In the second half of Jonny’s chat with the great Christopher Hampton, Sir Chris continues the story of the race to turn his play into the Oscar winning movie, Dangerous Liaisons- and get it out before Milos Foreman‘s rival film; doorstepping a startled John Malkovich; the Queen being sent to sleep by the inaugural play at the National Theatre; the difference between translation and adaptation; his relationship with Paul Scofield, seeing his Uncle Vanya 30 times, why he thinks Scofield was incomparable and the moment when an accident with a gun in Christopher’s play Savages prompted an unforgettable moment of improvisation from the great actor and Yasmina Reza’s horror at what Christopher had done to her play at the first night of Art.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Jonny’s guest is on British theatre and film’s Mt Rushmore of writers. Two time Oscar winning screenwriter Sir Christopher Hampton is one of the finest playwrights of the 20 and 21st centuries and in Christopher’s office in Notting Hill that spawned so much of his work they discuss the conditions he needs to write, sometimes needing to go to a posh hotel to finish a script and writing his first west end play in the pub at 18. The crown prince of youthful prodigies tells Jonny about the lesson of terrible reviews, acting with Leonardo di Caprio, why a Christopher Hampton part blighted Jonny’s daughter’s baby photos, the importance of relationships with theatres from Vienna to LA, winning an Oscar and then being unable to get a film made for six years, why writing plays is hard and writing film is a joy- and the remarkable story of Les Liaisons Dangereuses and its journey to becoming the Oscar winning Dangerous Liasons.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second half of his chat with the Ladies of the Hills of California, Jonny hears about the differences between Broadway and the West End, the realities of being a woman in the acting industry, trigger warnings, whether or not they’ve all been ruined by Jez Butterworth, singing for Sam Mendes and the incredible joy of the shared endeavor they are all undertaking onstage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Jonny’s guests are four actresses: Helena Wilson, Ophelia Lovibond, Leanne Best and Laura Donnelly, who together embody the Webb Sisters in Jez Butterworth’s play, The Hills of California. Currently running on Broadway, Jonny and the ladies chat interesting name rebrands that would turn heads on a Broadway marquee, life-changing cookies, harrowing early stage experiences, holding a kind of theatrical fire in their hands onstage, what happens when Jez Butterworth radically rewrites the play you’ve done 150 times, moving like seaweed together, Jez’s addiction to emergency and what its like to be directed by Sam Mendes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second part of Jonny’s conversation with Bobby Cannavale, Jonny hears about the utterly life-changing experience of working with the great theatre artist Al Pacino, reading the play every day when he’s in performance, what is the joy of acting, being an audition reader and what it taught him about trying to get a job, they debate the pronunciation of Godot, we hear about the time Bobby made sure an audience member will never let their phone ring again in the theatre, F Murray Abraham hiding his Oscar onstage, why he wants to be terrified by Shakespeare and what was the Elizabethan‘s personal portable ring light. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonny’s guest this week is two time Emmy winner (for Will and Grace and Boardwalk Empire), two time Tony nominee and perennial engine of fun, Bobby Cannavale. Jonny could talk to Mr Cannavale every day. And very nearly did. They talk about shared experiences (a love of apples, playing Jason in Medea at BAM’s Harvey Theatre, working with talented wives), Bobby’s affection for reading plays as a kid, being a nine year old gangster in Guys and Dolls, intellectual insecurity and the qualities that attracted mentors like Sidney Lumet, Lanford Wilson, George C Wolfe and Al Pacino. Bobby explains how he understands the importance of the event, why he’s always ready for the fight and the fateful night when he sat next to Pacino at the Tony awards. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The second half of Jonny’s chat with Cynthia Nixon ranges from playing a version of Marina Abramavich, staring at her costar for 20 minutes before the show (and being helped by a lozenge) to Williams Hurt, David Rabe and their rebellion against Mike Nicholls. From why her first Tony-winning performance as a bereaved mother didn’t capsize her, to whether actors can have qualms about using personal details from their lives. From her run for governor of New York, politics and its relationship to acting, why Andrew Cuomo isn’t Shakespearean but Cynthia is Portia, why she wants to go back to acting class and how being directed feels like her mother’s love. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonny’s guest this week is a colleague of his on the new season of HBO’s And Just Like That, she’s Ada Brook in The Gilded Age, she’s won two Tonys, two Emmys, two SAGs and a Grammy, she ran for Governor of New York, she performed two shows on Broadway at the same time and forced Equity to outlaw anyone ever doing so again, for a generation of Sexers of the City she will always and forevermore be Miranda Hobbes, she is the one and only Cynthia Nixon. A child actress since she was 11, Broadway debut at 14 and New York theatre royalty ever since, Jonny shimmied along the hall from his dressing room to Cynthia’s to talk about her remarkable life in the theatre. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second half of Jonny's chat with James Corden they discuss OCD and it's links to actor's superstition, James tells the story of delaying the play so he and the audience could watch England win on penalties, the brilliance and oddness of The History Boys, taking a vow of stupidity with Nicholas Hytner, letting down Richard Griffiths and finally getting a burst of Uncle Monty, breaking down the magic of the show that made him, smacking the well-fed rump of a mango-coloured real estate developer from Queens, getting a scoop on James's idea for a new play and his theory about the future of theatre.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonny's guest this week is none other than the man who gave the world Carpool Karaoke, took Paul McCartney back to his childhood, became the star of American late night by playing a man who fights with himself onstage, the writer and star of Gavin and Stacey, the man who'll always be a History Boy - James Corden. On his return to the London stage after a 12 year absence, James and Jonny sit down in his dressing room at the Old Vic to talk coming home, making late night tv into a 1,198 night variety show, mountaineering advice from Chris Evans, being a shy extrovert, the magic of Mathew Warchus, loving a line reading, why actors should take lessons from Formula One, how his pre-show rituals nearly capsized him, the best way he knows to handle nerves- and strap in for the terrifying description of a day at the Late Late Show up until the moment he's completely alone. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonny’s guest this week is the actor, theatre maker, political activist and Bolton royalty- Maxine Peake. Two weeks into devising her new theatre piece, Robin/Red/Breast, Maxine gave up a lunch hour to talk about the goddess MAAT, playing legendary singer Nico, walking audience members round the block while they processed what they’d seen, the loneliness of one-person shows, audience interruptions while performing Beckett (including the hazards of letting children kick a ball against Winnie’s mound), Ray Winstone’s mate who didn’t fancy watching the play, playing her famous Hamlet, her twenty year collaboration with director Sarah Franckom, not being “wired right” as a hyper empath, escaped cavalry horses and how everything is political. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The second part of Jonny’s chat with the great Alan Cumming ranges from why black joy, queer joy and trans joy feels like an act of resistance - to dealing with Joan Collins in his dressing room after playing a concentration camp inmate in Bent. It goes from going under while playing Hamlet to going under, naked, in an onstage swimming pool after singing George Michael’s 'Father Figure' - and emerging with eczema. It includes a discussion of saying the most explosive word onstage, completely committing to something you don’t think works and how people’s reaction to his penis gave him the idea for his new one man show. Facelifts, freedom and remembering Alan’s smile from the opening night of Sam Mendes Cabaret at the Donmar in 1993, the first time the world met his unforgettable MC.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Season 4 of SDJ and who better to kick it off with than Olivier award winner, two time Tony award winner, BAFTA winner and the man who just won his second Emmy award for hosting The Traitors US- Scottish icon, national treasure, the Dionysus of 21st century theatre, the eternally youthful Alan Cumming. In Act 1 of their two part chat, Alan and Jonny have a frank, funny and freewheeling conversation that ranges over the power of saying yes, what The Traitors has taught him about acting (and why its like being double-jointed), his problem with the Method and the best piece of acting advice he’s ever received. They talk about bravery, the influence of Alan’s childhood, how his one man dance piece about Robert Burns in his fifties nearly ruined him, his fascination with portraying mental illness onstage - and giving people permission to dislike you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After the interval, Jonny hears how Matthew Broderick was pulled out of depression by a play from an unknown writer called Harvey Fierstein; doing things his own way as a young actor; the incredible story of the day his life changed forever- and the sadness underneath it; the last conversation he ever had with his father and how his dad’s example revisits him onstage; why he can drive directors mad; why Nathan Lane thinks he’s like the Warner Bros frog; the pressure to be funny; his love for Neil Simon and the failure that seems to always await the giants of American theatre; the rollercoaster of a life in American theatre and getting together with Robert de Niro to fight Donald Trump. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the last double episode of the current season, Jonny rounds off by talking to a bona fide star who’s been one almost all his acting life: two time Tony Award winner and, for a generation of movie-goers, the patron saint of being young- Matthew Broderick. Matthew is the star of movies like Ferris Bueller, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Election, You Can Count on Me and The Producers, but his career in the theatre has been immense, not least the five plays of his great mentor and collaborator Neil Simon. The last of these, Plaza Suite, with his wife Sarah Jessica Parker has brought him to London and in his dressing room at the Savoy Theatre, he tells Jonny about the magic of the magic of stage doors, reveals intimate details of his dressing room, the enduring fascination of Joan Collins, doing two shows on his birthday, Ferris Bueller and the pain of growing up, getting the silent treatment from John Hughes, acting with his dad, his triumph as Wall in Midsummer Night’s Dream and the tragic story of the big break that nearly broke him. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second half of their live chat, Alison Balsom and Sam Mendes discuss what it’s like for him to have been everyone’s Dad professionally since he was 24 (just don’t take his sausage roll); being a woman in a predominantly male art form, changing the paradigm of the trumpet and the spirituality of playing music in church; Sam’s transformative memory of Jackson Pollock in Venice and the joy of throwing paint; where emotion lives in their work; the trumpet piece that reflects who you are at any stage of your life; being uningratiating onstage; why Sam was in a kind of dream-state directing Hills of California and what auditioning new-born babies taught him about performers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Jonny sees you “the coolest power couple in British theatre” (Jez Butterworth and Laura Donnelly, S3, E8) and raises you one “coolest power couple in British culture”, theatre and film powerhouse Sam Mendes and one of the world’s greatest classical and jazz trumpeters, Alison Balsom. In the first interview they’ve ever given as a couple, they treat SDJ Live at Jermyn Street Theatre to a voyage round their remarkable life and times: what is was for them both to be prodigies and whether they miss their younger selves; Alison’s calling to play the trumpet and not feeling like a soloist until she’d played the Last Night of the Proms; not feeling like a real film director until Sam directed his first Bond; where doubt exists differently in theatre and in classical music; the search for the perfect chord in art; Alison’s recording of her greatest mistake, never being able to duck the hardest challenge and why Simon Russell Beale as Uncle Vanya suddenly couldn’t stand up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is a man of many talents. James Shapiro is the Larry Miller Professor of English at Columbia university, he is the Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at the Public Theater in New York and he is the author of the mighty 1599, Baillie Gifford Award Winner for the best non-fiction book of the last 25 years. Jim has spent his life making Shakespeare come alive- on the page, in the rehearsal room and the lecture hall and no one does it better. This is a conversation that takes in: judging the Booker Prize; Hamilton’s 50 foot wave; working on the scary and tempestuous production of a Trump-imitating Julius Caesar; being Shakespeare’s agent and the director’s waiter; what stops you feeling the great plays as you once did and the erosion of democracy and its inextricable link to theatre. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The second half of Jonny’s chat with actress Laura Donnelly and playwright Jez Butterworth, recorded live at Jermyn Street Theatre, delves into the twelve endings Jonny had to learn and perform for Jez’s play Parlour Song at Atlantic Theatre in New York; writing for the person you’re in love with; an actors contract with the audience and Sam Mendes’s opinion on Laura’s; what Jez believes is the foundation of drama; the ease of acting Butterworth; having daughters and writing women when you’re not one; Laura Donnelly’s locked door and Jez’s knack for finding the numinous in his everyday life; engineering an emergency in the theatre- and Hugh Jackman splitting his trousers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Stage Door Jonny goes live with “the hottest power couple in theatre” (Vogue Magazine). This week’s episode talks to the doyenne of 21st Century playwrights, Jez Butterworth (Jerusalem, The Ferryman, Hills of California) and the leading actress in his last three plays, Laura Donnelly, partners in life as well as art. Act 1 of this live show at London’s Jermyn Street theatre covers: their first meeting in an, ahem, audition room for Jez’s play The River and Laura’s observation that made the future father of her children sit up and take notice; Jez’s myesthesia, 1,000 oranges and the dangers of exaggeration for an actor; the tragic events in Laura’s life that inspired Jez to write The Ferryman; why Laura wouldn’t get on the table and dance when Jez asked her to and why Jez was terrified of writing The Ferryman until an event in both their lives meant he had to. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Act II of Jonny’s chat with Simon they discuss the difference between immersion and identification; how much mystery Simon leaves in his understanding of a play; the director’s 3am thinks; why Simon has no problem with leaving a show; how directing can be like working in HR, his love of first days; Shakespeare’s school of life; what Simon fears most in the theatre- and why A Christmas Carol at The Tabard theatre is so special to him. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is Simon Godwin, one of the finest directors on either side of the Atlantic. Simon sits down with Jonny in majestic surroundings (work with me here) and they discuss how Simon (and Hamlet) came to Jonny’s aid when he was trying to buy a house; how Simon assembled the site-specific Macbeth that is currently playing; his three play collaboration with its star, Ralph Fiennes; the difference between certainty and confidence; why he suddenly stopped his directing career to go and train his body- and what Rupert Goold said to him as he was leaving; the moment that sticks in Jonny’s memory when he was directed by Simon - and Simon’s lockdown Romeo and Juliet starring Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week’s chat Jonny takes a stroll down memory lane with acclaimed director Dominic Cooke. They both started at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the early 90’s and Dominic rose to become artistic director of the Royal Court, Olivier-award winner, CBE and now the director of a new blockbuster stage production based on The Biggest TV Show in History. No not Seinfeld. Jonny and Dominic chat about the very particular flavour of the RSC when they met, their problem with stage violence, the “liberating duality of the theatre”, why we don’t talk enough about being bored, the unsung hero of modern British directors, telling an actor “I don’t believe you” and the problem with anger on stage.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second part of Jonny’s chat with director Dominic Cooke they discuss getting the end of Ma Rainey's Black Bottom wrong, some strategies actors use to avoid being vulnerable, Sophie Okonedo and giving her performance up to the gods, experiencing vulnerability as a director and having to be dragged back to see his own shows, his fears for free expression in young writers right now, his long collaboration with Caryl Churchill- and how Caryl was right in her play Seven Jewish Children. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second act of Jonny’s chat with Dame Harriet Walter the conversation ranges over: age in the theatre; Harriet’s extraordinary encounter with her childhood hero, Rudolf Nureyev; being rejected by drama schools and what made her carry on; what she does and doesn’t want from a director; being robbed of time and power by other actors onstage; her search for a great comedy - and how the world expects too much from its mothers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s guest is none other than a walking trifecta: a Dame, a national treasure and a star of Succession. Dame Harriet Walter sits down with Jonny and powers through a windy chimney and the sound of a little light bricklaying to talk about the unforgettable visual images of theatre; Rebecca Frecknall’s production of The House of Bernarda Alba; how she stays connected to the life of the play night after night; how she wishes a play could always have a live conductor; undressing Hitler; what trying to effect change through the theatre means to her now; being an ensemble player, hiding under her desk to avoid the school play, all-women Shakespeare, sympathy for the overdog and what she thinks of Jonny’s pleas to her to play Macbeth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the first Act of this week’s conversation Jonny talks to the pride of Nempnett Thrubwell, the internationally renowned director of Mamma Mia on stage and screen, Phyllida Lloyd. Phyllida directed Meryl Streep to an Oscar for playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady but her visionary work in the theatre long preceded that. Phyllida’s remembers Jonny in a pond, talks about her most recent stage production at the National Theatre in 2023- a verbatim play based on the testimony of the survivors of the Grenfell fire-and how theatre can play a part in bringing a public outrage to account. They also discuss how Mamma Mia was a cultural disrupter, Phyllida’s problem with spreadsheets, the power of art in prison and what it takes for an actor to endure through a lifetime. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Act 2 of Jonny’s chat with Phyllida Lloyd (unless you left at the interval, like Phyllida sometimes does…). Phyllida discusses her dreams of a Rusisian theatre commune, her relationship with Harriet Walter, and whether it’s always easy to direct a friend, chasing the artistic utopia of her schooldays with her famous trilogy of all-female Shakespeares, the one woman show that changed her and why there’s no excuse for making dull theatre. Not to mention how she wouldn’t direct the Tina Turner musical now and why it’s over for blokes like Jonny. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The most cracked out of all theatre junkies is Jonny’s guest this week. At least 10,000 nights in the theatre and counting after over 50 years as the doyen of British theatre critics, Michael Billington was THE arbiter of critical taste for the entirety of Jonny’s life. In this chat Michael opens up about his trouble with mime, air-kissing C list celebrities, how even critics are joining in the rise in audience participation, spaghetti in the stalls, hearing Laurence Olivier in his head, the “inexhaustible surprise” of the theatre, missing Harold Pinter, never finding Marilyn Monroe, how Chekov understood his 20 year old feelings and the way criticism completes the cycle of creation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The second part of Jonny’s chat with Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola recorded live at Jermyn Street Theatre introduces the potent memory and presiding spirit of Emily’s extraordinary father, Sir John Mortimer. From his heckling of Sarah Kane’s legendary “Blasted” to his meeting with Tom Cruise, from Alessandro’s Broadway debut opposite Helen Mirren and a catalytic biting incident, from an elderly actor calling in sick to the stage door of the RSC, to sharing a dressing room with a pep-talking Bradley Cooper, to what transgression and freedom means onstage today, the spirit of Sir John was alive and well and appearing for one night only at Jermyn St theatre.Buy tickets for Jonny's next live show with Jez Butterworth & Laura Donnelly here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to this season’s first live recording! This episode is brought to you in association with the wonderful people at Jermyn Street Theatre in London and if there’s a more richly enjoyable podcast released this week, we want to hear it. Jonny talks to the blissfully honest, vulnerably human and wildly entertaining power couple that is Emily Mortimer (Mary Poppins, Paddington 3, Lovely and Amazing) and Alessandro Nivola (American Hustle, Many Saints of Newark, Jurassic Park) and the conversation ranges from furries to fairies, from shyness, fear and how Robert de Niro overcomes them, from first kisses to problematic acting teachers, from vomiting in Moscow, via breaking into Laurence Olivier’s trailer to the truly harrowing story of Emily’s Scottish Portia in The Merchant of Venice.Buy tickets for Jonny's next live show with Jez Butterworth & Laura Donnelly here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join Jonny in the Old Vic dressing room of one our finest - and most fragrant - actors, Bertie Carvel. Bertie is a double Olivier and Tony Award winning star and as deep a thinker about his life in the theatre as he is a transformational chameleon onstage. He and Jonny share a forensic discussion about larping, the inner body, Bertie’s magic trick, why he now reads his reviews (and why he thinks acting companies should hold post-review therapy sessions), wanting the play to end just after you’ve opened, what it felt like to play Donald Trump and doing 652 performances of Missy Trunchbull in “Matilda”. This really is a conversation that captures what it sounds like to hear a great actor in the awkward and exhilarating throes of creativity. He’s also the first guest to use the word “shriven”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the big kick off of SDJ Season 3! Who better to launch us than one of the most electric young actors there is, Paapa Essiedu. Paapa welcomed Jonny into his bijou dressing room in London’s National Theatre and the conversation ranged over: drinking during a show, Paapa’s risky superstition, how Jamie Lloyd doesn’t want you to know where to stand, what a famous director in the audience can do to you, two actors nightmares that launched Paapa on the stage, separation anxiety and what it does to his brain and what onstage chemistry is and how to preserve it. Happy New Year everyone, its Streetcar Time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonny rounds off the summer season in style: the first SDJ live show at Jermyn Street Theatre in the heart of London’s West End - and two masters to talk to. Sir Nick Hytner and Sir Simon Russell Beale tell Jonny about the two decades and nine plays of their collaboration. It’s a fascinating insight into the dynamics of one of the great director-actor partnerships of our times. Who is the lover and whom the beloved in this relationship? How does Simon know when Nick thinks it isn’t working? Nick’s thoughts on change in the theatre and in life, how he directs actors, Paul Scofield, Daniel Day-Lewis and much more.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From personal tragedy to Nathan Lane. In the second part of their chat John and Jonny discuss the formers three collaborations with the doyen of the American stage, crashing waves of laughter, having the confidence to play a comedy god with other real comedy gods, Pinter with Juliette Binoche and Liev Schreiber, getting ghosted backstage by Philip Seymour Hoffman and the “undeniability of theatre”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

John Slattery, everyone's favourite louche silver-fox for a four martini lunch is Jonny’s guest this week. They discuss white rappers, directing onstage, a plan to save the theatre, getting naked on stage whilst crying having auto-fluffed with a hairdryer beforehand, the brutal facts of using personal grief as onstage motivation, audition-fear and how to calm it, fighting to get in the room and John’s journey from Catholic school to the one teacher who knew he had what it takes.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Legends alert. This week Jonny’s guests are the creme de la creme of Broadway musical composing, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. Their music for the current Broadway smash Some Like It Hot is still on heavy rotation in the Stage Door household and they’re the musical force behind Hairspray, Catch Me If You Can, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sister Act, Oscar-nominated songs by the bucketload, Tonys, Grammys - the whole nine. But what lives too! Take them from being madly gifted theatre-obsessed kids from unlikely backgrounds yearning to get to New York to their first meeting in Marie’s Crisis, mad 200-strong productions of The Trojan Women, a close-up look at how they write songs together, the ravages of the AIDS crisis, a MOMA retrospective of their downtown days, all the way to conquering Broadway- and a magnificently moany insight into how hard it is to stay at the top of the American musical.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to know which public information advert from his childhood rolls off Mark's tongue like the alphabet? How uncanny his Gielgud impression is? Whether any man wants cock in Tod - and what that even means? The madrigals he sang the very first time he was on stage? What wonderful tradition began with Ralph Richardson firing rockets off the roof of the National Theatre? And why Mark will forever remember our Jonny as the Donmar Enforcer? Of course you do! What a joy it is to welcome the polymath and global treasure that is Mark Gatiss to the podcast about theatre, life, and life in the theatre. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Act 2 of Jonny’s chat with Oscar-winner Kenneth Lonergan, they discuss the high-school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream where Kenny met his best friend and frequent collaborator, Matthew Broderick; Kenny’s misgivings about his acting range; the play of his he had the most fun with; the difficulty of getting started as an unconventional writer and why, despite a time of increasingly strident political certainty, he thinks plays that are interested in human nuance will survive. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An American master this week everyone. And a little bit of a hero of Jonny’s. Kenneth Lonergan is the writer and directors of three movies, all of them masterpieces, and the playwright of groundbreaking plays like Lobby Hero and This Is Our Youth. Hear about birthing his plays, writing as the muscle memory of the brain, why he is fascinated by the state of adolescence, which of his plays started as a dream, how he jumped from prose to playwrighting and why movies don’t quite touch the experience of a play. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The second part of Jonny’s chat with Dominic West in which Dom talks about following the most successful play of the 21st century, career advice from Anthony Hopkins, snogging Alan Cumming, getting mixed reviews on Broadway, his favourite theatre, being bad at playing posh people, being allergic to crying and why theatre isn’t for psychopaths. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dominic West, ladies and gentlemen! This week, our superbly entertaining West guest talks wearing a turban doing Tamburlaine with Jonny at the RSC, his family background in amateur dramatics, making his father cry, why his mother didn’t want him to do The Wire, falling off the stage in his first professional gig, wishing he could do Hamlet again, running away to join the circus, getting goosed by hen parties and how you need to leave a gap between you and the character to let the audience in. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The second half of Jonny’s chat with the revered John Douglas Thompson covers their mutual love for the director Arin Arbus, giving up the use of his eyes to do Beckett with an actor John describes as like being onstage with “ a dog, a baby and a genius”, what Eugene O’Neil’s characters say to each other when John engages them in conversation, what pisses him off about the theatre, what is was like to do “the worst Hamlet in America” and some ideas for a John and Jonny collaboration. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jonny talks to perhaps the most celebrated classical actor in America today, John Douglas Thompson. No perhaps about it (if you read his reviews), John makes Jonny extremely jealous when he considers the critical raptures that JDT routinely receives. John has played Othello SEVEN times and isn’t done with it yet. But only if a woman directs it. He has trenchant thoughts on critics, won’t do a play that involves the occult, acts like a master pickpocket, honours his parents through performance, never knows if Othello will kill Desdemona tonight or not. All this despite living another successful professional life until he was nearly thirty. Find out which play made him want to be an actor. And the incident that cracked open what it would take to be good at it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Act II of Jonny’s chat with Laura Linney, we discover who her ideal man is; what seminal experience of festive female empowerment pushed her along the path of being an actor; what happened when she got stage fright; what was said to her at the Moscow Art theatre that unlocked a door; her relationship to fear; and what advice she would give a fourth year Juilliard drama student if that student happened to be Jonny.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who better to kick off the Summer Season of Stage Door Jonny than the wonderful Laura Linney? Want to know what work she does to make all her performances on stage and screen so full and lived in? Want to know what she thinks the secret weapon of the theatre is? Ever heard of a delightmare? Want to know why Joanne Woodward wanted to meet Laura in her car? Who her favourite director is? All is revealed during the first part of Jonny’s conversation with Laura in her Broadway dressing room. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are no second acts in American lives but there are in Stage Door Jonny. In the last act of conversation for this series of the podcast, Sir Simon Russell Beale tells Jonny about playing Hamlet for his mum and the challenge of grieving onstage, who he fixates on in his audience about once every couple of months, the actor he thinks is the top dog of his generation, improvising Ibsen and the bastard who invented the matinee. He also manages to beautifully articulate what might actually be the manifesto for this podcast: an actor onstage at a particular high water mark of feeling and an audience who understands in the same moment that they are that character too. Simon definitely says it better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Enter the Ur-Guest, the man who’s performance in Lehman Trilogy made Jonny fall back in love with theatre, the OG inspiration for Stage Door Jonny and one of the undisputed greats of the modern stage- Sir Simon Russell Beale. It feels entirely fitting to end this inaugural series of SDJ with a chat with SRB, an actor who has performed more great roles than even Wikipedia can count. If you want to know how palatial his dressing room at The Bridge theatre was while he was playing the title role in John Gabriel Borkman, whether he has sacrificed love for his career, who made his very first costume, the role of sniffing in his famous collaborations with Sam Mendes, how many pints can get him to bed before most of the audience and how certain parts get him to a magical place beyond caring, this is the episode for you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.