Stage Door Jonny

He's back, loitering by the stage door, angling for chats with some of the finest theatre artists of this (or any) generation. Find out who's coming up in our Summer Season, coming very, very soon. Please subscribe so as not to miss an episode, and leave us a rating and review. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are no second acts in American lives but there are in Stage Door Jonny. In the last act of conversation for this series of the podcast, Sir Simon Russell Beale tells Jonny about playing Hamlet for his mum and the challenge of grieving onstage, who he fixates on in his audience about once every couple of months, the actor he thinks is the top dog of his generation, improvising Ibsen and the b...

Enter the Ur-Guest, the man who’s performance in Lehman Trilogy made Jonny fall back in love with theatre, the OG inspiration for Stage Door Jonny and one of the undisputed greats of the modern stage- Sir Simon Russell Beale. It feels entirely fitting to end this inaugural series of SDJ with a chat with SRB, an actor who has performed more great roles than even Wikipedia can count. If you want to...

Take your seats for Act II of Jonny’s chat with Martha and hear how she feels about the first day of rehearsal, what noise the first stagger through of a play elicits in her and the effect it has on her bowels. We hear how The Coast of Utopia changed her life, what was special about the curtain call on the days when they did all three plays in that trilogy consecutively, why she still has beef wit...

Ladies and gentlemen, Martha Plimpton. Martha was all but born in the theatre - literally. She was onstage in the original Broadway production of Hair in her mum’s tum, then held by her as a tiny baby and a host of impromptu babysitters night after night as they sang “Let the Sunshine In”. The theatre was her formative play-space and so it remains. In the first part of their chat she and Jonny dis...

In Act II of Jonny's chat with Toby, we hear his nightmare of not being able to squeeze into Coriolanus's breast-plate, his unsexy take on Hamlet but some of that audience's sexy take on him, the role of chemistry onstage and which legendary actress didn't want the audience to laugh at her character, the efficacious role of pissing about in rehearsal, how thrilling it is to enter a flow state on s...

For Jonathan's pal Toby Stephens, acting is very much the family business. His mother is Dame Maggie Smith, and his father was bravura actor and legendary hellraiser Sir Robert Stephens. Here he speaks with great frankness, insight and humour about his parents and the influence they had on his own path towards a brilliantly successful career on stage and screen. He shares memories of failing to re...

Ever wondered what Willem is thinking about when he throws his yoga mat out every morning? Well, wonder no more, as we bring you the second part of Jonny's conversation with him on his farm outside Rome. We also find out how his time with The Wooster Group has informed his work as a screen actor, what he still craves from the theatre, and why actors should maybe sometimes just let the work do the...

We all know about Willem's sensational work on screen, but what you might not have realised is that he dedicated nearly 30 years of his life to the The Wooster Group - a legendary experimental theatre company in New York. Willem was kind enough to invite Jonny to his farm outside Rome, where he had only just morphed from movie star to animal midwife. They discuss how a white middle class boy from...

In Act II of Jonathan's chat with Sir Richard, the director talks of receiving right proper rollickings from theatre royalty, how he used light to change the shape of the stage for his legendary Guys and Dolls, his dreams of casting one of the great Olympic champions as Ariel, writing his first original play and the reception it received, whether the theatre has ever failed him and the insecuritie...

Sir Richard Eyre is a cornerstone of contemporary British theatre, who has given us Jonathan Pryce and Daniel Day Lewis as Hamlets, Ian Holm as King Lear, Mary Poppins in the West End and 5 Olivier awards along the way. In the first part of his chat with Jonathan, he charts his rise from a country boy with no knowledge of the form whatsoever to becoming director of the National Theatre. Along the...

In part two of our conversation with Zadie, Jonathan does his very best to encourage her to persevere with her second play and she explains how a thought that seems relatively tame to her in prose form has the potential to be thrillingly animated on stage. We learn which Shakespearean revivals infuriate her, how she and her husband Nick Laird can tell from the opening line of a play whether they'l...

Zadie Smith is unquestionably one of the finest novelists of her generation, but you may not know that she's also now a playwright - albeit by accident. In part one of her conversation with Jonny, we find out the treachery she was subjected to after turning her back on a talent show's judges to sing a Whitney Houston track to a wall, her retirement plan involving a fusion of jazz standards, comfor...

In the second part of our chat with Zachary, we learn why he owes a debt to the Pittsburgh Mini Stars, his Munchkin breakthrough, drinking his way through to the ghost of Tennessee Williams and the extreme and showstopping lengths he will go to to defend Calista Flockhart and Edward Albee from the stage. We also find out which Hamlet Jonny had a crush on and what it was like to act with the S...

Yes, of course you know Zachary Quinto from Heroes, American Horror Story or as Spock in the Star Trek reboots. You may also know him as one of America's most exciting stage performers (Angels in America, Boys in the Band, Glass Menagerie,Best of Enemies in the West End right now). But what you might not know about Zach is how he hums his way down freeways to warm his voice up, hisses in his...

In part two of Jonathan's fascinating conversation with Jez Butterworth they discuss Jez’s innate fondness for anecdotal embellishment and relationship with truths and lies, joining a conga line of druids, the seminal role Harold Pinter has played in his life and how theatre is really all about jeopardy and dignity. Jonny also poses him a series of teasing questions posed by some of their esteemed...

One of the greatest playwrights of his generation, Jez Butterworth, joins his old friend Jonathan to discuss his creative process and extraordinary body of work. In part one of their conversation, we hear why Jez was magnetically drawn to Pewsey on the day of the Queen's funeral, how there's sometimes an ideas butler by the bedside when he wakes up in the morning, which utterly inappropriate...

You will certainly know all about William H Macy and Felicity Huffman for their unforgettable roles onscreen (him Fargo, Boogie Nights, Shameless etc / her Desperate Housewives, American Horror Story, Transamerica etc) but what's perhaps less well-documented is their rich history in theatre. And what an entertaining history it is. Here, Jonny discovers how Felicity caught Bill'e eye skinny-dipping...

In the second part of Jonathan's candid, moving and illuminating chat with David in his dressing room at the Noel Coward theatre, we hear about his relationship with Martin Luther King both on and off the stage, psychotic breakdown, hanging with the naughty kids at King Lear, the time he spent with Vanessa Redgrave and the strange curse of 1606, blackface, friendship and the theatre family - not t...

Having barely seen each other since they appeared in a play together in 1992, Jonathan and David roll back the years ... in Noel Coward's dressing room ... shortly before he commenced his warm up for the evening performance of James Graham's Best Of Enemies ... on his birthday. David Harewood, we salute and thank you! In the first of this two parter, Jonny and David have a no holds barred con...

Ever skipped school to appear in a George Bernard Shaw play in New York? No? Well, that's exactly how Ethan Hawke's theatre career began as a 13-year-old - which spawned an adoration of the stage that has endured ever since. In the second act of his interview with Jonathan, he also talks about joshing Bobby Cannavale, Freudian motivations, the high watermark of his professional career, and hi...

Polymath alert! Actor, director, documentary maker, producer and novelist Ethan Hawke joins Jonathan to revel in his passion for theatre - and lifetime in it. When not failing to make Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer's coffee machine work, Ethan recalls riling Tom Stoppard, an uplifting chance encounter with Mark Rylance on a snow-swept New York street, the sequel he wrote to Annie on first se...

Jonathan's latest guest is the great Phylicia Rashad. In 2004, Phylicia became the first black woman to win the Tony award for Best Actress, and picked up another for Best Featured Actress this year. In addition to her fine work on stage and screen, she is the dean of Howard University's Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts. Jonathan met her at the Atlantic Theatre in New York,...

The second part of our chat with Damian Lewis is studded with reminiscences about his late wife, Helen McCrory. Damian speaks openly and beautifully about the play on which they fell in love, their contrasting experiences at drama school, and the time he watched her walk mesmerisingly onstage in Uncle Vanya, pour a cup of tea, leave without saying a word and have the audience in the palm of her ha...

Aside from containing a massive spoiler about Edward Albee's play The Goat: Or Who Is Sylvia - you have been warned - Jonathan's chat with Damian Lewis is an entirely safe and wonderful space to explore the highs and lows of life on stage. As well as asking, despairingly, 'why do we bother?!', Damian discusses the perils of duelling with Ralph Fiennes, the tantalising news that a return to theatre...