Eight years ago, halfway through the premier episode of ABC’s “Ugly Betty,” I fell hard for the character of Marc St. James, played by Michael Urie.
He was feisty and fabulous, and played with such tremendous verve and attitude by the talented, Juilliard-trained actor that it was abundantly clear that a star was born.
We had the opportunity to touch base with the multi-talented Urie in advance of the Chicago run of his award-winning turn in “Buyer & Cellar,” a one-man tour de force that won tremendous acclaim in its off-Broadway run last year. The play, by Jonathan Tolins, revolves around an out-of-work actor who gets a gig working in the underground mall on Barbra Streisand’s Malibu estate. Urie plays all the characters—including Babs herself—and takes the audience by storm. He’s looking forward to his Chicago appearance and talked candidly about the differences between stage and screen acting, and why his heart lies with the theater.
Make It Better: So this will be your first time performing in Chicago! Have you visited before?
Michael Urie: Just for the preview cocktail party [a few weeks ago]. I got to walk through the [theater] space, meet some people, talk about the play, appeared on Windy City LIVE… Now I’m getting to expand and talk to more people. I plan on talking to every single person in Chicago [laughs]. One by one, until I’m done. Fifteen minutes at a time.
We are huge “Ugly Betty” fans, and Marc St. James was our favorite. Of course, the “evil” characters are always the best parts, the juiciest parts.
I totally agree. When I was a kid, I used to play “He-Man” with my dad. I’d make him be He-Man and I’d be Skeletor and always win.
You had such delicious chemistry with Becki Newton and Vanessa Williams, it was like an acting master class each week. Was that acting, or did you really have a great rapport?
I HATED them [laughs]. Just kidding. I think it was really both. They were both just brilliant actors, [and we] got along truly famously. Every day was a party, and the work was fun. We had so many silly, wonderful scenes, and so many sweet scenes together, too, between the three of us.
In the later seasons, I really loved the way your character evolved.
Yeah…he was a real guy. Most of the stuff I did was evil and snarky and one-dimensional. But they gave me some wonderful little tidbits where I got to be a real person, and you can’t put a price on that…it was super special. There were wonderful opportunities for multiple levels.
I remember reading that you really don’t like to audition—not that any actor does!
No. I really don’t. I don’t know anyone who does. And if anyone says they do like to audition, they’re either liars or I hate them! It’s just such an unnatural thing. There’s nothing about auditioning that’s actually like performing. For TV, sometimes, they make you go into this scary room of suits and do your audition, you get one chance at it, it’s dark room with big lights and you can barely see the people you’re auditioning for and you’re meeting with a casting director who’s not really an actor and you have to do it, and you either get the job or your don’t. There’s nothing about actual acting that resembles that process at all. It’s just not real.
Now that you’ve achieved a certain level of fame, are you finding you still need to audition?
Depending on the project I do. For big films, I would have to audition. For smaller independent films, not so much. For series regular parts on television, they make you jump through hoops until you’re like a big, big, big star.
Do you feel like when you’re on film—either TV or big screen—your movements can be smaller?
When you’re on stage, you have to telegraph everything to the back of the theater. And depending on the size of the theater, you have to put all of your feelings and emotions into your whole body, in case they can’t see your face. But on camera, especially in a closeup, the camera can see you think. So you don’t want to put it in your whole body. You just put it in your mind. The camera does the rest.
Do you prefer one to the other?
I prefer acting on stage, to be honest. There [are] a lot of great opportunities in TV and film—certainly the money is better—but there’s nothing quite like the immediacy of a live audience and the thrill of doing the entire show in one night. You know, when you do a movie or a TV show, it’s all cut together, and you might start at the end and work your way back. One scene might be shot from four different angles, so you have lots of opportunity to recreate it, but it’s all concentrated in the same few hours of the same day, and with a play, you do the whole thing every night. You get to the end, you think, “I want to do something different tomorrow night.” And then you get the opportunity to do so.
Have any of the shows that you’ve done for TV been filmed live?
“Partners” was shot in front of a live audience. It wasn’t LIVE live, but there was an audience there. It’s sort of like the best of both worlds, having the audience and the scope of television and the timeliness… TV by nature is far more timely than film, being that you shoot it and it’s pretty quickly on the air, but shooting in front of an audience, you get that thrill and the immediacy of their laughter.
Speaking of partners, your partner, Ryan Spahn, is also an actor. How does that work with you both being in the limelight?
It’s tough. Being an actor alone is tough…much less when you have an actor spouse! There’s so much rejection in show business. We feel each other’s pain. You sort of go through it twice when it’s like that. But on the other hand, no one really gets me like he does. And also, we work together. He’s a writer as well, and I directed a film that he wrote. We’ve worked together as producers, we’ve acted together. There are pros and cons.
“Buyer & Cellar,” was it written with you in mind? Where did you come into the process?
Jonathan Tolins actually wrote it with Jesse Tyler Ferguson in mind, and then ultimately he was unable to do it…But gave his blessing for Jonathan to shop it around with me instead. He would ask my opinion about things, and if I needed something [in the script], he would give it to me; if there were lines I didn’t need, he would cut them…and then if I paraphrased something and it came out of my mouth better the way I said it, then he would change it for me.
Michael Urie will be appearing on stage in Broadway in Chicago’s production of “Buyer & Cellar” through June 15 at the Broadway Playhouse at Watertower Place. Tickets are available here.
