Interview: Garrett Turner Says TINA: THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL at Wharton Center is an Unmatchable Story That Will Change Your Life

April 18th through the 23rd only, the story of superstar Tina Turner comes to Wharton Center for the first time in the form of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. Tina premiered in London in 2018 before moving to Broadway in 2019. Each of these productions were nominated for several awards, with Adrienne Warren (as Tina) eventually winning both the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Actress. Last fall, the national tour started its journey in theatres across North America.

BroadwayWorld Michigan had the pleasure of speaking with Garrett Turner, who plays Tina's husband Ike Turner in the North American tour of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. Read our discussion below!

BroadwayWorld Michigan: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your career in theatre?

Garrett Turner: I was born and raised in Alabama. I was an undergrad in Atlanta and then got a couple scholarships to study abroad and while I was abroad, I made the decision to pursue this career. I did a master's in music theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, then moved to New York in 2014 and started auditioning. That's how I ended up here today.

Tina Turner has a very long and expansive career. Can you briefly describe the part of her life that the musical covers?

From her childhood in Nutbush, Tennessee to her international acclaim that she found for herself and her own music after she left Ike. I feel like the film (What's Love Got to Do With It) is kind of like 93% Ike and Tina, focused on that drama. But in our show, the first act is kind of my act, in the sense that it tracks Tina's arc with the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. But at the end, I go away. The whole second act is the story of her finding herself and her own voice after Ike.

What role does your character, Ike Turner, play in the show?

It's safe to say he's the villain of our story. Of course, the wonderful thing I love about playing him is so many villains in so many stories are made up. They can come across as being sadistic for the point of being sadistic. But Ike was a real person. He was born in the 1930s in the rural south, small town Mississippi, into abject poverty. He had to contend with Jim Crow racism, he had to contend with abuse that he suffered when he was young; he was sexually abused when he was young. Somehow out of that he learned to play the guitar, he learned to play the piano and he started a band. He took that band from semi-acclaim in St. Louis to international stardom. He was a real musical genius and force of nature.

A lot is known about Ike, some of it negative and some of it very impressive. As he was a real person, was there anything specific you did to prepare to play this role? And is it difficult to play not such a great guy?

Yes and yes. I did as much research as possible. It's a real responsibility to do that, particularly playing someone who is so crystallized in the American psyche. People have so many preconceived notions about him. It's important to know as much as you can. I read his autobiography, I read a biography about him, I read one of Tina's autobiographies. Those different vantage points were very important to just corroborate who he was, who he said he was, who other people said he was. From there, it was watching every video I could find, it was replicating his voice. He was a serial abuser and sexual predator, just a very troubled man. It is difficult to embody him spiritually and psychically because of that.

I genuinely believe and think it is an honor to play this role. Not only because he was iconic in his own right and it's a special opportunity to get to embody this person, but it's because I am playing an integral part in telling the story and sharing the legacy of Tina Turner with people across the nation - people who love her and people who've never heard of her.

As she has such a remarkable discography, what are some of your favorite numbers to watch and/or sing?

I love that you say watch, because that's exactly what I do. I am a spectator for most of the numbers. The one I always go to first is "River Deep, Mountain High." It's also one of my favorite moments in musical theatre, the way the song is set up in the show.

One of the things I love about this show is how little my singing matters. No one leaves Tina and goes, "you know, I really love that Ike number." I just get to growl my song or two; most of the show is a play for me.

What sets the Tina musical apart from other biographical jukebox musicals?

Katori Hall, for one - a Pulitzer Prize-winning Black woman from Memphis, Tennessee, who is telling the story about this Black woman from Tennessee. She was the perfect person to do it, and she blew it out of the water. The material is incredible, the way the show just constantly springs forward with momentum, with pace.

And then the other thing that sets it apart is Tina Turner! She is inimitable. There is no one like Tina, there's no one who's ever been like her on stage. That voice and just the tour de force that she would always give. On top of that, her marriage. This is a story about liberation from violence and about stepping into one's own and finding your own voice. She was the proto of the Me Too movement, the fortitude that she had to have not only get from Nutbush to the stages that she made it to, but also to leave, to escape, the patriarchal tyranny of Ike. And then to find her way to superstardom, it's just an unmatchable story.

Do you have any social media accounts you'd like people to follow?

Instagram: @garrettmturner

Is there anything that audiences should know about her story before coming to see the show?

That it just might change your life. Come for the music, come for the shaking hips and the long legs and the thrill of a rock ballad, but in the midst of that, watching this Black woman go through this microcosm of her life in two and a half hours' time, and to see what she had to contend with, and to see her courage and her spirit and her fortitude, is singularly inspiring and it just might change your life.

Tickets for Tina: The Tina Turner Musical are on sale now at Wharton Center's official ticketing outlets: online at whartoncenter.com, at the Auto-Owners Insurance Ticket Office at Wharton Center, or by calling 1-800-WHARTON.

To keep updated with Tina: The Tina Turner Musical as they travel around the country on their national tour, visit their website at tinaonbroadway.com, and follow them on Twitter at @TinaBroadway, on Instagram at @tinabroadway and on Facebook at facebook.com/TinaBroadway.

Note: This interview has been edited for conciseness.