Julia Stiles Will Join Dane Cook and Josh Hamilton for Broadway's Fat Pig at the Belasco

By Andrew Gans
January 4, 2011

Stage and screen star Julia Stiles will join the previously announced Dane Cook and Josh Hamilton in the Broadway debut of Neil LaBute's Fat Pig, which will begin previews at the Belasco Theatre April 12 prior to an official opening April 26.

Heather Provost and Aldo Scrofani will produce the Broadway run, which will be directed by playwright LaBute. The producers said in a Jan. 4 statement, "We are extremely excited to be working with this astonishingly talented team and to have as our home, the newly renovated and stunning Belasco Theatre, one of Broadway's true gems."

Additional creative team members, ticket on-sale information and casting for the role of Helen will be announced shortly.

In a previous statement the playwright said, "Since the original production, the text of the play has been seasoned over the past five years by both my experience and the continuing struggle for acceptance of people in the world around me who fall outside of mainstream, classic definitions. I’ve been approached by people who’ve seen Fat Pig and need to talk to me about it more than any other play I’ve written and I recognize the universal nerve that gets pinched by this story. I’m also extremely eager to get into rehearsal with Dane and Josh. The ability to cater to your actors is a luxury that comes with being both writer and director. I’m planning on writing new material for this production to enhance the already considerable gifts that these men bring to the characters. I’m very much looking forward to this opportunity to see Fat Pig through fresh eyes."

	Josh Hamilton
	photo by Joseph Marzullo/WENN

MCC Theater presented Fat Pig at Off-Broadway's Lucille Lortel Theatre in 2004. The Off-Broadway cast featured Jeremy Piven, Keri Russell, Andrew McCarthy and Ashlie Atkinson; Jo Bonney directed.

LaBute directed the show's London's incarnation.

Fat Pig, according to press notes, "tells the story of Tom (Hamilton), a very eligible bachelor who falls for the beautiful, bright and plus-sized Helen. Tom is overjoyed with his new relationship but his shallow co-workers are less enthusiastic. Tom shrugs off their objections but eventually the cruel jabs of his acerbic friend Carter (Cook) and Jeannie (Stiles), a former flame, force him to question his own values and the importance of conventional good looks."

LaBute was represented on Broadway with the Tony-nominated Reasons to Be Pretty.

This year, Stiles joined the cast of “Dexter,” earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her screen credits also include the Bourne Trilogy opposite Matt Damon ("The Bourne Identity," "The Bourne Supremacy" and "The Bourne Ultimatum"); three Shakespearean film adaptations: Michael Almereyda's "Hamlet," "O" and "10 Things I Hate About You," for which she earned a 2000 MTV Movie Award for Best Female Breakthrough Performance and the Chicago Film Critics Award for Most Promising Actress. She also earned critical praise starring in Patrick Stettner's independent feature, "The Business of Strangers," opposite Stockard Channing. Stiles began her career on stage at La MaMa Theatre, and has since appeared in Shakespeare in the Park's Twelfth Night, both the London and Broadway revival of David Mamet's Oleanna with Aaron Eckhart and Bill Pullman, respectively; and opposite Mia Farrow in James Lapine's Fran’s Bed. Stiles also wrote and directed a short film, "Raving," for ELLE magazine's film series, starring Zooey Deschanel and Bill Irwin. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and on the Sundance Channel. She graduated from Columbia University in 2005.

Famed comic Dane Cook has been seen on screen and "My Best Friends Girl," "Dan in Real Life," "Good Luck Chuck," "Mr. Brooks" and "Employee of the Month."

Josh Hamilton's New York theatre credits include A Lie of the Mind, Things We Want, The Coast of Utopia, Hurlyburly, Proof, This is our Youth, The Waverly Gallery, The Cider House Rules, As Bees in Honey Drown, Gone Home, The Violet Hour, Suburbia and Women and Wallace.