Actor Keegan-Michael Key was 8 years old when he saw his first musical. It was “Godspell,” and he was hooked. “I was in the third grade. I thought it was the most magical thing. I thought, ‘Oh, wow, I want to do something like that!’ I wanted to be in a musical so bad after I saw the kids up there were having so much fun. I just remember being absolutely intoxicated by it.”
Little did he know that nine years later he would instigate his love for musicals by playing in the high school production of “Godspell.” And on April 5 he’s back to that dream starring in the second season of “Schmigadoon!” via Apple TV+, a send-up of all the classic musicals of the past. This season the show concentrates on the darker versions of musical theater with parodies of shows like “Cabaret,” “Chicago,” “Sweeney Todd.”
In a way, that initial glance of “Godspell” sealed his fate. Key, 52, admits that he first culled notice as the class clown and his humor often plunged him into trouble. “It was probably from imitating the teacher,” he says on a cold rainy afternoon here.
“They would say, ‘Mr. Key, Mr. Key, would you pay attention, PLEASE.’ I was probably trying to refine my imitation of that teacher. I would also pretend to be cartoon characters of cartoons I liked, and my friends in the neighborhood would laugh. I was in the sixth or seventh grade when I first realized I was funny. In high school I would do the morning announcements of people that I knew how to impersonate. I would do Casey Kasem, ‘Oh, yeah, the doughnut drive’s next week,’ (he says in Kasem’s unique voice). I would do Hulk Hogan and people would say, ‘Wow, that’s so cool.’’’
But it was his very first part on stage that convinced him he could do it. “I played the role of a young native American named Billy Yellowcorn in a play at the Detroit Repertory Theatre called ‘Detroit Stories.’ That did change me. It was my first professional job ever, and that really did allow me to say, ‘Oh my gosh, maybe I can do this for a living. I love this so much.’ I would have gone to school for it, but I got that role and I remember thinking to myself, ‘Maybe this is it. Maybe this will change my life.’
“It changed my confidence because it was one of these roles where it was just me doing a monologue on stage for like seven minutes straight. And I did it. I thought to myself, ‘OK, all right. I did this which means I probably CAN do this. I probably can get through and make this a career.’”
Adopted by social workers Michael Key and Patricia Walsh, Key grew up a Catholic in Detroit. His adoptive parents were not shocked when he announced he wanted to be an actor. “They were liberal for Catholics,” he says. “They were actually very supportive. They didn’t ask me to have a major fallback. They let me do my thing. I was very, very, very fortunate that they said, ‘Look, if that’s what you want to study, go.’ Thank God.”
He did study, earning his master’s degree from Pennsylvania State, but soon found that the world of show biz was not so welcoming. “The hardest time was probably when I got out of graduate school and I moved back home to Detroit and I started a theater with eight of my friends,” he recalls.
“The theater used to be a coffee house and we paid rent, and it was in the part of town that we could afford. And you'd have a roommate. And I was working in the theater and didn’t have any other jobs except at one time I was doing singing telegrams for the Eastern Union telegram place, and I was also doing plays. It was a tough time, but I was also doing what I loved.”
Key first harvested national attention as one of the comedians on “MADtv,” where he unpacked a panoply of quirky characters. Later he teamed up with his very good pal Jordan Peele for “Key & Peele,” a sketch comedy series that nudged the ratings on Comedy Central for five seasons.
Key, who credits his second wife, producer-director Elisa Pugliese, for illuminating his life, has proved his mettle in a variety of ways. He hosted “Brain Games” on National Geographic, voiced Toad in “The Super Mario Brothers. Movie,” hosted Animal Planet’s “Funniest Animals,” has been nominated for comedy writing, made his Broadway debut and costarred in TV shows “Fargo,” “Playing House,” and films “Horrible Bosses2” and “The Lego Movie.”
He admits he’s hopelessly disorganized in his daily life but sports a secret talent: He can whistle like a pro. He says he has devised a method for overcoming his initial fears when he starts a new project.
“I tell myself I can do anything for 30 seconds. And then you can do anything in the world for five minutes, and then you just keep going up the ladder — anything for 10 minutes. If you get through it for 10 seconds, the next thing you know you're actually doing the thing. Sometimes I just jump into the predicament. And then you're in it.If I have to talk myself into it, sometimes if I'm scared to do it, I’ll just go ahead and do it anyway.”
How Joni Mitchell inspired Annie Lennox
The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song goes to Joni Mitchell this year, and PBS will be celebrating that accolade on March 31. A Who’s Who of stars will be paying tribute to Mitchell including James Taylor, Diana Krall, Herbie Hancock, and Annie Lennox.
Singer-songwriter Lennox, who got her start with the Eurythmics, says that Mitchell was pivotal in her becoming a singer-songwriter. “I was a young teenage girl living in Aberdeen in the northeast of Scotland, came down to London in 1971 extensively to study flute at the Royal Academy of Music,” she says.
“And it was not going to be my future at all. And so I had very little money, and I was living in a basement in Notting Hill Gate in London. And I had this little room in a basement, and I shared it at one point with this guy. And he was quite a character,” she recalls.
“And he always used to save his money up to buy albums. And he would come back with the latest album. ... And so he had a Joni Mitchell record. And I think it may have been ‘Court and Spark.’ And he had a beautiful stereo system, and he had headphones, and he gave me access to the records. I couldn’t afford to buy records.
“I picked up more of the music I learned in two places. It was either on the radio or it was in the dance halls in Scotland. So, there I was as this kind of penniless kid living in a basement, and this young guy had the album, and I listened to it. And I fell in love. I just fell in love. How could I say it? It came into my soul.
“And I was not a singer-songwriter at that point. I was trying to figure out what am I doing to do? ... I’d made it to the first mountain, and I got into the music, the academy. And then, the first day, I was like this is not going to work for me. Who am I? What am I? I think many of us have been in that place where destiny doesn’t just naturally come out and tell: This is what you're going to do in your life. And, sometimes we're left with huge question marks. And I was in that place of question mark.
“So, Joni's songs are ... I have to say it's poetry that is embodied with music. The music speaks through the poetry. And I, for my sins, because I was a melancholic teenager, and I used to express myself. I used to have little notebooks and things, and I would write down my sorrow and my melancholy in kind of poetic form. And what happened I think was that, in a way, Joni's presence for me as this kid was like I had a blueprint there.
“There was poetry. There was music. Maybe you could put the two things together, and maybe I could even do that ... I honestly feel, on reflection, that if I hadn't heard her music and I hadn't been able to visualize the potential of putting words and poetry together with music, I don’t think I would've become a singer-songwriter.
“And I honestly feel that Joni's significance now at this later stage in her life and this later chapter in her life, is all the young women that she has inspired across all these decades who put their hands up and said, ‘I was inspired by Joni Mitchell to become the person that I am now.’
“Because I can tell you this: there were two singer songwriters, women, at that time. One was Carole King and the other one was Joni. And they were there. And then, I could see it. ‘Maybe I can do this.’ So it's like for me to have the honor of being invited to talk about Joni and maybe even to sing for her is an honor, is a deep, deep honor. More than I can express.”
Remembering Reddick
It was sad news to hear of actor Lance Reddick’s death at 60. Best known for the “John Wick” movies, “The Wire,” and the savvy police chief of “Bosch,” Reddick told me in a recent interview that a back injury caused him to become an actor.
“I studied classical music, thought I was going to be a classical composer,” he told me. “I went to the Eastman School of Music. I left Eastman because I realized I was in denial and I really wanted to be a rock star. So I got married straight out of school, moved to Boston because my wife at the time was from there. Two years later my daughter was born, and I found myself working three jobs, seven days a week,” he recalled.
“Then I had a back injury. I was lifting a big bundle of newspapers, but it wasn’t the lifting itself, it was the exhaustion. I’d come from a double-shift of waiting tables to a double-shift of delivering newspapers and I delivered the Wall Street Journal in downtown Boston, and it was the 100th anniversary of the Wall Street Journal so it was a double edition. I just cranked it up for about 24 hours and I was just exhausted and something went. At the time I was used to working on adrenaline, and I worked out every day – even with all I had going on. So when I was in pain or exhausted, I just ignored it and kept going,” he said.
“About two weeks later I woke up one day and couldn’t’ get out of bed. I was in bed for about two weeks, and it really made me reevaluate what I was doing. It sounds crazy but I thought, ‘Well, I know the recording studio I'm working with is taking me for a ride. It’s time for me to admit that to myself. So let me start from scratch. I can sing and I can act. So let me try to act.”
And so he did with such dignity and charm. He will be missed.
'General Hospital' celebrates the big 60
It’s hard to believe but ABC’s soaper “General Hospital” will be celebrating it’s 60th anniversary on Saturday. It ranks as the longest-running American soap opera still in production. Actress Genie Francis, as the winsome Laura Spencer, has appeared at various times on the enduring series. When Laura married the character Luke (Anthony Geary) in 1981 it caused a media tsunami. Thirty million viewers tuned in to the nuptials, and it proved the highest-rated hour ever in soap history.
“I don’t know what it would’ve been like not to have been Laura,” Francis tells me. “I only know what I did, and for me that was my life. It was like being shot out of a cannon, very intimidating and fortunately for me I think a lot of it was over my head. I didn’t get it. Now as an adult, looking back at it, and everybody is still talking about it, I get it a lot more. Things like that really don’t happen often. It sort of transcended the genre.”
Laura’s back on the series. But she’s a new woman, says Francis. “I feel very, very fortunate to have this new reinvented Laura,” she says of the role.
“I love who she is in the present day. She was such a victim as a young woman, and to see it flip around and have her be fully empowered, this powerful woman who is the mayor of the town. She doesn't take crap from anyone. She's a strong woman. She's a good role model for other women. But I love my Laura today. I loved my Laura then too, but this is where it needed to go.”
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