Betty Buckley Chats Joe's Pub Show, Playing 'Women on the Edge' and More

From Grizabella (CATS) and Norma Desmond (SUNSET BOULEVARD) to Edith Beale (GREY GARDENS) and Mama Rose (GYPSY), Tony winner Betty Buckley has a specialty for tackling what she calls "women on The Edge."

In an interview with Out, the actress chats about her upcoming Joe's Pub concerts and her propensity for playing troubled characters.

At the center of her upcoming show STORY SONGS "is a song Joe Iconis wrote for me in the spring. He invited me to be part of his Joe Iconis & Family concert at Feinstein's/54 Below in May. He wrote it a week before. It's called 'Old Flame', a wonderful character piece and so funny."

Audiences can also expect "a few standards," as well as tunes by Stephen Schwartz and Jason Robert Brown. But the concert will mostly feature contemporary Broadway composers.

When asked about preparing for her role in M. Night Shyamalan's forthcoming film SPLIT, Buckley talks about working with a psychologist -- the same one she consulted for GREY GARDENS at Bay Street Theater and in Los Angeles -- to create a character portrait.

"I'd go through the script with her," she told Out. "I know a lot about psychology now because I've been through therapy for years and years. I'd just go through the scenes and see how she would view them if they were a client or patient. How the psychologist would be feeling and how she'd handle it. I also worked with a lady I was in long-term analysis with on Sunset Boulevard."

Buckley will also give a Five Day Song Interpretation Workshop at the T. Schreiber School, September 19, 20, 27, 28 & 29. For additional information, visit: http://tschreiber.org

Read the full interview here.

Buckley will return to Joe's Pub for an exclusive seven-show engagement from September 22 to September 25. She be joined by renowned jazz pianist Christian Jacob, her longtime Musical Director and arranger; as well as Tony Marino on bass; Oz Noy on guitar; and Ben Perowsky on drums & percussion.

Buckley will also present STORY SONGS in Philadelphia, PA (September 18), Port Washington, NY (September 30), San Francisco, CA (October 21-22) and Costa Mesa, CA (October 27-29). She will perform Ghostlight, based on her recent album with T Bone Burnett in Newark, NJ (September 17). For more details, visit www.BettyBuckley.com.

Betty Buckley, in an award-winning career that has encompassed TV, film, stage and concert work around the globe, is probably best known as one of theater's most respected and legendary leading ladies. She won a Tony Award for her performance as Grizabella, the Glamour Cat, in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats. Buckley received her second Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a musical for her performance as Hesione in Triumph of Love, and an Olivier Award nomination for her critically-acclaimed interpretation of Norma Desmond in the London production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard, which she repeated to more rave reviews on Broadway. She is a 2012 Theatre Hall of Fame inductee.

Her other Broadway credits include 1776, Pippin, Song and Dance, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Carrie. Off-Broadway credits include the world premiere of Horton Foote's The Old Friends for which she received a Drama Desk Nomination in 2014, White's Lies, Lincoln Center's Elegies, the original NYSF production of Edwin Drood, The Eros Trilogy, Juno's Swans and Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road. Regional credits include The Perfectionist, Gypsy, The Threepenny Opera, Camino Real, Buffalo Gal, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Old Friends at Houston's Alley Theatre and Grey Gardens at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, NY and The Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles. In London she starred in Promises, Promises for which she was nominated for an Evening Standard Award and in 2013 the British premiere of Dear World.

Buckley tours in concert worldwide with her ensemble of musicians and recently was featured in the Royal Albert Hall concert of Follies in celebration of Stephen Sondheim's 85th birthday. She has recorded 16 CDs, most recently Ghostlight produced by T Bone Burnett released in 2014.