VIDEO: John Gallagher Jr. & Stark Sands Talk SWEPT AWAY on Backstage with Richard Ridge

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Broadway is back and BroadwayWorld is bringing you all of the interviews you crave with your favorite Broadway stars! Richard Ridge is keeping up with all of their latest projects on Backstage Live, bringing you in-depth interviews weekly. Below, watch as he catches up with Broadway favorites John Gallagher, Jr. and Stark Sands.

The pair, who previously co-starred on Broadway in American Idiot, is now back onstage together in The Avett Brothers musical Swept Away, which is currently running at Berkeley Rep. Written by Tony Award-winning stage and screen writer John Logan, Swept Away is helmed by Tony Award-winning director Michael Mayer, and features choreography by Tony Award nominee David Neumann.

"We are having people show up in Berkeley saying, 'Wow, I've never seen a musical before, but I've seen 20 Avett Brothers shows...' And then they sit down and take this rather extreme, unpredictable, intense journey with us and they're hooked by the end of it," explained Gallagher. "To be up there some nights and thinking that I might actually be part of something that is providing someone with that experience is really cool."

Swept Away is set in 1888, off the coast of New Bedford, MA. When a violent storm sinks their whaling ship, the four surviving souls - a young man in search of adventure, his older brother who has sworn to protect him, a captain at the end of a long career at sea, and a worldly first mate who has fallen from grace - each face a reckoning: How far will I go to stay alive? And can I live with the consequences?

Sands acknowledged that the events of the past two years have impacted to power of the show's message. "For the people in our audience, whether they realize it or not, they have been through the last few years too. The themes of our show, which was written and conceived long before there was a pandemic, are so resonant. It's surprising people and punching them in the gut. It's really satisfying to be in a theater, whether you're on our side of things or in the audience, for that."

watch as the duo chats more about creating the new show, their love of The Avett Brothers, and more!