Young actor has luxury of choice

At 27, Patrick Wilson is nominated for a Tony and up for another major Broadway role. Stay in New York or head for the comforts of California? Tough call.

By JOHN FLEMING

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 3, 2001

[AP photo:] Patrick Wilson, nominated for a Tony as best leading actor in a musical for The Full Monty, talks after a Broadway Show League softball game in New York's Central Park. The former St. Petersburg resident's work on the Great White Way is thriving, but he is also intrigued by Los Angeles' career opportunities.

NEW YORK -- Could it get any better than this for a young actor?

At 27, Patrick Wilson is starring in a Broadway hit, The Full Monty, and he has been nominated for a Tony Award for best leading actor in a musical.

Wilson also has been offered the role of Curly in one of the most anticipated revivals of recent years, the Trevor Nunn-directed Oklahoma!, a smash in London that is set to open early next year in New York.

He auditioned for the god of American musical theater, Stephen Sondheim, when he was being considered for a role in a revival in the fall of Sondheim's Assassins.

Wilson appears to be faring well in the romance department, too, going out with TV and movie star Jennifer Love Hewitt, his date for tonight's Tony ceremony, televised live from Radio City Music Hall.

He is even having a banner softball season in the Broadway Show League in Central Park. One Thursday in May, he roamed centerfield and knocked out four hits to lead The Full Monty team in a 17-6 drubbing of The Rocky Horror Show.

He has come a long way in a short time from St. Petersburg, where he grew up as the youngest of three sons of John Wilson, Channel 13's news anchor, and Mary K. Wilson, a voice teacher and church musician.

But after the softball game, over lunch at a sidewalk cafe across from Lincoln Center, Wilson didn't sound overjoyed about making it big in the Big Apple. What he mainly talked about was how much he wanted to leave.

"I really want to go to L.A.," he said. "I've been trying for years to make that step into film and TV land, but it's a hard decision. Do I want to make my mark in musical theater history by being one of the few people to play Curly on Broadway, or do I just want to go be happy in L.A.?"

In a way, Wilson's disenchantment with New York is understandable. For all the glamor, being in a Broadway show can be a grind, with eight performances a week and only Mondays off. Wilson, whose apartment is just west of the theater district, has not missed a performance of The Full Monty since it opened in October. That means he has done about 250 shows in 220 days.

During the last six years, since getting a bachelor of fine arts degree from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh and moving to New York, Wilson has worked almost continuously in a string of increasingly important plays and musicals. His big break came when he landed the leading role of Billy Bigelow in the national tour of an acclaimed revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel in 1996-97. He made his Broadway debut in Fascinating Rhythm, a short-lived Gershwin revue in 1999.

"I'm starting to get to the point where I don't just want to live in a teeny little apartment and walk three blocks to the show every night," he said. "That's not really me. You grow up in St. Pete with cars and sun, and, you know, I want a house and a dog."

In Southern California, Wilson has performed at theaters in Los Angeles, La Jolla and San Diego (where The Full Monty originated), and he heads out West whenever he has a chance.

"It's like living in Florida. You can be living in L.A. but in an area that looks like Brightwater (Boulevard on Snell Isle) or Old Northeast. It's very suburban. That really appeals to me. That appeals to my life, to my heart."

In New York, Wilson isn't the sort of star whom people recognize on the street ("Only theater people recognize you"), but he does have to deal with the occasional barbs of fame. At lunch, he grumbled about the New York Post's "Page Six" gossip column, which had run a photo of him and Hewitt with an item listing some of her old boyfriends.

[Photo: AP] Actor Jennifer Love Hewitt, arriving here at the 2000 Golden Globe Awards, will be Patrick Wilson's date at tonight's Tony Awards.

"Hewitt was so impressed with Wilson's pants-dropping performance in the show, she went backstage to meet him," read the item, headlined "Hot, hot, hot."

"Jeez," Wilson said of his paparazzi encounter.

Winning the Tony would be a boost to his career, but Wilson is up against formidable nominees Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, co-stars of this season's runaway hit, The Producers. The other nominees are Kevin Chamberlin of Seussical, which closed a few weeks ago, and Tom Hewitt of The Rocky Horror Show.

There has been talk that Lane and Broderick could cancel each other out with the 705 Tony voters and give Wilson an opening.

"That's the only good buzz, and if that happens, it would be very funny," Wilson said. "I'm pretty humble and self-deprecating, so I'm sure I would say something to that effect in my Tony speech."

Still, Wilson recognizes that he is a long shot. The Producers, with a record-breaking 15 nominations, is expected to sweep tonight's awards ceremony.

In any other season, The Full Monty, which has 10 nominations, would be a favorite to haul in its share of Tonys. With a smart, funny, pop-rock score by Broadway newcomer David Yazbek, the musical was adapted from the popular 1997 movie, transplanting its crew of stripping steelworkers from Sheffield, England, to Buffalo, N.Y.

It is one of the rare hit musicals in the last couple of decades to have a contemporary setting (the only other one that comes to mind is Rent). In a cartoony kind of way, it puts a deft spin on themes ranging from blue-collar male bonding to unemployment to raunchy sex.

Wilson plays Jerry Lukowski, the jobless, divorced dad who is ringleader of the steelworkers. It's a wide-ranging role, calling for a balance between dramatic and comic acting as well as song and dance. Several of Jerry's numbers show off Wilson's lyric baritone to great effect, including a mock-macho duet with John Ellison Conlee on Man and his second-act solo, Breeze Off the River, an ode to fatherhood. He is part of a ravishing trio in a spoof on suicide, Big-Ass Rock.

"The show has enough heart that it can strike people different ways," Wilson said. "Some audiences go crazy for Big-Ass Rock, and then some people kind of put their blinders on and say you can't make fun of suicide. I think that's the benefit for me of the show, being able to appeal to everyday, average people, the women who want to see the Chippendales strip, the straight men who were dragged to the theater, the critics who want to dissect it. There's a lot in there for people to dig into."

For the Tony telecast, The Full Monty cast will perform the finale, Let It Go, in which the guys bare it all, though their nudity is obscured by stage lighting.

"I'm glad it's lit the way it is so you really can't see a whole lot," Wilson said. "From our point of view, imagine the entire night, not being able to see the audience, then you take all your clothes off and see every one of them, because you're backlit. Psychologically, it's pretty trippy."

(Incidentally, The Full Monty has another St. Petersburg connection, however tangential. Playwright Terrence McNally, who wrote the musical's book and also is nominated for a Tony, was born in St. Petersburg in 1939 and lived there a few years.)

Wilson was offered the Oklahoma! lead after he sang Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' in an audition for Nunn. He is well known to the show's producer, Cameron Mackintosh, who produced the Carousel revival. Though the New York Times reported that he was cast in the show, Wilson and his management agency won't make a decision until after the Tony Awards.

"He's so busy with all the Tony hoopla," said Mark Redanty, Wilson's agent. "We've asked them if we can wait for his final decision until after the awards, and they've been very gracious to let us do that."

If Wilson were to win, it would strengthen his bargaining position. "It does make a huge difference to win the Tony," Redanty said. "It's nice to be nominated and asked to the table. But ultimately it's the win that gets you somewhere."

Leading actors in Broadway musicals don't make movie-star money, unless they actually are movie stars. Glenn Close reportedly made $75,000 a week in Sunset Boulevard. Wilson is probably able to command $5,000 a week. Oklahoma! could offer much more.

Redanty said he is leaving the decision up to his client.

"Patrick can have a career on either coast. He has conquered this city. The L.A. thing is sort of his next ballpark. He could continue to work out of New York and get the type of work he wants in California as well. That's where the dilemma comes in, whether to stay here and commit to another show and put off the possibility of on-camera work for a while, or try to do both. That's what we're trying to work out."

Wilson has had some screen work, such as a small part in the movie My Sister's Wedding. Recently he turned down an offer to be in a Showtime series because he didn't want to break his contract with The Full Monty, which commits him to the show until September.

"Hour dramas are more my speed, versus Will & Grace or something," he said. "I don't have any desire to waste my dreams on being on some kind of snappy sitcom. I have worked too hard to just do that. I'd like to maybe do an hour drama, and I'd like to do movies."

Wilson has never been in a production of Oklahoma! ("I saw it once at Dunedin High School"), but he fell in love with Rodgers and Hammerstein while doing Carousel. "There's a reason these shows have lasted," he said. "I think I could really dig into the role and have a good time with it and bring something different to it."

His choosing to do Curly would not be free of risk, even with all that Oklahoma! has going for it. For one thing, he could be unfavorably compared to Hugh Jackman, who won raves for his performance in the London production. Jackman has moved on to films, starring in X-Men and Someone Like You.

"I saw the tape of him doing it, and he was terrific," Wilson said. "Completely different than how I would take a stab at it. I'm sure if I did it there would be some critic who would say Hugh Jackman was a lot better, but that happens all the time. It happened with Carousel. It even happened with Full Monty, people comparing me to Robert Carlyle (Jerry in the movie)."

Then there's the show itself. Unlike Carousel, which took on fresh meaning in director Nicholas Hytner's dark treatment, Oklahoma! might not bear the weight of a radical reinterpretation by Nunn, head of Great Britain's National Theatre and director of blockbusters such as Cats and Les Miserables. The British press lauded the production, but American critics might have other ideas.

"There could be a backlash of people saying that Oklahoma! is not like Carousel, that the dark side is not as pronounced," Wilson said. "Well, every Rodgers and Hammerstein show has an undercurrent. In Oklahoma!, Jud is stalking Laurey the entire show, and Curly is like a Benedict to her Beatrice. There's a lot to play."

A year ago, Wilson would have been thrilled at the prospect of steady employment on Broadway, moving right from one hit show into another whose high profile virtually guarantees a long run. The standard actor contract runs a year, so if he takes the role of Curly he would continue to live in New York until at least 2003. He would rather be in California.

"People might say you're silly to leave a really great career in New York, but I don't think of it like that," he said. "What's the worst case? Sure, I would struggle in L.A., I know I would, but I'd enjoy myself. Play golf, go to the beach, be happy. And I'd get a job. There are a lot of great parts out there."

Yet it would be tough to pass up Oklahoma! "It's going to be huge," Wilson said. "I'm too domestic to want to do the New York rat race another five, 10 years, but one more year . . . maybe."

Wilson said he has accomplished what he set out to do after college.

"Six years ago, when I moved here, I said the only things I wanted to do was originate the lead in a show, and if it was a musical, then do the recording, and get nominated for a Tony. So now that I've done all that, I don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe I should dream higher."

At a glance

The Tony Awards ceremony is broadcast live starting at 8 tonight on WEDU-Ch. 3 and from 9 to 11 p.m. on WTSP-Ch. 10.

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