Interview: Tyler Joseph Ellis of SHUCKED at The Hobby Center For Performing Arts

Today, BROADWAY WORLD writer Brett Cullum is joined by Tyler Joseph Ellis, who is currently here in Houston playing Storyteller Number 2 in the touring production of Shucked! This musical about corn has hit the Hobby Center just in time for your pregame Thanksgiving dinner action! It runs through Sunday, the 24th! Tyler Joseph Ellis has appeared in many musicals, including one of Brett’s all-time favorites, PASSION, by Stephen Sondheim. He was on THAT ‘90S SHOW on Netflix. He also appeared in the SEX LIVES OF COLLEGE GIRLS on HBO, and he is a huge personality on TikTok and Instagram, where he does comedy bits. 

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Brett Cullum: Okay, first up, SHUCKED. What the hell is this thing? I have no idea coming into the show; never seen it. 

Tyler Joseph Ellis: Good. Well, I don't want to give too much away, but we are about corn, as you can see from all the marketing materials. But it's about a town called Cobb County that is somewhere sort of in the middle of the U.S.A. Sort of isolated by corn fields, so no one ever comes to Cobb County or leaves Cobb County. This town sort of runs on corn, but the corn starts dying, so a brave young woman has to leave the town, which no one ever does, to try to find help, to figure out how to save the corn, and accidentally enlists a con man to come back to the town with her, and hilarity ensues.

Brett Cullum: Sounds very straightforward.

Tyler Joseph Ellis: Yeah, totally, absolutely easy, Peasy, but I promise it's hilarious.

Brett Cullum: That's what I've heard, you know. And it's funny because there's this marketing campaign going on right now, and every time you turn around, you hear Reba McEntire talking about SHUCKED. And many people are kind of virally mad online that she's not in it!

Tyler Joseph Ellis: It is a little misleading, but if it gets butts into seats, I guess. Full disclosure. Reba McEntire will not be there and is not in the show, but she genuinely loves it!

Brett Cullum: Was she a producer?

Tyler Joseph Ellis: No, she just came to the show and was like, “I'll gladly be your STALKS person!” because she wants people to see it. Something like that rarely happens, but we're very honored.

Brett Cullum: So you play Storyteller Number 2. Is that a big role, or is that a huge deal? Or are you just like “Spear Chucker Number 9?”

Tyler Joseph Ellis: No. What's funny is that it does sound as though I'm like tree number 4 in INTO THE WOODS. But Storyteller Number One and Storyteller Number 2 are leads in the show, and we take you through the musical. So we open the show. We will touch base with you. We're in every number, both narrating the piece and also inserting ourselves into it to play different characters and that kind of thing, and it's a blast. Take my word for it, Brett; I promise I have lines.

Brett Cullum: I had a friend who said, “I'm in LITTLE SHOP!” I went and saw it, and he was literally in the skid row number and the very end! I was like, wait, what? This was your dream? But back to you, Tyler! When I think about you. You seem to be an all-media kind of guy. We're talking about streaming shows, short films, musicals, and social media. What outlet is your favorite? I know you graduated in 2020 from UCLA. So, I imagine you guys spent a lot of time online.

Tyler Joseph Ellis (glaring at Brett): Yes, when I went to USC. I wouldn't correct you if it weren't for UCLA being our rivals, so I have to! So that I don't get killed by USC.

Brett Cullum: Yeah, no. I just purposely did that to create drama. See, I work for BROADWAY WORLD. We need the drama!   

Tyler Joseph Ellis: That is why you're good at your job, right?

Brett Cullum: Yes. I am a master of making things dramatic! It was part of my interview; I did several scenes from DANGEROUS LIASONS as the whole cast all by myself. 

Tyler Joseph Ellis: No, I graduated in 2020 from USC, meaning about half of my final school semester had to be online for at least half of it. So, at the time, of course, all of us seniors were like, “Woe is me! We have it the worst!” But then, in the grand scheme of things, I think the grades below us had it much worse than us. At least, when I say I graduated in 2020, people feel really bad for me. So that works. However, I had to pivot to online schooling and started doing content on the Internet to have some creative outlet. As you mentioned, I was doing PASSION! We were in previews for it. And I was getting my equity card and was like, “Here we go.” I'm finishing my degree while in the show, which will be so much fun. And then Covid hit. So I had all this pent-up energy creatively and then went to social media, which I never thought I would do. But it really worked out for the best. But to answer your question, my favorite media to do is I'm always a theater person. I'm wearing a “Loving Sondheim is not a choice, It's who I am” t-shirt! I will always be a theater person, but I genuinely love doing stuff for the camera. I think it's so much fun. 

I love how “lightning in a bottle” theater feels. I mean, doing a run for so long. We're less than 30 performances into this tour, but it still feels like a pretty long run to me. But I'm doing this for a year! It's like part of the work is figuring out how to make it fresh and keep it exciting and all that good after doing it so many times, whereas it's the opposite with film. There's this little magic that you have to capture in a short period of time. And then it's not up to me anymore. It's up to the editors and everything. It's kind of nice to surrender control. But for now, I love musical theater, and I'm sure I'll want to do something else after this. But I love being a multimedia person because I never get bored.

Brett Cullum: One of the things I love about theater is that you feel that instant reaction. You don't have to wait. It's like with online stuff; you have to wait. Did this get this many views, or are people reacting positively and negatively? Theatre is instant gratification. I get the applause it is done in one shot rather than multiple takes out of order.

Tyler Joseph Ellis: I think it's so helpful for any actor to try to get familiar with it all! But back to SHUCKED! I mean, it's so fun. I was shocked by getting the laughter! It is so much fun having an audience of 2,500 people or more laugh at your joke. It's so fun. So, yes, that's really special.

Brett Cullum: Yeah. And this is a really funny show. I mean, everybody says it's absolutely hilarious. So it's kind of one of those constant things. It's not just like a 1 or 2 joke kind of show. 

Tyler Joseph Ellis: Every other line in the show is a joke. Get ready.

Brett Cullum: Okay. So, I noticed that you do ads for H and R Block! What do you know about taxes?

Tyler Joseph Ellis: I'm getting to know a little bit more about taxes these days. Luckily, those ads pretty much you don't know it's a commercial until the very end. So it's like three series of short films that they turned into an H and R Block ad, so I didn't have to do any tax jargon or anything. But on the horizon for this tour, I will be taxed in every city I'm currently in. I've started to get some help figuring out how to do that because being an independent musical and media artist is not very straightforward. I’m a contractor for the social media stuff and am now going on tour! I'm trying to become more and more of an adult. I'm 26. So, I think it's time not to call myself a teenager anymore and try to figure out some things about taxes. 

Brett Cullum: Oh, you're killing me! 26, and it's time to become an adult? Tyler, Joseph Ellis, I am not an adult, but well ahead of you, so it's fine. I still don’t understand taxes! 

Tyler Joseph Ellis: Okay, good. That makes me feel better.

Brett Cullum: You're one of the few people I've talked to with a big ad campaign with a huge company! How did you get that gig? It's very different from auditioning for theater, I'm sure.

Tyler Joseph Ellis: That is such a good question. It was really the social media thing is so helpful because you create things in a vacuum, and you're making stuff on your own. And you see that some of them do really well with the numbers game. But you don't equate those numbers to real people. They become their own thing. But what I have realized time and time again is that people watch it. Important people watch them! The director-writer of those ads took a deep dive on my social media and just saw me. I try to use my social media, of course, to entertain but also to showcase the things I can do. I can act and be silly and also play different characters! And this ad campaign required me to play three different people, and he said, “I think it's him! I think we want him to do it!” So, I didn't have actually to audition. It was really more of a meeting with the writer-director. And he's like, “Yeah, let's do this!” It was bananas, and it was a few weeks in Los Angeles and a lot of changing costumes among the three people, but it was so much fun. I loved it. It was chaos personified, and it was a big-budget ad campaign. It was so much fun.

Brett Cullum: Yeah, no, I actually enjoyed it. So I'm going to plug it. Go to Tyler's website, which is https://www.tylerjosephellis.com/. There is actually a link to all of the commercials. All seven minutes of it is entirely there. And it's fun. And then, plus, you've got some links to your online stuff. You 26-year-old kids; you drive me crazy because you've got the whole handle on this social media thing. Great website! It looks so much better than Alan Cumming, who I interviewed earlier this year!  

Tyler Joseph Ellis: I used to work for Alan! Years ago. We love Alan in this house!

Brett Cullum: It's a small world. And look at me! Starting drama with your old boss!  

Brett Cullum: So I must ask because you're wearing the T-shirt. We mentioned PASSION earlier, and we referenced that you had to shut it down for COVID-19. Who were you playing in that? Please tell me it was Fosca! 

Tyler Joseph Ellis: I was Count Ludovic of Austria in the flashback, but I was also Private Argenti, which was so fun. So you get to do all the soldiers' gossip, which is arguably my favorite part of the show. But you also get to be a total villain in the flashback and sing that amazing, really complicated cut of music, which ends in “Just so, you know!”, way up there. And it was a blast. I love that show. I think it is so underappreciated. I really want it to get like a Jamie Lloyd SUNSET BOULEVARD treatment. I want PASSION to come back sexy in an approachable way. I think it's so riveting and scary. And so I'm waiting for a really cool PASSION revival with a big name. I'm ready! 

Brett Cullum: Nicole Sherzinger! We have a job for you! Yeah, Sondheim is amazing; I think everybody shares that because he comes up in every interview. What's your favorite Sondheim show?

Tyler Joseph Ellis: I would say SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE will always be my answer, but FOLLIES is a close second. Both of those shows! Every single time I revisit them, I find something else; I mean, that kind of goes with every Sondheim show. But I really worship the ground that man walks on. When he passed, people reached out to me as though I lost a family member. Everyone was like, “Are you Okay?”  I never met him. But I wrote a letter to him in college, and he responded. I have one of those Sondheim letters from him. I'm a Sondheim freak, for sure.

Brett Cullum: So you are a Sondheim guy, you do big national ads, and you are STORYTELLER # 2 in this show that Reba McEntire loves! What is it about SHUCKED that makes it so huge and popular? 

Tyler Joseph Ellis: You're just gonna have to see Brett. I don't know what to tell you.

Brett Cullum: I know, I know, and I'm excited. So you're in Houston. Obviously, this tour sounds like it just started. You're 30-something days in. Is that right?

Tyler Joseph Ellis: It's very recent! We went to Providence, Richmond, Nashville, Austin, and now Houston! We do a little Texas tour until the holidays, and then we end in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and then it's the holiday! 

Brett Cullum: Oh, all the hotspots! What a glamorous life! Have you ever been to Houston? Have you ever been to Texas?

Tyler Joseph Ellis: I have been to Texas. I've been in Houston once before. I've never been to Austin, so I have enjoyed my stay here. I haven't been to San Antonio, Dallas, or Fort Worth, so I'm excited to see everything. And I'm really understanding already that this is a pretty big state. I'm from California. So, driving this State is a feat in and of itself. And then I've gotten spoiled with the East Coast, where you can go to another State in thirty minutes. But Texas is no joke! The fact that there are this many markets for one show to go to in one state is pretty spectacular. So I'm thrilled to say that I've been to all the major Texas cities since then.

Brett Cullum: Well, I mean SHUCKED. It's a natural fit! We love corn. Probably more than Sondheim, taxes, or Nicole Scherzinger. If Jamie Lloyd decides to pare SHUCKED down and make it sexy, it may not work here in Houston! 

Tyler Joseph Ellis: Yeah, maybe it won't work. But that's for twenty years from now.

Brett Cullum: Exactly! When they do the revival with Nicole as Storyteller Number 2! But in the meantime, we have you playing storyteller number 2 and SHUCKED at the Hobby Center. You probably know where to get tickets, but it's the Hobby Center sites and our handy link below this article! Tyler, thank you so much! So much fun talking and geeking out over Sondheim. Now, let me get out of here and make more drama while you prepare Nicole to take over your role!  

SHUCKED is currently at THE HOBBY CENTER as part of the Broadway at the Hobby Center series. It plays through Sunday the 24th. Neither Reba McEntire nor Nicole Scherzinger are in the production. Stephen Sondheim wrote none of the music, but it’s worth seeing Tyler Joseph Ellis crack jokes about corn! 

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