Theater

Hader plays a hitman who enrolls in acting classes in the dark comedy, which he co-created. He's been nominated for Emmy Awards for both acting and directing Barry. Originally broadcast June 2019.

The Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical is about a Black gay man working as an usher on Broadway. Michael R. Jackson talks about writing the book, music and lyrics and how his time working as an usher at The Lion King on Broadway inspired it.

Washington was recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He spoke to Fresh Air in 2008, about the film The Great Debaters, which he directed and starred in.

Hall, who died June 12, appeared in the Paul Thomas Anderson films Boogie Nights and Magnolia. He also played a cop on the trail of overdue library books on Seinfeld. Originally broadcast in 2003.

The Sound of Music star will soon be honored with the AFI's Life Achievement Award. In 2008 and 2019, she spoke to Fresh Air about growing up during WWII and performing in her parents' vaudeville.

In June, Lansbury will receive the Tony Award for lifetime achievement. The Murder, She Wrote star previously won Tonys for her performances in Gypsy and Sweeney Todd. Originally broadcast in 2000.

PBS's documentary details how Sondheim's landmark 1970 musical was adapted to the current Broadway version — pivoting on a gender switch that rewrites the central role as a woman instead of a man.

Waterston joined the cast of the original NBC series in 1994 on a one-year contract. He wound up staying 16 years, until the series wrapped in 2010. Now the show's back — and so is he. We talk about working into his 80s, Grace and Frankie, and how the 1984 film The Killing Fields changed his life and career.

Hurt, who died March 13, won an Oscar for his performance as a drag queen sharing a prison cell with a political dissident in the 1985 film Kiss of the Spider Woman. Originally broadcast in 2010.

Baranski started her career in theater and now co-stars in The Gilded Age on HBO. "I was a passionate acting student and nothing was going to stop me," she says. Originally broadcast June 25, 2020.

By age 5, Keaton was a star in his family's vaudeville act; he went on to star in and direct silent films, performing jaw-dropping stunts. Slate film critic Dana Stevens profiles Keaton in a new book.

Cox says ruthless business tycoon Logan Roy is one of the most extraordinary roles he's ever played: "He is a misanthrope [who] is very disappointed with the human experiment." We talk with the Scottish actor about the musicality of his voice, why he doesn't practice method acting, and growing up in poverty.

SNL's Cecily Strong co-stars in the Apple TV+ satire series Schmigadoon!. It centers on a couple who gets trapped in a town where people burst into song. We talk with Strong as well as Cinco Paul, the show's co-creator.

We conclude our tribute to Sondheim by listening to archival interviews with collaborators and performers, including Stephen Colbert, James Lapine, Paul Gemignani and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

We continue our tribute to Sondheim by listening back to a 2010 interview in which he shared the stories behind some of his most famous songs and gave his take on other great lyricists.

Sondheim, who died Nov. 26, was the lyricist and composer who gave us Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods and other shows. In 2010 he spoke about his writing process, from rhyming to finding the right note.

In 1970, Stephen Sondheim's comic musical Company broke most of the conventions of American musical theater. Now, a newly restored documentary goes inside the making of the original cast album.

The noted sleight-of-hand artist, who died in 2018, was also a scholar of con games and oddities. This week, Sotheby's auctioned off part of Jay's 10,000-item collection. Originally broadcast in 1998.

Majors was nominated for an Emmy for his role in the HBO series Lovecraft Country. Now he stars as an outlaw seeking revenge in The Harder They Fall, a western featuring an all-Black cast.

Billy Porter won an Emmy for his starring role on Pose, an FX series set in the underground gay and trans ball culture of the late '80s and '90s. Porter grew up in the Pentecostal church convinced that he would be damned for being gay. It wasn't until he was introduced to the world of theater in sixth grade that he began to imagine a different future.