Actors are not nurses. We’re not saving lives. If anybody can stay home, we can, and that is nothing against my community. I think most of us feel that way. We absolutely should have stopped exactly when we did and we should not come back until it’s entirely safe.
Broadway will come back and people will be so hungry for live performance, to sit in a theater and see actual people that they will come in throngs. I think it will be stronger than ever. For all the shows that have unfortunately closed for good, my heart just aches, but we have to get something else going. We have to start up again. I hope that our show is back. I have every intention that I will be, and I believe that our producers are very confident thatwill be back, but anything is possible.
But I don’t think I can live in that space. I need to live in a mindset of awe and curiosity and wonder and joy, while still conveying what’s so great about this song.
I suppose the reluctance I’m feeling is because I’m guarding against disappointment. Can you imagine being in a state of expectation for this long and then, all of a sudden, they go, “Well, too bad.” I mean, talk about going to the dark recesses of your mind. I’m trying to keep myself open to the fact that we are coming back and that we are not coming back.
So I’m terrorized. They’ve won with me. They won with me after 9/11, and I am terrorized now with this homegrown terrorism. Not that a Proud Boy or a Boogaloo Boy is going to buy a ticket tojust to shoot up my ass, but you don’t know. I have been vocal about my hatred for Trump, so I don’t know how safe I am on stage. I mean, when I said what I said on the red carpet at the Tony Awards three or four years ago, [] the hate mail was insane.