Isaac Mizrahi goes deep with Emmy-nominated actor, Tituss Burgess. They talk about how Tituss is wrestling with his difficult childhood, getting over his 10-year relationship, writing the score for the new musical, “The Preacher’s Wife” and more. Plus, Isaac discovers what he really wants in his obituary.
Follow Hello Isaac on @helloisaacpodcast on Instagram and TikTok, Isaac @imisaacmizrahi on Instagram and TikTok and Tituss Burgess @instatituss.
(Recorded on November 6, 2023)
If you really want to get to it. You know, my body. I have such a strange relationship with it because I always see little fat Titus, a little unworthy fat Titus, and I have to talk to him often and remind him that all of those things that we learned are not true. It doesn't always work, but I'm a little obsessed with trying to look my best forever, running away from whatever I thought my worst was. And I don't like that that is my motivation, but it is, and that is the truth.
This is Hello Isaac. My podcasts about the idea of success and how failure affects it. I'm Isaac Musraian. In this episode, I talk to Emmy nominated actor and Broadway star Titus Burgess.
Hello, Isaac, it's tight as Burgess. Wait did you give me the right number? It's just the right number. Well, I hope it is, call me back. Can't wait to.
Titus Burgess has always been one of my favorite performers, and I always love watching him. I think he's just so fascinating as not just a performer, but also as a personality. And I've always wanted to meet him, and I've always wanted to talk to him. And today I'm excited to hear about not just who he is as an artist, but also I'm going to try to find out who he is as a person. So let's get started. Titus Burgess. Hi, Hi. First of all, look how fresh you look?
Oh? Thank you?
I just loo oh really well, you look fresh?
Thank you?
And you know what I want to ask you, is Titus Burgess your real name? Or is that is that is your actual given name?
My mom named me Titus Lamont Burgess Titus out of the Bible. It's one of the smallest books in the Bible, and Lamont after Sam Inside.
Oh, come on, that's amazing. I love all that. It's funny because I like talking to people of your age because you're not quite as damn old as me. But you're also not like the kind of I don't know, the TikTok generation. Even though I know social media is quite important to you. By the way, it actually okay, And I don't everythink.
I mean, I scroll on Instagram just as much as the next person, and I suppose my attention span is probably just as small as the next person because everything is in sound bites. Right. However, the need to be incessantly seen via these platforms is not it's too it's a full time job and I don't have that type of energy. When I have something to say, then I go on there and I say it, or if I'm feeling particularly cheeky, then I'll, you know, do it. But I don't sit and premeditate what I offer up. If it comes up, it comes out somehow.
Like I find your Instagram posts incredibly engaging, and I wish you had a podcast, like you're one person I wish would have a podcast that I could listen to because I think you're really fun to listen to and pretty smart. Well, just that whole statement about social media I find really really smart. Can we do a little history lesson about you? Because reading and reading about it? Where are you from? Originally?
I'm originally from Athens, Georgia, but my birth through about eight years old was in Stephens, Georgia, which is about twenty minutes outside of Athens. I grew up on a farm my grandmother and my granddad. We raised hogs and chickens and horses, and they had call it green fills and corn fills and all that, and so I I was up at the crack of dawn with my grandma getting the eggs out of the barn.
So tell me where is this whole kind of show business gene came from?
You know? Isaac? That is uh a sidebar, just a little small diatribe. I loved your TV show, thank you. I did, and I was just talking about the other day. I was like, you were so engaging and so the antithesis of all things Hollywood, and you made everyone feel so comfortable. Wow, that's a very That's a hard thing to do when you're trying to do a TV show.
But well, I mean everything's hard, you know, everything's really really hard to do. I think, all right, enough of this mutual admiration, darling back to you, where do you think this show business gene comes from? If you're growing up on a farm, how did you discover your calling?
My mom sang, and my grandma other could sing, And my earliest memories of being in front of people were in the church, and I thought that everyone could sing, and that everyone was a not a performer, but that everyone could do what I was doing, until I realized that that was not the case. And being on stage feels the same as singing. A solo in Sunday School.
Well, it's funny because I know that religion bears a big kind of part in your life, and it still does, does it not? Do you go to.
I very much got I belong to a church called Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village, And I would say I am culturally Christian, but I believe a lot of things and many things can be true, and there are many ways to the Wizard of Oz. So my God is not the only way for you to find inspiration and for your soul to be saved or you know, I could care less night that. I just want people to be happy. To the Church of Happiness, to the Church of source energy, and whatever drudges up that feeling for you, whatever it could be your dogs, I don't care.
It is my dog.
If you walk around feeling a sense of hope and love, then you go to my church.
So just to be clear, like do you believe in God? Or for you do believe God? Was I don't? And the thing is like I grew up in a very religious background too. It wasn't on a farm. It was in a house in Brooklyn and a yeshiva, and it was really scary and you know, just for one minute, if you could kind of acknowledge, you know, what the Bible says about artists, and what the Bible says about homosexuals, and what the Bible says about unclean fibers. There's a lot of stuff, So talk about that for just a minute.
So I want to be very frank. I don't really care so much about what the Bible says. There's many things in the Bible that just cancel me out right. But thankfully, my connection with God lives outside of those stories and those parables, and I think more people would stand a chance to feel that connection where we not so indoctrinated with Helfi and Brimstone and religion is scary and it is weaponized, and it makes total sense why they're atheists and people who don't believe. And I often wonder, here's something else I have to believe in, something outside of me, otherwise it gets too cerebral for me, and I feel like I'm just out here floating. You know, I don't know what's going to happen. You know, when I close my eyes for the last time and take my last breath, I think I believe that I'll you know see my loved ones who've passed on. But probably because I was taught that, I don't know that I, in my heart actually feel that way. I don't know what the fuck is going to happen? Yeah, beyond he and now. But I had to believe that the here and now serves a greater purpose than just the here and now. There's too much happening in the world and too much work that we have to do to try and salvage what's left of this beautiful place that we were handed for me not to believe.
So except what I'm kind of getting at, did you have a happy childhood in church? Like? Was that a particularly happy experience?
View? No? No, no, you no, it wasn't. You know?
How did you find your way to that? Do you know what I mean?
Yes?
If you don't want to talk about it, just say, like, let's.
I will to you about anything I hide. You know.
I am in the midst of such a sort of a crisis of faith. You know, I believe in my own kind of spirituality. I never really believed in God. I'm so nihilistic. I'm so kind of outside or outside or outside, And I wonder how a person like you who grew up in the church, probably not the most happy childhood. I mean, I read some stuff about you. I'm just assuming from what I read and how you actually have come to this incredibly beautiful place where you are now with religion.
Let me see if I can walk us through it. You know, my childhood has given way to some traumas that have caused me to make some really unhealthy choices in my adult life that I'm still trying to bring into focus. But what keeps me connected to God is that I am still here. I get to sing, I get to make people happy. I feel the love of spirit around me. I've talking to you. My vibration is raising that energy exists before us and after us and right now and long when we're gone. You know, for instance, this is going to sound crazy. You know, we listen to Judy Garland saying right, and we do to all of those wonderful concerts or whatever. But the joy and the sincerity and the way she was able to connect so transcendently, that is God.
I agree with that energy.
Music is God. There's so many ways to the epicenter of the zenith of what we are and our possibility and what we are capable of, and we are inundated with so many ugly versions of us that it is easy to be unclear and not be able to sense that sort of light and love and warmth. At all times. I wrestle with it. I'm not always as close to the spirit world as I am able to summon today. Last week even it was pretty bleak, it got really dark, But I always bounce back. My natural set point is, is joy me too? Exactly? That's good, that.
Is it's true, it's something, it's really something. I agree with you.
Whatever you want. We can call it love, we can call it light, we can call it spirituality. However you break it down though the recipe, you know, the composition of it is something greater than us, that lives both outside of us and inside of us.
And you feel it especially when what when you're singing, when you're on stage. Do you feel it when you're filming something for TV or.
For the movie? Now?
Yeah?
Do you don't?
I do? I do. I'm very inspired. There's a crazy kind of thing that I'm feeling from you right now. I'm taking a lot of inspiration just looking at you.
Yeah, And so.
I feel this feeling, whether I am making you a meal and cooking for you, or whether I am talking to a stranger and having that uncanny, strange connection, or when I am looking into my.
Dog's eyes like it's everywhere and always available to us. It's just activation. And that is something that I'm learning and relearning, learning and relearning, learning and relearning. And that is why I had not left the church. That is why I have not left seeking God. That is why that curiosity has not escaped me, because I know that it is always there.
Right, Wow, darling, that is very very powerful, I mean it. And it's funny because you know, yesterday it was a particularly lousy day and I just I had such a terrible struggle yesay, just kind of overcoming my thoughts about the future and my thoughts about the future of the world. And ah, I mean there were a million terrible stories in the news and a million terrible stories in my own life. And funny, today, I feel so much better. And it's because, like you said, we are able as human beings to find some kind of something. I just refer to it as inspiration. All right, So tell me something, darling. Do you get stage fright?
Oh? Yes, oh yes, Mulin Rouge my return to Broadway. This is a after fourteen years of being absent from the stage. I don't know if lack of preparation gives way to stage fright or if fear is just because you care.
No, it's not lack of preparation, Darling. We are extremely prepared. We are very very prepared.
I care about the information people receive from me. I care about even when I don't have the energy or am able to even focus enough to deliver the right kinds of things. But I care about it nonetheless, and that makes me constantly panics, Drick the moment I hit the stage, because the performance that I give, that is the only church some people are going.
To see, well experience, right exactly, But I have to tell you me too. I mean I get terrible, debilitating stage fright.
Right.
And I was in a play last year. I was in Chicago for two months and yeah, I was, Yeah, and I know the show and I knew the stuff, and they rehearse the shit out of me. And I worked on it and I really did, and it didn't matter. It wasn't about the preparation. It was about whether I could force myself to be present the minute I walked on stage, because how many times you go to the theater and just hate what you're seeing, titis and so like, I don't want to be the thing that people go like, oh god, that show is so good until he came out, you know.
Oh come on, no one's going to do that. Did you enjoy it?
Oh my god, yes I did. I enjoyed it. And it was a challenge just because every single night like it did not abate the stage, fright, did not a bay. It was better at sometimes and better at sometimes. And then I did this whole brain fart thing where every single time my music would come up, I got and I couldn't remember the what. And it went on for so many nights that the conductor came to my dress room and he said, you know, do we have to And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, it's not about drilling. It's not about drilling. I've drilled the shit out of this. I know every syllable of it.
You know.
It's just about that moment where you go, can I just be here right? It's just about being there in that moment, you know, so existent I wonder I.
Think the great performers, uh in our in their hey day. You know, I've read Imagined Judy Garlic, you know Elaine Stridge, and she goes on and on about going up on the opening night of Company and she couldn't remember the lady wonderful story, it's so good. And Hal Prince comes to her door and he says, you know, that was the last night, Elaine, Yes, tonight is this night, and just sort of retrains for me because I tend to carry last night's performance into the next night, trying to top what I've done. Of course that I but truly though, the circumstances are different, and they serve us. They're there to help us, the audience, the collective mindset of the audience. They are the other character that we don't often consider, and they inform us, you know, And there's so many ways to snap us into focus. But what we don't give full gravity to. I think, Isaac, is it's hard being on earth right now.
It's really hard, really hard. Yes it is, Yes it is.
And the way we consume information is so different than ten years ago, twenty years ago. So it stands to reason that the type of focus that we are trying to summon and enact it is different than what it was fourteen years ago when I was on Broadway. So I taking myself a little more grace when we were doing the thing and trying to, you know, make people happy with with with our art. It takes a different type of focus altogether today to do what we do.
I think so too, Darling. Is there someone who influenced you as a performer?
M Renee Fleming?
Really that is a big surprise to me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my degree is in music. It's not in theater.
The opera star Renee Fleming, the fabulous opera singer who's so beautiful.
She's just she's an amazing actress.
I agree.
I've always thought, you know, when I was in school studying classical music, I was like, this is to me largely kind of boring, if not inaccessible, you know, and opera it's slowly changing, but it's a bit of an elitist sport for any reasons. People's socioeconomic backgrounds don't allow for the ticket price, so you don't, you know, get to consume it the way people who are wealthier perhaps would and have exposed to blah blah blah. So there are many reasons why I thought opera and classical music was inaccessible until I encountered Renee Fleming.
Wow, that's she's gonna Does she know this?
She is a pal she does, and I've had the privilege of singing alongside her, which completely blew my mind. But the thing that I appreciate most about what she does doesn't matter what genre she is doing, because she is able to waltz in and out of so many different genres of music. But it is her ability to cradle a story and be so honest about it. She's never in front of the material. It's never Renee forward.
It's always about It's about Yeah, it's true.
And that is what struck me long before her flawless vocals did, and her ability to act through operas that everyone's done before, but she always find something so new to do with the material. I just am blown away by our artistry.
Tell me something you don't come across as someone who has confidence issues. Do you suffer from like imposter syndrome? Do you wake up in the morning going like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're gonna find out today.
I don't have imposter syndrome when it comes to art. I know that when I open my mouth. It's a god thing. Again, something else takes over and so I don't have to worry about being great. It's gonna happen in spite of me. This is why I don't have a podcast, is because I am more concerned with my walk in life and wanting it to match up what I taught. And sometimes I want to take great care to not be a hypocrite because I really do care about what people not think of me. But I want to be transparent, so you know, that gives me more like, oh, I'm not living up to my standards of being a good human today as perhaps I could, where I had to strive a little harder, or maybe had a bad day or maybe you know, cut someone out. You know, that kind of thing, kind of you know haunts me. But imposter syndrome when it comes to are, Nah, it's gonna be there. We're gonna do what it's gonna do.
That's incredible. I mean there's a part of that that resonated with me. You know, it's not about so much imposter syndrome, but I think knowing that I was a good performer, and knowing I was a good designer, and knowing I was good at certain things that kind of led me. Yeah, like that I could set myself up to do all that stuff. I could make deals to appear and I could make deals because I could get there, and I know I can do that job. But I have to tell you, like this morning, I thought, oh, yeah, yeah, is tight as gonna find out that I don't know what the hell I'm doing, that I'm an idiot or something. You know, I swear to God almost always. I have a lot of like dread and fear of being sort of I don't know what exposed as a what might.
We find out? Isaac, I'm seriously darling.
I don't you know, I don't that I'm by the way, okay, here's the thing that I'm not as good as Renee Fleming, you know what I mean. And by the way, I'm not as good as like, you know, Whitney Houston. I'm not as good as Liza Minelli.
You would never be hired to hear this whole thing. Me too.
We will never be No, of course not. But I mean, don't you want to make sure that you are the best Titus Burgess in the entire world and that you are doing exactly right? And what you're supposed to be doing. You don't ever see any kind of there's not a challenge to that. There isn't a challenge never. I don't Wow, this is amazing, and you know I feel that from you, And that's part of what's so inspiring about you. Did you ever fail in some way that you've felt that you've felt really shaped you, that helped you move on?
I can answer this question this way. There are moments where I don't live up to my name. There are moments where I fall short and I feel that crippling embarrassment and I run away from that feeling, and that feeling and not wanting to feel that feeling governs a lot of my moves and how I edit art as I go along. But I feel a lack of confidence, just like as a man, as a single man, as a black man, and as I dare to be a better human. That's kind of where I'm like, Oh, they're gonna find out that I too don't know what the fuck I'm doing. But it's not art, it's my walk in life.
No, it's true. That's true. That's one funny thing that you said, because that I've always known as an artist don't fuck with me, fellas. Yeah, like, don't fuck with me fellas. Do you see a shrink?
Oh?
Hell?
Yah?
Oh thank god, oh god. Okay, well that's a good answer. I'm not going to ask you to the question. But you know, I found out from kind of devouring your Instagram page a little bit over the past day or two that you have a few sleep issues, which, Darling, we share this in common. What sign are you? What? PERI? I sees, Oh, my god, the wateriest the water, the end of the end of the world, Darling, the end of the end of the world.
Like crippling emotions. Like just the other night in Saturday, we had two shows. I didn't sleep well Friday, and obviously your emotions like are all over the place, and I already don't need help with my emotions being all over the place. I went over to my friend's house and I sobbed. I just I felt like it's like I can't do the sh I was sitting ordering sushi in between shows for dinner and I started crying like something, you know, and I didn't know what it was or whatever, but I'm just out of a ten year relationship. I know that too, And so I'm still grieving that, and I'm still you know, wrestling with a lot of stuff that occurred in my childhood that is starting to boil up to the surface or whatever. So at any moment, it's anyone's guess which tightest you're gonna get. You know, these emotions of mine, they sideswiped these shit out of me, and it comes up when I'm about to walk on stage or I mean, it's just it's it's really and so sleep I think. So. I took a sleep study test, which reminds.
Me of years ago.
Well did you pass? Do you have something?
It wasn't about passing or failing, it was just, you know, I went to one of those clinics for two nights and they studied me while I was and they told me about patterns and they went over my nutrition. It helped not at all.
Oh, no, do you sleep with the machine that see if I know?
Oh no, no, no, I don't have apnea. I just have insomble. Oh because you have sleep apnea. Oh I see, I see. Well at least we'll see.
I'll tell me. But I'm pretty sure I did because I literally stopped breathing when yeah, it's really bad. It's bad, and so I'm always tired and I don't know what. I got a good night's sleep, uh Thursday night, and so Friday show was particularly great. But the feeling that I felt that wasn't cloudy. I was able to focus and I was able to do my day. And I thought, is this what people?
No, no, no, Let me give you a little advice. Darling is an old insomniac. Okay. One, It's so funny. The performance thing never never, and you think it's going to and you think you had a good show Friday because you slept on Thursday. That's bullshit. A good show Friday because you thought, oh, I can now have a good show. You can have a good show whenever you want to have a good show. Okay one.
Two.
I mean this too. As you get older, it gets a little bit easier. You'll see that, like over the course of like ten years, and then another ten years, and by a certain point, like right now, I don't really feel like an insomniac anymore. And I rarely take sleeping pills anymore.
Rarely sleep, Like how about sleep? You sleep?
Well? I mean, the problem right now with all the world's problems and problems with people and all that. I'm having a little bit more trouble sleeping, and I sleep more erratically, like I sleep like not at all, and then I sleep for like hours.
You know.
It's a real pendulous thing. But you know, I got my first dog and he helped a little bit. And then I met my husband and that helped a little bit. And then I got my second dog, and the second dog really helped the sleeping thing. It's so funny.
You know, how long have you been married.
We've been married since twenty eleven. Oh wow, that's and we know each other likes changed what when I spoke about Yeah, you'll have to meet him eventually. He's so, he's a wonderful person. But darling back to you, I'm sorry. There's a kind of conditioning that I read about, Like, you know, your childhood. First of all, I think you were a fat kid. Is that?
Yes?
Yes, so is I. That's another thing we have in common, the sleep thing and the fat thing. Right and by the way, right now, she's looking very skinny, honey. I don't know what that's about. We're not supposed to celebrate that or even care about that.
No, a little bit. It doesnt matter. Well, I've been nipped and tucked Isaac. But I also have had a personal trainer for about a year and a half, which I also thought would help my sleep. Nope, And so that it's something else that you know, that whole imposter thing. I don't know how to receive affection or if you really want to get to it. You know, my body. I have such a strange relationship with it because I I always see little fat Titus, a little unworthy fat Titus, and I have to talk to him often and remind him that all of those things that we learned are not true. It doesn't always work, but I'm a little obsessed with trying to look my best forever, running away from whatever I thought my worst was. And I don't like that that is my motivation, but it is, and that is the truth.
Yeah. Well, speaking of these kind of feelings that you grow up with and that you're conditioned, right, and I'm telling you, you know, I was bullied the whole thing. I'm sure you were too. And the thing I felt the most sensitive about was not being a feminis, not being queer, nothing. When they taunted me for being fat, it really really really hurt and I'm not exactly sure what that's about. I think it's because it was like an issue for my mother too. You know, my mother was really really like, ah, my god, she was completely on my case about being fat, you know, and not that she shouldn't be or she should be.
Did she know that what she was mister?
No, no, no, no, it wasn't an intentionally cruel thing. But I was going to ask you, like, these kind of like setbacks that you've had in your life, are these like moments where you're being kind of challenged? Do you feel good about your past? Like would you change anything?
Oh?
Yeah, you would.
I mean I didn't need to be taunted and he to learn some of the lessons I now. No, I didn't need to be molested to you know, know some of the things that I know. I didn't need to grow up in a house full of depressed people and be tasked with taking care of their emotional health to be the Pisces sensitive soul that I have become what I do some over, yeah, would it have made a difference, I don't know, Isaac. I mean, you know, it all shapes how you see the right now right, It all shapes your incessant need to make sure that your didn't design elements are christeing and perfect. You know, it's hard to let me retrack that no, I would not change anything.
Well only because I feel like, as we look now at the way people are raised right, like they are given such a wide berth. You know, when you think about did you see that show called Jamie?
Yeah?
Oh wait London, I was in love.
I can not see that you even.
Say, okay, well, because I left there thinking, well, you know, his mother got him his first pair of platform shoes. How much can I care about this character?
You know what I mean?
It's like seriously right, I mean, with the way people are accepted today, I keep thinking if I were raised that way, what would I be? Now? Don't you think this little bit of grit, or all of the grit that you have had to put up with, isn't that what makes you this incredibly like? Don't you like love that you're so sensitive pisces, et cetera. Doesn't that make you an artist?
Do I love it? Like?
Aren't you an artist because of the adversaries? You know?
Very good? Yes, of course it avails me to a level of empathy that my art definitely benefits from but as a human, very recently, I've been able to to not let it run me. But for a while, you know, my emotions were running them up and sort of governing all my choices until I got into therapy and you know, started to unpack everything because everything was sort of lumped under one umbrella. But you know, sure, the darkness that I carry, the darkness that I inherited, does very much play a part, but also so does the light a great deal of the life. And you know, even more so because when I'm able to be in it, when I'm able to truly stand in it, there's no other feeling like it. It is the closest I feel to God. Is the closest I feel to what I believe God feels. You know, if God has feelings, Fuck, I don't know, but you know, so I hesitate to praise the darkness and not illuminate the light.
But you talk so openly about your past and about what it was like for you as a kid and being molested in all of that, and I feel like that is a very, very very big help in this world. There is something brave about that. You know, a lot of people probably wouldn't talk about that too too much, you know. So I feel like maybe giving you know, air to that kind of darkness is one way to transform it into lightness. You know.
Oh, I think it's the only way. I don't know how to keep stuff to myself. I tend to try and tell it before you can find it out. And celebrity culture is we have so much sway in the world, and people hang on our every word to an unhealthy degree. I feel sometimes and I just think my desire, especially if I'm going to be out in the world, being so accessible and people you know, able to come up and talk to me, YadA, YadA, if you're following me, There's not so much that I want you to know every detail in my life. But I just need you to know I'm human, you know, and I need you to be able to borrow from that. I need you to be able to benefit more from me than just what you know me. For I think that is my call to action. That is my church where I am the pastor, And that's a you know, a check you can take to the bank in cash, darling.
So how important is your personal story in this your preparation for kind of like going on stage tonight in Mola Rouge, right, Like, you are tightest doing that role? Right, You're not Jerry or Back. I don't know who the hell would do that role. I'm trying to think of like somebody who would do a great job with that role. You know, it's like you're not whoever it is doing that role. You are you doing that role? How much does your own kind of personality bring to like first of all, you're so funny. Do you write stuff? Do you write jokes?
No? Well, I do write, but not comedy.
You never did stand up? You never did like stand okay, right right, I'm just asking.
No, no, no, I am an actor. Give me the words and I'll exst. But it's interesting you bring that up though, because I was just taking with my publicist today telling which talk shows to not ever put me on ever again. Some formats need sound bites, and you know it's it's more for improv people than you know straight up in I can talk like this, I know how to do this. I'm not a comedian and I don't understand it and I don't have that type of mind. But how important is my story in my performance?
Is?
You know Mulan Rouge is not particularly you know, close to my story, but there are elements of that character that resonate with me. For instance, you know, he's tasked with being the showman, the ring master, but he's in charge of a fledgling company that's about to go under, and you know, I understand the sad clown of it all. And that was my way into playing this character and bringing all of the hurt and darkness and the responsibility to smile and nod when you don't feel like it, and it adds a certain sinister quality to it, I find, and it's it's working for the character. But I try and bring all of me into whatever I'm doing, even when I don't feel like it, because you can't fake how you.
Feel, you know, right, So like how do you prepare to go on stage? Like when do you eat? For instance, before it's a real slot, it's a slag, right, It's.
So like I mean, I'm just now sort of reintegrating the discipline that it takes to do a broalys show back into my life and really like making sure that I eat because I'm also type to you diabetic and so it just go sure, Harry, you know, and like every moments I'm like, am I going to pass out? What did I eat today? So you know, I don't. I don't have a regimen, per se or a routine. I try and sleep as much as possible, which, as you know, is hard for me. But that show takes all of my energy, all of it. So I don't pack my days with a lot and I'm trying, you know, stay quiet because of course, at the moment you wake up, your it's your day is in service.
To that one show. And do you review the material? Do you learn up?
Oh? Yeah, I want to.
Okay, you are my brain.
I absolutely want to. Yeah, yeah, but I will know right away from the first inhalation I take when I open my eyes what I have to do to get my voice, performance writing. And sometimes I wake up and it's just there and there's not a great deal to do. But I think that's just sort of my school training and such.
And like what I kind of insist is that like, no matter what, no matter how, every single moment on stage is planned and you have to be somewhere to catch a light and you have to say something. So the trombone knows that that's this, you know, right, It always has to be somewhat different. I like really think that that's true, you know, I how do you do that? How do you make it different every single night?
So personally, I don't think that I'm am actively trying to make it different. It just is justiss the very nature of live theater. There's a nownesst to it that has never been and never will be, even if it's the same text, you know, and our show is the construct of it is it's such that there's never the same people in it every night because it's always a swing. It's always a swing. Someone's on, life happens, you know, whatever. So those type type things also contribute to it's fresh, because it literally is fresh. You know, as long as you're there and showing up, you have no other choice about to respond in a right now sort of way.
But here's the thing. If you're really listening to someone on stage, or if you're really listening to yourself and like saying things that you've never said before, right, you might just get caught. I mean that's what happens to me. I get like, oh wait, oh right, wait, sorry, there's another thing I'm supposed to do now, right, Oh okay, So you have to kind of pull yourself. It's kind of like a medium, isn't it. It's like because if you went totally into that thing, you would disappear, and you show.
Yeah yeah, no, only an awareness that creeps in that you were up on stage doing a performance that can both serve you and fuck you up, you know. So there's a healthy balance of that. But I try, I try to listen as much as possible because that is the only thing that kind of keeps you on, keeps your toes on that stage. Otherwise you drift off when you start making your gross reliss while you're a.
Lot right well, that you can't do I mean that you can't do. You can't do that. So wait, so earlier you were talking about, you know, feeling a little off center because you recently broke up with your husband of twenty nine years. You're just your ten years I been married.
I never wanted to get married, but now I do.
Now you do? You see, don't I don't blame you? Can I talk to you for a minute. When did you break up with your significant other? When did that happen?
Let's see that happened almost it'll be two years this coming December. Wow, the initial conversation, and it has taken me as much time to uh retrieve my energy from that partnership.
Well wait a minute, can I pimp for you? By the way, if I know some people to introduce you to, Like, seriously.
Guys, talk to me, Isaac. I don't know what it is. And what's that about.
You're so cute, you're so amazing, you're so sexy. Wait a second, and by the way, they don't fucking slide into my dms, you know what I mean. It's like they're always sliding into my dms with recipes or something.
Well, the most attention I get is, oh, you're that actor or you're right, you know whatever. It's fine. It used to mess with my head a little bit, but historically even that's just sort of been been the uh the case. But yeah, it was a very hard decision to make it. It was a long time coming, you know, relationship morph and neither of us were our healthiest selves inside that union, and it served as purpose. He was my best friend and really gave me space to come undone and covered me in ways that no other human has before. And in fact he helped me so I put him through school. He got his degree in psychology, and he brought home this book one day called The Highly Sensitive Person. I don't know if you ever heard of it.
I think I've heard of that book.
Yeah, And we read some of it, and it brought in the focus a lot of traits that I was caring that at first glance can give the appearance of being flippant, if not self centered, but ultimately it's just a cavalcade of just overwhelmed by stili and such. And so I would retreat in a way and not give of myself because again, always tired, blah blah blah, blah, bah blah. So he illuminated a lot about my personality, which ultimately sort of gave way to us sort of realizing, well, this is turned into something else. And Pablo would have stayed with me had I not released him first. I actually prayed that Pablo would fall in love with someone else.
Wow.
He was significantly younger than I was. And there's a great little growth that Pablo had to do. And I had to rip the band aid off and go and get myself together, and I had to do it without him, and I knew that.
And you had to make the decision to do that. Yes, do you want to have kids? Eventually? You think?
No? No, No, here's where does not trust God? Where don't trust? I don't trust that. Collectively we are as concerned as we need to be about taking care of one another. And so for those reasons, I refuse to bring anyone else into this world. I panic for you. I pan it for me too.
Exactly are you kidding? And by the way, I don't know why, Like I think, I think, oh God, I'm way too self centered to be a good caregiver for a kid, you know, And yet you cannot believe what a good parent I am to my dogs, you know what I mean. But for some reason. Oh no, darling, darling, please, are you kidding? And I don't see it being any different at all. I'm so glad you're laughing. Like one of the things I always say is children are the dogs of straight people. Right, Oh, I'm sorry, it's the true. I'm serious. It's if they only knew. But no. But but the point is, and it's it's really not because I'm gay, because I'm straight. Really, that's not the thing. It's just about like I feel like I'm sparing that poor kid, you know.
Yeah, well. Also, I think there's a glorious aria that Rene Fleming sings in a street our name Desire, which was written by Andre Previn. It's called I Want Magic. It is through composed and the text is real. Who wants real? I know I don't want it. I want magic. That's what I try to give to people, and that is what you and I both do. We try and curate the world of possibility, and I think that that takes a great deal of shepherding, if not parenting, and it is all consuming in such a way. I don't think there's a need for us to populate the earth with our offspring. We do it in other ways, and it is no less daunting than if what we try and offer we're in the form of a person in terms of.
Parenting, and no less valuable because a lot of times people like will look and say, oh, well, you just wouldn't know because you're not a parent, and I look at them and I think, well, yeah, you're just not particularly talented, so you wouldn't know either.
You know.
It's like I could say the same thing, how are you fixed for the holidays? Are you gonna have a fun time in the show? Is that gonna help. Is that gonna be daunting? What's gonna happen?
I don't know.
It'll contracted through to the next year.
You can track it through, Okay. Number seventeen. My best friend and I are going to go to a spaw on Thanksgiving and we're gonna come here and watch TV. And I think because of them in the show, and because every day it is being surrounded by literally thousands of people, I think it's a day to be quiet, and I'm gonna just be quiet, and That's how I'll spend these holidays.
So, Darling, I am kind of obsessed with obituaries. I think about them a lot constantly. You have something you want your obituary to say. You want to be remembered for something exhausting. I know you're exhaustedility, but.
Uh, you know how I want to be remembered or how I want people to remember me.
I don't know, because I really am obsessed with the thought of posterity. Like when I think I'm gonna die, I want something somewhere to show the people they're never going to know that my favorite thing in the world is my dogs and spaghetti. As you know, whatever it is, They're never going to know that. That's the history of private lies, that's the history of my private life. I try to illuminate that in my memoir. But they will know something about Titus Burgess. What would you like them to know that?
I have a heart full of love and I really try to love the best that I could art it already it lives on beyond us, even now you know your show, I can find a clip on YouTube that's always gonna be there. We don't need help framing how great we were, the thing we did. It's the stuff that people don't know about us, right, It is what you know I want illuminated. But also how people remember me is not my business. I can't care, and that is something I'm getting better at, not caring how you're the villain in somebody's story, you know what I mean? And I just think I just want people know that I tried to love the best that I knew how to the best amount.
You know what, darling, Can I tell you something about my obituary? I think all I give a shit about is if they pick a gorgeous picture, if they pick a good picture where I look thin, then that'll be fine. I swear to God like a young cute picture.
I'm not kidding.
It just dawned on me while you were saying that I want to look cute. You know. I swear to God because I remember when I went out of business in nineteen ninety eight, I closed my coturier. Right, it was literally on the front page of the time. It was like on the okay, albeit on the lower fold of the thing, but there was a picture of me and the headline was something like designer most likely too doesn't And it was devastating. But the picture was cute. I looked really thin, and I was like, hooray, I'm free, you know, like shit exactly because I was so happy that I was going on. I was so happy because I always wanted to be in in the movies, in theater and entertainment, and I was so happy that it was going to be all this free time to do all that, you know. So for me, it was all about the picture, you know. So maybe it is about the picture. Maybe it is just about the picture, all right. Well, we also ask our subjects to talk about what they want to promote on the podcast.
Isaac, I mean comes rouge, but well, can I.
Tell you what I want you to promote. I want you to promote this show you're working on. Tell me something about the damn Thing.
So I bought the rights to The Preacher's Wife that starred Dinzel Washington and.
My favorite movie in the world.
It's such a one.
Oh my god, it's such a good movie. And by the way, there was a movie called The Bishops Wife. Do you know that movie? Okay, because that's also really good. A lot of original sorties, I think, so.
Yeah. And so I turned into a musical. I wrote the score, and Azy Dungeee wrote the book, and I've been working on it for thirteen years. I've only had the rights for eight. I don't recommend starting writing something without the rights because it gets real hairy. But I just knew that this story was supposed to be told through me, and it is very special. And I feel confident that the world is ready to receive a new thing. And I say that humbly, but it does things that I didn't even think it was gonna.
So you wrote the music for the Damn Thing? Yes, you you wrote music, Darling. This is amazing. This is a gift. That's one thing I cannot do. I can do so many things, but I cannot write music. That is amazing. I did you write the words and music or just the music?
And I tell you that is the longest term relationship I've ever been in writing that show, and it has shown me the greatest reciprocity. And I only hope that audiences receive as much joy watching it as I did writing it, because it just it has shaped me, It has raised me. It has taught me so much about the business, and it has taught me so much about this community people inside the story, and I've just I've learned so much trying to get this thing on stage. We have our world premiere at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, Georgia this coming spring, so you can go to the Alliance Theater and it's got some wonderful stars that will be announced shortly that everyone knows and loves. One of them was actually in the movie. So yeah. So it's just it's really gotta be awesome. And I cannot wait to just let it do what it does and wait for all the other lessons that it's about to teach me, because it's sure is going to do that.
I am coming to Opening Night, Seriously, I am coming to open up. It's not starring in it. When you for Broadway, I know, I can't wait. By the way, who knew that Andre Previn wrote an opera of street Car named Desire. That's shocking. I didn't know that. I love Andre Previn. He sort of knew Dorri Previn. Do you ever meet her? I knew her for like one second. I dated a guy who knew Dori Preven and I met her like in wherever they all live up there by Jacob's pillows. So anyway, that's where they live.
Yeah, he writes the most glorious.
Oh and there's a plant, my own tree. That's my opening number.
It might it might be.
You know, I see all the songs from Valley of the Dolls. Ah, well, you're a doll. I love you. I think I hate being finished. Why don't we have dinner as something? Eventually? I'll meet you at the that that everybody goes to f to theater, Cathay Central, glamorous. That would be if we walked in together to Cathy Central, the queens would kill themselves. The girls would just eat it. Okay, all right, I love it, I love it, I love it, all right? This is you're so well, this was so good. I love you, I love you. That was an amazing experience for me, not just because of the information that Titus imparted, but more because I could feel there was this crazy chemistry between us, like a crackly kind of I don't know if you can feel that sort of thing through the ethernet, but whatever it was, Darling, I felt his incredible kind of friendly and loving energy from across the burrows at least, you know.
And I have to.
Say that I wasn't expecting the vulnerability that came about in that talk. You know, maybe because of the way he appears on stage and the way he appears in movies and TV. He's always so incredibly prepared and so kind of confident and casual, you know, so I never get the feeling that he is this vulnerable kind of person. But today I felt a lot of that vulnerability, and I was very, very very pleased. And I feel like I made a friend today. Darlings, if you enjoyed this episode, do me a favorite and tell someone, Tell a friend, tell your mother, tell your cousin, tell everyone you know. Okay, and be sure to rate the show. I love rating stuff. Go on and rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts so more people can hear about it. It makes such a gigantic difference and like it takes a second, so go on and do it. And if you want more fun content videos and posts of all kinds, follow the show on Instagram and TikTok at Hello Isaac podcast and by the way, check me out on Instagram and TikTok at I Am Isaac Msrahi. This is Isaac Misrahi, Thank you, I love you, and I never thought I'd say this, but goodbye Isaac. Hello Isaac is produced by Imagine Audio Awfully Nice and I AM Entertainment for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by Me Isaac Msrahi. Hello Isaac is produced by Robin Gelfenbein. The senior producers are Jesse Burton and John Assanti, and is executive produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Caral Welker, and Nathan Kloke at Imagined Audio, production management from Katie Hodges, sound design and mixing by Cedric Wilson. Original music composed by Ben Wilson. A special thanks to Neil Phelps and Sarah Katanac at I M Entertainment.