Theater News

Gossip‘s New Guy

Musical theater star Patrick Heusinger talks about joining the cast of the hit TV series Gossip Girl, what he’s learned from starring in Spamalot, and the pros and cons of being "too pretty."

Patrick Heusinger
(© David Needleman)
Patrick Heusinger
(© David Needleman)

Patrick Heusinger would really like all of you to know about James, the character he’s playing on the second season of the megahit TV series Gossip Girl, which returns to the airwaves on September 1. But there are limits, and they’re not self-imposed. “You have to sign away your life when you agree to be on this show,” says Heusinger. “All I can tell you is that James is the new love interest for Blair (played by Leighton Meester). She first brings him to the Hamptons and he sort of starts off as a pawn to make Chuck (played by Ed Westwick) jealous.”

However, Heusinger — who’s currently finishing up a two-year run as Sir Lancelot in the national tour of Monty Python’s Spamalot — can freely relate what it’s been like filming the show. And to say it has been a far cry from such prior theatrical and movie experiences as the Paper Mill Playhouse production of Godspell, the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof, in which he played Fyedka, and the critically acclaimed independent film Sweet Land, is to be guilty of severe understatement.

“Nobody drove a car 20 miles to see me and Alan Cumming on a farm, but when you’re in the middle of Central Park working on one of TV’s hottest shows, it’s a very different situation,” he says. “There was this one scene that should have taken an hour to shoot, but all of a sudden there were hundreds of school girls there and they would stand and watch and scream their heads off every time Chace Crawford came out of his trailer or Leighton showed up. It was certainly fascinating.”

While he had only seen one episode of Gossip Girl when he got the job, one member of his family reacted quite strongly to the news. “The week I got the part, I had planned to fly to my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida to surprise my older sister, who was doing a community theater production of The Secret Garden,” he recalls. “So I had to call her and tell her why I couldn’t come, and she was like ‘Oh my God,’ and started screaming into the phone. I think me getting this part was actually a better surprise for her than coming down to see her.”

Heusinger’s life has been full of surprises, most notably his acceptance into the prestigious Juilliard School. He applied on the advice of his high school buddy (and recent Tony Award nominee) Daniel Breaker, even though he’d never been to New York City, and his audition in Chicago included an admittedly horrible version of a monologue from Two Gentlemen of Verona. “I had never read the play and I just memorized this speech, for one of the leading men, on the plane ride up, because I knew I needed a classical monologue,” he recalls. “So I did this romantic speech as some sort of wacky comical piece — the way I had remembered Daniel doing something else from the play. And while they let me in, they told me to never ever do that monologue again.”

Justin Patterson, Christopher Sutton,
Patrick Heusinger and Kevin Crewell
in Monty Python's Spamalot
(© Joan Marcus)
Justin Patterson, Christopher Sutton,
Patrick Heusinger and Kevin Crewell
in Monty Python’s Spamalot
(© Joan Marcus)

At Juilliard, Heusinger ended up doing character-oriented leading roles. “I was always Richard III or Archibald Craven, you know hunchbacks with charisma,” he notes. “But a couple of years ago, my body and face started to change, and I was caught in this kind of in-between land between character actor and leading man, and I realized I was going to have to pick which way I wanted my career to go. So I washed my face and combed my hair and started going to the gym four times a week and jogging three miles a day. Before that, I used to get a lot of ‘he’s good, but he’s not pretty enough.’ Now, I just went up for this independent film about this psychotic photographer, and I gave this great audition, and they called and told my agent ‘I’m sorry, he’s too pretty.’ I thought, ‘What can I do, not wash my face for two weeks?’ On an ego level, I much prefer to hear that than the former, but there are pros and cons to everything.”

He initially resisted the idea of joining Spamalot, having not pictured himself doing broad comedy. In fact, he actually turned down his first audition, and asked for a week to decide after he was offered the role. Now, he’s glad he changed his mind. “I have gotten this great education in what it is to be an actor in the theater and to be a good professional from all the people I’ve worked with,” he says. “And what’s been really beautiful is watching my current Arthur, Gary Beach, discover all the jokes he’s found in the show that I don’t think anyone else has. I’m also looking forward to working with Jonathan Hadary, who’ll join the show in Toronto, which is my last stop.”

While he won’t discuss other roles he’s up for after Spamalot, Heusinger is far from reluctant to talk about a show he’s developing based on the life of the late rock singer Jeff Buckley. “He was such an incredible and beautiful musician, who has colored modern rock and roll more than anyone else,” he says. “But when I got to know the story of his life and his struggle with his family, and being in the shadow of his father, I knew I wanted to play him. So I sat down with this playwright, Brian Pracht, and we’ve been working on this multi-character musical. Originally, we wanted to use Jeff’s music, but then we realized we would be bound to the rights holder, who is Jeff’s mom, and we didn’t want to be held to making her act or appear a certain way. So we’ll be using original music that will sound like Jeff’s music. But most importantly, we want to make a play that Jeff would have watched — although he wasn’t a playgoer — and say ‘that was great.'”