A WONDERFUL GUY: CONVERSATIONS WITH THE GREAT MEN OF MUSICAL THEATER to be Released in April

A Wonderful Guy: Conversations with the Great Men of Musical Theater, Eddie Shapiro's follow up to his wildly popular Nothing Like a Dame, will be released on Thursday, April 1 and is published by Oxford Press. A Wonderful Guy will be available in hardcover and digital formats with pre-orders now being accepted on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

In A Wonderful Guy, Shapiro sits down for intimate, career-encompassing conversations with 19 of Broadway's most prolific and fascinating leading men. Full of detailed stories and reflections, the talks dig deep into each actor's career; together, these chapters tell the story of what it means to be a leading man on Broadway over the past fifty years.

Shapiro said, "In Nothing Like a Dame, I talked to the greatest living female stars of the American Musical Theater, weaving a tapestry of 60 years-worth of Broadway's oral history. But, of course, the women only tell part of that story. For every Evita, there's a Che. Mrs. Lovett is no one without Sweeny Todd. Bess only exists if Porgy's there, too. The list of iconic male musical theater characters embodied by indelible performers is not only robust, it's made of legends.

Only Joel Grey can talk about creating an iconic role on Broadway, then starring in the film version, then bringing it back to Broadway. Only Michael Cerveris can detail the experience of creating iconic roles as diverse as the eponymous Tommy, and Bruce in Fun Home. Only John Cullum has appeared on Broadway in each of the last seven decades. And Brian Stokes Mitchell knows better than anyone what it feels like to be a star of today at a time when stars who work exclusively in theater are all but extinct. Their stories are unique and needed to be captured."

Spanning three generations of luminaries from icons of the stage like Tony® and Academy Award® winner Joel Grey (Cabaret) and Tony Award winner Ben Vereen (Pippin) to the newest crop of leading men like four-time Tony Award nominee Raúl Esparza (Company) and two-time Tony Award winner Christian Borle (Something Rotten, Peter and the Starcatcher) along with a host of others, A Wonderful Guy brings more fly-on-the-wall opportunities for fans to savor, students to study, and even the unindoctrinated to understand the life of the performing artist.

In addition to Grey, Vereen, Esparza, and Borle, A Wonderful Guy features interviews with two-time Tony Award winner John Cullum (On the Twentieth Century, Shenandoah), Tony Award winner Len Cariou (Sweeney Todd), Tony Award winner Michael Rupert (Falsettos, Sweet Charity), three-time Tony Award nominee Terrence Mann (Les Misérables), two-time Tony Award nominee Howard McGillin (The Mystery of Edwin Drood), Tony Award winner Brian Stokes Mitchell (Kiss Me, Kate), three-time Tony Award nominee Marc Kudisch (The Girl From the North Country), two-time Tony Award winner Michael Cerveris (Fun Home, Assassins), Tony Award nominee Norm Lewis (The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess), Tony Award nominee Will Chase (The Mystery of Edwin Drood), two-time Tony Award nominee Christopher Sieber (Spamalot), two-time Tony Award winner Norbert Leo Butz (Catch Me If You Can, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels), Tony Award winner Gavin Creel (Hello, Dolly!), two-time Drama Desk Award nominee Cheyenne Jackson (Finian's Rainbow), and two-time Tony Award nominee Jonathan Groff (Hamilton).

Eddie Shapiro grew up singing music from every cast album he could get his hands on. He is the author of Nothing Like a Dame: Conversations with the Great Women of Musical Theater, Queens on the Kingdom: The Ultimate Gay and Lesbian Guide to the Disney Theme Parks, and hundreds of articles in various magazines, newspapers, and other periodicals. He lives in New York City and Los Angeles.