Video: Sarah Snook & Kip Williams Talk Bringing DORIAN GRAY to Broadway

What made you say yes

I'm going to tackle this. I'm going to take this on. I don't

Well, ignorance. Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. Emmy Award winner Sarah Sduke will be making her Broadway debut

reprising her Olivier Award-winning performance of Oscar Wiles, The Picture of Dorian Gray

She takes on 26 roles in Kip Williams' groundbreaking production, and I've caught up with both of them here at the legendary Algonquin Hotel

Well, the two of you are about to make your Broadway debuts. What does it mean to, now that you're here in New York, the music box, you're going to be going there, but Broadway debut, what it means to each of you

It's incredible. It's not something that I, you know, it's something you always dream of, and then you hope maybe could happen someday somehow, but not know when

So to be doing this and doing this with an Australian production and doing it, you know, post a West End run that was successful and acclaimed that it feels like a really, um

quite an amazing expansion into something that feels like it only ever existed in fantasy or dream

So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's incredible. It's the biggest thrill, you know

I mean, some of my favorite theater in the world has happened as an audience member coming to see shows on Broadway

and it's the most incredible theater community. So to have been invited to the music box and to share it with New York audiences is just a dream come true

It's incredible. What made you say yes? I'm going to tackle this

I'm going to take this on. Oh, I don't, well, ignorance. I couldn say no is really there was no option to say no in terms of where my heart and soul sat in regards to wanting to be able to explore multiple different characters in the same piece both male and female be on stage

Again, I hadn't done that for a while and I, you know, work with Kip. I just, all of it is, was so seductive that I had to say yes

Yeah. What's been like collaborating together on this? Well, for me, it's been so much fun. Yeah

I mean, my mind is constantly blown in rehearsals with Sarah, because this piece is like an Everest of sorts for a performer

and the speed with which you can process and execute the most complex of ideas and choreography

it's quite mind-blowing, so it's been incredible. Yeah, it's, I mean, we did a run the other day that went for an hour and 50s

managed to somehow shave five minutes off for speaking too fast, which at the beginning of this

journey, if you had said that I would be able to speak faster than the actual text, I would not

have believed you. But Kip was like, nope, you will get faster. It's been incredible to work together

on this, always feeling supported and feeling like there's always a, you can stretch and you can

try and you can fail because you'll always be caught by somebody who's looking out for you

and has the whole piece and your care in mind as well. 26 roles in this show

Which ones came easier for you? Which ones were harder to find? If you don't mind me asking

No, of course. I just was asked this question before and Lord Henry was my answer that that is one of the easiest roles that came to came quickly but I just remembered how Mrs Leif I play an old old decrepit lady sweet blessed cherub she is old Mrs Leif who I think she probably about 80 at the beginning of the play so by the end of the play she definitely 140 or older

she was my favorite, I think, to play, and maybe the easiest to jump into

which is such a strange thing, to think that, yeah, older women

and predatory men are my slip lane. You know, there's a stage work

there's beautiful camera work in this show. I know you're used to cameras and everything else, but what was it like rehearsing all of this

and fine-tuning it as an actress? Yeah, wild, with absolute pun intended

as well. There are so many marks on the floor, so many camera angles, the specificity within which

Kip requires your chin to be turned, your head to be turned, you know, it's millimeter precision

which, you know, in the first instances, it's like, oh, what? Don't box me in, mate. But then you

find, I love it because the strange kind of, and maybe all actors have this, a willingness or a desire

to impress the teacher. to get it right, a perfectionism that exists, and then finding, you know, the expansion inside that where I can push the boundaries, where I can invent

There a couple characters that are slightly different every night that don have any pre attachments so I can develop and evolve and change And also just like keep mining keep discovering keep choosing and finding new ways to tell the same story

which is, yeah, again, testament to the writing and also to Kit

The look you have in this show is amazing. The first time you saw yourself all done up

with the outfit, the hair, the makeup and everything else. What went through your mind? What were you thinking

Cool. I like it. I love the wigs. They're so fun. The kind of the rockabilly high hair style one

The white one with the, we call it the Met Gala kind of flowers and the white blazer

It's so much fun. It's really, you know, you talk about putting a pair of shoes and costume on to give you a character

That gives you a character. You know, so many young people have come to see this show

They went to the West End. I have so many people. My nieces and nephews are all like, that's one sets of tickets

They said, we're going to see Doreen Gray. We're going to see Dore and Gray. Because of your success on Succession, you're going to see

you know we all remember the first time we saw someone on TV or on film we went to the theater

and like oh my god we're seeing these people do this live bringing a whole new audience a young audience

to the theater what it means to you it's so exciting being at stage door last season in west end was

so special because there were so many young people who who either had seen theater for the first time

or i think there was a couple people who came multiple times and like spend your money on other things

like you got to eat but i guess that's a you know that's it's something in our soul

that we want to have a story told to us that makes us feel seen and makes us feel alive and energized

And this play, fortunately, really did that. And, yeah, it means a lot to have a young audience

be able to come and see the show