Tony Winning Director Joe Mantello on How Ryan Murphy Convinced Him to Come Back to Television in ‘Hollywood’

Speaking with Awards Daily, Joe Mantello explains how he was convinced to return to television six years after his Emmy nominated performance in The Normal Heart. The magic was in working again with Ryan Murphy. The Tony winning director also updates us on his upcoming film adaptation of The Boys in the Band. 

Six years after his Emmy nominated performance in The Normal Heart, Joe Mantello has finally returned to television in Hollywood. As Richard ‘Dick’ Samuels, a wickedly intimidating yet perceptive studio executive, the Tony winning director and actor won over both fans and critics of the Netflix limited series with a role that goes beyond the repressed, closeted trope in many period pieces and instead brings a new queer narrative to life.

While taking six years between onscreen roles Mantello has kept himself incredibly busy directing nine Broadway productions, acting in a revival of The Glass Menagerie, and adapting his Tony winning revival of The Boys in the Band for the screen. So, what inspired the Emmy nominee to finally return to television? The answer lies in Ryan Murphy. As Mantello said himself: “I love Ryan, I love being in his world, and I would do anything he asks me to do.” He also credits the creation of the complex character as a complete collaboration with Murphy.

In a conversation with Awards Daily’s Jalal Haddad, Joe Mantello detailed the process of bringing Dick Samuels to the screen in the new revisionist tale of the golden age of Hollywood while explaining why Dick’s story is a lot more complicated than a simple repressed middle aged man in the closet. He also took the time to talk about his upcoming film adaptation of the Tony winning play The Boys in the Band and what it was like directing the film while simultaneously shooting Hollywood in the same studio.

Awards Daily: Hollywood is your first project to bring you back to film and television since your Emmy nominated performance in The Normal Heart. What about this project convinced you to come back to television and what keeps you coming back to work with Ryan Murphy?  

Joe Mantello: It wasn’t really a conscious decision other than the fact that in my real life I am a theatre director. I mostly work out of New York and frankly Ryan is the only person who has asked me! I’ve been busy over the years with certain projects. I love Ryan and we work together because he is a great creative partner. Anything that he’s interested in I’m interested in because I like the way his mind works. It really was the chance to work with him again that drew me in.

AD: Was there anything that drew you to Richard particularly?

JM: It starts with Ryan offering you the role which isn’t written yet but exists in his head. He lays out what he thinks the arc might be but there wasn’t anything to read; but after some hemming and hawing I jumped at the chance. I have to say that when I got the first script I didn’t understand why Ryan thought I was the one to do it. There were things about the character I didn’t feel were in my wheelhouse. I needed him to help me see what he saw. He took me through the course of the seven episodes and said “trust me.” Then he quoted Carrie Fisher and said “instant gratification takes too long.” I don’t call myself an actor and he was sensitive to that. It was a great collaboration of us developing the character but it truly emerged from him and is entirely his creation.

I tended to like the places where the buttoned up, repressed, starchiness of the character was loosened. Coming in and losing my shit on Darren for going over budget and emotional scenes like that. I think that’s what Ryan was saying when he told me to be patient. “Yes you are going to start in a place where you feel like a suit. That’s going to feel very uncomfortable for you and that’s okay because what’s going to happen is you will have an incredible arc and travel a great distance. You don’t need to do it all in the first episode. That was a really fascinating thing to learn and he was right.

AD: While this is a revisionist tale that explores many true life figures Richard is one of the fictional characters of the story. Did you look to anyone from that era for inspiration?

JM: When we first  talked about the role he told me it was sort of modeled off of Irving Thalberg; an east coast intellectual, a man that plays his cards close to his chest, slightly intimidating, whip smart, people both fear and trusted him, and a man that was interested in developing quality pictures. I read a couple of his biographies and that was the jumping off point.

With a Ryan Murphy production you know you are going to be surrounded by the best of the best in terms of the costume and production design, everything is first rate, so my understanding and appreciation of the period would come from stepping onto the set. It was a meticulous recreation of the location and time.

AD: Hollywood is centered around a group of younger creators and performers chasing their dreams. One of the things about Richard was that he already had that professionally so instead his pursuit of “dreamland” was more internal and was focused on this acceptance of his sexuality within himself. It’s a story we see a lot with younger queer characters, but it isn’t as common to see middle aged queer people go through that transformation. What was that like to develop that arc?

JM: A lot of people look at Richard as being in the closet but I looked at it as slightly different than that. I looked at it as an unconscious choice to shutdown a part of himself. He made a series of compromises along the way and he became consumed by the work. For a long time the work was enough and his friendship with Holland’s character Ellen Kincaid provided him with enough. People make those kinds of agreements with themselves all of the time but I wasn’t interested in playing someone who was knowingly in the closet.

There is a scene at George Cukor’s house where I think he crosses a line for the first time. I remember saying to Ryan at one point “I don’t think of him as gay or straight. He shut it all down.” In that particular night because he is provoked or has one to many drinks he crosses a line and something starts to open up for him. It’s really dangerous because there’s a cost if he gets caught and there is also an emotional cost. I looked at that scene with Rock Hudson as somebody who was walking on the moon, not someone who was repressing something, but someone who actually didn’t know. Maybe this is a man who has never had a sexual experience and I wanted that scene to be really, really awkward as someone who is not only out of their comfort zone, it is really like walking on the moon for them.

It’s only when Rock Hudson makes it transactional for the role that he sobers up immediately and sees himself. That’s a different thing than someone who has been in the closet for all of those years lusting and leching after young men. That was not as interesting to me as someone who was completely shutdown and paralyzed. If you had asked him at the beginning of the series if he had a good life I think he would have said yes.

AD: Why do you think that night at George Cukor’s party was the night that opened up something within him and look into that part of himself?

JM: I think it goes back before that night to when Darren Criss’s character challenges his conventional wisdom. Richard tells him his movie wouldn’t have been a hit if they had cast Anna May Wong. His character responds with “How would you know? You never made the movie.” That question lingered in the air for Dick I think is an existential question for him. Until you’ve done the thing how do you know – I know that’s all sort of psychological nonsense. In making the movie he comes closer and closer to his authentic self. He gets in touch with both his creative instincts and his personal feelings. I think that was the catalyst for it all. In some sort of strange inadvertent way that question rattled around in his brain and unlocked something for him.

AD: I want to go back to that scene with Rock Hudson for a moment. I found it to be one of the most powerful moments of the series and one that lingered with me for quite a while. One of the reasons for that is because sexual assault in the queer community hasn’t really been talked about out in the open like that. Were you conscious of how powerful that moment would be and what was it like preparing for it?

JM: Yes, in the sense that I think there are a lot of things being talked about now that weren’t before. There is something in the ether that is incredibly valuable. In terms of shooting the scene I think both Jake and I wanted the other to feel comfortable, but I also wanted us to feel like where we could have no membrane. Both of those men were very vulnerable so I wanted to maintain the delicacy and not lean into the sensationalism of it.

This might be the director part of my brain but I knew one of the functions of that scene was that we had to leave him with something that would make Rock go into that house and find his boyfriend and own that part of himself. None of us wanted that moment to be maudlin and self-pitying. I think there is something brave that happens to both of them in that scene that changes them.

AD: As the series ended I found myself craving more from Richard and Ellen, in fact I would give anything for a spinoff focused entirely on their friendship. What was it like developing that relationship with Holland Taylor?

JM: Fortunately, Holland and I have known each other for a long time. We work on opposite coasts so we weren’t close friends but we have known each other for many, many years in the theater community. It was great because we walked onto set with our own history which was not dissimilar to the one between those two characters. They’ve known each other for a long time, they’ve come up together, they’re creatively like-minded. I don’t think I knew where Ryan was going to take in terms of the scene where she makes her affection for him known and we were both terrified of it when we got the script.

AD: The series ends with Richard passing away and the rest of the characters making a film out of his and their story with “Dreamland.” The film has sparked a lot of conversation as to what visibility in Hollywood can inspire in younger people but I’m curious as to what you think that story might mean to someone older, someone like Richard?

JM: I think he achieved the ultimate thing of what so many of us want, the perfect combination of being absolutely authentic and owning who you are in your work and in your personal life and being able to have a wonderful balance between the two. What he discovers is that you can have both and that they’re not mutually exclusive; you can have the creative life that you want in this business and be respected and revered and you can be your authentic self.

That is why when he died it seemed like a happy ending. At one point he turns to his lover and says “I’m dying an honest man” and that kind of peace that comes over someone by saying “you know what? I’ve done okay and I was happy. I had a good life and it’s a life well lived. This is okay.”

AD: With everything going on in the world in terms of the pandemic and its affect on how we interact with people I find it hard to imagine that we’ll have live performances for quite a while. Do you see yourself turning to more film and television in the meantime?

JM: I would like to. I like working with Ryan. I’m coming back to the west coast sometime soon to finish the sound mixing on The Boys in the Band. I imagine most of the fall will be about rolling that film out so I’ll be around. I love Ryan, I love being in his world, and I would do anything he asks me to do.

AD: Is there anything you can say on The Boys in the Band? I know it is scheduled to come out in the Fall and it sounds like that it is still on track for that? I’m curious as to what the process was like adapting it for the screen and if you found that challenging?

JM: Yes, I think the scheduling part remains the same which should be early Fall. What remains to be seen is how does it roll out? Will people be going to movie theatres? Does it need to be seen in a movie theatre? What will the press junket look like? I think everyone is still trying to figure that out but I’m just trying to stay focused on finishing the movie.

I am really proud of the movie and I am particularly proud of those nine actors. I think the performances are really stunning. We tried to find a balance between this story for the stage and a film adaptation. I think the power of it is this claustrophobia of that party. That being said there were some great choices made, especially in the prologue, where we get to see the characters out in the world in their own environment. You get a slight flavor of who these men might be and then they start to arrive at the party. Once we’re there Crowley [playwright and screenwriter Mart Crowley] did something really clever because the story takes place in this apartment, but he added a terrace. It creates this flow among the ensemble.

It seems cinematic to me in a way that I like movies to be. I didn’t want to apologize for it being a play because the power of his dialogue is still so potent after 50 years. I’ve seen it a number of times and I am never bored, especially because of the actors. I find it really funny, it’s incredibly moving. I’m eager for people to see it and I am pleased with it. I don’t mean that in a cocky way but I think we achieved what we set out to do whether the world recognizes that or shares my enthusiasm.

Hollywood is now streaming on Netflix.