Show People with Paul Wontorek: Joshua Jackson of CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD

Get Tickets to CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD:
https://www.broadway.com/shows/childr...

Stage and screen star Joshua Jackson discusses finding his happy place in the theater, getting to know his CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD co-star Lauren Ridloff, the end of DAWSON'S CREEK and more.

Here are some must-read highlights:

ON GETTING CLOSE FOR PHOTO SHOOTS
"We shot the photo for the CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD poster about halfway through the out-of-town run last summer, so we were quite used to being in each other’s faces at that point. Lots of breath mints were involved."

ON THE REVIEW HE CAN STILL RECITE:
"I did have one scathingly bad review during A LIFE IN THE THEATRE, which is of course, the only review that I remember. But it was brilliantly bad. The critic said I looked like, 'an American cockroach that had been flipped on its back trying to right itself onstage.' That's pretty bad. t’s only been 17 years. I’m sure I’ll forget about it eventually. THE EVENING STANDARD. Oh yes, I remember.”

ON TURNING 40:
“I didn’t put a timeline on coming to Broadway, but it is an excellent birthday present for 40. Every year that clicks by is another year where I think, ‘I can’t believe I still get to tell stories for a living. This is amazing!”

ON MAKING HIS BROADWAY DEBUT
“The experience of doing a play is such a joyful thing. It’s not the place where I spend the bulk of my work life, so when I do get the opportunity to come and do it, it’s because something really specific that I want to be a part of, a story that I want to tell. To walk up to work every day and and walk onto a Broadway stage is a pretty magical feeling for an actor.”

ON THE DISCOVERY OF CO-STAR LAUREN RIDLOFF
“Kenny Leon was putting together a read-through and had assembled a bunch of people. He called me up. He said, ‘I’ve found everybody else, but I haven’t found my leading lady. I do have this woman, who has been teaching me ASL, who for purposes of the read-through, I think would be amazing.’ She comes in on day one of rehearsal, and we get to the climactic scene in the play where Sarah uses her voice. Lauren says, through her interpreter, ‘I haven’t spoken out loud since I was 13.’ Flash forward the next day, we’re going through the play with people watching. We finally get to that scene. There’s this electricity building, and when she let it go it was a nearly indescribable experience. It was just this raw, emotional outpouring. It was one of those moments that can only happen in a live space. Kenny and I went out to get a drink afterwards, and I was like, ‘Man, that’s the whole thing right there.’”

ON LEARNING ASL
“Particularly for a leading man and leading lady, it’s important to get to know each other, to sort of understand who each other are, especially if you’re going to places that are uncomfortable. I had done quite a bit of work before I got to rehearsal, but had a lot more work yet to do just to get the language of the play down. So we would spend a day in rehearsal, and then she, I and Alexandria Wailes, our ASL director for the show, would then just break out another four hours and slowly but surely build me into a place where I was at like a post-toddler level in that language.”

ON THE END OF DAWSON’S CREEK
“It was such a long and ultimately complete experience because we knew we were going to end it when we were going to end it. So it was just this tremendous sense of relief. To be perfectly honest, I was quite burnt out at the end of Dawson’s Creek. There were many satisfying moments throughout that experience, but there were also many unsatisfying moments. If I could have ended it a couple of years earlier than we did, I would have.”

ON FINDING HIS HAPPY PLACE IN THE THEATER
“After Dawson’s Creek ended, I knew within a couple of months that I was going to go and do David Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre with Patrick Stewart. The plays that I’ve worked on in my life have all been very specific to a time in my life where there was a challenge or a question that I needed to have answered for myself. To put myself in Mamet’s language in the West End, a two-hander with just Patrick Stewart, is about the deepest of the deep end that you can possibly go into. He is such a skilled theater actor. If he had wanted to slaughter me onstage just to showcase his talents, he absolutely could have done that. That was within his power. But he’s not that man. He was incredibly gracious in allowing my learning curve—which was very steep for that show. Seeing his joy in it and discovering my own joy in it, I thought, ‘Oh right! I’m an actor. This is really truly what I want to do. I love this.’”