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Photo credit: Bleecker Street, courtesy of Christopher Fitzgerald
Interview , News , The Daily Roundup

‘Spamalot’ Actor Christopher Fitzgerald on His Transition from Performer to Actor


December 20, 2023

Christopher Fitzgerald grew up in Southern Maine and used to go by “Kiffer,” a nickname bestowed upon him as a young boy because he couldn’t pronounce his name.

In elementary school, he was already known as an actor among his schoolmates and even showed up at a Halloween party dressed as an old-timey Hollywood director, complete with a riding crop and chaps, beret and clapboard. How do I know this? Because I was one of those schoolmates for a brief time and he was friends with my younger brother, Drew.

In the few decades since we knew each other, he has built a lovely career for himself, mostly on Broadway, where he has starred in shows like Wicked, Young Frankenstein, Finian’s Rainbow and Waitress, the last three of which earned him Tony nominations. He appeared in the filmed release of Waitress: The Musical and is currently back on Broadway in the revival of Spamalot.

He spoke with me from his apartment in New York City.

Normally, I ask when someone got into acting, but you were doing it super young, back when we knew each other. How did it start?

My parents were divorced and I was with my mom. My earliest memories are just making her laugh and I also think I just had a lot of energy and trouble focusing. Maybe [I] hadsome ADHD stuff going on.

I think my mom was looking for ways to let me have some experiences so that I could work through whatever this thing was. When I talk to her, she’s always like, “I just looked at you and I thought, ‘I don’t know what this is, I gotta figure out where to put him.'”

I was in a clown class when I was five. That was my first thing. Around that time in the area — I don’t know if you remember this — but there was this new vaudeville revival going on. People like Benny Real, Jackson Gilman, Tony Montanero and the Celebration Barn in South Paris…

There was also Randy Judkins, who was Judd the Jester.

I was about to say that! He was my next name. Randy Judkins. All of those people were in Southern Maine in the late 70s. That was where it started for me. I was also doing my first play at the Portland Players.

This is probably gonna explain everything. I was a tiny kid, this little bundle of energy. I was eight and doing Oliver. I just remember being so cheeky and [loved making] people laugh at what I was doing. [I] enjoying what I was doing.

It got to the point that after a show one night, the guy who was playing Fagan took me aside, got in my face, and said, “When I say my lines, you need to be still and don’t make faces and don’t pull focus. It’s my moment and you have to wait.” I just remember in that moment going like, Alright, we’ll see. We’ll see.

There’s something to that, though, that rush of getting a laugh from an audience, the energy you get from it.

I loved that part of it. I also loved the community part of it. I loved being around adults. I loved being around people making this thing together. There was something really exciting about that and about performing.

It wasn’t really until I got to college and beyond that, I started to transition out of being a performer in my mind and started to study what being an actor meant. Where it was more about, what was going on? How do I interpret something? You know, having the words to lead me somewhere, how a story is put together with your collaborators, how you share the space. It became a whole other kind of experience for me at that point.

That transition from performer to actor tends to separate the wheat from the chaff. What was that like for you?

Performing for me was like this savior, this thing that gave me purpose and drew me out of the challenges of school and of being in my skin.

It wasn’t until I got to college and grad school and did the Williamstown Theatre Festival for so many years that I started to explore what it would mean to be vulnerable. Y’know, what does it mean to be Kiffer? That’s when I dropped the name Kiffer and became Christopher. It took time and some courage. I wasn’t sure [if] I liked it, but that was part of the journey. Eventually, I started to love that aspect of it.

You must be able to combine the silly with the serious sometimes, though. You’re in Spamalot, for crying out loud.

That’s the synthesis of what we’re talking about. I play Patsy, who’s the right-hand man to the king. It’s just stupid, but I think what I bring to it is some pathos and some ability to make choices that are about the story. Comic ideas come from my attempt to understand the pathos of the characters and then find some joy and performance energy within that.

You get to have both in a way, to be able to do that work effectively and the training allows you to bore down to the core of who these people are and find, even in the silliness, a reason for moving forward. A sense of truth and sincerity.

You can say the same thing about Ogie, your Waitress role, which earned you a Tony nomination.

So many people who’ve played that part after me would come and ask how to play him. My answer is always, to get rid of the idea of it being funny at all. Just mean what you say.

The sincerity of what he’s after will carry all of it and you’ll find all the joy and funny stuff that comes with it. You don’t have to do anything to be funny, because he’s just funny. He’s a loser who’s a winner.

You’ve done plenty of stuff on screen, but it’s fair to say that most of your success has come on Broadway. Was that the intention? Or did it just kind of happen that way?

I think that’s how it happened. I’ve grown to enjoy film work and that whole process, under certain circumstances and there are elements of what we’re talking about right now that exist there, but it’s more out of your control. What I love is, that I’m gonna go to Spamalot tonight and my favorite thing is the fact that I get to go on stage and then I’m in charge.

There’s no filter, no big crew that’s creating an environment that I’ve got to try to be present in. The relationship with the audience, the immediacy of that exchange is just so thrilling to me. To me, it’s the ultimate in what we do.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

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