Here's The Thing with Alec BaldwinAs we prepare to launch our fourth season at iHeartRadio, we’re revisiting some of host Alec Baldwin’s favorite episodes from the archives. In this episode, Alec speaks with actress, singer and Broadway star Audra McDonald. Much like the staggering beauty of her voice, Audra McDonald is impossible to ignore. The only artist to sweep all four acting categories at the Tony’s, she’s the most decorated Broadway star of all time. Reviews of her award-winning performances overflow with accolades, describing her stage presence as “spellbinding,” “haunting,” and “genius.” But for the California native, things haven’t always been easy. In this 2017 conversation, McDonald talks to Alec about getting into Juilliard, making it on Broadway, and the suicide attempt that helped shape who she is today.
Hey, it's Alec Baldwin here. Before we launch our next season of Here's the Thing at iHeartRadio in January, I thought I'd play some of my favorite shows from the archives. Audra McDonald occupies a unique place in the American theater. With six Tony Awards, she has the most of any actress in history. She is renowned for her work in opera as well as in films and on television. Here is my conversation with Audra.
McDonald svens.
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Much like the staggering beauty of her singing, Audra McDonald is impossible to ignore. The only person to sweep all four acting categories at the Tonys, she's one of the most decorated Broadway stars of all time. Reviews of her award winning performances overflow with accolades. She's spellbinding, radiant, and wrenchingly human. This year, the Julliard graduate took on her first voice over role, playing Madame Gardrobe in Disney's Beauty and the Beast. The performance was so great one critic wrote that her name and the credits prompted theatergoers to erupt in cheers. I sat down with Audre before her debut this summer in London's West End, where she takes on Billy Holliday, whose life as a black female performer hits close to home.
Specifically for me, I would say that there was an expectation on my part that things would get easier as a result of being successful. You know, well, what do you mean, they're going to make more money than I am, and yet we're doing the same thing, we're playing we're basically equal as far as the roles are concerned.
Or what did you do to address that? If anything?
I didn't. For I didn't do anything for a while I should have, and I didn't. I just went along well. And especially you know, when you're an actor, it's like you're always being told you should be grateful you've got the job, you know.
So being told that if you if you push too much, you're going to get a bad reputation for being Yes, yes, and I those actors that are infinitely less talented than you all the time.
They're just easy to easier to work with, and they don't they don't cause in terms of.
Being an African American performer, did that change?
Well, I tell you, I mean, let me give you an example. Of how in some ways it changed and didn't change. I have to I have to acknowledge the fact that I am someone who has had uh an incredible opportunity in terms of sort of breaking down barriers as far as like color bland casting, being color blind, cast as Carrie Pepperridge in Carousel, you know, or the fact that I played Mother Abbess and the Sound of Music Live, you know, and you know a lot of people have issues with that, but you know, I was the one that got the opportunity to do that. You know, when I was doing Annie for ABC, they did a version of that with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber and Alan Comming and Kristin Chenowith, and they cast me as Grace Ferrell and there was a scene at the end where Grace Ferrell and Daddy Warbocks proposes to Grace Ferrell at the end, the happy endings happening, you know.
And Victor was Daddy Warbucks.
Yes, he was my daddy. I love him too. And actually you'll appreciate this. We were sitting around one day on the set and you know, in a big, gorgeous mansion that Daddy war Books has and we were sitting between takes, and I was sitting next to Victor and I just got a little emotional. I said, Victor, what if this was really our house and we were really getting married and we had all this money and this life. And he said, in the just true Victor fashion, Darling, get a hold of yourself. You can totally hear Victors saying that, right. But anyway, so we were film king Barriers. Yeah, we're filming. We were filming Annie, and so we shot the scene where you know, Daddy Warbucks gives Grace Farrell the ring and it's lovely, and then we get word that we have to come in on a Saturday to do some reshoots. And Rob Marshall was directing, and Neil Maren and Craig Zayden, who were wonderful, wonderful producers and have been very kind to me over the years and give me a lot of work. That cast me in Sound of Music as mother Abbess, and they said we have to do some reshoots, and then they took me aside and said, it turns out that Disney might be a little uncomfortable or the powers that be. I don't know if it was Disney abcre I don't know. We are comfortable. There might be some issues with Daddy Warbucks actually marrying Grace. So forty year was this nineteen ninety nine nine, So we need to reshoot the scene and do it without.
You're hooking up the Daddy Warbucks.
Giving Yeah, And I was devastated. I was I was devastated. It's one of those things where you know you're starting to feel good, You're starting to feel like, oh, there's really change coming. Things are happening here. I am playing this role and it's it's Annie, but nobody cares.
And it's what did everybody else feel? Including Victor?
I think everybody and I think they were all kind of horrified, and you know, and.
Also did they use the product in the film?
Rob said, Okay, so we're all going to come in on a Saturday, and you know how expensive that is when you're only shooting Monday through Friday. Come in on a Saturday just to reshoot the scene. So everybody comes in and we get dressed up in that moment for that scene, and Rob does one big master take of Daddy Warbucks just sort of going, hey and bait buddy a buddy, It's great in this great this happened okay, exactly you over there, you person, you and he got one shot, one master take one shot. And then Rob said, okay, got that, so while we're here, and then he proceeded to reshoot other things that he thought he could make photos it, so he tanked to it.
He did tank it so they couldn't use it.
So they ended up using where so you look in the film and Daddy Warbucks proposes to Grace Ferrell in that and that's because that's because of Rob, you know, and his courage, his courage. Absolutely. And then at the end of the year when the film came out, Time magazine said something, or maybe it was a newsweek and of he said that in Things that Happened this Year, Daddy Warbucks Marry is a black Grace Ferrell and nobody cares. So I don't know what that's the answer to, but it's just an issue of things that you know, you think, you get to a certain point where you know things are changing, and then boom, you're sort of slammed back into that reality.
What are you in the middle of doing now?
I can't remember you rehearsing some show. Yes, Yes, I've Got a Lady Day was on the West End.
You're going to go to London.
Yeah, I've never been. No, I've never performed on the West End.
That's what I mean. You've never performed over there.
Not I performed, but never on the West End. I've never I've done like concerts and stuff that I've never done a show.
You never did a legit show over there? Yeah?
Yeah, yeah.
So what of the places outside of New York have you performed? That's an interesting thing to think about.
Well, in terms of like concert work everywhere, but actual shows, I've only done, Well, that's not true. I did the Secret Garden Tour million years ago. So you do kind of a national tour, you go all over the place. No, La, Yeah, I did it, but as you know, ensemble member, you know, and then I did Masterclass is the only other one that I did. We did that in LA and at the Kennedy Center. We did the taper at the Kennedy Center and plays and players in Philadelphia before we came into New York. But that's been the nineties.
Do you find that you stay in New York and try to stay in New York if that's home and that's easier for you, and well.
Yeah, I mean it is Broadway.
It's Broadway, and that's where I want to be. Yeah, but especially since you know, since having kids, you know, I mean, do you have no Well, I have a six month old, and I have a sixteen year old, and I have two step sons who are sixteen and thirteen. So it's you have a sixteen year old and it's yours, that's mine.
And you have a six month old that's mine, that's yours.
Yes, yes, you know what that's like, having a bit of a spread in between.
You had a kid when you were very young, the sixteen year.
Old, Well, that's very kind of you to say. No, I was thirty when I had my first and now I'm forty six.
And you want to have another baby?
I you know, I or you were drunk on a sailboat your husband?
What happened? Which is it?
Which is it? It's it's it's somewhere in between. It's really that the Broncos won the Super Bowl. Seriously, my god, and my husband is a big Broncos fan, and nine months later history the rest is Sally James McDonald's wins. Now, yeah, what are you gonna dow?
Was that for you?
Because I mean, I don't always want to ask. I was saying, how I want to do another show, but I don't want to be away at dinner time every night. Yeah, for four to six months, that's what's that like?
Do you bring the kids to the theater?
I did, well, I certainly did with my sixteen year old. When she was little, she was at the theater all the time with me. That was kind of the only way. And I imagine, well, I know for a fact, when I'm in London, I'm staying very close to the theater, and she'll be at the theater. And and if I were to get another Broadway show, I would just bring her there because you don't want to You don't want to miss anything, and you don't you don't want to make them feel like.
What about the baby?
Yeah, the baby will come. Absolutely, she has to just be with you right up till the half hour. That's what I've been doing now this year. You know, since i've had her, I've started back concertizing and literally I've had her backstage with either my husband when he can join me, or my babysitter, and I will sing and then run off stage and nurse her and then you know, go do your meet and greet or whatever. And actually during one concert she was really really fussy, and so my husband went on and performed, and I ran off stage and nursed her and called her down and ran back on stage. Crazy. Crazy.
Where did you meet him? Your husband?
We met doing one hundred and ten in the Shade, the show on Broadway back in two thousand and seven. Yeah, it was a long time ago, really, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a crazy time too. I I met him and then my dad was killed in the plane crash like a couple of weeks, like about six weeks later. Do your dad he was a high school principal that you grew up in California? Yeah, but you were born in Germany. I was born in Germany.
What was he doing over there?
He was in the he was in the army. Yeah, and then yeah, I was raised in Fresno, California. My dad was a high school principal and then he went on to become an associate superintendent of schools there. But his passion was flying, and he flew small planes and he had his own and he was he had just recently retired and he had his own plane that he was flying. And yeah, he had where were you that I was actually walking. I just finished the matinee of one hundred and in the shape. We were still in previews, and I was walking with my husband. He wasn't my husband at the time, he was just a friend at the time. A bunch of us were walking to meet the rest of the cast to have you know, a post you know, Sunday matinee drink with the entire cast. And my stepmom.
Called and said her dad was remarried.
Yes, he was remarried. And your mom still yes, my mom, she lives next door to me in the city. Yeah, yeah, or yeah, in Westchester. When she retired she left town breath yes, yes, but yeah. My stepmom called me and said, and I was just I was on fifty third Street between eighth and ninth Avenues, and it was it was It's interesting, you know in those moments, you know, you see what happens in film and you think it'll be similar, you know, in real life, and it's it seldom is, you know, as an act Well, I didn't. I didn't compute what she was saying. You know, she said, your dad, dad had an accident while he was flying the plane and he didn't make it. And I kept saying, oh. I said, okay, so where is he now? And she said, Audra, he didn't make it. I was like, okay, well where is Yeah? But I wasn't. It wasn't computing either, you know, and I was just really stunned. And it took it took a day for me to really start to cry, you know, because it just it ver close to him, yeah, yeah, very close, and it just wasn't making sense, you know. So it's interesting. I mean, it's been ten years on it'll be ten years actually next week that he's since his passing, and but it's just interesting. As an actor, this sounds so cold and callous and it's not. It's not meant to be. But as an actor, there was a part of me that was sort of floating away from my body watching the scene, going, I don't think you're having the right reaction, right, you know, I don't think process. Yeah, yeah, that's not you know, if this were a scene you'd fall to the ground and you know, break into a million pieces, and you're not doing that. You're you're playing the scene. It's so strange. But actually I know exactly when I really started to cry about my dad's passing and it was I I found out. We were getting ready to open one hundred and ten in the Shade, and so we're getting ready to go into critics Week where critics are coming and they're saying I'm saying I have to go, and they're saying, you're the star of the show. You can't leave as I have to. And so they canceled a couple of shows so I could fly home to California.
This is for their father's funeral. Yeah, they said, you can't leave.
Well know, they were just they were like, how do we do this? You know? And actually it was at the end of it was like right at Tony, what's it called it? When it's the cutoff time? Qualification time? So everybody was like, what do we do? So they were kind enough to cancel enough shows for me to run home for the funeral and trying to work that out with my stepmom who was devastated and you know, really broken, and trying to keep her together and keep the family together and figure it all out. And it wasn't until after the funeral you're saying hello to everybody. And I just kind of kept it together the whole time. And then as soon as I agreed it like the thirtieth person or something here, like a thousand people at his funeral. He was very, very well known and very loved in Fresno, California. And his older sister came and said, how you doing.
And that's when I lost it, when you emptied out.
I emptied out. But it was you know, But once again, that's not how I mean. Maybe maybe a good director, but that's not how I just imagine the film.
It was an actress.
You're always controlling and managing your feelings. Anyway, there was the lovers and knobs and dials inside of us. They was in there playing with all the yes.
Of course that we get paid for. You know.
So you moved to Fresno when you grew up in Fresno beginning at what age?
I was nine months old?
To me, here's your little baby. So you're a child.
And so there's the Order of McDonald who grows up in California. Yeah, there's the Order of McDonald, who now is one of the princesses of the Broadway Theater. There's like a Mount Rushmore. It's you and burned Itad and all these chicks. Now, who are these the greatest singers in the world, and I want to talk about the order in between. So the order in between when you first started into the business, when people are hiring you, and as you're building your career in New York and singing, what were they hiring you for?
Well, I think it had more to do with if I look back on it now, and no one's ever asked me this, So kudos to you. Well, I do try, You've got the talent, but I think it had more to do with I wasn't what people were expecting, you know, back in those days. Can I say back in those days, yeah, the early nineties. You know, you'd go an audition for something and they'd see an African American girl in her twenties walk in, and I think they'd expect some big gospel voice, or you know, they're like, can you be street smart? You know all those code words and whatnot, and I would sort of break out with the pseudo operatic voice that had Broadway qualities and was a bit goofy, and so I think it just intrigued people and anything. I think that's even how I got into Juilliard. When I auditioned for Juilliard and I wasn't you know, I wasn't really wanting to pursue classical music, but I thought, I'll audition on the strength of my voice. That's that's my strength.
Was that a goal to go to Juilliard?
Well, I wanted to go to New York. I wanted to live in New York Juilliard. Was it Lincoln Center, you know, you know.
The good beginning.
Yeah, And I thought I'd be able to get like my acting classes in nancing class as well. I was there. I didn't realize that once you're in a program, once you're in department, you know, you shall not stray. You stay in that department, and you know, so I just went in there an audition, didn't really know what I was doing, and kind of riffed at the end of a Mozart area. You're not supposed to rift with Mozart, and I did. And I said, I was a meto soprano and I'm singing subrette, you know, roles for them, showing them. I sang a subrette Aria from the note to figure out maryagifigure out.
And so for people who don't know what subrette is, what is that? I'm one of those people.
By the way you, Dorett, Well, Subrette is sort of like a really high light soprano, not necessarily coloratura, but she's like a young, sweet heroin hype lighter sound, not like a full lyric soprano. And so it's a lot of people say the ena roles despina, or it's theerlena, the little cute roles. So anyway, that's what I sang. I sang one of those arias. But then I said I'm a mezzo soprano, which I just was just that just showed how much I didn't know, how little I do. And they laughed at me and they said how old are you And I said I'm seventeen and they just said okay, And I thought, well, I blew that. And then two weeks later they called me and said we want you to come to Juilliard. But I don't think I think it was just intrigue on their part.
Are you there for four years? Well, would you start working?
No? I was there for five years, but.
You finished there, you graduated from there?
Yeah, I took a leave of absence because I had a suicide attempt actually while I was there, So I took a leave of absence there's a lot that happened between the Order and Fresnor, California and the Order who's on Broadway.
Now, okay, we're going to cover as much of that as you care to time.
I'm completely open about it.
So you're in Juilliard, Yeah, what years was that? That five years was from when to when?
It was from nineteen eighty eight to nineteen ninety three.
Right, So when you're there, was it trouble for you fitting in? Did you feel uncomfortable and out of place?
There?
Absolutely was that a part of what led you to do what you did.
Yeah, I felt out of place artistically. I felt all my life growing up in Prest, California, all I ever wanted to do was beyond Broadway. And then I thought, you know, let me audition for Juilliard. Just didn't think it through audition, got in. So everybody back at home is like, wow, Udra got into Juilliard in New York. She's you know, she's gonna make it. And then I get to Juilliard and I'm studying classical music. I'm like, this isn't what I want to do. I don't want to be an apt for singer. Why surely they're going to let me go take some acting classes, surely go do some dance lists, and surely didn't go an audition for Broadway shows. No, you have to just study, you know.
You are enjoying it.
No, And I felt lost. I felt completely lost. I felt like I was.
Offered about that.
But that alone, I'm assuming, if I'm wrong, didn't lead you to do something drastic.
What else?
No, I mean, well, you know, to an extent, you can say, yeah, well, you know, like I said, I'm open about it, because you know, I think I'm a case of it. It gets better, you know. But I so I was lost in terms of that, and then feeling like I couldn't just quit and go back home because I would look like a failure back at home And you know, I had boy trouble while I was there. And so the culmination of being where I wanted to be in New York City, thinking I'm finally going to realize my dreams, stuck and failing miserably at Juilliard, not being able to admit to anybody at home what was going on, Not being able to go home because I would have looked like a failure living literally on Broadway on Broadway my apartment. My address was Broadway twenty five oh eight Broadway third. I lived with the residential the old Broadway like well, the wild wild West.
Anything north of Baby sixth Street, forget it.
You did not in those days.
You shield and a sword to go to the grocery store.
Right and crazy to look at it now, Oh my goodness.
But what I'm curious about is that the woman, the young woman from Fresno, who goes to New York. And again, let me put a fine point of this before you answer, which is, and you say you have boy troubles? Are you dating a different kind of boy now with Juliet No, the boys that were hard for you to understand?
No, I was, you know I was.
Was that all the same?
Well? I was just not being treated well by a boy. Yeah, boys are the same.
All boys in the same week. Yeah, Ok, thank you. My guest has been Augum McDonald. Everyone, good night, everybody.
No, but but but but The reason I asked this, I want to are you a fish out of water in every way?
Yes? I was a fish out of water in every way except for the fact that I was in New York, which is what I knew I wanted. I knew that much was right, but everything else I kept you grounded, yes, but everything else was wrong. And so you know, in those days, I was, you know, twenty twenty one. I couldn't see past the fact that I had gotten here and everything up to up to now had gone swimmingly, and all of a sudden it was all falling apart.
And if you don't mind my asking what what were the the ramp up the time and what you were thinking and feeling. And the only reason I asked this for people who listen to this, who might be young people and artists who experience a certain kind of pain that you experience in this business that I think is very unique, because you exude in your work. You seem so confident and so powerful.
Well, I think it's because I'm now, I'm I'm where I'm supposed to be. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm doing what I think if you want to get I don't.
Know, you're not playing the Eena roles anymore, No.
No, no, But I mean it's more about I'm artistically fulfilled. I think my artistic soul is fulfilled. It's doing what it's supposed to do.
You agree, look cappy to me.
Not that she doesn't still find challenges coming up. Audra McDonald talks about a song that's been rather.
Hard to sing.
Audra McDonald isn't the only star who struggled to find her voice.
I mean when I tell people I was extremely shy and nobody believes me.
Now that's the thing that people have to overcome.
Yes, exactly.
You know, I've found a lot of comedians to be extraordinarily serious and draws withdrawn sometimes, So yeah, I think sometimes we overcome things by going after the very thing that really eludes us.
To hear more about Renee Fleming's story, go to Hear's Thething dot org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. If ever there was a track record that warranted dividom, it is Audra McDonald's. But despite her unparalleled fame, the Queen of Broadway is disarmingly humble, perhaps the mark of a person who's endured great pain in her case. While studying at Juilliard.
This was my third year and it had been just yet another year of floundering and doing poorly in all my classes, and teachers just saying you know, you've got to give over to your operatic sound, and me not wanting to, not knowing what that was. And when I would get close to an operatic sound, I'd say, I don't want to sound like that. So I felt like I was just being pushed and they were doing their job rightfully. So this is like, this is your Juilliard to study. This is what you're going to do to push me into a place that just wasn't me artistically. So that coupled with being you know, twenty twenty one by yourself in New York and being treated poorly by whatever his name was, what's his name, We're that no, no, no, no, no, he's he's fine. He's a great guy now. But at any rate, So all of that combined with me being sort of like the great hope from my hometown too. You know, Order's gonna make it. If anybody's gonna make it on Broadway, it's going to be Order. I I the boy was the catalyst that sort of like sort of broke that. It was a star that broke the camel's back. But it was three years of I'm in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing. I'm failing miserably but I'm here in Disneyland, where I'm supposed to be, where I said I wanted to be.
So I sord you do.
I I slit my wrists one night.
What happened? And written about this?
I haven't, I guess I should. I speak about it all the time, but maybe one day I'll write about it. Found you, I I I slipped my wrists and then realized what I had done and called the Sudent affairs director who I had become close with, and.
Said, I helped me, and someone came and helped you.
And they helped me, and they took me to a mental hospital. It's interesting this mental hospital still there, Gracie Square Hospital. It's next door to my ob gyn who delivered my six month old.
That's what a circuit that is. So I almost didn't make it, and now I made it and I'm in this.
I had to pass it, you know, every week to go to my obgyn appointment, I had to pass Gracie Square Hospital. And every time I passed it, there was a part of me just, you know, waddling down the street pregnant as can be. Some twenty nine years later, I would I would. I felt such relief and joy and you know, a sense of yes, I get the big picture.
Now, what month in the school year was that that that happened.
It was January or February.
So it was at the midpoint.
Let's say, and you take off office and you come back when you come back the following fall, you don't.
I came back the following fall for a little bit, and then I got an opportunity to audition for something that ended up that I ended up being the secret Garden actually, and I asked the you know, administration office and my the dean, what I should do, and they said, you know, go do that. It's okay, take the time off to go do that. It seems like that's where you want to be.
So and they probably didn't want to disappoint.
You at that point.
At that point they were like, sure, go go, you want to go sing on.
Go go do it.
Yeah, we don't ever want to get your way.
You know. The thing is there was actually a lot, not a lot, but they had a special arrangement with Gracie Square Hospital. There were a couple of other Juilliard students there that I had wondered what had happened to I was there. I was at the hospital for me, but Grace's Square, I thinks private hospital. I was there for a month. They evaluated me and said, you you're not going anytime soon.
And did that change you?
I was so heavily medicated. I was heavily medicated.
When you say that, it's so compelling to me because when I see you, I think of you. I think of you like you know, you're so strong your personality and performance. I view you as a person that's going to go. I'm going back into the burning building to save the baby.
Well that is me now, yeah, but I think maybe that experience helped make me that now. I mean, look, I'm still a mess. I mean everybody's a mess, always a mess, I you know, and I when I understood a lot going on, Yeah, and I realized, you know, I'm someone who suffers from depression. But I learned in the years a how to deal with it. B to find you know, find my joy and see to realize that, like alcoholism, it's something that you wake up every day and you say, yeah, that's still something that I have to deal with, as opposed to saying, oh, I'm just not depressed anymore. Just but to learn how to cope with that, and my art gives me a lot of joy and keeps me, keeps me strong.
So what's the first job you do?
This is a tired question, but I can't help back and ask you, especially with somebody like you, what's the first job when you do?
When you sit there and go, I got this.
I think I got this, like I'm over the.
No no meaning you know that the sky is the limit for you. You're out there and you're doing it, and you're connecting to that material, you know, and you go, I think I really really have a shot at my dream coming true.
Here.
It was Sally Murphy and she was she was Julie Jordan, and I played Kerry Pippridge and it was the guy Michael Hayden was with Hayden, Yes, yes, yes, Nick Heitner at Lincoln Center, which is also crazy for me to then open, you know, in Carousel at Lincoln Center, where at Vivian Momont Theater where you can look up and I can see the school that I, you know, had a hard time in and and I remember standing in those in those windows at Juilliard looking at Vivian Beaumont, seeing Patty Lapone performing there and going why am I not doing that? And then how'd you feel like the luckiest survivor in the world. I mean, and I felt a sense of gratitude, a sense of relief, and a sense of Okay, I get it. I now get that I was on my path.
Out the window of one place is your future. Out the window of Juilliard where you try to snuff yourself is the Vivian Beaumont where you're going to do.
Carousel across the street. It's always a vista for you what might.
Have been was, which was something not bad and wonderful? Yeah, I mean babies and Tony Awards and all that stuff.
I think, I think what it realizes there's a bigger picture. And I think, you know, it's very easy to, you know, just get into tunnel vision, especially when you're young and you know it's only you that you're having to think about. And not that that's a bad thing, but it's just easy to get buried very quickly under emotion and fear and disappointment and all that. And I just think that I learned to have a bigger picture about life.
We're taking a break, so stay with us. Once you become extraordinarily successful, in the busin You won your first Tony Award for what show?
For Carousel? And you're how old?
Twenty three?
Your child and you when you you were fresh out of that situation, You weren't far that far removed from that situation.
Was two and a half years away from that situation and a.
Half years later, which is nothing. Yeah, you win a Tony Award and you've won six Tony Awards. Yes, you won the most Tony Awards of anybody. Are you tied with somebody you're tied with?
No? Not with that.
No.
I love.
I love when people sit there and they go, oh, I don't know. I don't keep track of that. I go, you, liar, you got all your Tonys lined up?
They do.
No, I'm not you. I'm saying, but people in general, I doubt you do. To actually, but to embarrass you even more than I already have.
Oh good god.
You are enormously talented and everything clicks, and you're very, very successful, and you're gorgeous woman. Well you're a gorgeous woman. And what did that do in terms of your career, meaning that you could have gone and made films and then a television series. Did you have a lot of offers you swept aside.
No, I've never had those offers. I mean, I did one television series once where I played the best friend in Private Practice to the main character show Private Practice, Kate Walsh played Addison Montgomery and I played her best friend.
Did you do that?
I did it for five six years. The show ran for seven years, and I did it for five or six years. But no, Hollywood has never really banged down on my doors. And I think that's because you're very kind to say I'm gorgeous, but I don't think I'm the typical sort of look. I'm also a big girl, and I'm proud of that, and I'm fine with that. But you know, it's interesting when you go to Hollywood and you see these people on the movie screens your entire life, and then you see them in person and they're all like one fourth of them a taper airplay.
What the hell didn't look well?
Do you want a cheeseburger?
Yeah?
No, no, no, I mean it's saying look terrible, but it's just for me. It's just like I, you know, I think size wise that has something to do with it, and I and I don't know that that's where I'm at my strongest right, you know, And I think.
We work so hard to develop this perch you're in.
Now, what's that like for you to have to go out and wring yourself out again?
Process every night?
Well, the process for me, I go really inside. I get really quiet. People around me think that I'm angry with them before I do a show because I just get very quiet and I go inside and stay still, and I'm not. I'm not one to kind of jump around and go visit other dressing rooms. I just I have to kind of go in and be super super super quiet and still because focus. Yeah, because in a minute, you're going to have to turn all of your insides out, and so if I'm giving all that out beforehand, I will have nothing to get.
One of the hardest ones for you, Lady Day.
Absolutely that was by myself on stage for an hour and forty five minutes, just having to give it and especially living that life that she led. I have to have to live that on stage every night. That I was no fun to be around before the show. After the show, I was a ball.
Because that's very common.
Yes, because I was thrilled it was over until the next you know, it's interesting. I know I can remember who. Oh, maybe it was Kathy Bates. I can't remember who said this to me, but I said, well, why don't you ever come back to Broadway or do a show on Broadway? And I think it was Kathy Bage. She said, oh, honey, oh that's hard. It's hard, and she's right, you know it is, because especially when you think, Okay, I've done it, I've given a good performance. I got through that. You know, when you're doing a film, you're like, great, it's in the can and now I'm off the cub or whatever, you know. But Broadway it's like, and now I have to do that again tomorrow night, and then the next night after that, the next and it's a blessing.
At the end of every day.
I gotta go to work exactly, you have that whole day and what happens in that in the world. The worst thing for me when I was acting was when I have a wonderful, fun day and then I had to go to work and wring myself out and some drive to go do the Scottish play.
Yes, for me, it was always on Sunday matinee. When you're headed to your Sunday matinee. You're walking down ninth Abue and you're seeing everybody outside, either out of street fair or having wine and runch.
Yeah.
And I can't tell you how many I saw in the sun. I can't tell you how many times you're walking down ninth Aaber you just want to take your aunt and swipe all the food off of those sidewalk tables. It's like, that's not fair. No, of course not. I mean it's I'm doing what I wanted to do my entire life. But there is that.
People are counting on you. Yes, amazing.
When I did Street Car, I got really sick and I missed the show. I was out for it for a weekend, the two Saturdays and the Sunday, and I missed the show. But I go downstairs. I lived on Central Park West. I go downstairs. I cross over to Broadway an eighty sixth and Broadway on the northeast corner. I'm gonna cross over to William's Chicken, Yes, and get my soup.
Yes.
And I'm there and this little woman looks up to me. It's like seven o'clock at night. It's a it's a Friday night or a Saturday night. Rather and She.
Looks up to me, this little owlish woman. She goes, aren't you supposed to be on Broadway right now? And I thought this town, flip and town.
I have a story like that too. I mean, we were it was a New Year's Eve and Ethan Hawk had been able to we were doing Henry the Fourth at Lincoln Center, and he'd been able to get the entire cast invited to the plays and Players Club or a what's the club over on lads players Club? Yes, for New Year's Eve. So we're all there and we're all celebrating, and it's wonderful, but we're, you know, in and amongst you know, the actual members of this club. And it's New Year's Eve and I'm doing a play. And I was still young, and I thought, I'm gonna have a cigarette, you know, why not, I'm gonna have a cigarette. And I don't smoke as a rule, but I just decided it's New Year's Eve, I'm gonna have wine and cigarettes and it'll be fun. So I was smoking out on the little terrorists they have out there. I'm smoking my cigarette. I'm chatting with some of my cast members and an older woman who's a member of the plays Club. She comes up to me and she said, I'd say you're Audra McDonald, but it couldn't possibly be her because she wouldn't be smoking, never destroying her instrument. She wouldn't be smoking. And then she just sort of march, Now.
Who are people who in your life? In your career?
One might assume you've sung the song, sang the songs of pretty much everyone you want to sing. Where is there one that's gotten by you? Is there some composer whose music you want to sing that you haven't sang.
No, I wouldn't say that. I mean there's always young compo. I am always championed the work of new, young musical theater composers, so I'm always looking for new work to do. There are certain songs that I stay away from because I don't feel that I can do them properly. For example, one that I have not been able to conquer that I have tried a couple of times and never done in public because I can't conquer it is Being Alive by Sondheim. I cannot. As much as that song moves me and as much as it means to me, every time I try and sing it, I fail. So I have not done it in public, and I won't until I figure it out. And that is that strange?
It is No, No, I mean, I'm sure there's people. It's like in plays. I mean, I'm trying to roles.
I'm trying to think of. Right.
Do you have writers whose work you steer clear of as a performer because you don't you don't get it, so you don't know how to bring it to life. Not that you don't enjoy watching.
I might enjoy watching, you know, whatever. I want to have in the theater. Life itself is so filled with oddities now and surreal crap going on with the government and everything. I want to see something which is really I want some honesty. No, I need to have a like oxygen. I need a big hit of honesty.
I you know, that's interesting. I was listening to a performer on the way down here who i'd absolutely admire, whose work I admire, and they were singing a song that didn't, in my mind, seem quite right for them. Not that they weren't singing it beautifully, but I thought, I don't think they believe this. I don't. I think they're trying something and they don't believe it, and there's a part of me that thought, why am I thinking that about them? I do that stuff all the time. But I think you're right. There is something going on right now in the zeitgeist that's sort of like everybody is needing truth and needing needing something to ground them and where is reality?
Any sat tire?
And my last question for you is, well, first of all, describe for me, if you would, as I try to, always think about people in your profession and who do what you do as well as you do a moment when you're on stage and you used to go out there at night and you'd sing a song and you knew you were going to kill these people, you know, the minute that you sang that song, the way you said that you could almost feel the people just getting destroyed by that song.
Is that in a Lady Day as well?
Well? I think in the beginning with Lady Day, because I think no one thought that I could find her voice, you know, because I'm a soprano. So it's like, what are you doing with's the soprano doing Lady Day? You know, trying to be Billie Holiday. She doesn't have it in her And I didn't think I had it in me. And so some nights, you know, the show opens and the first thing I do is sing before I even start speaking, and so the audience and you can tell that the audience is waiting to hear is she going to get it? And on nights that I really felt that I was really lined up, really lined up with Billy. I had I had enough, you know, of her perfume on, and I had the makeup right, and I had the gin behind my ears so I could smell like what she must have smelled like in those days. And I would open my mouth and sing the first all I know is I'm in love with you, and you'd hear sometimes i'd hear the audience gasp, and that's when I'd be like, Okay, I got that right now. Sustain it for the next hour and forty five minutes, you know, and I'd feel that. I'd think, Okay, they're they're taking the journey with me. And there were nights where that wouldn't happen. I'd think, Okay, I got a drag them on this journey too, you know. But every once in a while there'd be that moment of and every once in a while to hear people go, oh my god, ah and know is I'm in low.
Ye in there you said that we are through. I know that that should know a yes, care go I wonder where Allah has gone.
The final line of a review from The Evening Standard for her recent West End debut as Billie Holiday doubles as a review of Audra herself. Quote, yet still she stands broken but indomitable to the last unquote. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing.
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