Character Breakdown: WATER FOR ELEPHANTS Cast Unpacks Their Roles

See Vanzini Brothers Circus 401, not only run, ain't it so

The road don't make you young, ain't it so? The road don't make you young, ain't it so

The road don't make you young, live a life worth living When they say it can't be done, ain't it so

Jacob Jankowski was studying to become a vet at Cornell University following his father's footsteps who was a vet when he loses both of his parents

in the midst of the Great Depression and has nothing left and doesn't know what to do so he's going to go west

and ends up getting on this train that turns out to be a circus train and yeah, as I mentioned, finds purpose and community

and decides to stick around and becomes their vet and a lot of story ensues at that point

I play Marlena and she ran away with a circus at the age of 18

to pursue a life of love and her passion for animals and she is an equestrian that has an incredible gift of taming animals

and communicating with them and also healing them. She has this beautiful liberty horse act that she does

and she's kind of the gravitational center for everybody in her orbit

She calms them down, she redirects their perspectives when they're not seeing the light

But she never puts herself first, she always puts the animals first or her husband first

And then Jacob Jankowski comes on the scene as their new vet and brings an elephant into their lives and together they

kind of reawaken their love of life and their inner child and they train this elephant who can't understand them at first

but they get to know more about each other and have a burgeoning friendship which then becomes a burgeoning love

and it's really beautiful to play this woman who goes from choosing other people to choosing herself

I play August, he's the owner of the circus and the ringmaster

and he spends a lot of his time trying to figure out how to keep the circus alive

in the 30s when everything's closing and food is hard to come by

I play what we lovingly call Mr. Jankowski. I'm the older version of Jacob who is our leading man

and a lot of the play is sort of a memory play of my character remembering

how he went through all the tumultuous period of his life finding home, finding a family after he had lost, had a terrible loss in his life

I play Barbara, we've been around for a long time but for many years she was sort of the featured show girl, head cooch tent performer

She's transitioned more now into training and teaching the up-and-coming performers but she's very much the mama bear of this community

She's seen it all, she knows when things are going well, she knows to feel those tremors when there's trouble in the water

and how to manage it and at the end of the day, keep the show going

and keep everybody on the train and moving towards the next tomorrow, the next day

That's all we can do is keep going. I play Wade who is an ambitious, somewhat broken, roused about

which is the men who put up the tent, take it down, lift heavy things

throw people off trains if they need to be fired. He is, I think on the inside, a very sweet person

but very broken and has lived a very hard life. I play Camel. Camel is a roused about or a laborer

and he is the first person that Jacob meets when he jumps the train

and Camel becomes a mentor and sort of a father figure for Jacob

and he shows him the ropes and they become very good friends

I'm always a little reluctant to say more than that because I don't want to tip what happens, but yeah

I play Walter who is the clown of the circus, a performer, a kinker as they say

who befriends Jacob and follows through on a friendship deeper than anyone can imagine