By Lily Faulkener
Images by Chelsea Gehr
When I begin our conversation with actor Michael Urie, the talk quickly shifts to… dancing? No wonder we started talking about dancing. I had just seen the Ugly Betty alum in the Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress opposite theater staple, two-time Tony Award-winning Sutton Foster. I was talking about how much energy I was sensing [in his performance], the energy coming from an athletic place Urie did not know he possessed until his sister pointed it out after seeing one of his productions.
“I didn’t ever think of it as athletic until my athlete sister came to see me in something years ago,” the Texas native Urie claims. “This is when I was still in school. We did this big restoration comedy, and in it I had a sword fight, and I had this huge, funny scene where I was hiding under a bed from my mistress’s husband and jumping over hedges and flipping and running and she was like, ‘It’s athletic, what you’re doing.’ I’d never thought of it that way, but it really is. It’s really quite athletic. And as much attention as I have to put on, being mentally ready to go out and do a show, eight times a week, it’s way more important that I am physically ready because my brain will catch up.”
The Juilliard-trained Urie’s committed to the craft and it shows in his preparation: go to the gym every show-day; stretches; pretty substantial vocal warm up and then a physical and vocal cool down at the end of the night, which is kind of new for the 44-year-old Urie.
That commitment to the craft of acting is what Urie specializes in…and it shows. In addition to Once Upon a Mattress, he will star in Goodrich, opposite Michael Keaton and Mila Kunis, out this October.
But he’s not feeling typecast having played predominately mean, bitchy characters. “There’s Goodrich, Once Upon a Mattress roles that you kind of align with the character and who you are. It’s interesting. I think for a long time I was cast [on TV] in these sorts of mean characters, bitchy kind of characters. On Ugly Betty, I was this bitchy guy [a role that would garner Urie a Ewwy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2009]. And then I had a great recurring role on Younger with Sutton [Foster]. And now I’m playing a bunch of nice guys. I think maybe we’ve kind of gotten past—certainly with gay characters—like, gay characters don’t have to be mean anymore.”
With Once Upon a Mattress thriving on Broadway, and for Urie, the reason for seeing a live performance is a real unifier: it’s about people wanting to go into a room with others and experience the same joy together. “Coming on the heels of the isolation and division of the Trump Covid [period], being a comedy about grief and a comedy about mental health was really important. We are talking about mental health more now than we were five years ago.
“Goodrich, this sweet gem of a movie, starring Michael Keaton, is very nostalgic. And I think it’s about us reconnecting with our families, in a positive way, even if there have been rocky times. I feel like projects and characters come to the surface when we as a society need them. These projects especially feel like they are a product of their time.”
In speaking of a product of their time, artificial intelligence (AI) has a way of impacting performances. Productions don’t need to go to the locations and do the shoots. Part of the parcel is people having morals and scruples, what’s the right thing to do here. “CGI has gone through so many phases and we as an audience are able to see it now. I mean, yes, sometimes we get fooled by CGI, but it’s just a new technology.”
For now, Urie’s just happy with his current projects. He’s excited for people to see the new season of Shrinking on Apple TV starring Harrison Ford [delayed from the actors and writers strike last year; season 2 came out October 16]. “I don’t like it when there’s too much time between seasons as a viewer. So I want us to get back before anyone forgets about us. The new season is really about forgiveness.
“And it’s a show, like I said before, about mental health. And we’re in a moment as a society where we’re talking about mental health more than we probably ever have. Certainly as a whole talking about it, as something that everybody has to deal with and, and working with Harrison [Ford], he’s playing a character that is, I think, pretty close to him, in a lot of ways.
“He’s been in comedies. I’ve seen him in comedies, we’ve all seen him in comedies. But to do this, to do this role where he gets to really embrace a character that’s dealing with Parkinson’s… In this era of his life, [he] still cares, [he’s] still passionate, and still wants to be the best. Still wants to be his best. I shouldn’t say the best. Still want to be his best version. Be a perfectionist and love the work. He comes off as cranky in interviews and stuff and he loves playing that card.”
Urie is super-excited for his character in Shrinking. An adult. For Urie, even though it’s a comedy, it feels like his first big boy job, his first really grown up show, dealing with adult themes, situations and problems. He didn’t expect or necessarily think that it would ever happen for him. And now he gets to go toe-to-toe with people like Jason Segel and Harrison Ford.
In Goodrich, Urie plays a guy whose husband leaves him with their kid. “These are characters that exist in the world, and their problem is not their queerness. And that is a nice, refreshing change,” laments Urie. “I didn’t have any problem playing all those characters for all those years. That was important then and still is important for lots of people to see those kinds of stories told. But this new wave of playing queer characters that have problems that are not their queerness is exciting and refreshing and fantastic. This is just life. It’s not a different life. It’s what everybody’s life is, a journey of all the differences that go on.”
It’s this intense pride (pun intended) that bleeds out of Urie’s work, even off-stage. He’s the co-founder of Pride Plays, a queer theater festival that runs during Pride Week in New York City that gives opportunities to queer theater artists that might not be getting them otherwise. And it has been extremely rewarding personally.
Hair & makeup Chelsea Gehr
Stylist Michael Fusco