Interviews
Shon Greenblatt- Oscar

TEEN BEAT:  Tell us about your character in Newsies.

SHON GREENBLATT:  The character I play in Newsies is a true character. His name is Oscar Delancey. [The younger of the two Delancey brothers.] The Delancey Streets in New York and San Francisco were named after him.  When he grew up he became a huge crime lord. But, in Newsies, he's this bad, more perverted, demented younger brother.  My character's the guy you love to hate.

TEEN BEAT:  Was he an easy character to play?

SHON:  I've never played a bad guy, so it's cool. It's hard to play a period bad guy because you can't rely on any one thing. There was a lot of research into this character. We were trained in martial arts and wrestling and there was a dialect coach on the set.

TEEN BEAT:  Was it hard to stay in that "New Yawk" tongue?

SHON:  No. We were around each other and pretty much talking like our characters all the time.

TEEN BEAT:  Was there anyone who mastered this "dialect?"

SHON:  If we couldn't find the dialect coach, then we'd talk to Max Casella.  Max has such a great New York accent.

TEEN BEAT:  Were there any outstanding things you remember from filming?

SHON:  Yeah. When we burst into the theater where Ann-Margret is performing to get all the kids. The cop my character's with falls into the orchestra pit and it's a funny, slapstick thing because I'm trying to push him out of there and he weight two tons and he's crushing me.  I just started ad-libbing.  I had to get it approved by the dialect coach because there are certain words they didn't use back then.

TEEN BEAT:  Were they open to your input as far as lines go?

SHON:  Yes. Actually, I said the ad-lib and the script supervisor wrote down what I said, and together we picked what we'd keep. Then, all the other takes were done with that.

TEEN BEAT:  We understand that Kenny Ortega, the director of Newsies, was really great.

SHON:  Kenny Ortega is the greatest.  He's an actor's director.  He really believed in us.  He's a good guy.

TEEN BEAT:  Was Newsies a tough film to make?

SHON:  Newsies was . . . there is no walk in the forest when it comes to making a film.

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