By Brandon Voss
10 Apr 2012
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| Justin Long |
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| Photo by David Johnson |
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Having contributed his boyish charm to the TV series "Ed" and to films as varied as "Jeepers Creepers," "Live Free or Die Hard," and "He's Just Not That Into You," Justin Long is learning to be less likable as he makes his Broadway debut in Teresa Rebeck's Seminar at the Golden Theatre. As of April 3, Long has succeeded Hamish Linklater in the role of Martin, one of four aspiring young novelists, opposite Jeff Goldblum, who has replaced Alan Rickman as the group's acerbic but brilliant teacher. We spoke with the 33-year-old former "I'm-a-Mac" pitchman shortly before his first performance of an eight-week engagement.
Justin Long: My agent knew I was looking to do more theatre, but theatre has not been always been high on the priority list for my representatives. My manager had been calling and calling about some pilot that I wasn't much interested in, so thank God I heard about this opportunity from Busy Phillips, who I was doing a movie ["A Case of You"] with in Brooklyn. I was actually familiar with the play because I had done a reading of it last summer, knowing that Hamish and those other guys were already cast. Once I realized that the producers were interested in me as a replacement, I aggressively pursued it.
As an actor who has had much success in television and film, what does it mean to you to be making your Broadway debut?
JL: I guess it's really always been a dream of mine, but it wasn't necessarily a goal, because it never seemed realistic. I first fell in love with acting through theatre, being in plays and going to plays. My mom was an actress when I was growing up, and she was always doing a play. What money she made was by doing voice-overs and stuff, but her heart was in the theatre. All of her friends were also working theatre actors, so that's just the environment I grew up in. I had no delusions of grandeur about acting, so I never thought I'd do anything in front of a camera. I thought that maybe, if I was lucky, I'd get an occasional episode of "Law & Order" or something, but my dream was to do theatre, and that's what I thought it meant to be an actor. I was lucky enough to get some breaks in films, and that sort of snowballed, and I didn't go back to theatre for 10 years.
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| Jeff Goldblum and Justin Long | ||
| photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN |
What brought you back to the stage?
JL: I really missed it. I had the opportunity to do the Williamstown Theatre Festival for the last couple of summers [Mat Smart's Samuel J. and K. and Lewis Black's One Slight Hitch], and the experience really reminded me just how much I missed and loved theatre.
You've actually been circling Broadway for years, participating in New York theatre institutions like Celebrity Autobiography and The 24 Hour Plays, plus MCC Theater's readings of Neil LaBute's Filthy Talk for Troubled Times: Scenes of Intolerance.
JL: Absolutely, I was trying to dip my toes in there, but it's not the easiest world to break into. Whenever I could, I would do reading or something, not so much as means to an end, but just because I really enjoy being on stage. I have a lot of friends who have consistently been doing plays in New York, and I also socially gravitate toward that whole world. I also enjoy watching plays. So yeah, I was flirting with it for a while.
