Tonys 2001 - Red Carpet: Marc Kudisch
By Emily Hoffman
Transcript by FreakyMartian
June 3, 2001
Tony Representative: Marc Kuh-dish from Bells Are Ringing.
Emily Hoffman: Yes! Hi, Emily Hoffman, from Playbill On-Line and Tonys.org.
Marc Kudisch: Hi. How are ya.
EH: I'm great! Tell us about what you're doing here this evening.
MK: I'm here to essentially present Faith Prince. You know, given the time limitations and all of that, we decided that her eleven o'clock number was really suitable for the way that the Tonys are being presented this year, and they asked me to present the number, which I thought was really cool.
EH: That is really cool --
MK: I mean, it's great. All my friends are on the stage - they're having to sing, they had to get up at nine this morning and sing. I get to wear a tux the whole night, get up there, say howdy, introduce it, sit back down. That's a good job.
EH: [laughing] Well, what you also do eight times a week is play in Bells Are Ringing with Faith Prince.
MK: Yeahhh.
EH: Tell me about that show. Is it really fun to be in? It seems like it's a fun cast.
MK: I love it, it's a beautiful musical. You know, people talk about how they want to, you know, write musicals the way they used to - well, we're doing a musical the way it used to be. And it's fun to do a revival that way. It's fun to do this piece. Not a lot of people really know it - or they have a particular perception or a reminder of what it was and it's nice to bring that music back on the stage again. And Faith is -- my heart.
EH: And you get to sing one of the greatest songs ever written.
MK: "Just in Time." I'm telling you, I kid you not, in the beginning when we started doing the show and I started into singing "Just in Time", Faith and I are dancing and as I would turn her, I would always whisper in her ear "Do ya hear that, do ya hear that?" It's just so wonderful to hear the audience react to know that that's the context of where it is in the show. It's great.
EH: Well, congratulations on being in a wonderful show, and have fun this evening.
MK: Thank you. Thanks a lot.
EH: Bells Are Ringing, of course, one of the very few musicals that was not based on another source. It actually came from an original idea from Comden & Green, they came up with this idea to do a show about Susanswerphone, an answering service, back in the 50's and they brought it back to Broadway this year -- and it's a charming, charming show, starring Faith Prince and Marc Kudisch. . .the gorgeous Marc Kudisch [laughing], whom you just saw and I had a chance to - stand next to which is one of the very nice things about this job.