Jersey Boys Reflect on Their Year on Broadway!
November 6th, 2006Playbill.com’s Ernio Hernandez notes that Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard, J. Robert Spencer and John Lloyd Young have spent four seasons on Broadway as The Four Seasons in Jersey Boys. He caught up with the stars of the 2006 Tony Award-winning Best Musical and asked them about the characters they play; their favorite Four Seasons’ song; their auditions; their thoughts on Tony night; and what has changed a year later.
Here’s a sneak peek of this wonderful interview as the Boys respond to this question: What has changed a year later?
Christian Hoff: Amazingly, it seems to me that the attention that I’m getting as an actor now is more intense than ever. I have a great team assembled — that happened before the Tony Awards, thankfully — so, we were all on board regardless of the outcome, no fair-weather friends. And that was an immediate win. We’ve got a lot of opportunities for next season here in New York and [in] film and television as well. I can’t say anything right now, but good things are happening, and the Broadway community can look forward to seeing me break out next year. And also, I’ve got my third child, my first born with my wife Melissa Hoff, and her name is Elizabeth Christine. She was born basically a year after we opened. So, it’s been a good year.
Daniel Reichard: I think I know what I’m doing a lot more now than I did then. I feel like I used to think that a failure taught you the most, because I had done things that were not successful. But I did learn you do learn more from a big success because a success keeps going — so there are ups and downs with the experience of a success. You learn how to maintain your work. I’m a little more clear about why I’m doing my work. It was funny going through an experience like this — all of a sudden these people you’re doing a show with, you’re in competition with them for awards [and] finding some people like you the most or some people like somebody else the most. And, all of a sudden, the whole feeling changes. It made me really think about what my priority was because you have to get passed your jealousies, your ego. I don’t want that to sound dark, but it’s like growing up. I think I’ve had to grow up professionally through the experience. What’s different is I feel a lot more confident — I’d handle, God willing, another Broadway experience with a lot more knowledge . . . I’ll be even happier the next time I do one.
J. Robert Spencer: Well, my wife is expecting a baby in January, which is amazing. All that time spent in L.A. writing scripts, Jersey Boys has allowed me to meet a lot of people whose work I’ve loved through the years. And I was able to meet a wonderful gentleman and flat out said to him, ‘I’ve got this comedy I’ve been handing out a couple of years.’ He read it and said, ‘I always wanted to start a movie company, so let’s go.’
John Lloyd Young: I’m finally enjoying starring in a hit Broadway show. Enjoying it — having fun. I was appreciating it before, but the workload and the outside pressure — especially leading up to the Tony Awards — were just so incredible that I never felt like I was flying on the success of the show. I felt more like I was holding it up like Atlas — it felt like excruciating work. Now, those pressures are gone, and there’s nothing to prove, so now when we go out there, the audience is coming to see the Tony Award-winning cast and production, so there’s just such enthusiasm, and we walk out to bask in the glow of that affection and give them what they came there for. And that’s just so rewarding now.