Interview: Original JERSEY BOYS Cast Members Celebrate 10 Years on Broadway

The hit musical JERSEY BOYS opened on November 6, 2005 at Broadway's August Wilson Theatre. Since that time, the production has been seen by 4.7 million people, 23 million worldwide and is currently playing in New York, Las Vegas, London, in cities throughout the US on a national tour and in cities throughout the UK on a national tour.

Peter Gregus, Mark Lotito, and Sara Schmidt have the distinct honor of being the only three remaining original cast members from the Broadway show, now celebrating ten years on the Great White Way. Among the many tracks they cover are Gregus as record producer Bob Crewe, Lotito as infamous mob boss Gyp DeCarlo and Schmidt as Frankie Valli's daughter, Francine.

Following a lively photo shoot throughout the August Wilson Theatre with photographer Walter McBride, the three talented actors sat down with BWW to share their reflections and fondest memories of their time with the show.

BWW: Can you believe it's been ten years since JERSEY BOYS opened on Broadway?

Mark Lotito: No! You know it's that odd thing about time. When you're in the middle of it, you're like 'wow', but then when you look back you say, didn't we just open yesterday?

Peter Gregus: It's so compressed. I feel like it's not ten years, it's more like phrases, three years here, four years there, but it feels like a phrase rather than ten years.

How has the show evolved since its beginnings?

Sara Schmidt: The structure obviously hasn't changed, the words were written, but the atmosphere surrounding the story has changed in that it's not as dangerous as it was ten years ago. Our audiences are expecting to hear the F-word whereas ten years ago, when Mary first says the word 'Dago', there was an audible gasp from the audience.

Mark Lotito: And we're sort of a known commodity now. Jersey Boys is worldwide at this point, so people already have some sort of knowledge of it before they see it. And then there's also just a personality change just by virtue of different human beings coming into the show, they bring a different energy to the roles they play. Even when we're out and an understudy is on, there's always a different energy, even though as Sara was saying, the structure remains the same.

One of the unique things about the show is the role that the audience plays.

Mark Lotito: Yes, as hard as this is to believe, it is never the same from night to night.

Sara Schmidt: It's true, even though it's the same fourteen people on stage, there's 1,222 new people in the audience.

Peter Gegus: It's so funny because right from the beginning, Des [McAnuff], our director said you can't judge an audience as a single entity, they're not one person, they are thousands of people and they're all receiving the show in a different way. So whether they're receiving it in a gregarious, loud way, or in a quiet introspective way, you can't take all that on, you have to play to the audience that's in front of you, but know that they're getting the story, know that they're involved and invested in it.

I had the honor of being dance captain for five years, so I was able to come out and watch the show once or twice a month, so I knew on various nights, a quieter Wednesday for example, I'd go backstage and the cast would be like, 'wow, they're really quiet tonight,' and I'd be like, 'no they're not, they're just ingesting it in a different way but they're still enthusiastic.' And I feel that way today, the audiences are from all over the world now, that's a big part of who we're entertaining now, it's a very different audience from the first couple of years, but still, at the end of the day, people who speak no english at all, they hear 'Oh What a Night' and they recognize it and they connect with the music on a whole different level. It's really amazing.

Mark Lotito: Because audience reaction can vary so much, you really have to, at the end of the day, trust in what you're doing. Some nights, it is like a rock concert and that's great, and other nights when they're super quiet, you think hmmm, but then you exit the stage door later on and somebody's always there to tell you this is the most amazing thing they've ever seen.

Peter Gregus: And it's fun to go out the stage door and see people from all over the world. Last year we had a group of kids who were exchange students and I made them say hello to me in every language they spoke and it must have been at least 20 different languages, and it was crazy fun. But they all had a ball, so there's something about the show that transcends just a language, it's very visual, you know who these guys are, and there is a lot of storytelling in the visuals that our director created. And to Mark's point, you have to trust what the writers wrote, you have to trust those words because they wrote some brilliant words.

Sara Schmidt: And I think that's a lot of why the three of us have stayed with the show, and how we can stay, because it's so well written. It's easy for us to do every night, you're not lying, you're not BS'ing anybody, it's honest, and you're allowed to just be, and you're not making a fool of yourself. It's just really easy to go with what the writer wrote.

Even though JERSEY BOYS tells the story of The Four Seasons, it truly is an ensemble piece.

Peter Gregus: Everyone in the cast walks out the door each night feeling that they have contributed and there's an ownership to that. You know you're not one of 42 people with tap shoes like in '42nd Street', and I've been that, and it's very fulfilling, but there's a different thing going on here. Even though the ensemble is called the ensemble, they're not. Everyone plays roles, everyone speaks, everyone has a very important role to play in the show, across the board. Especially the women, my god, their characters have a huge impact, they telegraph the look of the show and the look of the period with the costuming and the wigs. They're such a big part of the storytelling beyond just the words. Sara, how many costume changes do you have?

Sara Schmidt: Seventeen.

Peter Gregus - Seventeen costume changes! Amazing.

Do each of you have a favorite memory from your years with the show?

Peter Gregus: I'm going to go back to La Jolla because I was there when a lot of this was created, and I have to say, the day we created "Cry For Me", the day I watched Des and Ron Melrose and Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman create that moment was to me, really what this was all about. And I'll never forget, when "Cry For Me" was developed, everyone in the room was just weeping, it was so beautifully done. And then to take it further, to put it on stage with the lighting and the costuming, the way the lights slowly meld into that isolated moment when you hear those four voices meld together for the first time, it was a truly magical moment.

Sara Schmidt: Well I don't have one specific moment, it's more like ten years of amazing friendships, and watching people get engaged on stage, having the girls in the dressing room coming in and saying they're having a baby, having babies born. Those are my favorite memories.

My other favorite memory is really selfish, it's when I got to meet Derek Jeter (laughing). We sang the National Anthem, and I am rarely starstruck, I feel like acting and celebrity has a lot to do with luck, but when Derek Jeter walked through the door, I literally dropped my soda on the floor and had to go run and hide, it was so horrifyingly embarrassing.

Also, the first year when we performed at the Thanksgiving Day Parade. I remember it was 10 o'clock in the morning and we looked to our left and there came all The Rockettes, and all of the floats, and it was just the coolest thing that a 20-something year old had experienced up until that point in her life. Such a New York moment.

Mark Lotito: Well for me, when you've been in it for ten years, you've seen so much, you've experienced so much and it's all wonderful, but I would say the thing that continues to surprise me about the show is that just when you've done it another hundred times and you're not sure where inspiration is going to come from, the show is like a gift because all of a sudden, you see something new from the other actors on stage, and you find in that moment there is another level, there was something that hadn't been explored yet and then it kind of affects you and all of a sudden you're like, 'huh, that came out differently tonight.' So the show is so tight and so good that it finds a way to keep giving to everybody up there on stage. So that for me, is something I'm really thankful for... otherwise, I'd kill myself!

(all laugh)

If you had to cite one reason why you think Jersey Boys is still going so strong after ten years, what would it be?

Sara Schmidt: For me, it's the writing and the directing and the respect that the people who they've hired have for the piece so that you don't stray. They've hired a lot of people who are not selfish, and just do the work and tell the story, a story that every person can relate to on some level. If you were the girl who worked in the diner, or the girl who loved Frankie Valli, or the woman who snuck into the bowling alley to watch The Four Lovers play, everybody can relate to something. I remember at the beginning they said they wanted three million people to see the show, they wanted the tri-state area, that was the goal, and I remember I was like, 'wow, that's a lot of people.' I think we had a million people within the first year and a half. And the fact that it is now worldwide, in how many different languages, how many people have played these roles, it's just unbelievable.

Mark Lotito: Sara's absolutely right, the show is so well conceived by the entire creative team and then you have this wonderful nostalgia for the music, which certainly gets people in here. But then on top of that, certainly when we started, there's the unexpected bonus of this great story, that fills it out in a way that I think surprised people when we first opened. It was like, 'oh, this is like an American rags to riches story, with all the dirty stuff along the way', because you can't go from the bottom to the top without it being complicated, and without some people getting hurt along the way when it happens.

Peter Gregus: I think one of the things which struck me when we first began, which also explains why we have this nice longevity, is that it's a guy's show. I mean it's a show that a husband can say to his wife, 'I want to go see Jersey Boys. I want to go see my story.' Because it's really about men's relationships, with all the warts and fighting, and you don't get a lot of that on Broadway and you don't get a lot of that with a musical. So for this show, and this crowd, it's very easy for a guy from Staten Island to say, 'I want to see a Broadway show and I want it to be Jersey Boys, because I know I'm going to see myself up there more than anywhere else.' And I do think that's one of the reasons why we've kept vibrating with the public. You see guys in their 50's and 60's bawling their eyes out.

Mark Lotito: The first year I had this experience, I came out of the theater after a performance, most of the crowd had gone, but there was one guy there and he stopped me and he said, "I gotta tell ya, I had a shitty day at work, we live 30 minutes from here but it took us over two hours to get to the show, my wife bought these tickets, I had no idea what the show was about, I thought, 'if I have to sit through another freakin' Wicked' or 'Beauty and the Beast' I'll kill her', my business sucks right now, I'm at my wits end, and then I saw this show, and I gotta tell ya ... it changed my life."

Oh what a night indeed!

About JERSEY BOYS: JERSEY BOYS opened on Broadway to critical acclaim on November 6, 2005 at the August Wilson Theatre. The show is written by Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice, with music by Bob Gaudio, lyrics by Bob Crewe, and is directed by two-time Tony Award-winner Des McAnuff and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo. The original Broadway cast included John Lloyd Young, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J.Robert Spencer.

JERSEY BOYS is the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons: Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi, about a group of blue-collar boys from the wrong side of the tracks who became one of the biggest American pop music sensations of all time. They wrote their own songs, invented their own sounds and sold 175 million records worldwide - all before they were thirty. The show features all their hits including "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Oh What A Night," "Walk Like A Man," "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and "Working My Way Back To You."

Peter Gregus' Broadway credits include CONTACT (OBC), A CHORUS LINE. Regional credits include ANIMAL CRACKERS (Goodspeed) and JERSEY BOYS (La Jolla).

Sara Schmidt's Broadway credits include BROOKLYN, DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES. Off-Broadway credits include FAME ON 42ND STREET, THE FANTASTICKS.

Mark Lotito is a veteran of 10 Broadway shows including FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and THE PRODUCERS. TV credits include The Good Wife, House of Cards, Jessica Jones and Boardwalk Empire. Film credits include The Wannabee and License Plates.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos