Meet the Nominees: Hair‘s Will Swenson

Will Swenson might seem like the kind of guy who would take his first Tony Award nomination in stride, but the actor is more than excited by his nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his very electric performance as Berger in the Tony-nominated revival of the musical Hair. “The words Tony Award nominee don’t seem to be something to describe me, because it hasn’t really hit me yet,” he says. “I grew up in a theater family and I’ve done theater my whole life, ever since I was a kid, so this kind of validation feels fantastic.”

The opportunity to play the drug-loving, free sex-loving, school-hating Berger has proven to be an exciting one for the Utah native. “I like playing him, because he’s kind of not of this planet, and because he’s so unlike any character I’ve played before,” says Swenson. “And he’s so different compared to who I am as a person. I think every actor would probably say that you take pieces of yourself and amplify them, so that you can make them true, but really there’s not too much of Berger in Will.”

Audiences might find that statement particularly hard to believe, especially given the opening moments of the show when Swenson’s Berger interacts with members of the audience. “I’ve been given a lot of leeway and trust from my director (and fellow Tony Award nominee) Diane Paulus,” he says. “I basically get to talk to a few different people every night and give them a hard time and mess with them. Sometimes it goes well and other nights you get some very stoic people, like the woman one night who was so scared that she wouldn’t speak a word to me and was ducking her head the whole time. That sort of interaction doesn’t necessarily work toward our energy advantage in this show, but generally people are thrilled to get heckled.”

As a first-time nominee, Swenson himself hasn’t been shy about getting advice on how to deal with this attention — turning to, among others, Audra McDonald, a four-time Tony Award winner herself. “The best advice I’ve gotten is to just soak it up and enjoy it,” says Swenson. “I have a problem as a human being of not living in the moment — I am always looking forward for what’s going to happen next, or what I should have done in the past to make something better.”