fired me. But I got
my hair put back, so I survived all of that LA.
And I got a phone call while I was living
in La that Michelle Legrand wrote a musical. I was
given a fax by my then manager and it said
that the passe Murai is coming over from Paris and
they're bringing it to Broadway. James Lapine is the director,
(27:56):
Jeremy SAMs is the writer, and with music by Michelle Legrand.
And it was like the paper was glowing in my hand,
truly glowing in my hand. My father had brought me
up to love the music through the Vietnam years, and
I knew every song. You have to believe me. I
didn't tell the backstory, but I love Michelle. I looked
at this paper. I looked at my manager and I said,
(28:17):
Michelle Lagron, Michelle Legron wrote a musical like it was.
And she turned to me, she goes, I know, I know,
I love her.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
So Michelle has tops in my book.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah, yeah, so that's not my manager anymore. But I
flew back. I flew back met the team got the
leading part to see. James Lapine was was the stitch
he wrote Sunday in the Park with George. So right
after that I had a wonderful success. I met Son,
Tim and James for Sunday in the Park with George,
and I just got cast by the based on the meeting,
(28:50):
and they didn't ask me to sing.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
When was the original production?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
When the original production? Now I was the Kennedy Center.
It was the first major revival in history. It was
a very first time it had ever been seen again.
I wore Bernadette's clothes. They added a like a foot,
you know, to the dresses, but I wore her dresses.
It was such an honor. So that was a bit
back to back. So the two north Stars came back
to back. I can't choose between them, and they don't
(29:15):
always have the highest regard always for each other. And
sometimes I wrote Michell Legrand's eulogy in the New York Times,
and I said that he could write, he could turn
a melody to a chord that no one else on
earth besides him could have thought of. Sometimes quoted that
back to me in an email. We had so many
(29:36):
emails asking me like what like what like what cord?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Like?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
What was he was? So he didn't want me to
revere him in the same way. You know, I revered
them both, but they were the polar opposites. One is
a total sensualist with multiple, you know, many women in
his life, lots of wives. Michelle's very happy with his
now wife whatever, but they're perfect. They actually he goes
back to the first girlfriend or something, so he's actually
(30:02):
back at the his true love. But he's just a
sensualist and an affirmative French troubadour really from the great tradition, Charlestrena,
from even the sound of the old carousel. It's just
all the dancing illusions of life, and you know, the
spirit of the poet lives on you. Hear an accordion,
you know in your brain when he's just beauty itself.
(30:23):
Sondheim is asking a lot of questions. It's like your
mammot is percussive. It tells you what to Everything is percussive.
Every syllable tells you what to think, where to turn
a phrase, and it's edgier, and it's all about the
ambivalences and disappointments in life. You get everything you want
in life and nothing that you want in life. That's
the sort of Sondheim life. You can probably apply that
(30:47):
thought to any song in any character. They both are
doomed by their duties and their desires.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
You've been a leading lady in these musicals and these
very in a world of great romance, and what happens
when you go out there and you're not that in
love with the guy who is your leading man in
the in the show, not without naming names, meaning what's
it like for you to have to go and do
so when you do a movie if they do a
love scene with somebody that you're not that j as
(31:15):
a person. Forget about sexually, You're just not there. You're
not your favorite people. You get through it the days over,
it's over. When you have to go out there again
and again and again in a show and that person
isn't your capetin amen.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Have you had that happen?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I usually find a way though,
you know, there's a you know, musical theater is a
little different than than the film because you have to
be athletes. You're you're sharing a athletic task. So if
the person can get the athletics, you know, beautiful singing,
be there physically for you, be positive, not be ill
(31:53):
a lot. You know, when somebody's really ill, it's really
a downer. I've really annoyed, annoyed when I have a
leading man who's prone to like bronchitis sort of thing,
because because he's drinking all night, and you know, he's
drinking all night and he comes he direct and you're like, honey,
could you just just drink water, Just just stop drinking,
you know, and so you have to stick all the time.
(32:13):
So these things like that, you know, it's more like
people catching colds, and you want you want people to
be grounded and reliable and friendly. I've never really had
anyone that just really repulses me. There was one that's
not it. It was it came in just a little
too into his liquor whatever. Yeah, like.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
The clot Tom Jones, just a little Tom Jones.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Was bothers me because that's just like he's not thinking,
he's just being all like, yeah, cod piece.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Oh god, yeah, well that's important.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
But I don't find that I.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Was in the ballet, I had a gigantic cod piece.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I'm not a code person like I.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Went to the codpiece story that made me a custom
god piece when I was in this and.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
When I had to blatant Camelot, and I was supposed
to be absolutely in love with the guy with the
cod piece, right. I can't remember the character, but I
was working with King Arthur, who was Jeremy Irons. It
was very hard for me to, you know, to be like, gosh,
I'm going to go off with the.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Dickhead I mean codpiece.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
It wouldn't been inst and I'm looking at him like,
forget it, Jeremy Irons off stage, off stage, we're like
perfect for each other. No.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Actually, there was one time we had between shows, you know,
we're getting notes or something, and the notes started and
we realized we had just had a three hour break.
And he goes, oh, darling, we just had three hours.
We should have had sex, but I forgot. Not that
I would have said yes, but it was.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
And we're laying there naked on a bed. I'm going
to kill her in this movie The Juror that to me,
Moore was the star of.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
And we're laying on.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
This bed together and we're naked and we have a
sheet over us, and she goes, have you done this
a lot before?
Speaker 3 (33:58):
These nude scenes like with you?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
And she got I go listen to me favorite, Like
I said, twenty minutes from now, we won't even put
the sheet over us.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
And then one's going to notice that the crew doesn't care.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
We'll be butt naked ready and the crew doesn't give
the ship, so we'll cover up. So we have to
do this scene and we're like going at it. We're
like making down. But there was a lamp in her body,
were a towel, yeah, yeah, we a little fake LEAFU.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yeah, they will I have my thick leaf. Yeah. And
you don't have.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Intimacy counseling back then, right, Oh yeah, me neither, because
that was.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
My intimacy counselor. Because I said to her, they make think, okay,
that's lunch and I'm going to go have lunch. And
I look at her and I go and we're like
really really like pulsing here, look right.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
In the eye, and I go, what do you want
for lunch? And she goes, you know, oh, and I
was like, oh, yeah, ok. I was married at the time,
and I was okay.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I wrote an essay about this, about doing my first
nude scene for the television show Billions, and it's called
Negotiating Nudity.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Are you nude?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
In Billions, I played the wife of the you know
how there were two brothers. The premise of the show
is two brothers and the bad friend rather survived and
the good man died in the nine to eleven disaster.
I'm the wife of the good man. I knew all
the bad things about Damian Lewis. I know everything, and
I'm the wife that says I know you're bad and
I'm going to write a book and they shut my
(35:14):
life down.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
How do you end up nude? That's why I end up.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Nude because I've written a tell all book and I
sleep with the publisher. I don't know I had to
sleep with the publisher if I had a good book.
But that's something I should revisit. What was creepy was
that I negotiated it, and I wrote an essay about
all the negotiations, because they ask you about your left
bosom and your right bosom, and what you're willing to
show in your back, this crack and that other thing
(35:36):
and the button on your lower back and just all
weird stuff.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Oh it all came off.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Oh really, did you have a contract that was specific?
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Jack schmancrack.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
I found the whole thing so it's just wrong tempered
for me, Like I just the wrong person to be,
you know, navigating all this. It just was crazy. So
I did write this essay, which I think is how
my New York Time things started, because that really was
really a good piece. Christina Cuomo actually printed it for
me in one of her magazines. And then I got
the phone call, that beautiful, famous phone call famous to
(36:10):
me when Scott Heller from The New York Times said,
we think you're right for the Times. I'm pretty sure
that it was that. Christina always thinks that she gave
me my first. But the show was tricky because I
had to get you know, spray painted or whatever for
body paint so that you look extra tan, you know,
and perfect your skin. I had worked out my body
(36:30):
was just as good as I was going to get.
And I looked at the call sheet. Of course, they
never told me who I was going to be in
bed with. It was Austin Pendleton. Ah, he's so what
was But Austin is an older.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Man could play the publisher Jesus christ.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Austin was my acting coach when I was in my twenties,
and he went to college. You went to Yale class
of sixty one with my fast one. Yes, he was
my acting teacher, and so that's what my article is
about facing your acting teacher in your a nude scene.
It was really hard and he was we were both,
I mean, we're it's really bizarre. It was a really
(37:07):
bizarre day. We obviously got to you know, we did
what we had to do it, but it was awkward
and it created a very funny article, and it was,
you know, we had a pile of towels between us.
But why are we talking about this? But he was
my teacher and he helped me to get Eliza Doolittle.
I and Roger Reese they were my coaches when I
was young. So you never know who's going to be
(37:27):
on the call sheet.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
We were thinking you and I together called billions in concerts,
and you and I will reenact the nude scene.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Then you're gonna get to see.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Some songs, No, I have music.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Of grand together. Who cares all the quirky stuff?
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Actress, singer and writer Melissa Raco. If you're enjoying this conversation,
tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the
thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get
your podcasts. When we come back, Melissa Rico talks about
the great aunt who became a Zingfeld Folly star and
(38:07):
the grandmother who first recognized her talent. I'm Alec Baldwin
and this is Here's the thing. Melissa Rico was born
in New York City and raised in Manhasset, Long Island.
(38:28):
Her father was an orthopedic surgeon and a pianist, and
her mother was a teacher who now works as a
sculptor and artist. But the performing arts ran even deeper
in her family. Her maternal grandmother was an opera singer,
and her great aunt Rose was a successful Zigfeld Folly
star Eriko's own professional career began at just twelve years
(38:51):
old on the children's television series The Great Space Coaster.
The series led to title roles in Anna Karenina High Society,
Dracula Amor Sunday in the Park with George, and the
Irish Repertory theaters Finian's Rainbow. With such an illustrious career
and family history, I wondered who in Rico's family first
(39:13):
encouraged her to pursue performing professionally.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
It might have been my grandmother. My grandmother and her sister.
Do you know, I was fascinated by my immigrant history,
and I was fascinated that the Italians who came over
in the turn of the century went and were seamstresses
for World War One. And then my aunt Rose was
a very successful Zigfeld girl. So I grew up in
(39:37):
a house full of the actual follies girls, just like
Sondhimem's musical, which he always found fascinating. So I knew
her and her friends. I think right away there was
a sense that the actresses, they were the only feminists.
I was given women who made money, who got out
of the house, who did something that were like pioneers.
So I think it was a sense of disposition, first
(40:00):
the voice, but that I had the disposition. Yeah, I
had the disposition to stand on my own two feet,
to get out in the world, to get out of
a house. I wasn't a house oriented person. I wanted
to I wanted to be. I was intrepid, naturally intrepid,
and I was as I got older and stopped doing gymnastics,
where I went right away to a theater camp and
the gymnastics gave me a funny body language, so right
(40:21):
away I was I had high kicks and flips, and
I could do cartwheels, and I was getting all the
comic characters Adelaide and Hetty LaRue, and I got all
the funny stuff because I was physically unusual. I had big,
curly hair, a shapely body, but it was an acrobat
and so I had a sort of boldness about me.
And this a natural style of singing. I wasn't an
(40:42):
opera singer. I have none of the background of Audrey
McDonald and Kelly O'Hara, all these girls who trained in classical.
I'm a little more from the hip, you know, an Italian.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
American who just actress.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
But I'm also just a girl doing cartwheels in the lawn.
I would love to jump into a play. When I
got to Yale, I thought, oh God, gosh, I can't
be in college for four years. I'm just I was
just chomping at the bit to work. And I would
look at backstage newspaper and look for another adventure, you know.
And I looked. I saw a Ringling Brothers audition Rhode
Island Theater by the Sea, and I auditioned for Rhode
(41:16):
Island Theater by the Sea. I got seen in the
hall by the director of le Miz pulled me out
of the hall. And it might have even been that
day that made me feel like I'm on the adventure
because they pulled me out of one thing. I'm in
the middle of college. They put me in an audition
for le Miz. I opened my mouth and they stopped me.
They said, can you start in ten days? And it
(41:36):
was dropping out of Yale, you know, which I was
also a really good student, and I did.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
That part Yale.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Art history and philosophy, but mostly art history. I could
have gone down that road. That's a little bit of
a different topic. I loved my Yale education, but I
do have a me too story that we can put
aside for another time. But that was like a little
bit at Yale with one of the most prompt professors
in the world.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Yeah, just maybe he fixated on.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
You, he fixated on me. And then it was there
was a bad episode and it just was just very heartbreaking.
I never picked up my thesis. I was at a
graduate level and this one thing for graduating, so my
intellectual life was kind of, you know, not discouraged, but
it just I don't know what I got. I kind
of just froze and just went into the theater. So
(42:24):
it was wonderful when, you know, in the twenty seventeen
when everybody started talking about these things, But I had
already been thinking about silence and women, because in twenty
fifteen I started this process, this making of my own cabarets.
The first cabaret I did was called Sing the Silence,
and it was about women and their silences, based on
(42:45):
a conversation I'd had with Sondheim where he told me
a person can sing the apostrophe of a word. Couldn't wouldn't?
I said, but there's no, there's an apostrophe, And he
was talking to me about silences, and so we got
into these weird habit holes and I started thinking about
silences and all of this. So anyhow, that was a kind
of a turning point moment. Just to go back when
(43:07):
I dropped out of college and left one life as
an intellectual or as a kind of a student of
the world, I still have that. I treat everything like
opportunity for research.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Finish.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
I did it, went back, I did go back. Yeah,
that was you took.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
A break for how long? How many years were you
out of there?
Speaker 2 (43:24):
One and a half. But I did a year as
a correspondence student with other kids who were like journalists
or one kid who was at NASA and I was missing.
I called it Yale by mail. We did it all
by mail. It was really interesting. So I as a
correspondence student, so I didn't have to lose too much time.
That's the moment where I think I thought, maybe this
was going to take me not just out of high
(43:46):
school and be a good singer, oh wow, I have
a pretty voice, but into the profession, into crazy things
where you drop out of one thing and you jump
into another life and you pack your bags. That I
love the idea of that. You know.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Someone once pointed out to me. They said, oh, the
two ballet companies in New York, and there's two upper
companies in New York. And they said that, well, one
group they dance really well and they're acting is terrible,
and he goes and the other one they're acting is
really good, and they're dancing is so so. One group
they're singing is right, and they're acting is so. And
the thing that I love about you is that you
(44:18):
are an actress. Now you have made your reputation with
this huge component, this amazing piston in the engine here
of your singing career and singing in the theater and
so forth. But when I did that Gift of the
Gorgon with you, I mean, I'll say this till the
cows come home.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
You were so fantastic. And what I realized was, without.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Mentioning other people, there are these dames in the theater
who they're acting is so so they're acting, and so
they're singing as pristine they're singing is remarkable, but they're not.
And you have both.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Peter Schaffer wrote equis and that we did the American
premiere you and I. It's the first time it's ever
been heard in the in the US. It was a
great thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
And we did Gorgon.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Yeah, we did the Gift of the Gorgon, which Judy
Dench says in her book was the ravaged her that
it was the hardest role she ever played. My part
so it's innate to that role is to be destroyed,
like you wrecked me. I remember waking up the next day.
I was wrecked. It was a very difficult relationship. We
were playing professors of Greek mythology and philosophy, so we
(45:21):
were like two PhD type teachers. Maybe we could do
it again.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Who knows, well we should do something again, because I'm
really dying too. I haven't done a play in a while.
This one guy wrote a review. Isn't it funny how
people if they write a review.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
You were wonderful, as f Scott Fitzgerald, this time really good.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
But the thing about that is that we did you
took about critics.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
And one guy wrote a piece in a New Jersey
paper that was brought to my attention, and I thought
to myself, this guy's been reading my diary. He really
really got what I was trying to do, mister Baldwin.
This and this and this and this, and he wasn't
like licking me to death. But it was very very much,
very positive and and and filled with understanding.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
I think a lot of times people who.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Like I have a few like that.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
I was so Rackey was somebody who was like, I
just know, why bother?
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Why bother getting up there when he's But the point
is that Brandley was somebody who I thought, in my
mind he didn't really understand what acting was and what
people were doing and why I really want you and
I to find something to do together.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
My twins apply to college in the fall, so I
know you're not on that place, but you could do
a play here and.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
Still in college.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Yes, she's aware, she's at Duke and she is uh
already recruited at Goldman Sachs at the most premier premier.
She's brilliant. She's a math major, former tennis star, and
on the team. She's a beautiful human being. All three
of my girls, I'm proud to say, have hair down
to their waists. Just imagine the whole thing. Me and
these three women like they're with me right now. It's
(46:56):
they're everywhere as your beautiful, funny, playful children and your
gorge his wife are like as I look at you,
I see all that life. Do you remember the Bowery Babes. No,
that was a period of my life. You gave me
money during Hurricane Sandy. You donated from your foundation to
you didn't know what it was. It was when I
remember when I ran a mother's group down in Soho.
I have five thousand families in it because when I
(47:18):
was in the stage of parenting you're in. But I
did this already. This Mother's Day which is coming up
twenty twenty six. I am finishing it. It's twenty years
and not for profit. We used to have a lot
of money. You gave us some money which we did
use for diapers dot com. I don't know if you
remember you provided diapers for the community center you were.
It was called Boweribabes. Actually it wasn't a thing you
(47:39):
do with Broadway. It was the Lower east Side. It
was a Lower east Side mother's community that I founded
when I was in your parenting phase with all those
little children, all that behavior which we would deal with. Actually,
we used to have events for how to talk, so
your kids will listen and listen, so your kids will talk,
and you know, control but not control, let them be empowered.
(48:00):
Closing it down this Mother's Day and all of our
money whatever we saved over the years, there's twenty thousand dollars.
We've already given it to Sloan Kettering, which I'm so
proud of, to pediatric Cancer. So that's close. We're going
to announce that it's all over. But it's a beautiful
and difficult time to raise little children.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
You think Broadway and what's on Broadway has changed a
lot since you started.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Broadway. Of course, has changed because I'm not there. It's changed,
but it's still temperamentally the same people, you know, isn't
it moss Hart who says it's all the unhappy children.
I think he says that in his book. You know,
there's a lot of people who come to it because
they find each other, and that's not a bad thing.
It's still a beautiful holding ground for a lot of
all times.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
The way it also links to Sondheim because from Rogerson
Hard and Rogers and Hammerstein Oklahoma and all these sunny,
beautiful things, some tragedy here and there, but my fare later.
And then you get into Sondheim, people doing a lot
of whining and Sondheim but it's real, honest. And then
you get into shows that are like modern shows, which
are very edgy and and strange and urban, and you
(49:02):
know that the themes are very very existential.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
I mean, people are really really doing a lot of yeah,
but there's.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
Still a community, a lot yeah, a lot of crying
and a lot of loud singing.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
There is some debate currently as of this week, there's
some debate about the demands of eight shows a week.
There are some actors who are now stepping forward and
saying eight shows a week under the conditions that were
being asked to, which is to outscream and out sing
pop stars with no pro tools and so on, and
so they're being asked to be pristine rock singers eight
shows a week with orchestras blazing. When we were younger
(49:36):
and when I was doing classic shows, the original orchestrations
were spare. I would step forward in a Kurt Vile musical,
which I've done a few, many of the orchestra stops
pretty much, and you start going, tell me is love still?
And there's nothing going on except a little like a
little it's just a little something. The orchestra stops. They
don't do that. Now. The orchestra's blazing, blaring, the sound
(49:59):
systems are it's your vocal cords are being asked to
do different things. So I think we're in a time
where actors are pushing back and saying that this marvel
comic level entertainment value. The demands are crazy, They're not
human anymore. Hopefully people will start coming to my simple shows,
me and a pianist, me and a small band, back
(50:20):
to human size work.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
My thanks to Melissa Erico, this episode was recorded at
CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Zach MacNeice, and Victoria De Martin. Our engineer is Isaac
Kaplan Woolner. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought
to you by iHeart Radio
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is a Tony
nominated actress, singer, recording artist, and writer. Melissa Rico has
graced the Broadway stage in iconic roles like Eliza Doolittle
in My Fair Lady and the title role in One
(00:25):
Touch of Venus. She is also one of the most
celebrated interpreters of the work of composers Stephen Sondheim and
Michelle LeGrande. Her twenty eighteen album Sondheim Sublime was described
by The Wall Street Journal as the best all Sondheim
album ever recorded. In addition to Sondheim, Erko's interpretation of
(00:47):
Michelle Legrand's music was so profound that she was asked
by The New York Times to write his eulogy and
was the only American singer invited to perform at his
memorial in Paris. In addition to her career on stage
and in the recording studio, Erico is a recent contributing
editor to The New York Times and was the only
(01:10):
American singer invited to perform at his memorial in Paris.
As a native New Yorker, and performer with a long
career on the Broadway stage. I was curious if Melissa
Erico was a frequent theatergoer herself.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, I pursued tickets today to Ragtime. I don't go
to the theater obsessively. I don't, not in recent years.
I don't exactly have a good reason. If it's a
Sondhim musical, I'll never miss it ever, nothing even a gesture.
And yeah, I never miss a thing. I'm gonna. I'm
gonna check out Ragtime. It's merely because I'm a parent,
(01:46):
I think, you know. But if it's a have to
you know, the Irish rep you know, or Bill Irwin
is in it, certain things, I'm going to check it out.
But so no, not obsessively. A lot of my friends
are Tony voters that we're getting to that age, or
everybody I know is voting.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So he started. And you've made a name for yourself
doing you know, the standards. The big chips have rolled
into town.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Absolutely, and when you became.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Famous, and as my recollection, you became famous when you
did My Fair Lady with Chamberlain, that's when you really
really made your name in New York as one of
the princesses of.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
The Yeah, I did like miss before that. I did
actually added Karenina with the creator of Circle in the
Square with Ted Man, and I did make a bit
of a stir in that for some reason, maybe because
it was such a misguided show and I sort of
stood out as something that was positive. I remember John
Simon saying he wished that the entire cast had gotten
hit by the train and other memorable lines. Way late
(02:39):
in my career, he asked me out to launch and
he started to love my work. That is a little
novella in itself, like my relationship too. Well, there's always
a novella, right, but I could just track that relationship.
It's a beautiful, crazy shape. But he came to love
me with Boy did he make life complicated in the
early days. Who John Simon?
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Simon? Oh Simon, the critical?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Oh sorry, I'm asus.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
When you say that about Simon.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Well, we'll get into critics for a second, and that
is not even critics. I'll never forget this guy, who
I really adore. He wrote an article about me. He
wrote about an article about me in The New Yorker,
and he had the greatest line. He said, Alec Baldwin,
who resembles an NFL linebacker in his broadcast years.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
That's so good, that's so bad, it's good.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
And I was like, wow, that's spot off.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I remember the day's rice too, you know. Well, first
of all, do you remember the days where the New
York Times got printed and everybody would run get it
and bring it to the opening night party at Tapana
the Green?
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Right?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Oh my god, So I remember those days where they
were hot off the press. They would go forty fourth Street,
they would run to the party, and you'd be in
this unbelievable dress from Bendel's.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Which would go to the Times Building and get go.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
To the Times Building, grab the paper, bring it to
the party, and you just done this twelve million dollar musical.
This happened so many times, luckily and well unluckily. But
in my fair lady, I was in a green dress.
Tavern on the Green was completely packed. I bought it.
Its Fran Weisler came up to me and said, you're
gonna be a star, like really quietly, and I guess
(04:05):
it said the beguiling newcomer like, and then whatever the rest.
But they race with their eyes to the you know,
the first assessment, which is it's a disaster or it's
just you know, a gut punch is the worst. Fortunately,
unfortunately this show just opened when the show.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Was done in nineteen forty three, This and the Unfortunately
they look for.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
That right away in the first paragraph and then they
just run up to you at the party. So that
was a good a good party. But yeah, I do
remember those days. But there I also remember the days
where the magazines would come out later, so you'd get
the New York Times, Stephen Holden if you were Cabaret
or Sunday remember how he used to do this second
review on Sunday, you'd get Frank Rich, then you'd get
Stephen Holden's possibly on piling on your telling a double wham.
(04:45):
You know, Thursday to Sunday you'd just be dying. Then
the magazines, and that's where John Simon was. The magazines,
so you'd walk by New York Magazine, New York Magazine,
and then the Variety. You look for Jeremy Garrard, things
like that, you know, And I'm definitely not somebody who
is like studies reviews, but I was young enough to
just want to get the just so I would look
quickly for one of those unfortunately or you know, houch
(05:07):
kind of words. And I saw dishpan face, Erico, dishpan face.
That was I think that's where.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I think it.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Later Tony Walton said, my face is like a moon,
so maybe I have a little flat face. It's good
for theater.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
No, don't, don't. I would employ this. I would employ
none of those words.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
And as I said later in my career, he went
got more and more and more complimentary, which I don't
remember any of the phraseology. I only remember the bad things.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
But I did streetcar and I go to the party
and I'm going home and I don't want to read
the paper and I just wasn't in the mood if
it was. I'm assuming I'm going to get some kicking
the balls there or whatever.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And I go home and.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
I pick up the paper on the corner and I
get the paper and I'm reading. I'm like, holy shit,
I mean he was really very kind to me. And
my ex wife turns to me, not the reason she's
my ex wife, but contributing.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
She turns me, shees, you don't believe any of that,
do you.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
It was like, well, okay, maybe I shouldn't believe any
of that.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, it's like my mom says, you know, like, well finally,
you know, so it's like, got a great musical, so
you're in a hit. Well, finally just puts your entire
past in somewhere weird light.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
Just critics, I think, But I.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Think the critics. I'll give you two examples. I think
the critics in film and in the theater. Here's what's
missing and that and that is that if you've got
somebody who's as talented as you are, you're so talented,
you're so talented, and you're so gorgeous, and you get
up there and you play these parts and you can sing.
So if the show doesn't work, it's not your fault. No,
(06:39):
it's a director or the reader. And they don't want
to do they feel they have to dish out. And
in the and in film, what they do is they
pile up on the person who's not doesn't have that
much power. So if the person so if the star
of the movie prints money for the studio, they get
a little whisper who goes, don't you touch him?
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Or business of it. I don't have a lot of business,
you know, like tentacles, like people like pushing away the
complexities of these things connecting you. Yeah, I don't have that.
So my life has actually been quite natural. I sort
of feel like I'm actually in the jungle, and like
experiencing the actual jungle. There's no cages, there's no monitors,
which has made it interesting and very lively. To answer
your question, by the way, I do go to the
(07:18):
theater like I'll see Audra or i'll go in if
I'm in London, I'll go see John Lithgow and go backstage.
In both cases, so it is friends, but it was
also like masters, like when I feel like there's a
master thing just FAI would never miss it. When you
called to do a play together last summer, what's the
first thing I.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Said, Well, you said yes, yes, right, I made it.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
I made it happen.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
But I want to lose the opportunity to mention to
people here on the show that it was really a
big moment in my life in terms of work, and
that is you see people you obviously are you know,
like I said, one of the great great leading ladies
of the Broadway musical stage, and you did Gorgon and
I had never done anything with you dramatic correct and
we're doing this thing, and again I remember going, holy.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Shit, like you can do that? I thought you weren't
that into that, And that's more musical musical saying right,
you were fantastic. I was top material.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Yeah, I connect to things, and I have a kind
of unguardedness I always had, and you know, it probably
hasn't served me in other ways, possibly though I won't
regret it. But I do feel like artistically, like I'm
available to what's why jazz is feeling so good in
these cabarets and things. The parts that I had for
until I was forty six, I was playing all the aws,
(08:30):
was playing all the lovely characters, and just to sort
of tap the tuning fork back to this critics thing,
I was always called lovely or lovely appeared in a
lot of reviews because I had to be. I was
sort of in Brigadoon or I was in my fair
Lady high society. So many of these shows were the charming,
young sweet character. And I went to Harold Guskin at
one point. Do you remember Harold. Yes, Harold is an
(08:51):
acting coach who wrote a book called How to Stop Acting.
I told him about the reviews. He looked at a
bunch of them always said lovely, something like lovely. He said,
We're going to get the word lovely out of these reviews.
I'm going to teach you how to shit on the stage,
he said. And it was so gross. I was like, oh,
you know, Glen Close had just left and I like
bumped into you know, all kinds of people in the
(09:12):
in the lobby, which shows that particular show would have
been Dracula. I think, okay, who did you do Dracula
with Tom Hewitt? Was Dracula? He was wonderful. That was
a tricky sell for me. I was not sure that.
See Christopher Hampton wrote it, who wrote Lele And I
loved him and I knew him socially and part of
(09:35):
that kind of uh royalty of the British theater, and
I knew a lot of people exactly. And Christopher is
such a high vibration, and Frank Wildhorn was a composer,
and it was unclear where the balance was going to be.
There's a bodice ripper kind of you know, in obviously
a Dracula musical, there's also another kind of inferred, passionate, strange,
(10:00):
illuminating Sasbo's world whatever. There's everything women walking around in
there in there, but yeah, you know, like there's just
those all these Victorian dresses. And I was saying to Kelly,
maybe O'Hara, maybe we should be attracted to each other
over the waiting of the monster. And she was like
she was looking at me like monster, Like we can't.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Fix that free way with the monster.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
She was literally looking at me like, Melissa, you care
so much. I was reading bram Stoker in my dressing room,
was having you.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Went to Yalees, You're meeting bram Stoker.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I was having paranormal experiences in the theater. I feel
like this is going to get quirky. I feel like
David Blasco full on was aligned with me because you
know he he haunts the theater. Have you heard about that.
David Blasco is a lot is a ghost. He's the
most famous ghost in Broadway history. He had an apartment
(10:53):
above the Blasco and so I visited the apartment multiple
times with somebody who was Dracula's understudy and had lots
of extra time. I'm and he got the key and
so we would sneak up there, you know, on between
the shows. Remember his name is a big guy. He
was a little old. We'd actually look around for for
signs of the paranormal. He was kind of nerdy in
(11:15):
his buff way. We had wonderful times up there looking
for the paranormal.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
I think I found the paranormal. It's right here. It
doesn't stick your hand in my pocket, it's here.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
This has gone wrong. No, anyhow, David Belasco, I'm sure
I saw him. I turned around looking at my dressing room.
I saw a man in a black coat go into
the mirror right next to the dressing room, not the
star dressing room. If you probably he walks through, it's
probably your dressing room is the bottom floor. I'm the second.
I was a second dressing room. Have you played the Belasco? Okay,
(11:50):
so I'm up a flight and there's that really old mirror. Beautiful.
I saw him walk into the mirror. I saw him walk.
I know this sounds like I'm making this up. I
actually turned around. I saw a man walk into the mirror.
Another experience I had was we were in previews and
the show was not going particularly well. There's a woman
in a blue dress who also haunts the theater and
when the previews were happening. They don't know why, but
(12:13):
all the pipes broke and there was a flood. Everything
was dumping down on millions of dollars of set, and
the fire department came and literally I heard these like
handsome Irish guys go David. Blasco strikes again. Like while
they're walking around, they know the place is haunted and
weird things happen there. I feel that when I went
back to get my coat one day in my l
shaped dressing room, and I went around the corner. Once
(12:35):
I got around looking for the coat, it was too
dark to see my coat. Someone turned on my lamp.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Blasco strikes again.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
He turned on the lamp. Mm hmm. I was freaked out.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Turned it off, Christine and Christine.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Maybe it's all the powers, suggested, I look, I'm old
enough now. Maybe I'm just cuckoo. Oh you're singing the
Phantom of the Ore. I've passed on that role. Why
to go back to Yale?
Speaker 4 (13:00):
But I want to.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
I want to.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
I want to. We're going to get there.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
But let me just ask you this, which is that
when you do something, because I'm sure you get offered
a lot of things simultaneously when you do something like
Dracula Beyond, because many people don't understand this a paycheck
and I want to go to work. People say to me,
why did you do that? I go, I looked at
my calendar and I hadn't worked in two months, and
I was an anxious to go to work.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
This is what I do. And so I go and
do this movie or this play or TV thing.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Whatever, and find did I do it?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Like, we'll pick one, Well, we're going to pick a couple,
So pick Dracula. Why that? Why did you want to
do that?
Speaker 4 (13:30):
Well?
Speaker 3 (13:31):
It was the draw.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Well, I'm get into my mid thirties at that point,
and you know, I had a ton of positivity around
what I was doing in a sort of third revival
of my career, and I started super young. I had
just finished working with some Time and Michelle legram and
had a Tony nomination. I had really awoken a kind
of vision of a sort of intellect meets actress singing.
(13:55):
I actually it was almost like straight acting the way
I think about things. Forgive me for saying barbistur. Samda's
a great inspiration to me, because every half sentence is
smart in her prime. There's just no She's the Gilgood
or the Laurence Olivia of music singing. And I was
starting to think like that. I was starting to animate
music like it was a play. And the Laburn thing
(14:17):
was so interesting and beautiful. I worked with James Lapine,
he was the director, and Jeremy SAMs wrote the words.
It was beautiful, and obviously Sondheim was Sunday in the
Park with George. I did that and it was like
my brain went wild. It was an art hist.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I loved it.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
But that was right after so it's just like it
was like there was like a wind pushing me. And
I just thought, maybe because it's based on a beautiful novel,
maybe because it has so much undercurrent of social it
was actually kind of looking at sexuality and repression, and
it does a Victorian novel, and I just thought, well,
it's another corset thing. So I'm gonna look all right,
(14:55):
and you know, it's gonna look really nice and most
incredible clothes. I was my friend is missing, you know,
Oharah goes missing, and I'm just so well dressed. When
I was dressing out, I came out in these coats
with a lamp. I had hats, like in my in
my dress, looking for her in the cemetery, and she
comes out with the glow in the dark contact lenses
and snakes in her hair and throwing up, and I
was like, so well dressed. I was like, oh, honey,
(15:16):
where have you been?
Speaker 3 (15:16):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
It was also silly, but it didn't have to be,
you see, it was I was trying to make sense
of it, Alec and so I thought, because it was
Christopher Hampton and it was Bram Stoker, I thought there
was hope. You know, maybe I complicated, you know, it
turned out to be kind of like I was lost
in a sort of kitch maze, and I had to
(15:37):
make sense to the audience. After lots of weird stuff
would happen. I'd be left with Kelly O'Hara had like
sort of thrown up and went down, you know, somebody
stabbed her and she was throwing up, and she had
the snakes and she disappeared, and then glow in the garden.
She had the fangs and stuff, and I had to
I had to do a lot of stuff, and then
you respond to things or I had to bite Dracula
(15:58):
or something I don't I had to kill him at
the end. But here's the thing. Often I'd be left alone.
And the way the set worked was they were instead
of sending the set this way or up, like sideways
are up, they had a concept that all of these
pre Raphaelite style buildings, these large, large double story two
hundred feet way down there's a great depth in the glasco.
(16:19):
The set would go down, and so we would be
left with these precarious holes around us. People were very upset.
I actually spun Stephen McKinley Henderson. I spun his jacket
in previews and you can look it up. He's often
says I saved his life. It just was odd and dangerous,
and I felt responsible. And so after all the set
(16:39):
would close, you'd feel everything closed. I'd be left alone
with these solos. That's how it felt. It felt like
I'd been left with this weird like it could be funny,
but like I'm going to try to fix it for you,
and I just you know me, I didn't. I didn't
get giggles or phone it in. I just kept trying
to fix it. So it felt demanding.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
You know, It's interesting that there are people I know
myself included, where periodically I didn't do this all the time,
but periodically, especially when I was younger, I felt responsible
for a lot of what was going on around me,
rather than keeping the focus on my own performance.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Like as I moved along in film, I began to
be like you know, I would do the scene with someone.
I said that to Paccino one time. I said, are
you doing a scene with someone and you're at the
net here playing tennis and the other person.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Isn't that good?
Speaker 1 (17:26):
You got to the director and say, said me. Even
Pacino said, oh no, no, no, I never gon't get involved.
I keep my focus on myself. If you're not an
equal partner to me, I don't look at it that way.
I mean, you're doing your thing. I'm doing my thing.
Now I tend to be much more like you know.
I don't bother. I just come to work.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
When I do a scene, I try not to leave
the set when we're doing that scene till all the
coverage is done. Then I can take a break. Cruise
said the greatest line to me once, Tom said the
greatest son he goes. He said, I got to give
them their money's worth, I said, who he goes? The
people that are paying me and the people that are
buying the tickets. Hm, I gotta get man. He's hard.
Everybody knows he's the hardest working person in the movie business.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
He's not totally He's not wrong, Oh no.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
And my point is, I thought to myself, he's going
to take this to another level of really really committing to.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Just doing life my thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I kind of learned that a long time ago, and
maybe not in the most positive sense at first. Which
I worked with Bill Cosby when I was seventeen. I
played a young student Cosby whare I was on his
television show. It was called The Cosby Mysteries. Do you
remember that?
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yes, my friend David Black wrote on Cosby Mysteries.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
I was in it as a teenager, and he used
to do his part and then leave and he'd leave
me with nobody a piece of tape or his stand
in and he'd say, that's what you went to Yale
drama school. I was going to Yale, that's what you're
going to yell for. Yeah, And he'd leave me alone,
so I'd have to act opposite him, but without him.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
There, he didn't give a shit.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
He was busy or something. He did ask me out
for lunch, you know sometimes, well, yeah, exactly. I came
to wonder about I misunderstood a lot of lunch invitations
in my career. I actually went to lunch and was
a total lady at a million lunches, and I.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Realized, that's why were you this that where you were there?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
I misread so many lunches you didn't wear it. I
didn't know. I didn't even know. I didn't even think
of it. I thought people wanted to have lunch and talk.
I once had a Saturday night audition called with Harvey Weinstein,
and I remember it was like why Saturday night, you know?
But I went and I wanted it so badly. It
(19:30):
was for never Land, and I thought, I am never Land,
Peter Pan, I get me in there. I just wanted
it so badly, and I showed up so prepared, so
profoundly prepared, and I ended up being very ladylike and
going on about my young family on my marriage. Never
heard from him again. So maybe being stranded, unfortunately, is
(19:51):
a little bit of a not a familiar feeling. I
know I'm not victim or something, but artistically I don't
always have the Alec Baldwin opposite me. Here's one of
the beautiful things. Partnership took on a whole other meaning
when I started making my own work and the twenty
years I've been playing with this piano player, Ted Firth,
(20:13):
many masters as well are now playing with me. I
have about four or five of the most profound musicians
you can imagine. But what I've discovered in cabaret and
jazz is that we create these shows. I come up
with these themes. Everything has an arc, a story, a
costume of feeling. Every show there's one moment where I
(20:35):
stop the band and I just work with Ted and
we have a ballad of some anyone can whistle, I
can dream, can't I send in the clowns. That's not
the best example because it's very hard to reinvent that one.
It doesn't need much reinventing, But we do something that
the audience is absolutely riveted in the band or the
Bad and the Beautiful From my Noir record, this song
(20:56):
it's actually not called the bat of from the Call,
No it is called the bat of the bum It
is in this It is one of the most difficult
melodies I've ever sung. Tony Bennett couldn't learn it, and
that's why Bill Evans plays it as a solo on
their record. It just stops and it's out of the
blue solo, I'm told is because Tony was just flummoxed
by the melody. Yeah, oh, I love it. I worked
(21:17):
really hard on it. It's these moments that are chromatic,
super difficult and full of rich, evocative language. It's emotionally
improvised as well as chords and extended bars and what's
happening in my later you know, sort of in this
life process. All the handholding of Barbara Cook, it's your turn,
(21:40):
Rosemary Claar, You're wonderful, all these women who've held my
hand and said, just do it, do it your way,
just do it. Robirt of Flack putting all that love aside,
and there's a lot of it. I sit with Ted
in these moments and I'm not trying to sing a
song anymore. I'm trying to sort of let the song
teach me something as it's happened. There's so much beauty
(22:02):
and wisdom in the American songbook from the thirties through
Joni Mitchell, honestly through sound times. I'm sure, and I'm
sure if I would just start learning Sarah Burellis's music.
There's others, but I am so engrossed in the worlds
of Jerome Kern and early Oscar Hammer sign all the
seed bed of what became Sondheim. So when I work
(22:23):
with Ted, I'm so safe and we don't even talk.
It's like you with a great actress or actor Glenn Gary.
All the beautiful movies you've given us that are so masterful.
I bet you had partners where you didn't have to
talk about it. It was best to come out of
your trailer full of life and just face another person
who's full of life and don't talk. That's me and Ted.
(22:46):
We don't talk at all. I might say something that implies, God,
this kills me, or boy, that's a lonely song, or
dreaming saves your life. I'll say like a sentence like that,
and he'll go like mm hm, and then he'll start
playing what sounds like my subconscious like sounds like a
dream anyhow. So we just made a record called I
(23:06):
Can Dream, Can't I, And it's just the two of
us doing those moments. It's just an album full of
those moments. And I don't know if it's overkill in
terms of piano solos and meandering non arrangements. But it's
that's just what it is.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
When you talk about that, that kind of battery you
can have with someone. Mine was so unlikely the greatest
example of that, even though there's other things I did
where I had this connection with someone, I'm acting with
somebody I'm really thinking. It usually begins often in the
theater where I'm doing the piece over and over again.
So when I did street Car and I had to
come out and I had to and I would tell.
I told Ed Harris, I said, I never loved a
(23:45):
woman more than Amy. When we were doing she was stella.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, you lock horns.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Yeah, you just like that person. You have the same
thing going on.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
And it's about the work actually, you know, I often
asked my mother about you know, always Ted. You know,
we don't we don't talk about. We don't talk about
you know, it's very hard to get work. Every day
is a struggle to get these concerts, to design the concerts,
to promote the concerts. I do so much by myself
and sometimes it's just unwieldy. And then I say, well, mom,
Ted doesn't push it on social media. He doesn't. She says, Melissa,
(24:15):
stop looking at ted, look together at the music. And
by the way, my mom's not, you know, not a boodhut. Anyway,
I mentioned her twice as so she was. But it's
the idea of just we both look together passionately at
the music. And I'm sure that's what you mean when
you have all the.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Person and the person.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I had the most strange connection that way was it
was Julie Harris played my mother on a TV show
and I go to do this TV show Not's landing,
and I'm like, I don't know. With the show's in
the top ten, my agent said, you're going to be
a cast addition to.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
A hit show.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I go in there and all of them are lovely people.
I mean, I had a lot of fun. But Julie
Harris plays my mother, and it was like you'd sit
down with her and do a scene and she just
pulled it out of you.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
You didn't have to do anything.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
May seconds for me look her in the eye, and
there you were, and she.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Just took you on this magic carpet. She was so
empathic and so beautiful.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
You know, I want to be like that. Please help
me get later. I want to be like that. Yeah,
as a person large, I really want to be that
for younger people and for any artistic process.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Actress and singer Melissa Raco. If you enjoy conversations with
the leading ladies of the Broadway stage, check out my
episode with Patty Lapone.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
I knew when I was a kid that I had
a Broadway voice.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
I wanted to be a rocker because I grew up
in that era of transistor radios at the Beach.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
You know, the.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Rascals we started in the fifties, Little Anthony and the Imperials.
I mean all through the fifties and sixties and seventies.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
I knew I didn't have a rock voice, though I
knew I had a Broadway voice.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
To hear more of my conversation with Patti Lapone, go
to Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break, Melissa
Rico talks about how her two musical north stars, Michelle
Legrand and Stephen Sondheim, shaped her artistic life. Hi'm Alec
(26:21):
Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. Melissa Raco's stage
career began with the national tour of Les miserab, which
she joined while a freshman at Yale University. It was
the first of many iconic roles, including her star turn
as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady opposite Richard Chamberlain
(26:41):
in nineteen ninety three. She earned a Tony nomination for
her performance in Michelle Legrand's Amour in two thousand and three.
But it's Eerko's later work on the stage and in
the studio interpreting the music of Sondheim and La Grand
that has truly set her apart as a singular voice
in American music. Equally praised for interpreting both composers repertoires.
(27:06):
I wanted to know which of the two Melissa encountered first.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
It was Lagron.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
How did you intersect with him?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Because I was living in la a whole long period
of my life in which I used to call you
as were old friends and ask your advice and things.
And I was doing lots and lots of television pilots,
and as I told you, I was. You know, there
were about seven of them. One of them involved them
cutting all my hair off and firing me the next day,
and I had no hair. They wanted me to look
like a French actress, they said, But they took twelve
(27:34):
inches off my hair and fired me. But I got
my hair put back, so I survived all of that LA.
And I got a phone call while I was living
in La that Michelle Legrand wrote a musical. I was
given a fax by my then manager and it said
that the passe Murai is coming over from Paris and
they're bringing it to Broadway. James Lapine is the director,
(27:56):
Jeremy SAMs is the writer, and with music by Michelle Legrand.
And it was like the paper was glowing in my hand,
truly glowing in my hand. My father had brought me
up to love the music through the Vietnam years, and
I knew every song. You have to believe me. I
didn't tell the backstory, but I love Michelle. I looked
at this paper. I looked at my manager and I said,
(28:17):
Michelle Lagron, Michelle Legron wrote a musical like it was.
And she turned to me, she goes, I know, I know,
I love her.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
So Michelle has tops in my book.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Yeah, yeah, so that's not my manager anymore. But I
flew back. I flew back met the team got the
leading part to see. James Lapine was was the stitch
he wrote Sunday in the Park with George. So right
after that I had a wonderful success. I met Son,
Tim and James for Sunday in the Park with George,
and I just got cast by the based on the meeting,
(28:50):
and they didn't ask me to sing.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
When was the original production?
Speaker 2 (28:53):
When the original production? Now I was the Kennedy Center.
It was the first major revival in history. It was
a very first time it had ever been seen again.
I wore Bernadette's clothes. They added a like a foot,
you know, to the dresses, but I wore her dresses.
It was such an honor. So that was a bit
back to back. So the two north Stars came back
to back. I can't choose between them, and they don't
(29:15):
always have the highest regard always for each other. And
sometimes I wrote Michell Legrand's eulogy in the New York Times,
and I said that he could write, he could turn
a melody to a chord that no one else on
earth besides him could have thought of. Sometimes quoted that
back to me in an email. We had so many
(29:36):
emails asking me like what like what like what cord?
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Like?
Speaker 2 (29:40):
What was he was? So he didn't want me to
revere him in the same way. You know, I revered
them both, but they were the polar opposites. One is
a total sensualist with multiple, you know, many women in
his life, lots of wives. Michelle's very happy with his
now wife whatever, but they're perfect. They actually he goes
back to the first girlfriend or something, so he's actually
(30:02):
back at the his true love. But he's just a
sensualist and an affirmative French troubadour really from the great tradition, Charlestrena,
from even the sound of the old carousel. It's just
all the dancing illusions of life, and you know, the
spirit of the poet lives on you. Hear an accordion,
you know in your brain when he's just beauty itself.
(30:23):
Sondheim is asking a lot of questions. It's like your
mammot is percussive. It tells you what to Everything is percussive.
Every syllable tells you what to think, where to turn
a phrase, and it's edgier, and it's all about the
ambivalences and disappointments in life. You get everything you want
in life and nothing that you want in life. That's
the sort of Sondheim life. You can probably apply that
(30:47):
thought to any song in any character. They both are
doomed by their duties and their desires.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
You've been a leading lady in these musicals and these
very in a world of great romance, and what happens
when you go out there and you're not that in
love with the guy who is your leading man in
the in the show, not without naming names, meaning what's
it like for you to have to go and do
so when you do a movie if they do a
love scene with somebody that you're not that j as
(31:15):
a person. Forget about sexually, You're just not there. You're
not your favorite people. You get through it the days over,
it's over. When you have to go out there again
and again and again in a show and that person
isn't your capetin amen.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Have you had that happen?
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I usually find a way though,
you know, there's a you know, musical theater is a
little different than than the film because you have to
be athletes. You're you're sharing a athletic task. So if
the person can get the athletics, you know, beautiful singing,
be there physically for you, be positive, not be ill
(31:53):
a lot. You know, when somebody's really ill, it's really
a downer. I've really annoyed, annoyed when I have a
leading man who's prone to like bronchitis sort of thing,
because because he's drinking all night, and you know, he's
drinking all night and he comes he direct and you're like, honey,
could you just just drink water, Just just stop drinking,
you know, and so you have to stick all the time.
(32:13):
So these things like that, you know, it's more like
people catching colds, and you want you want people to
be grounded and reliable and friendly. I've never really had
anyone that just really repulses me. There was one that's
not it. It was it came in just a little
too into his liquor whatever. Yeah, like.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
The clot Tom Jones, just a little Tom Jones.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Was bothers me because that's just like he's not thinking,
he's just being all like, yeah, cod piece.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Oh god, yeah, well that's important.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
But I don't find that I.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
Was in the ballet, I had a gigantic cod piece.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
I'm not a code person like I.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Went to the codpiece story that made me a custom
god piece when I was in this and.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
When I had to blatant Camelot, and I was supposed
to be absolutely in love with the guy with the
cod piece, right. I can't remember the character, but I
was working with King Arthur, who was Jeremy Irons. It
was very hard for me to, you know, to be like, gosh,
I'm going to go off with the.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Dickhead I mean codpiece.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
It wouldn't been inst and I'm looking at him like,
forget it, Jeremy Irons off stage, off stage, we're like
perfect for each other. No.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Actually, there was one time we had between shows, you know,
we're getting notes or something, and the notes started and
we realized we had just had a three hour break.
And he goes, oh, darling, we just had three hours.
We should have had sex, but I forgot. Not that
I would have said yes, but it was.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
And we're laying there naked on a bed. I'm going
to kill her in this movie The Juror that to me,
Moore was the star of.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
And we're laying on.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
This bed together and we're naked and we have a
sheet over us, and she goes, have you done this
a lot before?
Speaker 3 (33:58):
These nude scenes like with you?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
And she got I go listen to me favorite, Like
I said, twenty minutes from now, we won't even put
the sheet over us.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
And then one's going to notice that the crew doesn't care.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
We'll be butt naked ready and the crew doesn't give
the ship, so we'll cover up. So we have to
do this scene and we're like going at it. We're
like making down. But there was a lamp in her body,
were a towel, yeah, yeah, we a little fake LEAFU.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
Yeah, they will I have my thick leaf. Yeah. And
you don't have.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Intimacy counseling back then, right, Oh yeah, me neither, because
that was.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
My intimacy counselor. Because I said to her, they make think, okay,
that's lunch and I'm going to go have lunch. And
I look at her and I go and we're like
really really like pulsing here, look right.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
In the eye, and I go, what do you want
for lunch? And she goes, you know, oh, and I
was like, oh, yeah, ok. I was married at the time,
and I was okay.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I wrote an essay about this, about doing my first
nude scene for the television show Billions, and it's called
Negotiating Nudity.
Speaker 3 (34:52):
Are you nude?
Speaker 2 (34:53):
In Billions, I played the wife of the you know
how there were two brothers. The premise of the show
is two brothers and the bad friend rather survived and
the good man died in the nine to eleven disaster.
I'm the wife of the good man. I knew all
the bad things about Damian Lewis. I know everything, and
I'm the wife that says I know you're bad and
I'm going to write a book and they shut my
(35:14):
life down.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
How do you end up nude? That's why I end up.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Nude because I've written a tell all book and I
sleep with the publisher. I don't know I had to
sleep with the publisher if I had a good book.
But that's something I should revisit. What was creepy was
that I negotiated it, and I wrote an essay about
all the negotiations, because they ask you about your left
bosom and your right bosom, and what you're willing to
show in your back, this crack and that other thing
(35:36):
and the button on your lower back and just all
weird stuff.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Oh it all came off.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Oh really, did you have a contract that was specific?
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Jack schmancrack.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
I found the whole thing so it's just wrong tempered
for me, Like I just the wrong person to be,
you know, navigating all this. It just was crazy. So
I did write this essay, which I think is how
my New York Time things started, because that really was
really a good piece. Christina Cuomo actually printed it for
me in one of her magazines. And then I got
the phone call, that beautiful, famous phone call famous to
(36:10):
me when Scott Heller from The New York Times said,
we think you're right for the Times. I'm pretty sure
that it was that. Christina always thinks that she gave
me my first. But the show was tricky because I
had to get you know, spray painted or whatever for
body paint so that you look extra tan, you know,
and perfect your skin. I had worked out my body
(36:30):
was just as good as I was going to get.
And I looked at the call sheet. Of course, they
never told me who I was going to be in
bed with. It was Austin Pendleton. Ah, he's so what
was But Austin is an older.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
Man could play the publisher Jesus christ.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Austin was my acting coach when I was in my twenties,
and he went to college. You went to Yale class
of sixty one with my fast one. Yes, he was
my acting teacher, and so that's what my article is
about facing your acting teacher in your a nude scene.
It was really hard and he was we were both,
I mean, we're it's really bizarre. It was a really
(37:07):
bizarre day. We obviously got to you know, we did
what we had to do it, but it was awkward
and it created a very funny article, and it was,
you know, we had a pile of towels between us.
But why are we talking about this? But he was
my teacher and he helped me to get Eliza Doolittle.
I and Roger Reese they were my coaches when I
was young. So you never know who's going to be
(37:27):
on the call sheet.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
We were thinking you and I together called billions in concerts,
and you and I will reenact the nude scene.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Then you're gonna get to see.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Some songs, No, I have music.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
Of grand together. Who cares all the quirky stuff?
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Actress, singer and writer Melissa Raco. If you're enjoying this conversation,
tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the
thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get
your podcasts. When we come back, Melissa Rico talks about
the great aunt who became a Zingfeld Folly star and
(38:07):
the grandmother who first recognized her talent. I'm Alec Baldwin
and this is Here's the thing. Melissa Rico was born
in New York City and raised in Manhasset, Long Island.
(38:28):
Her father was an orthopedic surgeon and a pianist, and
her mother was a teacher who now works as a
sculptor and artist. But the performing arts ran even deeper
in her family. Her maternal grandmother was an opera singer,
and her great aunt Rose was a successful Zigfeld Folly
star Eriko's own professional career began at just twelve years
(38:51):
old on the children's television series The Great Space Coaster.
The series led to title roles in Anna Karenina High Society,
Dracula Amor Sunday in the Park with George, and the
Irish Repertory theaters Finian's Rainbow. With such an illustrious career
and family history, I wondered who in Rico's family first
(39:13):
encouraged her to pursue performing professionally.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
It might have been my grandmother. My grandmother and her sister.
Do you know, I was fascinated by my immigrant history,
and I was fascinated that the Italians who came over
in the turn of the century went and were seamstresses
for World War One. And then my aunt Rose was
a very successful Zigfeld girl. So I grew up in
(39:37):
a house full of the actual follies girls, just like
Sondhimem's musical, which he always found fascinating. So I knew
her and her friends. I think right away there was
a sense that the actresses, they were the only feminists.
I was given women who made money, who got out
of the house, who did something that were like pioneers.
So I think it was a sense of disposition, first
(40:00):
the voice, but that I had the disposition. Yeah, I
had the disposition to stand on my own two feet,
to get out in the world, to get out of
a house. I wasn't a house oriented person. I wanted
to I wanted to be. I was intrepid, naturally intrepid,
and I was as I got older and stopped doing gymnastics,
where I went right away to a theater camp and
the gymnastics gave me a funny body language, so right
(40:21):
away I was I had high kicks and flips, and
I could do cartwheels, and I was getting all the
comic characters Adelaide and Hetty LaRue, and I got all
the funny stuff because I was physically unusual. I had big,
curly hair, a shapely body, but it was an acrobat
and so I had a sort of boldness about me.
And this a natural style of singing. I wasn't an
(40:42):
opera singer. I have none of the background of Audrey
McDonald and Kelly O'Hara, all these girls who trained in classical.
I'm a little more from the hip, you know, an Italian.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
American who just actress.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
But I'm also just a girl doing cartwheels in the lawn.
I would love to jump into a play. When I
got to Yale, I thought, oh God, gosh, I can't
be in college for four years. I'm just I was
just chomping at the bit to work. And I would
look at backstage newspaper and look for another adventure, you know.
And I looked. I saw a Ringling Brothers audition Rhode
Island Theater by the Sea, and I auditioned for Rhode
(41:16):
Island Theater by the Sea. I got seen in the
hall by the director of le Miz pulled me out
of the hall. And it might have even been that
day that made me feel like I'm on the adventure
because they pulled me out of one thing. I'm in
the middle of college. They put me in an audition
for le Miz. I opened my mouth and they stopped me.
They said, can you start in ten days? And it
(41:36):
was dropping out of Yale, you know, which I was
also a really good student, and I did.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
That part Yale.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Art history and philosophy, but mostly art history. I could
have gone down that road. That's a little bit of
a different topic. I loved my Yale education, but I
do have a me too story that we can put
aside for another time. But that was like a little
bit at Yale with one of the most prompt professors
in the world.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Yeah, just maybe he fixated on.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
You, he fixated on me. And then it was there
was a bad episode and it just was just very heartbreaking.
I never picked up my thesis. I was at a
graduate level and this one thing for graduating, so my
intellectual life was kind of, you know, not discouraged, but
it just I don't know what I got. I kind
of just froze and just went into the theater. So
(42:24):
it was wonderful when, you know, in the twenty seventeen
when everybody started talking about these things, But I had
already been thinking about silence and women, because in twenty
fifteen I started this process, this making of my own cabarets.
The first cabaret I did was called Sing the Silence,
and it was about women and their silences, based on
(42:45):
a conversation I'd had with Sondheim where he told me
a person can sing the apostrophe of a word. Couldn't wouldn't?
I said, but there's no, there's an apostrophe, And he
was talking to me about silences, and so we got
into these weird habit holes and I started thinking about
silences and all of this. So anyhow, that was a kind
of a turning point moment. Just to go back when
(43:07):
I dropped out of college and left one life as
an intellectual or as a kind of a student of
the world, I still have that. I treat everything like
opportunity for research.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Finish.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
I did it, went back, I did go back. Yeah,
that was you took.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
A break for how long? How many years were you
out of there?
Speaker 2 (43:24):
One and a half. But I did a year as
a correspondence student with other kids who were like journalists
or one kid who was at NASA and I was missing.
I called it Yale by mail. We did it all
by mail. It was really interesting. So I as a
correspondence student, so I didn't have to lose too much time.
That's the moment where I think I thought, maybe this
was going to take me not just out of high
(43:46):
school and be a good singer, oh wow, I have
a pretty voice, but into the profession, into crazy things
where you drop out of one thing and you jump
into another life and you pack your bags. That I
love the idea of that. You know.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Someone once pointed out to me. They said, oh, the
two ballet companies in New York, and there's two upper
companies in New York. And they said that, well, one
group they dance really well and they're acting is terrible,
and he goes and the other one they're acting is
really good, and they're dancing is so so. One group
they're singing is right, and they're acting is so. And
the thing that I love about you is that you
(44:18):
are an actress. Now you have made your reputation with
this huge component, this amazing piston in the engine here
of your singing career and singing in the theater and
so forth. But when I did that Gift of the
Gorgon with you, I mean, I'll say this till the
cows come home.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
You were so fantastic. And what I realized was, without.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Mentioning other people, there are these dames in the theater
who they're acting is so so they're acting, and so
they're singing as pristine they're singing is remarkable, but they're not.
And you have both.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Peter Schaffer wrote equis and that we did the American
premiere you and I. It's the first time it's ever
been heard in the in the US. It was a
great thank you.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
And we did Gorgon.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Yeah, we did the Gift of the Gorgon, which Judy
Dench says in her book was the ravaged her that
it was the hardest role she ever played. My part
so it's innate to that role is to be destroyed,
like you wrecked me. I remember waking up the next day.
I was wrecked. It was a very difficult relationship. We
were playing professors of Greek mythology and philosophy, so we
(45:21):
were like two PhD type teachers. Maybe we could do
it again.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Who knows, well we should do something again, because I'm
really dying too. I haven't done a play in a while.
This one guy wrote a review. Isn't it funny how
people if they write a review.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
You were wonderful, as f Scott Fitzgerald, this time really good.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
But the thing about that is that we did you
took about critics.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
And one guy wrote a piece in a New Jersey
paper that was brought to my attention, and I thought
to myself, this guy's been reading my diary. He really
really got what I was trying to do, mister Baldwin.
This and this and this and this, and he wasn't
like licking me to death. But it was very very much,
very positive and and and filled with understanding.
Speaker 2 (46:03):
I love that.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
I think a lot of times people who.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Like I have a few like that.
Speaker 3 (46:10):
I was so Rackey was somebody who was like, I
just know, why bother?
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Why bother getting up there when he's But the point
is that Brandley was somebody who I thought, in my
mind he didn't really understand what acting was and what
people were doing and why I really want you and
I to find something to do together.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
My twins apply to college in the fall, so I
know you're not on that place, but you could do
a play here and.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
Still in college.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
Yes, she's aware, she's at Duke and she is uh
already recruited at Goldman Sachs at the most premier premier.
She's brilliant. She's a math major, former tennis star, and
on the team. She's a beautiful human being. All three
of my girls, I'm proud to say, have hair down
to their waists. Just imagine the whole thing. Me and
these three women like they're with me right now. It's
(46:56):
they're everywhere as your beautiful, funny, playful children and your
gorge his wife are like as I look at you,
I see all that life. Do you remember the Bowery Babes. No,
that was a period of my life. You gave me
money during Hurricane Sandy. You donated from your foundation to
you didn't know what it was. It was when I
remember when I ran a mother's group down in Soho.
I have five thousand families in it because when I
(47:18):
was in the stage of parenting you're in. But I
did this already. This Mother's Day which is coming up
twenty twenty six. I am finishing it. It's twenty years
and not for profit. We used to have a lot
of money. You gave us some money which we did
use for diapers dot com. I don't know if you
remember you provided diapers for the community center you were.
It was called Boweribabes. Actually it wasn't a thing you
(47:39):
do with Broadway. It was the Lower east Side. It
was a Lower east Side mother's community that I founded
when I was in your parenting phase with all those
little children, all that behavior which we would deal with. Actually,
we used to have events for how to talk, so
your kids will listen and listen, so your kids will talk,
and you know, control but not control, let them be empowered.
(48:00):
Closing it down this Mother's Day and all of our
money whatever we saved over the years, there's twenty thousand dollars.
We've already given it to Sloan Kettering, which I'm so
proud of, to pediatric Cancer. So that's close. We're going
to announce that it's all over. But it's a beautiful
and difficult time to raise little children.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
You think Broadway and what's on Broadway has changed a
lot since you started.
Speaker 2 (48:19):
Broadway. Of course, has changed because I'm not there. It's changed,
but it's still temperamentally the same people, you know, isn't
it moss Hart who says it's all the unhappy children.
I think he says that in his book. You know,
there's a lot of people who come to it because
they find each other, and that's not a bad thing.
It's still a beautiful holding ground for a lot of
all times.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
The way it also links to Sondheim because from Rogerson
Hard and Rogers and Hammerstein Oklahoma and all these sunny,
beautiful things, some tragedy here and there, but my fare later.
And then you get into Sondheim, people doing a lot
of whining and Sondheim but it's real, honest. And then
you get into shows that are like modern shows, which
are very edgy and and strange and urban, and you
(49:02):
know that the themes are very very existential.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
I mean, people are really really doing a lot of yeah,
but there's.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
Still a community, a lot yeah, a lot of crying
and a lot of loud singing.
Speaker 4 (49:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (49:13):
There is some debate currently as of this week, there's
some debate about the demands of eight shows a week.
There are some actors who are now stepping forward and
saying eight shows a week under the conditions that were
being asked to, which is to outscream and out sing
pop stars with no pro tools and so on, and
so they're being asked to be pristine rock singers eight
shows a week with orchestras blazing. When we were younger
(49:36):
and when I was doing classic shows, the original orchestrations
were spare. I would step forward in a Kurt Vile musical,
which I've done a few, many of the orchestra stops
pretty much, and you start going, tell me is love still?
And there's nothing going on except a little like a
little it's just a little something. The orchestra stops. They
don't do that. Now. The orchestra's blazing, blaring, the sound
(49:59):
systems are it's your vocal cords are being asked to
do different things. So I think we're in a time
where actors are pushing back and saying that this marvel
comic level entertainment value. The demands are crazy, They're not
human anymore. Hopefully people will start coming to my simple shows,
me and a pianist, me and a small band, back
(50:20):
to human size work.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
My thanks to Melissa Erico, this episode was recorded at
CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Zach MacNeice, and Victoria De Martin. Our engineer is Isaac
Kaplan Woolner. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought
to you by iHeart Radio
Host
Alec Baldwin
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