The Tony Award experience is a lofty one…particulalry when you win one. Jessie Mueller won her Tony Award for her portrayal of Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical. That was Mueller’s fourth Broadway show and her second Tony nomination.

She had previously been nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical for her turn as Melinda Wells in the 2011 revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.

She’s received two additional Tony Award nominations for her performances as Jenna in the musical Waitress and as Julie Jordan in the 2018 revival of Carousel. Most recently she appeared on Broadway in the play The Minutes by Tracy Letts. Not bad for someone who got their start singing The Wiggly Worm in a school production.

When Mueller takes to the stage of The Wallis in Beverly Hills on June 16th and The Smith Center in Las Vegas on June 17th with Seth Rudetsky, she’ll have plenty to talk about and to sing. I spoke with Mueller last week about various aspects of her career, new musicals on the horizon and finding a way to accept all that she’s accomplished. What follows are excerpts from our conversation that have been edited for length and clarity. To see the full interview (which does include some singing), please go to our YouTube channel.

17 years ago when you were playing Lady Mortimer in Henry IV, a character that doesn’t have any printed lines. A character that only sings in Welsh that nobody can understand. What were your thoughts then about what your career might be from that moment and how much does your career look like what you expected or hoped it might be? 

That was 17 years ago. I’m still stuck on that. So I was only four. [She laughs.] I mean, it’s incredible. That is wild. 17 years. That is so fun that you brought that up. My experience of that show, I remember, because I got to do it at Chicago Shakespeare Theater in Chicago. And then we got to do it at the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company] in Stratford-upon-Avon. They were doing a festival of the whole [Shakespeare] canon and our show was chosen to represent the Henry IVs. 

It was just a magical experience for me personally. I remember feeling like I was starting to be treated like a real adult actor, because there were some folks in the cast that I knew because my parents are actors in Chicago. I’d seen them doing shows growing up, but I felt like everyone was treating me like a peer. I wasn’t the little kid of the actors, friends or whatever. 

I remember that really being a moment for me about thinking maybe I’m really doing this. But as far as what was in my mind of where my career might go, nowhere near what has occurred. I don’t think I could have imagined it. I don’t think I had that kind of scope. My model had sort of been a career in Chicago, which is what I was after. I wanted to be a working actor. Sometimes life takes you in different directions. It certainly did for me.

I know that Into the Woods has been published as your favorite Sondheim show. You’ve played Cinderella in that show. You played Mary Flynn in Merrily We Roll Along and Anne Egerman in A Little Night Music. You’ve done three Sondheim shows, but you have yet to do one on Broadway. Given that Into The Woods was just on Broadway, it’s unlikely that opportunity will present itself any time in the near future. So is there another Sondheim show that you would like to do on Broadway?

I feel like the music from Passion was going through my head the other day, but honestly, that’s not a show I know super well. Maybe I’ll have to wait until Into the Woods rolls around again. Maybe I could “witch” this time around. And then I could play Jack’s mother. That’s the thing about that show, you could just sort of cycle through all the roles. I don’t know. It’s very ironic that Sweeney is happening now. That’s one I’d like to do at some point.

Your career, for the most part in terms of musicals, has been revivals, re-imaginings of shows. Obviously Beautiful is a jukebox musical. But in terms of new musicals, with the exception of Waitress, most of your work in new musicals has been with recordings. You have the recording of My Heart Says Go that’s out right now. Upcoming is the recording for Diary of a Wimpy Kid. What do these recordings tell us about what your passion is for doing new work in addition to doing the work you’ve done already?

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for new stuff just because I guess I find it so exciting. I mean, it also can be infuriating when you’re working on it in the room. Yes, Beautiful was a jukebox. So you had the music already written. We knew that was golden. Working on something like Waitress was so exciting because it was a story that had been conceived, of course, from the film by Adrienne Shelly. But the music was original, so it had never been staged before. It was an adaption.

There’s just something exciting about being in that incubator, being in the process of trying to figure out what’s working, what might not be working. But that’s also the part that can be infuriating is you don’t know. Do we trust what we’ve got? Have we just not cracked it yet? Or is it that we’ve tried everything? I find that stuff exciting depending on who you’re working with. I’ve gotten to work with very generous people that are very open to what you bring to it. There’s that openness about bringing yourself and your perspective and I think it’s a real privilege to originate a role and put your stamp on it.

It’s not often that that an actor gets to revisit a role. Eleven years ago you first stepped into the shoes of Miss Adelaide in a production of Guys and Dolls. You got to do it again at the Kennedy Center last fall. How did your professional and life experiences inform who Miss Adelaide is more recently than who she was when you performed that role 11 years ago?

It’s funny because the process is so quick for the Broadway series at the Kennedy Center. So I think in all honesty I was relying a lot on what do I remember. What is in my muscle memory of who this gal is? But sure, I’m older now, I have more life experience. I’ve been in the business for a while. I’ve been an entertainer for a while. Miss Adelaide has been an entertainer and she takes pride in that.

Half the fun, too, is getting in the room with all the new people. This is how this changes this. This is who this Adelaide is because of James [Monroe Iglehart] being my Nathan and all this stuff. So that’s half the fun of it. But it was a joy to revisit it. I wasn’t sure I would ever get the chance to revisit it again.

Honestly, I felt like I was a little young the first time. But I was like, I’m game. Let’s do it. It was my buddy Matt Raftery who was directing that production in Chicago. I went in for Sarah initially. Then he was like, “Would you like to take a stab at Adelaide? Would you go look at the sides and come back?” I was like, sure. I just always wanted to be the character actress with the fun costumes and the big funny songs. I loved doing it again.

It’s been 14 years since Guys and Dolls has been on Broadway. So you know what the math says. It could be time for a revival. 

There was a lot of chatter after we did it in in D.C. We were so glad that it was so well received. And Philipa [Soo], Steven [Pasquale], James and I, we were totally game. We would explore this, but rights were tied up in the [Nic] Hytner production in London which I’ve heard incredible things about. It has just been so well received, so I don’t know what would happen. I don’t know if they’d bring that over here. I know that it might be a challenge just because of the space and with their immersive production which seems so cool. But if the opportunity came around again, I would totally float that idea, especially if I could do it with those three. We just had a ball. 

Most people associate with musicals, but you also got to do Tracy Letts’s play The Minutes. Is it a challenge for you to be seen as somebody who can act as well as somebody who can sing?

That the perception from the outside that hey, I can act too? That sort of thing?

When you come out singing the songs a lot of audience members, I would guess, don’t necessarily think that was also a great acting performance.

Because you’re supposed to make it look easy. It’s not. There’s a difference between someone who can sing and has a great instrument, which is amazing, but someone who’s also a communicator. Then you have those people who have both who have the glorious instrument and the communication tool. I feel like Hugh Jackman says it a lot. It’s the idea of in some ways it’s almost harder to act in a musical sometimes because you have to make it seem believable that you’re breaking into song. You have these very heightened experiences, which is why the characters are breaking into song. I think actors, especially musical theater actors who appear in musicals, don’t get the credence sometimes they deserve for the acting that they’re doing.

I actually do go to the acting first, which is funny when I’m working on something; when I’m learning something. Or as you spoke of earlier, working on something new. I have to remind myself you can’t act it yet. You don’t know it. You have to learn it. You have to do the technical stuff first of learning it and then you can do the acting work because then it’s in your body. Then you can really get inside of it to deliver. Then go back and fix the technical things and all of that again and kind of go back and forth between those processes.

One of the things I love most about your collaboration with Seth Rudetsky is the social impact component of it. You did What the World Needs Now after the pulse shooting in Orlando. You were involved with him with the Concerts for America. What do you feel is your role as an artist in helping to bring about social impact and social change?

If I’m going to be honest, I’m still figuring that out; coming to terms with the idea that I might have a platform that people might be listening to. So if that is the case, I might as well use it for good. I think I’m starting to crystallize this idea more. I really appreciate people like Seth and his husband, James Wesley, because they are doers. I feel like I’m a helper. I like to help. I like to be of service, but I’m not necessarily the first person who’s going to say I will lead the charge. I try to come in and do my thing and do what I can to help.

You did an interview with Patrick Healy of the New York Times just after winning the Tony Award for Beautiful. You said, “I thought I’d get wrapped up in all the wrong things” of your move to New York from Chicago. You continued to say, “Now look what’s happened. It feels like a wonderful accident.” I love that expression: wonderful accident. Nine years later, does your career still feel like a wonderful accident? Is there perhaps something more complex going on?

I think so. I don’t think it matters how quote unquote, successful you are, whatever the heck that means. It’s hard on your heart. It’s personal. Even when it’s not personal it is personal because the work is personal. You bring yourself. That’s the job. You’re supposed to feel and think and move and act and talk in front of strangers sometimes as someone else, sometimes as yourself, and hopefully create an exchange of meaning and maybe memory and maybe a spiritual flow and all these things. That is hard.

But I think it’s not an accident. I’m working on owning my achievements and I’m proud of them. But the moment you hook into that and give that too much meaning you are often very quickly reminded that it doesn’t hold in a storm. It’s this constant evaluation of what I put importance on and not diminishing an accomplishment or achievement or how hard I have worked. But acknowledging that it’s not the most important thing. God has been so good about where I’ve been led and who I’ve been led to and the opportunities that have been put in front of me. But also I’ve worked my ass off with the gifts I’ve been given.

I think also at that time in my life I was really trying to figure out where I fit in the whole scheme of things. I mean, I still am. What is humble? What is self-deprecating? Where are those lines? How do you stay true to yourself, who you are and what you believe in, but also have the grace and humility to just keep it real.

To watch the full interview with Jessie Mueller, please go here.

Main Photo: Jessie Mueller (Photo by Jacqueline Harris for The Interval/Courtesy The Wallis)

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We’re speaking by phone on an afternoon before Barford is about to launch the first of his eight performances for the week. Linda Vista tells the story of a man/child in his mid-50s whose marriage has fallen apart and his relationships with women are not going to win him any awards. In short, he’s a misanthrope. Perhaps the ultimate misanthrope.

Barford originated the role when the play first premiered at Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago in 2017. He’s happy to tackle the role again. A role that even his wife, director Anna D. Shapiro (who directed Letts’ August: Osage County on Broadway in which Barford appeared) said “is a version of a man [Letts] might have become if he’d made different choices in his life.” Barford says that could apply to him in some ways, too.

“I think we all have a little Wheeler in us. I think there’s an element of this play that is exorcising some demons from his own life. Many of us men have deep regrets about our behavior in the past regarding women. I had a ‘Wheeler phase’ when I was in my 30s. The Wheeler archetype is quite alive in the world. You’re consumed by your own pain and you become self-centered and righteous and you become ruled by your pain, your anger, sadness and loneliness. The guy is tremendously lonely. He doesn’t know how to help himself. Thankfully when I was in my 30s I understood that I was powerless to help myself with some of the problems I had.  Thankfully I began to see a therapist and that was an important part of my development.”

Since doing Linda Vista, Barford is surprised by how some women perceive his character. “The first thing I want to say, which has been a real revelation for us and I wouldn’t say it’s the majority, but we’ve been surprised how many women have said they identify with Wheeler. That’s unexpected because he behaves in what we assume are traditional male ways. I think beyond that a lot of women will be well satisfied in the second act of the play where he gets put in his place in more ways than one. All of the women in the play are at least a step ahead, if not a couple steps ahead, in terms of their development and their self-awareness.”

In Linda Vista the audience gets to experience how Wheeler handles someone who genuinely loves him and another woman who offers everything you imagine a mid-50s guy would want: youth, attractiveness and great sex.

“I think Tracy does a masterful job with this role because he does not shy away from the reasons why the morally righteous in the theatre will be well-satisfied in seeing his shortcomings and his moral complications. But at the same time, he never quite abandons him. Tracy allows us little windows to see why he might feel that way. Which is so smart, but people love to hate him or hate to love him or a little of both.”

Which brings us to the inevitable question about how much of the rewriting of Linda Vista was a direct result of the #MeToo movement and whether Letts took that into consideration. “I think the answer is, yes,” says Barford. “I’d be hesitant to talk about that because I think Tracy would be better equipped to talk about the how and the why of it.”

He then goes on to discuss the end of the play, which for obvious reasons won’t be revealed here. The addition of new lines, says Barford, came with this production. “I feel he is dignifying the reality of what women have to deal with every single day from men. That’s new. That was not in the original version.”

As our conversation comes to a close, I ask Barford to see if something the writer H.P. Lovecraft said about misanthropes applies to his character. Lovecraft said, “Man is most contemptible when compared to his own retentions. It is better to laugh at a man from outside the universe than weep for him within.”

“Well that’s an interesting idea,” he says. “I think that is probably germane to this. I’d be hard-pressed to imagine anyone going to watch the play is going to think one thing about him. He is noble. He is pathetic. He is insightful. He is blind. He is appealing. He’s repulsive. He’s funny. He’s stupid. It’s so beautifully full and complicated in a very human way.”

At the end of each performance, is Wheeler the kind of role Barford can easily put behind him ?

“For better or worse I’m the kind of actor who brings himself to my roles. I’m not one of those who can just put a mask on and just walk offstage and leave it on stage. It’s wonderful to experience all that humor that Tracy has and even some of the hopeful and tender moments in the play, of which there are few. But that second act is a take down – big time. It’s brutal. And he fucking deserves it.”

Linda Vista continues at the Mark Taper Forum through February 17th.

Photos by Craig Schwartz/Courtesy of Center Theatre Group

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Tracy Lett’s might be familiar to you one of two ways. You may know him as the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of August: Osage County.  Or you may know him for his roles in such films as Lady Bird and The Post.

In Linda Vista Ian Barford (who starred in the play’s first production) plays Wheeler. He’s in his 50s, his professional life has become banal. His marriage is over and he’s moved into a new apartment. All the opportunities to spice of his life are in place. Except Wheeler doesn’t specialize in introspection and his lack of self-awareness might just find him stuck in the same rut forever.

This production is directed by Dexter Bullard. The cast includes Tim Hopper, Sally Murphy, Caroline Neff, Chantal Thuy, Cora Vander Broek and Troy West.

If you are a fan of Letts as an actor, he will be appearing in a new production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons on Broadway in the spring opposite Annette Bening. This Roundabout production, under the direction of Jack O’Brien, will open at the American Airlines Theatre in New York in April.

“Linda Vista” photos by Craig Schwartz/Courtesy of Center Theatre Group

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