Josh Radnor on Broadway's DISGRACED: 'I Really Liked How the Heroes & Villains Keep Shifting'

Ayad Akhtar's 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Disgraced opens tomorrow, October 23rd at Broadway's Lyceum Theater. Today, the drama's star Josh Radnor, best known for his role on CBS's 'How I Met Your Mother', spoke to the New York Post about his latest project, which features the dinner party from hell.

"Honestly, I used to be very vocal about politics and what I consider to be injustices," begins the 40-year-old. "[But] I find, especially if you're in New York or Los Angeles, if you're at a dinner party and politics comes up, basically you're all just violently agreeing with each other because everyone's politics are all generally aligned leftward."

In the play, Radnor portrays Isaac, described as "a Jewish art dealer who, while dining with a successful ­Muslim-American lawyer and his wife, proves he isn't as P.C. as he seems." "One of the things I really responded to in the play [was] I really liked how the heroes and villains keep shifting almost on every page," explains the actor, who made his Broadway debut in 2002's 'The Graduate'.

Asked why he turned his focus to TV over theater, the actor offers, "I kept getting really close to these [theater] roles, and I noticed a lot of them were going to people who had more film and television credits. I just started booking pilots kind of quickly, and then the next thing you know - not the next thing you know, it was years and years - one of them hits."

While Radnor still takes some heat for the way his CBS comedy concluded after nine seasons on the air, he believes that reports of negative fan reaction were inaccurate. "I think that the negative reactions have been wildly overstated," he says, adding that "sentiment analysis" data showed that more than half the tweets about the finale were in fact positive.

The Pulitzer Prize winning play Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar began previews on Broadway on September 27 and will open on October 23 at the Lyceum Theatre, 149 West 45th Street. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Disgraced received Obie and Joseph JeffersonAwards.

DISGRACED will star Hari Dhillon, Gretchen Mol, Karen Pittman and Josh Radnor. American-born Hari Dhillon starred in the London production of Disgraced as Amir and was called "blazing and dangerous" by the BBC and "riveting" by the Financial Times. Ms. Mol's credits include Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things in London and New York. Ms. Pittman recently appeared in Bruce Norris's Domesticated at Lincoln Center Theater. Mr. Radnor is best known for his portrayal of Ted Mosby on the Emmy Award winning sitcom, "How I Met Your Mother."

Kimberly Senior, who helmed the two previous US productions, will direct. The design team includes John Lee Beatty (set), Jennifer Von Mayrhauser (costumes), Ken Posner (lighting), and Jill DuBoff (sound). Disgraced is produced byThe Araca Group and Lincoln Center Theater.

DISGRACED is the story of a successful Muslim-American lawyer and his wife -- an artist influenced by Islamic imagery -- enjoying their comfortable and successful life on New York's Upper East Side. When a co-worker and her husband come to dinner, what begins as polite table conversation explodes, leaving everyone's relationships and beliefs about race and identity in shards.

DISGRACED began as a part of the AracaWorks reading series three years ago and went on to be produced by Chicago's American Theater Company, LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater in New York, and London's Bush Theatre.Matthew Rego of The Araca Group said, "It has been incredible partaking in the development ofDISGRACED; each step in the play's journey has contributed to its power and poignancy, and we are so grateful for the contributions made by all. The opportunity to bring Ayad Akhtar's profound and incisive words to Broadway with such a dynamic and talented group of collaborators is a privilege."

Photo credit: Joan Marcus