Two years ago, actors from the hit HBO drama “Succession” dominated the theater. This season, New York theater has traded boardrooms for an emergency room and a fine-dining prep kitchen. Three actors from the HBO hospital drama “The Pitt” are appearing onstage, joined by three actors from the FX restaurant dramedy “The Bear.” Earlier this season, Jean Smart, a star of the HBO comedy “Hacks,” appeared in the one-woman show “Call Me Izzy,” and now her co-star Carl Clemons-Hopkins is making his Broadway debut in “The Balusters.” And actors from HBO’s sumptuous historical drama “The Gilded Age”? They’re glittering all across Broadway. That’s a lot of Emmy contenders gunning for Tonys and Obies.
Many of these actors are theater veterans, others are newcomers. All have to contend with audiences who know them best for their screen roles.
After being heckled at a performance of “Just in Time,” Isa Briones, an actress from “The Pitt,” posted on Instagram: “Don’t talk to me onstage and don’t call me Dr. Santos.”
“It’s a new problem,” said her “Pitt” co-star Patrick Ball, who is appearing in “Becky Shaw” on Broadway. “There’s a real luxury in anonymity.” But there are upsides to fame, too. Some of the dozens of fans who greet him at the stage door might not have bought tickets to a Broadway play otherwise.
“I feel very honored to get to bring a bunch of new theater patrons through the doors,” Ball said. His “Pitt” colleague Sepideh Moafi, who will soon perform a monologue in “New Born,” echoed this. She also said that she didn’t feel responsible for how an audience perceives her.
“All you can do is live fully and bring dimensionality and humanity and breathe life into the character that the writer has created,” Moafi said.
Here’s a guide to the actors and their roles, onscreen and onstage.
‘The Pitt’
Patrick Ball
A Yale School of Drama graduate, Ball broke out on “The Pitt” as Dr. Frank Langdon, a suave senior resident who was accused of skimming pain pills from his patients. In “Becky Shaw,” at the Helen Hayes Theater, he plays Andrew Porter, a sensitive would-be writer who coddles vulnerable women and cries at pornography.
Isa Briones
Briones is prickly as Dr. Trinity Santos, a resident in “The Pitt.” She is less irritable in “Just in Time,” at Circle in the Square, where she is starring as the singer Connie Francis opposite Darren Criss’s Bobby Darin. As a karaoke scene in “The Pitt” and recent videos show, Briones, the child of theater actors and a veteran of “Hadestown,” can belt with the best of them.
Sepideh Moafi
Moafi joined “The Pitt” for its second season as Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, an attending with a complicated medical history. In one of the monologues in Ella Hickson’s “New Born,” which begins performances on May 8 at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theater, she plays the mother of a toddler who befriends a celebrity singer.
‘The Bear’
Jon Bernthal
On “The Bear,” Bernthal plays Mikey Berzatto, the older brother of the main character. Having died by suicide, he appears in flashbacks. In “Dog Day Afternoon,” at the August Wilson Theater, he is very much present as the bank robber Sonny Amato, a role that Al Pacino originated on film. Jason Zinoman, writing in The New York Times, described Bernthal’s performance as “a dynamic whirligig of desperate energy.”
Ayo Edebiri
Sydney, Edebiri’s character on “The Bear,” is a dedicated young chef with a genius palate. In a revival of David Auburn’s “Proof,” at the Booth Theater, she plays Catherine, whose genius is for math. Helen Shaw, writing in The New York Times, described Edebiri’s stage debut as “down-to-earth and unshowy.”
Ebon Moss-Bachrach
On “The Bear,” Moss-Bachrach, an Off Broadway veteran, plays Cousin Richie, a friend of Bernthal’s Mikey. In “Dog Day Afternoon,” he plays Bernthal’s accomplice, Sal, a nervous novice bank robber. The Times critic lauded his “nicely restrained performance of a terse, repressed man.”
‘Hacks’
Carl Clemons-Hopkins
An Emmy nominee for “Hacks,” where he plays Marcus, Deborah Vance’s confidant and former chief operating officer, Clemons-Hopkins has recently traded Marcus’s tight polos for looser ensembles. In “The Balusters,” he plays Brooks, a travel writer and a member of a contentious homeowners association.
Jean Smart
On “Hacks,” which is now airing its final season, Smart plays Deborah Vance, a comedy legend with a luxurious lifestyle. In “Call Me Izzy,” which closed last August at Studio 54, she played a more modest character, a trailer park housewife and a closet poet. Jesse Green, writing in The New York Times, called Smart “a big presence, improving whatever she does.”
‘The Gilded Age’
Ben Ahlers
Jack Trotter, Ahlers’s character on “The Gilded Age,” began as a lowly footman, then bettered himself as an inventor and a businessman. He is also a person of ambition (though less successful at achieving it) in the Broadway revival of “Death of a Salesman.” Ahlers plays Happy, Willy Loman’s approval-seeking son.
Carrie Coon
On “The Gilded Age,” Carie Coon’s Bertha Russell is a virtuoso of intrigue. In the Broadway revival of “Bug,” written by her husband, Tracy Letts, Coon played a hardscrabble waitress contending with darker conspiracies. Zinoman, writing in The Times, called her an “excitingly live-wire performer who sells the play’s hard-boiled poetry with conviction.”
Kelli O’Hara
What would Aurora Fane say to this much drinking? On “The Gilded Age,” O’Hara plays an old-money socialite, replete with social grace. In the Broadway revival of “Fallen Angels,” she stars as Julia Sterroll, a wealthy, at times inebriated woman with a yen for adultery. Writing his Times review, Zinoman described her comic tone as “dry, pragmatic if not slightly sociopathic.”
Alexis Soloski has written for The Times since 2006. As a culture reporter, she covers television, theater, movies, podcasts and new media.
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