Table Of ContentEPISODE 11: TONY NOMINEE JENNIFER SIMARD
& ANDREW BRIEDIS (AKA ANNOYING ACTOR
FRIEND)
PATRICK HINDS: Hey Podcast listeners, Patrick here. Just a reminder that
Tickets for BroadwayCon 2017, presented by Mischief Management and
Playbill, are now on sale. You can find information and tickets at
broadwaycon.com. And you guys, we’ve just announced a whole slate of
original programming for this years con and I’m gonna tell you about some of
it right now. First up is BroadwayCon Start to Be which is a fan-based talent
show with Broadway judges for which our fans perform and compete for
prizes. There’s also I’m Just a Broadway Baby which is video clips of
Broadway stars performing when they were kids and recreating the
performances live. There’s also the BroadwayCon Feud which is hosted by
Jenn Colella and it’s out version of the Family Feud staring both Broadway
fans and Broadway stars. The last one I want to tell you about now is called
BroadwayCon Jukebox and with this, the audience gets one minute to vote
for one of our four selected songs on our official BroadwayCon App, so don’t
forget to download the app and after voting ends, our Broadway singers take
center stage and sing the winning song with our live band. You guys, there’s
so many things to know about for BroadwayCon 2017. Be sure to check it out
at broadwaycon.com.
ANTHONY RAPP [singing]: I know a place where you belong. Come follow
me and join the song.
ANTHONY RAPP [shouts]: Welcome to BroadwayCon…
PATRICK HINDS: …The Podcast. The show for the theatre kid in all of us. I’m
your host, Patrick Hinds.
[SONG BIT FROM DISASTER!]
PATRICK: This week we’re bringing you a tale of friendship, overnight
stardom that was two-decades in the making, the power of social media, and
two theatre nerds’ love of Jurassic Park or something like that. You all know
my friend Andrew Briedis as his twitter alter-ego Annoying Actor Friend. Well
Andrew is really good friends with Jennifer Simard, the Tony nominated
actress from last year’s Disaster! and up coming Hello, Dolly! So Andrew and I
had this idea of just putting the three of us in a recording studio and seeing
what happened. We all knew that I would totally geek out over Jennifer,
Andrew would speak in a very low, barely audible tone, and Jennifer would
just be her charming self, but we also wanted to tell this great story of how
Andrew and Jennifer met and how Andrew used his social media prowess to
almost Simard on the Tony’s and if you have no idea what I’m talking about,
you’re about to find out. I love these two. Here’s our conversation.
[SONG BIT FROM DISASTER!]
PATRICK: Hi guys!
ANDREW BRIEDIS: Hey hey.
PATRICK: Andrew! Jennifer!
JENNIFER SIMARD: Hi!
PATRICK: Welcome to BroadwayCon the Podcast!
JENNIFER: Thank you. It’s so good to be here.
PATRICK: Andrew and I schemed about making this happen like months ago
and then all of sudden, I got a text like ‘Simards in town tomorrow. This block
of time.’
ANDREW: We’re doing it.
JENNIFER: Let’s do it. I appreciate I got it together so quickly.
PATRICK: Well I’m just thrilled to meet you.
JENNIFER: Aw. I’m thrilled to meet you.
PATRICK: I’m such a big fan.
JENNIFER: I wanted—we’ve been trying to get this together for months now.
PATRICK: Yeah.
JENNIFER: Thank you for saying that. That’s so nice.
PATRICK: It’s funny. You have the voice of the nun. You just have the voice of
—
JENNIFER: I do?
PATRICK: Yeah. Just like—
JENNIFER: Well maybe it’s my high—no I can kind of do my—sometimes it’s
just nasal and awful though.
PATRICK: Yeah I love it.
JENNIFER: I just—I don’t have those dulcet tones all the time.
ANDREW: I think it’s sometimes—it’s like a podcast voice too when you get
the microphone.
JENNIFER: Yeah, I think I might of put it on a little bit just so I sound nice—
ANDREW: I love it.
JENNIFER: But believe me, sometimes it’s just like this. [extra nasal-y] Hey.
How are you?
ANDREW: I get the microphone, I’m just like [deeper] Hi, uhm, I’m just gonna
try and sound low and then it’s just quiet. [normal voice] It’s a podcast voice.
JENNIFER: It’s a podcast voice.
ANDREW: Yeah.
JENNIFER: You just turn it on. But I did the witch in uhm, Shrek, the Musical
and I thought to myself I think one of the reasons I got it was I do have that
just resting bitch face. Like my neutral face just looks angry. And I was like
‘how—how are you doing?’ I look witchy.
PATRICK: It’s funny—
JENNIFER: And I’m like no no I’m really happy. God damn my face, you know?
And my voice. This nasal voice. I mean I can say the gentlest, I hope kind
thing, but I think it can come out so controlling and awful because I have this
—just this this.
PATRICK: But but I had this total—
JENNIFER: Damn my voice and damn my face.
PATRICK: I had a totally different experience with you face when you walked
in I was like ‘She’s so pretty’ ‘Cause you know, as you were the nun, you can’t
really see your face.
JENNIFER: We camouflaged it. Seth was a little obsessed with that. He’s like
‘look at her. Here she is on stage and then the transformation!’ You know,
she’s really not a horror. Uhm, but you know.
PATRICK: I wanted—before we get to the two of you, can we talk just to you a
minute? Because we’ve never met you before.
JENNIFER: Yeah sure. Do you mind, my friend?
ANDREW: I would mind greatly, actually, but sure.
JENNIFER: Sorry.
PATRICK: Well you have this incredible career. There’s so many incredible
things to talk about. Maybe we won’t get to all of it today, but one of the
things I mentioned to you when you first came in, and this has been on my
mind since really since the off-broadway production of Disaster! because you
were such—I mean everyone in the show was amazing and that cast was so
wonderful in addition to the Broadway cast being wonderful.
JENNIFER: 100% wonderful.
PATRICK: Yeah.
JENNIFER: Love each of them.
PATRICK: You were the only one to go on. Is that right?
JENNIFER: Uh, Seth and myself, mhm.
PATRICK: Seth, of course, right. So you knw, you have this incredible body of
work behind you, but Disaster! hit. You got this incredible review, you got a
Tony nomination. And it just seemed like, all of a sudden, overnight you were
a star, so it’s like this overnight success despite the fact you’ve been working
for, you know, two decades.
JENNIFER: Right.
PATRICK: How—first question. When you got Disaster!, off-broadway, could
you have ever foreseen what would happen?
JENNIFER: Oh gosh. No, you you—I, you know, you just want to work and
hopefully extend the time that you’re able to do the thing that you love to do,
you know?
PATRICK: Yeah.
JENNIFER: And when you’re art is also the way you pay your bills, it can be
challenging, can’t it? You know. And so I uhm, I felt very connected to the role
and I was really excited to sink my teeth into her. But it’s interesting what you
say this overnight star. I think—my husband and I laughed, one of the reviews
or two of them actually, in the broadway or articles anyway since the
broadway show, uhm, and then I think off-broadway as well, dating back over
my career, it’s the fourth time I’m newcomer Jennifer Simard. In print. You
know. I think I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, The Thing About Men,
which was at the Promenade off-broadway. Gosh, it was such a beautiful
theatre. I’m still sad that it’s not there.
PATRICK: Where was that?
JENNIFER: It’s 76th and Broadway.
PATRICK: Oh. Oh!
JENNIFER: 76th Street. It was exquisite.
PATRICK: Of course. I remember that theatre.
JENNIFER: Uh huh. W’ve lost a lot of our gems off-broadway unfortunately.
But yeah, it was the fourth time I was a newcomer. Fresh face!
ANDREW: And it’s like 5th Drama Desk nomination. Newcomer Jennifer
Simard.
JENNIFER: Well four. I don’t—not five.
PATRICK: Twelve?
JENNIFER: I don’t want to say—no but yeah.
PATRICK: How was it when you like found you—the Tony nominations came
out. Be honest. Were you expecting it?
JENNIFER: Was I expecting it? No. Because look at the—look at the women
that were in my category.
PATRICK: It was a great year.
JENNIFER: It was a great season. Uhm, I mean, I think—you’d be lying if you
say you don’t hope that happens, right? Like it would be—I mean, I’m sure
there’s some people that would be ‘I don’t like awards.’ Uhm but not me. I
think it’s lovely. Uhm, you can’t make it about that, right? So you just
concentrate on other things. Uhm, I had a blue and white dress altered, I’ll say,
that I wore to the nomination lunch-in.
PATRICK: Yes!
JENNIFER: But I wasn’t expecting to wear it to that. I was altering it for the
drama-desk lunch in which was coming up in a couple weeks and I had just
altered it and I—when it came out, what you don’t know is that the next
morning, it’s like full court press or at least—that’s never happened to me
before, so I didn’t know that was the kick. So it happened and I’m like uh uh,
and you have to be at this, you know, early press event and you get your pin,
and they take your photos and you have to do interviews and I’m like ‘what
am I going to wear?’ This blue and white dress! So, you know it was uhm, it
was great. So no, I didn’t expect it. One of our good friends Keala Settle, she
was so great in Waitress, uhm luckily, she’s already had a Tony nomination,
but she and Andrea Burns in On Your Feet! Just brilliant. And there’s many
other women that I’m leaving out, but the point is, there could have been I
think ten slots wouldn’t have been enough this year.
PATRICK: Totally. And that category is usually tough because that’s where so
many of our great actresses are—is in that fabulous supporting role.
JENNIFER: And some years are weaker than others, but this year was. I—it
was a salad. It was so much in there and—
ANDREW: Yeah, I felt like I even just personally knew five people that were in
that category.
PATRICK: Totally.
ANDREW: Like you had like Krista Rodriguez in Spring Awakening.
PATRICK: Oh!
JENNIFER: Thank you! Excuse me—thank you. I’m glad you said Krista
because she was brilliant.
PATRICK: Incredible. Incredible.
ANDREW: And so I meant like just to make this about me. When I was at the
gym and I wasn’t watching the nominations. I was just trying to refresh
Twitter which is very confusing to do when the nominations are like—
[breathing deeply like a workout] who—who—oh Megan Hilty— Thank God.
And then I couldn’t—all a sudden it just sort of happened where I saw your
name, but I needed to see it on the Tony website and I actually just myself
started crying at the gym and I don’t do that. I’m not emotional like that. But I
started crying because it felt like we all got nominated in that nomination.
JENNIFER: Aww, Andrew.
ANDREW: Because it was such a singular performance.
PATRICK: But it was really just Jennifer. It was just Jennifer.
JENNIFER: And—
ANDREW: I have it on my resume.
JENNIFER: Let me tell you something. I’m gonna give a shoutout to uh, Keala
and Andrea Burns especially because I know them personally. They couldn’t
have been lovelier and that’s—it—I mean, and genuine. Like so so supportive.
So lovely. And I just—it really the fellowship of it was one of the nicest parts.
PATRICK: Did you think it was one of those things too where it was like ‘finally
people understand how good I am.’
JENNIFER: Oh gosh no. I think if you believe your own hype, it’s the fastest
ticket to the unemployment line, you know what I mean? I mean I—look—on
social I would unfollow me now if I were my friends. If you’re my Facebook
friend, I apologize. Uhm, but you know, I had a lot of people give me some
advice like ‘you have to ride that line of you’re self promotion’ Like, this is
what I’m doing, you guys. And I apologize and just, you hope you’re not a
douche and that you’re, you know, you hope that you’re nice to your friends
when nice things happen to them.
PATRICK: Well one of the really interesting things that came out of that whole
experience was with our friend Andrew was the whole Put Simard On hashtag
thing that happened that I think lead to Playbill coming and playing and
showing your number live when you did it. I want to go back to the beginning
of that if we can. ‘Cause I’m fascinated by this. First of all, how did you guys
even meet?
JENNIFER: We have a mutual friend. The fabulous brilliant actress Jackie Piro
Donovan.
ANDREW: Incredible. Known uhm as the first woman to play Cosette and
Fantine in the original Les Miserables before it was revived nine times, so she
was in the original company over the course of those years, she played those
roles.
JENNIFER: Mhmm. And her husband Peter Donovan is a local stagehand and
house head and my husband, Brad, is a local stagehand, so they became
friends and so we all, sort of, would meet and I think Jackie and Pete were
sort of the apex of social gatherings, so we met—
ANDREW: Yeah, we met at one of their—they have a birthday that’s close
together and we met at a Greek restaurant and you had just gotten Sister Act.
I believe that’s when we met.
JENNIFER: I guess so. And then we met at like her house in Maplewood or
something.
ANDREW: Yeah like Fourth of July parties or something like that.
JENNIFER: So sort of just periphery. Like ‘Hi it’s that couple again, right?
That’s really good friends with our other friends.’ You know? And then last
year, Pete and Jackie were planning a trip to Hawaii to honor some very
special events in their lives and they invited all of their twenty-five favorite
people in the world to this get together in Hawaii and Andrew and his wife
Sarah were there and so were—
ANDREW: Keale is was there.
JENNIFER: And Keale was there.
ANDREW: And the fabulous Patti Colombo choreography was there. It was
just like this, you know, hodge podge of wonderful people all out in Hawaii.
PATRICK: Uh huh.
JENNIFER: So we—so that was uhm, we probably got to know each other a
little more then.
ANDREW: You came up to me—it might have been when—I don’t remember if
it was the boat or Kawaii is where they filmed Jurassic Park and—
JENNIFER: That’s where we started to fall in love.
ANDREW: She goes—Jenn goes ‘we share a mutual uhm sort of like reverence
or obsession with Jurassic Park.’ I did not know that she had this same love.
JENNIFER: And I didn’t know that he did.
ANDREW: And we just like had come together where they filmed it over this
film that evidentially is very symbolic in both of our lives for various reasons.
JENNIFER: Right and I was like ‘until this moment, I didn’t really like you.’ And
now—
ANDREW: But now…
JENNIFER: I’m going to give you a chance.
Description:my friend Andrew Briedis as his twitter alter-ego Annoying Actor Friend. Well. Andrew is really good friends with Jennifer Simard, the Tony nominated.
