Michael Urie in Interview Magazine
After winning the Pulitzer Prize, back-to-back Tony awards for Best Play, a record-breaking number of Emmys for the HBO adaptation, and being canonized as a text taught in high schools and colleges across the globe, Tony Kushner's Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes returned to New York City last fall for the first time since it left Broadway over fifteen years ago. Directed by Michael Greif (of Rent and Next to Normal), the politically charged, sweeping epic has been selling out the intimate Peter Norton Space, in which both parts of the seven-hour play have been performed in repertory, since September. The production has now been extended three times-meaning a cast change is in order.
Enter Michael Urie, who on Tuesday took over the pivotal role of Prior Walter from Christian Borle. Urie is no stranger to playing gay roles. Over the course of four years as Marc St. James on ABC's Ugly Betty, his character grew from a flamboyant gay fashion assistant to a character with resounding emotional depth and maturity. Then there was last year's Off-Broadway The Temperamentals, where Urie again portrayed a gay man working in fashion, but this time one at the forefront of the gay civil-rights movement in the early '50s. And, of course, in the role of his own life, Urie, who initially seemed to be press-shy regarding his sexual orientation, described himself as "queer" exactly one year ago in the February 2010 issue of The Advocate. In our chat, Urie, rather than directly addressing his sexuality, uses that all-telling word when discussing the state of homosexuals today: we. It is this very idea of "we"-of community, of progress-that is at the heart of Angels. We sat down with Urie to discuss his preparation for the role, his fear-or lack thereof-of being typecast, and the new sense of political urgency the play has taken on today.
BELLIKOFF: Your character is considered a prophet of hope. If you had to be the prophet of hope for something, what would it be? What do you hope for?
URIE: Towards the end of the play, I talk about how we're going to get better. I say, "This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all. The dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living and we are not going away. We will not die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward." And then I say, " We will be citizens. The time has come." That line was written in 1993: "We will be citizens." And now it's 2011, and we are still not citizens. I think that that is the hope for me. At the end of the play, you know that you are watching a period piece. You know that AIDS is not the death sentence that it was at the time when the play came out, and certainly at the time that the play depicts. And then, at the end, you hear this line, "We will be citizens," and you know what it meant then. It means something different now, but it's still true. Gay people still are not... we don't have the same rights. They're not seen in the same light, even in New York-a liberal mecca-where this play is being done and takes place. So I guess that would be my hope. That when you leave the play-and I don't think it's possible with this production-you don't feel that it is simply a period piece. It represents a continuing struggle.
BELLIKOFF: I know your sexuality has been something you didn't originally want to talk about, before discussing it in The Advocate earlier this year. But looking at the parts that you take, do you see the roles that you're choosing as your own form of activism? How do you approach what you do?
URIE: There's definitely been times where I've thought or tried to make a concerted effort to branch out as far as the sexuality of my roles goes, but then I can't help it. A good role comes along, and a good role is a good role. The role of Prior in this play is better than almost any heterosexual role I can think of, so that question sort of goes out the window when the part is that good. It was the same with The Temperamentals. I also would rather work than wait and jobs are coming my way. But also...it's such a good part, first The Temperamentals and now Angels, I'd be a fool not to do it. Any straight person would too.
BELLIKOFF: Did you used to have a fear of being typecast but now it's not there as much anymore?
URIE: When I was doing Ugly Betty on TV, I was concerned about being typecast as that character. It didn't have anything to do with the character being gay, it was more the flamboyance of that character that worried me. I didn't want to become a stock TV character. There are so few similarities between that character and the one I played in The Temperamentals. They're both gay and they actually both happen to be in fashion, which is very ironic, but they're so different.
BELLIKOFF: To backtrack a bit, talking about Ugly Betty, did you have any input into the evolution of your character, Marc, over the years?
URIE: My part, originally-when I got cast, it was this tiny little co-star part. It wasn't even supposed to continue past the pilot. They didn't have ideas, it wasn't a fleshed-out character, until Vanessa Williams liked me. We had an amazing rapport right away, and the producers decided they were going to keep me on. I always thought of typically our parts, Vanessa's and mine, as Shakespearean villains. And I always sort of treated it like that. We always told the audience what we were going to do and then we went and did it. And then in the end, in the last two seasons, my character got to have ambition and try to move up in the world of magazines and have this lovely rivalry with Betty. I ended up with this incredible arc based on a character that was a joke, one joke. He was just this snarky, bitchy assistant and he ended up with a whole lot of character by the end.
BELLIKOFF: What are your main thoughts on starting Angels?
URIE: I'm excited. Excited is the first one. I'm really, really ready. I'm ready to jump in.
For the full article and source, go to http://www.interviewmagazine.com/blogs/culture/2011-02-03/michael-urie-angels-in-america/