Profile: Red-Letter Days
Backstage: West Coast
Most people have not yet heard of Douglas Sills. However, if he can get the kind
of buzz on the West Coast that he received in New York, you may not stop hearing
about him. Sills originated the role of Sir Percival Blakeney in the Broadway
musical The Scarlet Pimpernel, earning him a Tony nomination and his first real
taste of fame at the age of 38. Sills is now on the national tour with
Pimpernel, which is about to make its three-month stop at the Ahmanson Theatre.
Convinced his acting career was winding down after years of struggle, obscurity,
and guest-starring roles, Sills was on the verge of leaving the business when he
got the call to audition for Pimpernel. Detroit-born and currently Los
Angeles-based, Sills went to graduate school at American Conservatory Theater in
San Francisco, followed by work at such regional theatres as South Coast
Repertory, Mark Taper Forum, California Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla
Playhouse, and Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera. He performed in the national tours
of The Secret Garden and Into the Woods and appeared in the Blank Theatre
Company's L.A. premiere of the acclaimed musical Chess. Just before landing his
career-turning role in Pimpernel, Sills produced the new musical Dinah Was,
starring ER's Yvette Freeman as Dinah Washington. The show went on to have a
successful run Off-Broadway and is currently touring the country.
Thankfully, for audiences, Sills stayed in the game long enough to get this
long-deserved break in The Scarlet Pimpernel, and in the role of Sir Percy,
Sills has found his place in American theatre history. His charm, presence, and
command of the stage bring to mind the likes Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady or
Robert Preston in The Music Man-except that Sills can really sing. He can caress
a ballad or duet as beautifully as he can belt out "Into the Fire," the "money"
song in Pimpernel.
The story behind Broadway's The Scarlet Pimpernel is almost as amazing as Sills'
unexpected ride to stardom. Pimpernel was a show all but doomed by its miserable
opening reviews, but it somehow managed to bounce back by getting substantial
overhauls-new songs, rewritten orchestrations, restaged scenes, new cast
members, etc.-during its two-and-a-half year run, to the point that those
involved refer to its various incarnations like computer software: Version 1.0,
2.0, and so on. And were it not, in part, for Sills' commitment to the show,
Pimpernel very well might not have survived.
Back Stage West recently caught up with Sills in Seattle, Pimpernel's last stop
before docking in L.A. Sills discussed his new status as a musical theatre icon,
his experience with this troubled but rewarding production, and his realistic
expectations for his future.
Back Stage West: Did you hear about the recent Douglas Sills Jeopardy answer?
Douglas Sills: I had a relative call me and I heard about it. I've got to say,
that Jeopardy answer and having my picture up at Sardi's made me feel like I
didn't go to school for nothing.
BSW: And, as if it could get any better, it was a $1,000 Jeopardy answer: "It
was a red-letter day in 1997 when Douglas Sills made his Broadway debut in this
musical about the French Revolution."
Sills: I said to my mom, "I guess I made it." She said, "Well, none of the
contestants knew the answer." I said, "Thanks, Mom. I can always count on you to
put me in my place." But I can't tell you what a thrill that was. It's a trip to
become part of mainstream media iconography.
BSW: Have you seen some of the websites devoted to you?
Sills: No.
BSW: You've got to go online. If you ever get the feeling of being depressed and
that you're not going anywhere, go to dogpile.com and type in your name. There's
the "I Love Douglas Sills" website.
Sills: Do any of them own movie studios? That would be great. The fans of the
show have been wonderful people and I've actually made some friends. I'm not a
very easy person to make friends with-with strangers-but they really surprised
me.
BSW: I understand that you want to do Hamlet before you're 40. Why this specific
ambition?
Sills: It's a little like any amateur athlete wanting to be in the Olympics. You
can't say you're a mountain climber if you haven't at least tried to scale
Everest. Hamlet is it. I think I got into this end of the business because of
guys like John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, Laurence Olivier, and Richard Burton.
Those guys talk about Hamlet like women talk about their lives after they have a
child-like their lives are divided into two sections. It's life-changing, and it
can't help but be artistically changing. I've done a lot of Shakespeare and
that's certainly how I was trained, but I haven't done that role.
BSW: I read that your mother showed you The Scarlet Pimpernel, the movie, when
you were little. Was this something that you long dreamed of performing in?
Sills: Growing up, I had a habit of waking up a few hours after I was asleep, to
eat. I came down the stairs one night when I was very young. My mother, who had
four kids, was a night owl and she was up doing her "alone time." She saw me in
the kitchen and called to me. I was shocked that she was talking to me during
her private time. She pointed to the television and said, "So you think this is
what you want to do?" She had never said anything like that. It was an
acknowledgement of what I wanted. It was her giving me some advice, and it was a
really important moment.
I looked at the screen and there was this grainy black-and-white film. It was
Leslie Howard in The Scarlet Pimpernel. She said, "This is Leslie Howard and he
really knows what he's doing. OK. Now get out." As I walked out of the room, she
also said, "He's Jewish, you know," as Jewish mothers are wont to say.
BSW: Before I saw the play, I'd never seen the movie or read the book, so I had
no idea what to expect.
Sills: This is the original masked superhero story. Zorro came from this; The
Green Hornet, Superman, and Batman all came from this person's idea.
BSW: What I like about Pimpernel's story is that the lead character uses his
brain instead of his muscle to triumph in the end.
Sills: Well, that's the way I approach it. He's Everyman-put in very unusual
circumstances. I think that's what makes it timeless. Last year, A&E spent
millions doing a remake. So it's now had maybe five or six filmed incarnations,
from Leslie Howard to David Niven to Anthony Andrews.
BSW: What did you think of the A&E version starring Richard E. Grant?
Sills: I saw a little bit of it and I admire him very much. I think he's a
wonderful actor. I've seen him in all of his incarnations. Some time I would
love to be able to work on that level of subtlety. When the camera's right up
against your face, you can do things much gentler than you can in a 2,000- or
3,000-seat house. It's a little like cooking a gourmet meal for a party of 2,000
as opposed to five friends who are coming over for dinner. You just cook very
differently. You can serve them an incredible meal, but you have to take into
consideration what the parameters are.
BSW: Michael Caine refers to that in Acting in Film.
Sills: I'll never forget another thing he said: "You don't exist if you don't
have eyes." I'm blonde, and so I have to color my eyebrows and lashes.
BSW: For your work in Pimpernel, you have been compared to Rex Harrison. Do you
take that as a compliment?
Sills: I'm completely flattered. It's a crack-up, really. Something happened
today that really made me laugh. I read a review of it Seattle, and this
wonderful compliment came through which just made me pee. This critic wrote,
"Douglas Sills, as the 18th-century British nobleman Sir Percy Blakeney,
exhibits a streak of Errol Flynn, a touch of Danny Kaye, a dash of Jack Benny,
and a soup�on of Dame Edna." I'll take it all.
BSW: Another reviewer, Vincent Canby of The New York Times, wrote: "Sills
delivers one of the truly memorable musical theatre performances of the decade."
Sills: Well, this has been fantastic. It's been an incredible thing and I'm glad
it's happened when I was a little bit older and have had 20 years in the
business. I don't know if I would have been able to handle the pressure in my
20s.
BSW: Is it true that you were thinking about getting out of the business before
you got this part?
Sills: I had started to direct and coach. I produced a new musical called Dinah
Was about the blues singer Dinah Washington. My best friend had written the book
and I was the original producer in L.A. It came to New York, had a very
successful Off-Broadway run, and now it's touring the country. It's at the Arena
Theatre right now. It won several Obie awards.
I took my law school and business school tests again, because they had expired
from when I graduated undergrad from the University of Michigan. I was ready to
move on.
BSW: How many times did you have to audition for Scarlet Pimpernel?
Sills: Six. They put me through the wringer. I think I got it because they
couldn't find anybody else, and thank God Kevin Kline turned it down. He came to
the show and I said, "Thank you for being busy." He said, "Are you kidding? I
would never work that hard anymore." He was very nice and said I did a great
job.
BSW: Now that you're back in Los Angeles, the logical question would be, Are you
planning to do more television or movies?
Sills: I've done a lot of television: Coach, Party of Five, Woman of the House,
Sliders, Sisters, Murphy Brown. I've had a lot of good fortune in television.
I've been very close to having my own show. I've been really close to a lot of
wonderful things. I know what the heartache is of "almost"-when it's so close to
your mouth you can taste it, you can smell it. You've negotiated the contract,
you've signed it, and then it doesn't happen.
BSW: So you don't care to do television?
Sills: Oh, no, I'd love to do it. In fact, I think my ideal would be to have a
career very close to those of Kevin Kline or Glenn Close. They seem to be able
to move between the stage, television, and film with great fluidity.
BSW: Is L.A. the last place The Scarlet Pimpernel is going to be?
Sills: It's the last place I'm going to be with the show, but it's not the last
place the show is going to be. They have two years booked.
BSW: I saw the show in New York City. Following this show's ride through the
media, I'm not exactly sure which version of the show I've seen. There have been
so many rewrites and relocations for the production.
Sills: Can you give me a date or a year?
BSW: It must have been in June of '98.
Sills: Pimpernel, Version 1.0. That was the very first incarnation, directed by
Peter Hunt. That was before the show was purchased by Cablevision.
BSW: Isn't that amazing? The same people that own the New York Knicks are in
charge of The Scarlet Pimpernel?
Sills: I never thought I'd look forward to doing "art" business with them, but
they've turned out to be terrific employers.
BSW: Do they still own the show?
Sills: Yes.
BSW: I understand you're now up to the fourth version.
Sills: Yes. This is The Scarlet Pimpernel 4.0. We call it, "The Scarlet
Pimpernel 4.0: Make Sure You Have Enough RAM."
BSW: Not only in the articles I have read on the show, but even in the liner
notes of the CD, the original producers give you an enormous amount of credit
for keeping this show together. Do you feel comfortable in taking some
responsibility for that?
Sills: That's very nice of them. We certainly have been great admirers of each
other. I admire their tenacity and their resourcefulness, and that they have
persevered and put their money where their mouths were. They were very gracious
to me and admired whatever I brought to the show, and so it was a very warm
working experience.
You know, we were sold out in previews and got standing ovations every night,
and then The New York Times review came out and it was tough going from there
on. But the people that came loved it.
BSW: Were you in all incarnations of the show?
Sills: I didn't do 3.0. I left after 2.0 ended.
BSW: Why and how did the first big rewrite happen?
Sills: After the Tonys, it became clear that the fortunes of the show in its
then-current incarnation would not change in a really significant way to break
the half-a-million mark we needed every week. But then Madison Square Garden
stepped up to the plate. And along with this billionaire, Teddy Forester, Dave
Checketts from MSG said, "We're interested in investing in The Scarlet
Pimpernel." They hired a new director. They gave him X amount of dollars.
BSW: Robert Longbottom?
Sills: Right. And they told him roughly what they were interested in doing to
the piece, and Bobby had his own ideas and it became a much more extravagent
remounting than they had originally anticipated-new sets, new costumes, new
actors. They changed scenes. They changed the order of songs, orchestrations. We
only had three weeks and eight days of tech to redo the show; I was performing
the old show at night and rehearsing the new show during the day. So we
relaunched the show. And critics Clive Barnes and Ben Brantley came and they
reversed themselves on the negative reviews they had given.
BSW: Which is unheard of.
Sills: The next incarnation happened because the Minskoff, where we were
playing, had been promised Saturday Night Fever, which meant we had to go. The
Scarlet Pimpernel was left with a decision to make: Close or find another
theatre. Well, we found another theatre-the Neil Simon, which is much smaller.
So the producers said, "We're going to shut down, tighten the show, condense it
so we can fit it in there, and continue to make changes that we feel we didn't
really have time to make or that we realize we would like to make in the running
of The Scarlet Pimpernel 2.0." So they revamped the show again and made it sort
of a smaller thing, more of a chamber piece.
BSW: But you never did the show after the move to the Simon?
Sills: No. I was exhausted and was long ready to go. In fact, I had given my
notice about six months earlier, and [producer] Dave Checketts came to me over
dinner and kind of gave me that Mafia thing, like, "I need a favor." I said no,
and he said, "I don't think you understand... " So I agreed to stay on for a
little while longer until they closed that show, so it could be a little bit
neater in terms of closing there.
I just took about a six-month break, never anticipating I'd return to The
Scarlet Pimpernel, and then the tour came along. The producers and I talked and
talked, and by then I was much more sane and rested. I'm glad it worked out the
way it did-and now we're doing Version 4.0.
BSW: Do you think doing the show in L.A. will mean big things to your career?
Sills: It would be nice. It's going home for me, and to be able to be in a
big-profile project and go home at the end of the day is great. If something
happens, that would be great, and if not, I have my law school scores now. After
the run, I think I've committed myself to a project with South Coast Rep. We'll
either do Much Ado About Nothing or a new play that an old classmate of mine
from ACT wrote.
BSW: So you're going to stay in L.A. after the show wraps?
Sills: Not necessarily. I go where the opportunities are.
-David Juskow, Backstage: West Coast
April 27, 2000
Biography | News | Photo Gallery
Fan Thoughts | Music | Lucy's Page
This page hosted by 
Get your own Free Home Page