The actor and musician takes your questions on devastating box office results, his love of Oliver Hardy, and his new vaudeville crooner alter ego
Your roles fluctuate wildly between the serious and silly. Does one necessitate the other? vammyp
I’ve always thought it’s all the same. You just try to be as honest as you can, and if you’re being honest in absurd circumstances then you’re in a comedy. It’s not like I try to be funny or serious – just honest. If you’re watching someone play a bad guy and there’s nothing about the performance that makes you feel for the person or understand them in a deeper way, that’s a fail to me. Because the truth of life is that at a funeral someone always cracks a joke. There’s something so rich about being able to laugh at a funeral. That is what life is to me: all those grey areas, these contradictory things.
I’m impressed and baffled by this left turn with Mister Romantic [Reilly’s vaudevillian crooner alter ego]. How did you come up with the character? Why did you pick out the songs that you did? steve__bayley
I made the musical Chicago years ago and played this character Mister Cellophane, and it reawakened my love of musical theatre. In particular, my love of the vaudeville performance style: very presentational, trying to connect with the audience and not aloof in any way. I love performing like that. I wanted to sing all those songs, but I was also looking at the world and I thought: man, things are getting pretty unkind and divisive out there. So I created Mister Romantic. He has no memory of the past and so that puts the show live, in the moment. The whole mission is to create empathy and connection and to explore ideas of love.
