A MOUSE CLUBHOUSE EXCLUSIVE 2007 INTERVIEW
DANIEL JENKINS
talks about his career

by Scott Wolf

Daniel Jenkins is a Tony^® Award nominated actor who is currently appearing as George Banks, the father in the Broadway version of the smash hit "Mary Poppins" at the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York City.

Although I have never met nor spoken with Dan before, I enjoyed the interview so much.
He's a really warm, down to Earth person and I'm just delighted to share this interview with you!

Scott Wolf: Your dad is an actor, who currently plays Dr. Bob Kelso in "Scrubs," right?

Daniel Jenkins: That’s correct, yes.

SW: Having an entertainer as a father, when did you get the acting bug?

DJ: I watched my dad do it growing up. I saw him play Hamlet, Cyrano, McMurphy in "Cuckoo’s Nest" and all these great roles, but I also knew that it wasn’t necessarily a lucrative career, (chuckles) so I was never pressured into any kind of acting as a child.

In high school, I really have to credit my high school teachers for exposing me to musical theatre and getting me interested in that.

Then I apprenticed at a regional theatre in Kentucky… Actor’s Theatre of Louisville. Then I stayed on accompaniment for the next year so I was there for two years before I came to New York.

SW: What was your first job in New York?

DJ: I really got quite fortunate before I even came here. I did a film with Robert Altman. It was really kind of a mind-blowing experience, and as a result I got an agent and then moved to New York, so it was a very blessed introduction to the professional world.

SW: Was it a film we’d ever heard of?

DJ: Probably not… it was based on a National Lampoon series called "O.C. and Stiggs" and I played Lee in it. It was really, really fun, I got to love being in front of the camera and Altman was just fantastic... a wild, wonderful maverick of a figure. I got to work with him a couple of times after that because it’s kind of a family atmosphere once you’re over there.

I came here and actually "Big River" was the first job of note that I got in New York but that was almost a year after I moved here.

SW: What a way to start.

DJ: I know, I actually had gone back to Kentucky to do a play and then had to leave to come back up here to do "Big River."

SW: I read that you did something on a raft, going down the Mississippi, what was that?

DJ: I was 16, and my brother was 18. We both stayed with basically a family friend and teacher in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where Antioch College is. There was a theatre group that started there called Otrabanda and they ended up coming to New York back when the government was supporting the arts, you would get grants for reaching out to less fortunate communities with theatre and that’s exactly what this was.

David Dawkins was very much a Mark Twain fanatic and wrote the grant and we would float down the Mississippi river on a raft in under-developed rural towns and we’d put up a circus tent and do an original kind of musical and pass the hat. It was very early 1900s, if you allow.

It was also great preparation for the role of Huck.

SW: So it helped you?

DJ: Absolutely, to have that kind of understanding of the environment and the people along the river, it was an invaluable experience.

SW: And then you were nominated for a Tony® for that role, right?

DJ: That’s right. I’ve been very blessed with my introduction to this professional world in New York.

SW: And your father came into "Big River" as well?

DJ: That’s right, and that’s the first time we actually worked together. We thought we’d be doing some strange little play in some small space in Louisville, but no, we were doing "Big River" on Broadway together. That was our first job together.

SW: What was the revival you did for Deaf West?

DJ: That was a much different production. The first production had no sign language, no deaf or hard of hearing participants. It was just a straight book musical and the revival was a completely re-imagined one with the role of Huck being played by a deaf man named Ty Giordano.

I basically did everything I did before except a little bit more. I dressed up as Mark Twain, and did a little more narration and sign language as Mark Twain but I sang and spoke all the lines that I had did twenty years ago so I voiced for the deaf character of Huck and off to the side I’d be playing instruments and providing the oral part of the performance for Huck. It was a remarkable experience.

The Director, Jeff Calhoun, just realized that this piece would work well with the theme of the social outcast… having a deaf character play Huck just added another layer to it that was quite appropriate and very, very special… very moving.

SW: You’ve done film and television as well as stage. Do you have a favorite medium?

DJ: You know, they were really apples and oranges. I love doing theatre because you’re right there doing it for the people that you’re doing it for. There’s a remove with television and film. You will have finished a film and then however many months later, often a year later it’s presented to the public.

With TV there’s a delay, too, not usually quite as long, but it’s a different thing. Working with the camera is really fun, though. You really start to make choices that are appropriate for that size of medium. As large as it is on film, you have to make everything quite small, but you still have to have that fire burning in there. It’s fascinating.

As far as the response from the audience goes, I prefer theatre without a doubt, but doing the eight show a week thing is much different than keeping something immediate and fresh and only getting one shot a week at it.

SW: From an audience perspective, there’s just nothing like live theatre.

DJ: Yeah, and you know, people talk about books dying out and theatre dying out and I think it’s just the opposite, I think the more the Internet and other mediums crop up, the more people hunger for the more community oriented and primal entertainment.

SW: I hope so.

You’ve done some songwriting, right?

DJ: Yes, I did a show with my dad years ago where we put together some of his writings and made the book and then I wrote about fifteen or so songs to string them together. It was a blast.

SW: Do you have a favorite composer?

DJ: Well, I got to work with Randy Newman a couple years ago and he’s hard to beat in my book. He and James Taylor were big influences in my youth and getting to work with him was a mind blow.

SW: You actually got to play him in “The Education of Randy Newman,” right?

DJ: Well, kind of a version of him. It was semi-autobiographical, about as earnest as Randy will get. It was a wonderful piece using about more than 40 of his tunes. I’m still hoping that they can do something with it because it’s the material that those of us who know his work very well really love, and I think a lot of people are unfamiliar with, which is more of his straight up songwriting and character-based song… very interesting stuff and beautiful.

More from Daniel:
Performing in "Mary Poppins" on Broadway

See other interviews

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