Interview: Richard Thomas On Filling Big Shoes in Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain Tonight!

Richard Thomas, perhaps best known for playing the iconic John-Boy Walton in the beloved TV series The Waltons, has had a long, storied career that has seen him find success in television, film, and the Broadway stage, earning him recognition across generations.

In 1958, at just 7 years old, Thomas made his Broadway debut in Sunrise at Campobello, and over the last 67 years, he has graced the stage in productions such as Fifth of July, Democracy, An Enemy of the People, To Kill a Mockingbird, and most recently, last year’s Tony nominated revival of Our Town.

Now, Thomas is touring as the title character in Mark Twain Tonight!, made famous by the late Hal Holbrook, who conceived and starred in the one-man show for more than six decades.

Mark Twain Tonight! features excerpts from Twain’s writings, letters, and speeches, covering topics like politics, religion, and slavery. It also showcases humorous anecdotes and stories that highlight Twain’s signature humor and insightful wisdom.

Thomas is the first—and only—actor who has been authorized to perform this show by Holbrook’s estate, and he takes following in his old colleague’s footsteps very seriously, understanding the profound legacy that the actor created.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Mark Twain Tonight! has such a rich legacy thanks to Hal Holbrook. What does it mean to you personally to be the first and only actor authorized to carry this torch forward?
I’m delighted the estate decided it was time to bring it out again because I think it’s a great time right now for us to hear about Twain.

I knew Hal and we liked each other. It was a collegial relationship but a lovely one. He was the spokesman for the National Corporate Theatre Fund, and he asked me to come in and take over when he left, so we had this preexisting relationship. When the estate reached out and told me they wanted to run this again and they think Hal would probably be happy if I did it, I immediately said I would love to.

Hal curated and assembled a whole lot of Twain’s material and didn’t create a form for it; there’s a lot of different material an actor can put together and change-up as he wants to. He did a wonderful job taking a little bit from here and there, so you have something that is performable that gives you a full picture of the man, his story, and his feeling about things.

What was interesting to you about playing him?
One of the things about Twain that makes him a great character to play is that he embodies the American character in so many wonderful ways, probably most deliciously in his contradictions. His suspicion of wealth and power but his life-long desire to be a wealthy man with power. His real skepticism and high criticism of established formal religion but his continuing lifelong dialogue with issues of God and Heaven and Hell. He was not dismissive of the spiritual life, but he interrogated it fiercely.

His evolution of his social consciousness in terms of race and social justice really mirrors America’s own evolution in that respect. What makes him interesting dramatically is he’s aware of these contradictions and aware of the dark side of his own nature, and he shares it. He’s very human and you can really get into the soul of the man when you’re playing him.

Twain’s words still resonate more than a century later.
They absolutely do. There are certain sections of this piece where people come up to me and ask, “Did you put that in? Was that something you wrote?” but it’s all pure Twain. It just happened to be true in the Gilded Age and it’s true now.

It’s amazing how he remains fresh and prudent. The salient things in our society right now are all things he was involved in writing about and speaking about. And there’s more. There’s stuff not in my performance that I will eventually learn and put in. There’s a great piece on election years and I’m very excited about putting that in the show.

Actors are intrepid researchers, and Twain is just a bottomless well; you can just keep drawing good water from it without running dry. I’m on my third biography now and I’m going deep. I’ve always loved him before in a more general-audience way, but this is giving me a great opportunity to go deep. And he’s a wonderful companion. He has insights, he makes you laugh, and he makes you think.

Next spring you’ll be returning to Broadway in David Lindsay-Abaire’s The Balusters. How are you balancing this one-man show with preparing for a major Broadway return?
I’m very excited about that. I’ll start learning that about a month before rehearsals start. It’s a wonderful role, but it’s not 90 minutes by yourself, so it will be a much quicker learn. I start rehearsals on that two days after this tour ends. I’ll have time to come home, do the laundry, and get back to work!