Actor Kasey Mahaffy (A Man of No Importance): "We Need You To Be More Grounded"

Dennis is joined via Zoom by actor Kasey Mahaffy who is currently starring as Alfie Byrne, a Dublin bus driver who directs community theater at night, in the musical A Man of No Importance at A Noise Within theater in Pasadena. Kasey talks about relating more to this role than any he's played in the past, how he and the rest of the cast honed their Irish accents, why now is a very meaningful time to be telling this story and what it's like to hear audience members audibly crying while you're trying to play a scene. He also talks about his role in the 2022 L.A. production of Matthew Lopez's epic gay play The Inheritance and how he and the entirely queer cast are still bonded to this day. Other topics include: being married to a fellow actor (Francisco Chapin from TV's Matlock) and how they met on OkCupid, how A Man of No Importance is a valentine to theater in addition to being a coming out story, how nice Matt LeBlanc was to him on his first TV gig on Joey, dissolving into tears at a Keith Haring art exhibit, Jennifer Coolidge sharing stories of road rage and what casting directors really mean when they say, "We need you to be more grounded."

www.anoisewithin.org