By Andrew Gans
11 Dec 2009

	Kate Baldwin and Cheyenne Jackson
	photo by Aubrey Reuben

Question: Is it at all a surreal experience? You were on "The View" a few weeks ago…
Baldwin: It's only surreal if you let it be surreal. I want to talk about Cheyenne Jackson here for a second. He is the person I know who best handles all of the surrealness of what it's like to be performing a lead on Broadway and all of the demands that come with it. He is so good at keeping it fun, at letting any sort of negative stuff roll off his back. He is so good at bolstering the people around him, me included. I'm a big recipient of a lot of his support and encouragement simply because we have so much to do in the show together… and because we are really contemporaries. We're the same age, we grew up with some of the same stuff. I've really relied on him. When you talk about doing "The View," I think about that day and I think about Cheyenne and me and our rehearsals together, where they placed the cameras and where we talked about the sound and musicians and where Whoopi Goldberg came up and talked to us for awhile. The producer Bill Geddie came up and had seen the show and actually really loved it. So we talked with him for awhile. It didn't feel surreal. It felt easy and natural. I give a lot of credit to Cheyenne Jackson. He just navigates that world so beautifully. I'm so lucky that he's taken me by the hand and led me along into it as well and has been as loving and as generous as he can be.

Question: Since we haven't spoken before, I want to go back a bit. Where were you born and raised?
Baldwin: [Laughs.] Back a bit? That goes to the very beginning! I was born in Evanston, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago. We moved when I was seven years old to a suburb of Milwaukee called Shorewood.

Question: When did you start performing?
Baldwin: Oh God, as early as I can remember. It's the same old story that you hear from everybody, doing plays with all of the neighborhood kids. I think I just liked to be bossy. I think I just wanted people to do what I told them to do, and that was called "directing." [Laughs.] Of course, the most important element of all of the neighborhood plays were the costumes. Costume design, how you looked, was very important to me. [Laughs.]

Question: When did you know it would be your career?
Baldwin: Not until I was 22 and graduating from college with a theatre degree and I actually got a job for the first time. I got an Equity job playing the Liz Callaway part in Baby, aptly named Lizzie. I was 22, it was my senior year of college at Northwestern, and I auditioned for a local theatre production of Baby. I was told by my musical theatre professor that I probably wouldn't get it because I wasn't the right type, even though I was 22 and age appropriate and knew I could sing it really well. At that moment I was living for Liz Callaway. I loved everything she ever did. I idolized her so completely when I was in high school, her and Marin Mazzie. I really just did my best to imitate their sound. So I got cast as Lizzie in Baby at the Marriott Lincolnshire Theatre in Lincolnshire, Illinois, and all of a sudden I had an Equity card and a paycheck. That's when I thought, "I guess I can really do this. I guess I won't starve." That was a big point [for me and for] my parents. They had gone along with me and been very patient while I majored in theatre, but I think they still had their doubts about how it would go for me. But I think I was lucky enough and also naïve enough to go after it and see what could happen.

Question: So when did you get to New York?
Baldwin: It was the Christmas of 1998, and I asked my parents for frequent flyer miles to audition in New York City, and they gave them to me. So I flew back and forth from Chicago to New York, I would say, four or five times auditioning for different things. One of the things that came out of those auditions was Encores!, Babes in Arms.

Question: What was your first Broadway show?
Baldwin: My first Broadway show was The Full Monty.

Question: Do you remember you first night on Broadway?
Baldwin: Oh, my God, yes. It was so humiliating. Oh, God! Okay, I was a swing in The Full Monty. The Full Monty, by the way, is one of the best-written pieces of musical theatre… I think it's right up there with solidly structured shows like South Pacific and My Fair Lady. I really do. I think that the way that the book and the music go together is genius. It's so old-fashioned. I don't care if it's about guys in the late '90s stripping in Buffalo. It really is good old-fashioned musical theatre. And it's a buddy story, and that's always appealing.

So I got to Broadway with Full Monty. It was about a year into the run of the show. I was hired as a swing . . . . I had a week of rehearsal, and it was a week after that that I got the call that I would go on for one of the ensemble ladies, for Laura Marie Duncan's part. It was a part that I felt like I knew. It was a fun part, it had its own vocal solo, it had a couple lines, a couple of funny little things to do because Laura Marie Duncan is one of the funniest people you'll ever meet, and she created all that stuff. So I got out there and I remember thinking, "The sound is so loud! Wow, the lights are really bright," as though I'd never been onstage before. The bottom dropped out, and I lost my mind. [Laughs.] So there is one point in one of the sequences where Jerry, who is played by Patrick Wilson at that point, and Dave, who is played by John Conlee, go to a dance class and they are trying to enlist Harold, who is played by Marcus Neville, to come and join their stripping group. Meanwhile, they are checking out other people in the dance class, and I was one of the people in the dance class. There was a point in which I was supposed to come out and say to Patrick Wilson, "Do you wanna dance?" And he was supposed to turn me down and then turn away and look at one of the guys in the dance class and say, "Oh he might be a good candidate," or something to that effect. I'm butchering Terrence McNally now, but I'm supposed to look away, and it was sort of a funny take. So it's really loud, it's really bright, I'm waiting, I'm listening for my cue, I don't hear it. Patrick and John stop talking, I run out and realize that I haven't said what I'm supposed to say, and I just stand there dumbfounded looking at Patrick Wilson, going, "Oh, my God, I'm screwing up a Broadway show!" And he sort of looked at me and rolled his eyes like, "Oh, you're the new girl," and looked away and continued. [Laughs.] And when I came offstage, the stage managers, who were a lovely group of people, were laughing at me so hard. They were like, "Oh, Little Miss Perfect got it wrong the first time." What a humbling experience, right in front of Patrick Wilson, who I still can't talk about it with to this day because I'm so embarrassed by it. [Laughs.] And I'd run into him on the street in subsequent years and I'd hide because I was so embarrassed by what had happened. I'm sure it wasn't a big deal in his life, it was kind of a big deal in mine.

Question: You also have a new CD out. What was that experience like?
Baldwin: It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once. Tommy Krasker, God bless him, didn't balk when I said I wanted to do it in three months time. Sometimes people can take three years to do a CD like this. But it was my first time, I had a whole lot of ideas, and thank goodness I had the genius Rob Berman at my side to help me whittle down all of my crazy ideas and sort of streamline it into something that I think sounds pretty cohesive.

Question: You're married to an actor, Graham Rowat. Does that make it easier dealing with the highs and lows of the business?
Baldwin: Absolutely. He understands exactly what it is. He knows what I'm going through, he knows what the demands are, and he is one of the most patient, sweet, loyal, loving men I have ever, ever met. I am so lucky I married him. He is my world. He does so much to counteract the crazy bits of what happens when you're doing a lead in a Broadway show. He knows the best thing to say and when to say it. That's the best way to put it.

[Finian's Rainbow plays the St. James Theatre, which is located at 246 West 44th Street. For tickets call (212) 239-6200 or visit www.telecharge.com. For more information visit www.FiniansOnBroadway.com. Baldwin will also play Feinstein's at Loews Regency, which is located at 540 Park Avenue at 61st Street in New York City, December 13. For ticket reservations call (212) 339-4095 or visit feinsteinsatloewsregency.com and TicketWeb.com.]

Well, that's all for now. Happy diva-watching! E-mail questions or comments to agans@playbill.com.