Peter Gallagher on The Today Show!

On Wednesday, October 31, 2001 Peter Gallagher was a guest on the Today show. The following is the transcript of the interview:

(During Katie Couric's opening remarks, a montage is shown of Peter's roles in The Idolmaker, sex, lies, and video tape, While You Were Sleeping, American Beauty, and his current role in Noises Off)

Katie Couric: Peter Gallagher is an accomplished actor of stage and screen. In his screen debut more than 20 years ago, Gallagher played a Fabian-like rock star in Taylor Hackford's 1980 drama, The Idolmaker. Numerous roles followed, including his critically acclaimed performance as the cheating husband in Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies, and videotape, the comatose brother in While You Were Sleeping, and most recently opposite Annette Bening as a repugnant real estate agent in the award winning American Beauty.

This week, the versatile actor is back on Broadway as a mad-cap director in Michael Frayn's revival of Noises Off.

Peter Gallagher, good morning, this is your life!

Peter Gallagher: (Laughing) Well, my goodness, a retrospective, is there something I don't know?

KC: No, but it was so fun to see you in all of those roles.

PG: (Still laughing) That was wild.

KC: Tell me about your current one in Noises Off, you play the director of a sort of third-rate players production of ...

PG: Of a show called, it's a play within a play ...

KC: Nothing On, right?

PG: Nothing On, and it's sort of a bare-bones tour, a three month tour of this production of Nothing On, which is an English sex farce. The first part of the show is rehearsing, the dress rehearsal, getting ready for the opening. The next part of the show is after the show has been running and you see it all from backstage.

KC: Which is really fun, because the sets are amazing, because you have this whole living room set, with a balcony and lots of doors ...

PG: With doors slamming and then you get to see what goes on backstage. People still make their entrances, but all of the animosities and relationships and rivalries have started to develop, and the third part of the show is the last performance when basically no one cares, they can't stand each other, whatsoever, and everything is falling apart.

KC: Why did you want to do this, Peter?

PG: Well, because it's one of the greatest comedies written, certainly in my lifetime, and it was a great part, and I figured at the beginning of the summer that we would probably be in a recession, or something, so I thought this would be the greatest thing in the world to be doing, I'd be living at home, and you get a lot of bang for your buck in a show like this because it wouldn't promise to be serious and not deliver.

It's funny, and in that way it's very illuminating about a lot of things that are human. I don't even think of them as a third-rate acting company, we asked all those same questions, did all those same things in our own rehearsal. You couldn't tell the difference between Noises Off and us trying to learn it (Laughs).

KC: And Nothing On. You know, I mean it also seems like a great show for the times, because it is just this sort of fun, escapist, entertainment, and it is very noisy, and as they say in show biz, timing is everything.

I would think that it would be so difficult for you all as an acting ensemble to make sure everything just comes perfectly.

PG: Well, you know it, we're entirely dependent upon each other and I couldn't be happier to be on stage with that such, you know, this group of actors and craftspeople that I have the greatest admiration for, because we're all, our well-being, I mean those doors are made of steel, you know, (Laughing) so you get in the way of some of these things and you could be missing something, you know, little bits of yourself, anyway.

KC: Exactly, exactly. Now I know that you have your roots in the theater, your first starring role on Broadway was as Danny Zucko in Grease and years later, I saw you as Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls. And you have a beautiful singing voice, by the way, which we heard in The Idolmaker, a little bit, you're actually ...

PG: (Laughing about the Idolmaker clip that was played) I still can't believe that.

KC: Despite the fact that you're in a lot of great movies, is the theater your first love, pretty much?

PG: Well, it's definitely my first love. When I was starting out, I had never even imagined doing movies, it was never even on the radar. I mean making a living in the theater was beyond the realm of my comprehension, so when I started, I gave myself 7 years to try to make a living in the theater, and fortunately, I didn't have to test the strength of that resolve. In fact, I made my debut right across the street from where we are in the Brooks Atkinson, in Hair.

KC: Oh, that's right. You know, what's great about you I think, Peter, is that you seem so open to a variety of mediums and a variety of roles and we were talking during the commercial about this HBO film you did back in 1997, 4 years after the first World Trade Center attacks, called Path to Paradise, and it has a very chilling closing scene, doesn't it, tell me about that.

PG: Well, it was a movie that was based on a lot of transcripts and available wire taps through the Freedom of Information Act. And we shot in locations in New York and New Jersey, with Marcia Gay Harden and Ed Eisenberg. And it was about more or less the extraordinary good fortune we had that more didn't happen, because of the effects of having an open society and the last line in the movie was ...

KC: Was Ramzi Yousef ...

PG: Was Ramzi Yousef saying, "Next time, we'll bring them both down."

KC: Who, of course, was convicted for the first bombing.

PG: Yeah convicted. Mike played an FBI agent who was sort of recognizing his powerlessness in the face of free society, to prevent this tide of people who would like to see us go away.

KC: Seems incredibly prescient, today. Meanwhile, I want to mention a couple of upcoming projects, you're in a Showtime production of the Anne Rice novel, The Feast of Saints, and you play James Earl Jones' father?

PG: (Laughing) I do indeed, Gloria Reuben and I are James Earl Jones' father.

KC: Oh, wow.

PG: Played as a young man by Robert Ri'chard, this is an extraordinary story about New Orleans from the 1820's to the 1840's.

KC: And also Adam Sandler and you are teaming up, so we'll look for you in everything.

PG: Yes.

KC: Noises Off opens tomorrow on Broadway.

PG: Yes, let's keep our fingers crossed.

KC: We'll be back.