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Gay as ever: Desperate Housewives' Roger Bart re-creates his over-the-top Producers role for the movie
Advocate, The, Dec 20, 2005 by Sean Kennedy
"I just know that Gary and I--and even Matthew and Nathan--all sat there the first couple of days like, 'Man, are we lucky we're here!'" says Roger Bart, who plays the outrageously gay "common-law assistant" to Gary Beach's hack theater director in the movie version of the Broadway smash The Producers.
Though Uma Thurman and Will Ferrell replaced two key original cast members in the highly anticipated film (opening in limited release December 16 and nationwide December 26), the dueling "dynamic duos" of Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick and Bart and Beach re-create their Broadway roles. Thus moviegoers will now get to enjoy Bart and Beach's standout scene from the show's first act that sends up nearly every stereotype of gay men (and women)--over-the-top performances intact.
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"We didn't suddenly feel like we were straitjacketed," says Bart, a Tony winner for 1999's revival of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. (Indeed, Bart's hammy turn onstage inspired film producer Scott Rudin and screenwriter Paul Rudnick to create for him the role of the gay "wife" for him in last year's remake of The Stepford Wives.) "We both had some trepidation about how minimal we'd have to go here--how are they doing this movie?--but we walked in, saw the set we played on, just with cameras on one end of it, and within seconds we were at the exact height of what we did onstage."
It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, says the 43-year-old actor, who's now scaling a decidedly different peak as the pharmacist dangerously obsessed with Marcia Cross's character on ABC's Desperate Housewives. Filming The Producers, he says, "was like being around with a bunch of your best friends. We all went through something enormously positive together, and everybody was just so thrilled to be putting it on film for posterity."
Those future fans include at least one of his two kids: "My 4 1/2-year-old doesn't get it, but now she will someday. My 19-year-old--well, she's just ashamed. She's like, 'You just have no humility, do you, Dad?'"
He smiles, savoring the answer.
"None."
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