Promises, Promises' Katie Finneran Would Like A Piggyback Ride

I love Broadway. My own stage career, however, was rather short-lived. A highlight included a star-turn as the Mayor's Wife in Jackson High School's production of Bye Bye Birdie. It's true the Mayor's Wife is far from top billing, but I made quite the impression in my one big scene, at the end of act one where I repeatedly fainted with expert comedic flair as Conrad Birdie sang "Honestly Sincere" to the starstruck townspeople. So much an impression in fact, that our choreographer visited me backstage (ok, the choir room) after the first night's performance to ask me to tone down my performance. Apparently I was "upstaging" Conrad Birdie. I highly doubt that director/choreographer Rob Ashford ever told actress Katie Finneran to "tone it down" after a performance of the new Broadway revival of Promises, Promises in which she plays Marge, an outrageously dressed drunken floozy main character Chuck Baxter (Sean Hayes) picks up at a bar on Christmas Eve.

Finneran's not on stage long, about 15 minutes, but it's enough time for her to steal the scene and maybe even the show. The audience breaks into belly laughs and spontaneous applause as she and Hayes dance around an inevitable drunken holiday hookup. Marge is the antithesis of Fran Kubelik (Kristin Chenoweth), Chuck's true love who ditched him for his boss at the office Christmas party, but it's a wonderful role for Finneran. She's able to showcase her beautiful singing voice as well as her comedic talents and she recently received a Tony nomination in the Featured Actress in a Musical category for her performance. I wouldn't call it a breakout, however: she's been an invaluable asset to the Broadway stage since 1991, getting great reviews for her performances in shows like The Ice Man Cometh and her portrayal of Brooke Ashton in Noises Off, for which the phrase "comic bombshell," was used to describe her in the New York Times review.

We got a chance last week to visit the perky strawberry blonde in her dressing room at the Broadway Theater, which has easy access to the box seats where she often watches the first act of the show (she's doesn't make her appearance until the top of Act 2). She was drinking pink Vitamin Water out of martini glass with frosted sharks on them (her favorite animal) and had just come from looking at fabrics for her Tony dress which will be designed by her friend Jeff Mahshie. This year she's looking for a bright, fun color to represent her swinging '60s-style show, which was not nominated after some very lackluster reviews. In fact only Finneran, Hayes and Rob Ashford (for his choreography, not direction) were nominated. We chatted with her below about her boyfriend of two years, fellow actor Darren Goldstein, her first job on Broadway and what really is the proper thing to wear to a luncheon. 


So we actually met a few weeks ago at a performance of The Miracle Worker. You were there with your very handsome boyfriend Darren Goldstein. How did you guys meet? 

Darren Goldstein and I met--we were doing Beyond Therapy together, and he--I saw him across the rehearsal room, and I was like 'Ah, there you are. I'm so done.' I knew. 

Really? Do you believe in love at first sight? 

I never really thought about it, you know you have crushes on people, and you have, like, you know, chemistry, but this was a whole different level of chemistry. This was like, 'Oh, I am so done. I am so done.'

Did he look at you like that as well?

He was just sort of like...friendly. He was replacing somebody who got fired, so it was sort of a nervous situation for him, he was coming in to save the day, and, uh, I asked him for a piggyback ride 10 minutes after I met him. I was like, 'This is really weird, but I think I need you to give me a piggyback ride.' In the rehearsal room. I wasn't professional at all, I was like 'Whateve. I wasn't getting paid enough to be professional.

Well now you're back on Broadway and just received a Tony nomination! How did you hear?  

I never [wake up early]. I figure: 'If I'm nominated, I'll find out soon enough. If I'm not nominated, then I haven't lost three hours, four hours of sleep.' At eleven, Darren called me from Philadelphia where he was shooting, and he told me. And I looked at my phone and it was like, a million phone calls. So I knew that something good had happened. Yeah, so I'm so excited. I mean, this is a Perfect Storm part. It's like, a mix of the classic Neil Simon lines, and that [owl] coat that Bruce [Pask] made for me! He brought me the best costume. The dance number that Rob [Ashford] gave me and the way that he directed me, and what we figured out together. I'm just so happy that the audience likes it so much. But it surprises me, it surprises me, I didn't know that the character could be so popular. I mean I knew it would be funny, but you never know how hard it's going to hit people, or how universal it's going to be, or maybe just your friends are going to think it's funny. You never really know.  

It must be hard though since the show and Kristin Chenoweth weren't nominated.

It just makes me feel sad. I watch the show every night. It's the most joy-provoking show, that I know of right now on Broadway. It's so happy, and Sean is so great, and Kristin is so great, and Kristin and I are really good friends and we've been around for a long time, and I've known her since she did Scapin in the 90s. We both go after the same roles--the same quirky, funny roles, and we both knew that this was like a different role for her. Like stepping out of the box and and I am so proud of what she's done, and I think it's a phenomenal performance. The intimacy she creates with Sean, in that 'I'll Never Fall in Love Again' scene right after she kills herself. It's my favorite. I love her work in the show, so it really bums me out that she wasn't recognized. But we're going to be around for so long, we're going to be old women. There's going to be ups there's going to be downs. There's going to be shows where she gets acclaim, and nobody will know I'm even in it. It's just going to happen. We always talk about it, I'm in her dressing room everyday on the floor, eating some sort of cupcake from a fan. So send cupcakes. I'm in there everyday, or she's in here. There's a lot of gossip written about the show, so we just talk about it, but it really doesn't mean anything, because our world is right inside this theater, and it's so great, it's a joyous experience.  

I read something you said before along the lines of 'If you let the good reviews and the hype go to your head then you have to take the bad stuff seriously too.' I thought that was a really good point. 

The last time I read really great reviews was, a famous reviewer reviewed me and he talked about the specific things that I did well, and I went onstage and I was like 'Oh, this is the part the reviewer likes!' and it never got laughs ever again. It like totally screwed me. It just gets in your head. So I just try to look at it all the same.  

But the Tony's are still pretty exciting. Do you go every year? 

I went the one time that I won, I've never been since. It's almost better to see it on TV, because then you get to see everything up close.  

And as a nominee you get to do the events before like the Oscars! 

Yes I need to get my luncheon outfits together. It's a very specific outfit--luncheon! I have like five luncheons next week. I'm very excited.  

What do you do pre-show to get ready beside chat with Kristin? 

I like to have this tea: Synergy. It's like...kombucha, cultured tea, kind of acidic. It's cultured, almost sour, supposed to be really good for you. This is my favorite drink, Vitamin Water  in my shark glass. I do my eyelashes, and then my top base of my makeup, So my makeup is pretty much ready, and then I just start getting dressed at the end of Act I, and I sing along to warm up, I do warm up exercises, and then I sing along with the rest of the cast. It's interesting how much I have to physically warm up, because I keep thinking I don't do very much in the show, but actually the things that I do do like kicks and backbends and I can throw out my back. Acting drunk means you have to be very relaxed. I get up in the morning sometimes feeling like I got hit by a Mack truck.  

What do you do after the show? 

I go home, and Darren cooks for me. He usually makes like salmon and brown rice and vegetables, or he makes chunky tomato sauce and gnocchi. He makes fresh gnocchi by hand! He loves me! 

You've been on Broadway for 20 years now! And you're 39 so that means you started at 20! How did your career start so early? Did you go to school?

I had done a movie when I was at Carnegie Mellon when I was a freshman and I auditioned to play a zombie in Tom Sweeny's remake of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. And I went in and rolled around and 'aaah I'm a zombieee ahhhh' and they kept calling me back and they asked me to audition for the teenage lead, one of the five main characters. And I got it. And I shot it in Pennsylvania. Then I moved to New York--not because of the movie, but because we couldn't really afford it for me to stay in school, and I had had a lot of training. It was 20 grand a year to go to school, and when I moved to New York -- now it's like 20 grand a year to send your kid to first grade, or 30 grand. But um, so yeah, I moved to New York, and I had that movie coming out, and somebody from Carnegie Mellon had become a junior agent at Triad, and I went in and did my monologue, and got a fancy agent right away. And I got my first job with George C. Scott  [in On Borrowed Time] as an understudy. That was my first Broadway show. 

What's your first memory about your Broadway debut? 

I was walking in to my first day of the job, and George C. Scott was looking down onto the set. Nathan Lane and Conrad Bain and Teresa Wright were in the show, and nobody was around--nobody -- but George C. Scott. And he was leaning down, looking out at this tree. And I walked up and said 'Hi, I'm Katie Finneran,' and I said, 'I'm here for rehearsal. What should I do?' and he said, 'Well we're not going to do anything till we fix this fucking tree!"' It was like the main thing in the show, it was like a big tree stump that Nathan lane sat on. So I was like ok, 'I'm just going to go over here!' I just went and sat in the theater. But he was lovely to me, very patient. He called me darlin. 'Katie Darlin.' I didn't go on for that part, but I went on for another part, 'offstage voice,' actually. I did my Broadway debut as an 'offstage voice.'  

That's funny. Now that your parts are all onstage and are usually comedic, would you consider yourself to be a comedian?  

Yeah, I guess so -- kind of a clown, or a comedian. I think I prefer comedy, although I like to get really, really angry, too. I like it all. It's all very much the same to me, but I kind of hear the comedy in things, you know? I hear the comedy pretty well.