Rosario Dawson and Tracie Thoms may be the newbies in the Rent movie cast, but they bring their own oomph to this cinematic bohemian rhapsody.
“I can’t live without this music!”
Tracie Thoms is stoked. And with good reason. During the last 525,600 minutes—or the past year, for those of you unschooled in the Rent-method of measurements—the New York-based actress has seen a dream come true. And it’s a dream she’s going to be sharing with millions of moviegoers come November 23rd when the long-awaited film version of the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning Broadway musical Rent opens in cinemas nationwide, starring Thoms amid the cast of Broadway veterans (and one fellow newcomer) in the film’s eight principal roles. Landing a role in a big movie musical is a milestone for any actor, but it’s doubly fulfilling for Thoms, as she counts herself as one of the legions of Rent-heads (aka serious fans) who’ve been flocking religiously and repeatedly to catch the hit rock opera—which chronicles a year in the life of a group of bohemians struggling to live, love and pay their rent in New York’s gritty East Village—ever since it bowed at Broadway’s Nederlander Theater in 1996. “When I first saw the show,” explains Thoms, “I couldn’t get enough of it. The story, the relationships, and the music fit into it all so perfectly—I was hooked.”
Created by Jonathan Larson, Rent, the stage musical, has sucked in audiences ever since it debuted Off-Broadway in early 1996. Telling a story—based upon the classic Puccini opera La Boheme—of gay and straight starving artists, musicians, their lovers and exes as they face life in New York during the onslaught of AIDS, Rent was an immediate hit thanks to its blistering, moving rock-infused score and its unflinching portrait of downtown urban life in the 1990’s. Helping to fuel interest in the show was its own dramatic backstory—most notably the sudden death of Larson (due to an aortic aneurysm) the night before the musical made its debut at the New York Theatre Workshop. The show went on, and continues to run on Broadway today.
Director Chris Columbus’ film version, long in the works, will be met with much enthusiasm and anticipation from the show’s rabid fan base, eager gay viewers and curious moviegoers alike. Boosting interest is the fact that of the eight lead characters, six of the original Broadway cast members are reprising their roles. Taye Diggs, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp are all back, a rarity in the process of a stage-to-film translation. So it’s not surprising that generating just as much buzz are the two newcomers filling in the slots previously held by Daphne Rubin-Vega (as HIV-positive femme fatale/heroin addict Mimi) and Fredi Walker (as lawyer/lesbian/tormented lover Joanne). Onscreen, the indie film veteran and recent star of Sin City and Alexander, Rosario Dawson (pictured above), will be filling Mimi’s fishnet stockings. Slipping into the sensible shoes of the attorney Joanne is Thoms.
And don’t think that joining an already close-knit cast who created their roles onstage and have worked together for years wasn’t daunting for the two newbies. “I was freaked out in the beginning,” laughs Thoms. “But everyone involved was supportive and wonderful and beautiful. There was no sizing-up period, or hazing. Of course, Rosario and I bonded—being the new cast members—but we could always ask anybody questions, and they were completely open to answering them. And there’d be these great moments of recognition during rehearsal, like I would sing through a song and the other cast members would just notice and go, ‘Oh... Wow!’ They made us feel at home. In fact, when we met Taye for the first time that we were all rehearsing in New York, as Rosario and I walked in, Taye was talking with Adam and Anthony, and mid-conversation he just stopped and said to us, ‘You know what? It’s really weird, but I already feel like you guys have always been here. You don’t seem new at all. It’s great—but weird—at the same time.’ And I was like: ‘OK—We’ll take that!’”
“All of them already had a built in family,” explains Dawson, from the Toronto set of her upcoming film, Killshot. “Tracie and I are just like very excited, added extended family members. We wanted to be part of that family and we’ve been welcomed and it’s nice.”
Of course, both Thoms and Dawson bring their own unique credentials to their Rent roles. The Juilliard-trained Thoms has a history of musical theater, indie film and TV credits (catch her on Logo in the reruns of the short-lived Wonderfalls, and in new episodes of Cold Case), as well as years spent as an avid Rent-head. She’d auditioned for the Broadway show, but never got hired. This time around, Columbus cast Thoms solely on the strength of her audition tape, before ever meeting the director. “Whatever Chris was looking for, I guess I had that,” says Thoms, laughing. “Which makes sense to me because, like Joanne, I am a little anal. And I do feel like Chris made an educated decision, because once we were all together it just fell into place and I felt like I really belonged—after a week of thinking, ‘I’m going to get fired! They’ve hired the wrong person. How did I get here?’”
Dawson’s personal background would seem to have pre-destined her for a role in Rent. “I grew up with my mom and brother in a squat on New York’s Lower East Side,” she says. “It was very bohemian. And my mom’s circle was this close-knit kind of family made up of people who were all tattooed and pierced—these misfits who came together from all over. Having food and electricity and all of those things weren’t necessarily a given. Everyone would show up for these potlucks and parties—people would come and offer what they could, bringing their guitar or their poetry or painting, or food. I always had a very different mixture of people in my life.” And it being the late 80’s/early 90’s, AIDS was definitely prevalent, just as in Rent. “We lost a lot of friends to AIDS,” Dawson explains. “Everyone had different ways of dealing with it. Some people would hide away; some were out and looking for medications and fighting for their lives; others were like, ‘Well, everybody’s dying so I’m just going to burn out’—and they’d go out with a party.”
Not surprisingly, Dawson takes her participation in Rent seriously—even if she was skeptical at first. “Back in my neighborhood, when the show began, people were like, ‘They’re making a story about our lives and probably exploiting us. How can you have a musical about drugs and HIV and living in a squat on the Lower East Side?’ But it’s actually so profound. Rent hits everything. It has the violence of that time, and the tension, and it’s really powerful.”
And given recent developments regarding gay issues and HIV-infection, both Thoms and Dawson feel that now is the best possible time for the film version of Rent to hit theaters. “People like to think that the AIDS epidemic has gone away,” says Thoms, “but it hasn’t. People are still contracting the disease like crazy, especially women. This film isn’t dated at all.” Dawson strongly concurs: “It’s important to bring up all of these issues again, because they’re still so prominent. Look at our last election and the discussions about abortion and gay marriage, things you’d look at and think, ‘Aren’t we getting past these issues?’ But we’re not. So it’s powerful to be a part of this film, which can bring it up for discussion and with some humanity brought into it. Because with Rent, you’re going to be emotionally involved and that’s the power of the story.”
Thoms and Dawson both have their own favorite emotional moments from the film. “I loved the night we shot the New Year’s Eve scene,” recalls Thoms warmly. “We were literally all out on the street in San Francisco, and it’s like we were all just having a party, with fireworks and extras galore. I didn’t want to leave. It was exhausting, but so much fun. We had a lot of days like that—emotional, but it was a thrill to work every day.”
“’La Vie Boheme’ is my favorite song and scene,” admits Dawson. “ It’s brings me to tears, and it’s the most celebratory. And it helps give the foundation of what these people are doing, how they’re claiming it. It’s like, ‘We’re not outcasts—this is our home. We built it.’ ‘La Vie Boheme’ is the heart of Rent.”
For Thoms, the point—and big message—of Rent is “all about measuring your life in love. Here are these people who are poor and broke and sick and dying, but they have people who they love around them. And that makes it all kind of okay. It’s a story about an unconventional family who go through these trials and tribulations and come out of it knowing that it’s their love for each other that matters. You have to measure your life in love. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Rent (Columbia Pictures/Revolution Studios) is in theaters nationwide on November 23. The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is now available on Warner Bros. Records.
Written by: John Polly
Tracie Thoms is stoked. And with good reason. During the last 525,600 minutes—or the past year, for those of you unschooled in the Rent-method of measurements—the New York-based actress has seen a dream come true. And it’s a dream she’s going to be sharing with millions of moviegoers come November 23rd when the long-awaited film version of the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning Broadway musical Rent opens in cinemas nationwide, starring Thoms amid the cast of Broadway veterans (and one fellow newcomer) in the film’s eight principal roles. Landing a role in a big movie musical is a milestone for any actor, but it’s doubly fulfilling for Thoms, as she counts herself as one of the legions of Rent-heads (aka serious fans) who’ve been flocking religiously and repeatedly to catch the hit rock opera—which chronicles a year in the life of a group of bohemians struggling to live, love and pay their rent in New York’s gritty East Village—ever since it bowed at Broadway’s Nederlander Theater in 1996. “When I first saw the show,” explains Thoms, “I couldn’t get enough of it. The story, the relationships, and the music fit into it all so perfectly—I was hooked.”
Created by Jonathan Larson, Rent, the stage musical, has sucked in audiences ever since it debuted Off-Broadway in early 1996. Telling a story—based upon the classic Puccini opera La Boheme—of gay and straight starving artists, musicians, their lovers and exes as they face life in New York during the onslaught of AIDS, Rent was an immediate hit thanks to its blistering, moving rock-infused score and its unflinching portrait of downtown urban life in the 1990’s. Helping to fuel interest in the show was its own dramatic backstory—most notably the sudden death of Larson (due to an aortic aneurysm) the night before the musical made its debut at the New York Theatre Workshop. The show went on, and continues to run on Broadway today.
Director Chris Columbus’ film version, long in the works, will be met with much enthusiasm and anticipation from the show’s rabid fan base, eager gay viewers and curious moviegoers alike. Boosting interest is the fact that of the eight lead characters, six of the original Broadway cast members are reprising their roles. Taye Diggs, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Jesse L. Martin, Idina Menzel, Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp are all back, a rarity in the process of a stage-to-film translation. So it’s not surprising that generating just as much buzz are the two newcomers filling in the slots previously held by Daphne Rubin-Vega (as HIV-positive femme fatale/heroin addict Mimi) and Fredi Walker (as lawyer/lesbian/tormented lover Joanne). Onscreen, the indie film veteran and recent star of Sin City and Alexander, Rosario Dawson (pictured above), will be filling Mimi’s fishnet stockings. Slipping into the sensible shoes of the attorney Joanne is Thoms.
And don’t think that joining an already close-knit cast who created their roles onstage and have worked together for years wasn’t daunting for the two newbies. “I was freaked out in the beginning,” laughs Thoms. “But everyone involved was supportive and wonderful and beautiful. There was no sizing-up period, or hazing. Of course, Rosario and I bonded—being the new cast members—but we could always ask anybody questions, and they were completely open to answering them. And there’d be these great moments of recognition during rehearsal, like I would sing through a song and the other cast members would just notice and go, ‘Oh... Wow!’ They made us feel at home. In fact, when we met Taye for the first time that we were all rehearsing in New York, as Rosario and I walked in, Taye was talking with Adam and Anthony, and mid-conversation he just stopped and said to us, ‘You know what? It’s really weird, but I already feel like you guys have always been here. You don’t seem new at all. It’s great—but weird—at the same time.’ And I was like: ‘OK—We’ll take that!’”
“All of them already had a built in family,” explains Dawson, from the Toronto set of her upcoming film, Killshot. “Tracie and I are just like very excited, added extended family members. We wanted to be part of that family and we’ve been welcomed and it’s nice.”
Of course, both Thoms and Dawson bring their own unique credentials to their Rent roles. The Juilliard-trained Thoms has a history of musical theater, indie film and TV credits (catch her on Logo in the reruns of the short-lived Wonderfalls, and in new episodes of Cold Case), as well as years spent as an avid Rent-head. She’d auditioned for the Broadway show, but never got hired. This time around, Columbus cast Thoms solely on the strength of her audition tape, before ever meeting the director. “Whatever Chris was looking for, I guess I had that,” says Thoms, laughing. “Which makes sense to me because, like Joanne, I am a little anal. And I do feel like Chris made an educated decision, because once we were all together it just fell into place and I felt like I really belonged—after a week of thinking, ‘I’m going to get fired! They’ve hired the wrong person. How did I get here?’”
Dawson’s personal background would seem to have pre-destined her for a role in Rent. “I grew up with my mom and brother in a squat on New York’s Lower East Side,” she says. “It was very bohemian. And my mom’s circle was this close-knit kind of family made up of people who were all tattooed and pierced—these misfits who came together from all over. Having food and electricity and all of those things weren’t necessarily a given. Everyone would show up for these potlucks and parties—people would come and offer what they could, bringing their guitar or their poetry or painting, or food. I always had a very different mixture of people in my life.” And it being the late 80’s/early 90’s, AIDS was definitely prevalent, just as in Rent. “We lost a lot of friends to AIDS,” Dawson explains. “Everyone had different ways of dealing with it. Some people would hide away; some were out and looking for medications and fighting for their lives; others were like, ‘Well, everybody’s dying so I’m just going to burn out’—and they’d go out with a party.”
Not surprisingly, Dawson takes her participation in Rent seriously—even if she was skeptical at first. “Back in my neighborhood, when the show began, people were like, ‘They’re making a story about our lives and probably exploiting us. How can you have a musical about drugs and HIV and living in a squat on the Lower East Side?’ But it’s actually so profound. Rent hits everything. It has the violence of that time, and the tension, and it’s really powerful.”
And given recent developments regarding gay issues and HIV-infection, both Thoms and Dawson feel that now is the best possible time for the film version of Rent to hit theaters. “People like to think that the AIDS epidemic has gone away,” says Thoms, “but it hasn’t. People are still contracting the disease like crazy, especially women. This film isn’t dated at all.” Dawson strongly concurs: “It’s important to bring up all of these issues again, because they’re still so prominent. Look at our last election and the discussions about abortion and gay marriage, things you’d look at and think, ‘Aren’t we getting past these issues?’ But we’re not. So it’s powerful to be a part of this film, which can bring it up for discussion and with some humanity brought into it. Because with Rent, you’re going to be emotionally involved and that’s the power of the story.”
Thoms and Dawson both have their own favorite emotional moments from the film. “I loved the night we shot the New Year’s Eve scene,” recalls Thoms warmly. “We were literally all out on the street in San Francisco, and it’s like we were all just having a party, with fireworks and extras galore. I didn’t want to leave. It was exhausting, but so much fun. We had a lot of days like that—emotional, but it was a thrill to work every day.”
“’La Vie Boheme’ is my favorite song and scene,” admits Dawson. “ It’s brings me to tears, and it’s the most celebratory. And it helps give the foundation of what these people are doing, how they’re claiming it. It’s like, ‘We’re not outcasts—this is our home. We built it.’ ‘La Vie Boheme’ is the heart of Rent.”
For Thoms, the point—and big message—of Rent is “all about measuring your life in love. Here are these people who are poor and broke and sick and dying, but they have people who they love around them. And that makes it all kind of okay. It’s a story about an unconventional family who go through these trials and tribulations and come out of it knowing that it’s their love for each other that matters. You have to measure your life in love. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Rent (Columbia Pictures/Revolution Studios) is in theaters nationwide on November 23. The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is now available on Warner Bros. Records.
Written by: John Polly
