Tituss Burgess on Making Cole Escola's Oh, Mary! Dream Cast Come True and Returning to Broadway on His Own Terms
(Photo by Sergio Villarini for Broadway.com)
"I fantasize about Tituss Burgess."
That was Cole Escola, Oh, Mary!'s original star and mastermind, back in July 2024, just before his downtown hit opened on Broadway at the Lyceum Theatre. The show—a harebrained, booze-soaked yarn about Abe Lincoln and his impudent wife Mary Todd—would be on 45th Street for just 12 weeks, so replacement casting was the stuff of magical thinking. But—a First Lady can dream, can't she?
Eight months later, Burgess—a creature of the stage who found fame one "s" lighter as Kimmy Schmidt's Titus Andromedon—is Broadway's third Mary. He follows in the footsteps of Betty Gilpin, beginning his run March 18 before Escola and the rest of the original cast return for a victory lap beginning April 8. Read edited excerpts from Burgess' conversation with Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek as he looks back on a career due for some above-the-title billing.
I'm reading Variety and Cole Escola casually mentions that you're a dream performer to maybe take on this role. Was that a surprise to you?
That was a surprise to me. Because at that time, I didn't even know what Oh, Mary! was. So I went to see Cole shortly after they opened, and man oh man, was it a treat. Cole is a supernova and [they've] written a Herculean role. Once I realized kind of what they meant, I went back a second time to see if I could divorce their wonderful performance from the piece to see if I could envision myself in it. A couple months go by, I get a call, and I'm asked to do it—and I go, "f**k!" ‘Cause now I know the mountain that I'm about to climb.
How do you gear up for that kind of energy?
Well, as soon as I put the wig on, she's ready to come out. She is so ready to be on stage, that there's little I can do to calm her down.
Your name is really big in the ads. How's it feel to see your name so big?
I said to Tara Rubin that—and this was at the end of Guys and Dolls in 2009—that I would not return to Broadway unless it was on my terms. Unless I was above the title. And here we are. Outside of a stint in Moulin Rouge!, I meant that. I knew in that moment that what was ahead of me was some rulemaking, game-changing things that I would do for Tituss that the world didn't realize they wanted me to do. And now I think they realize that's what they wanted me to do.
Do you walk into a room now with a little bit more agency?
No, I’ve always had that. It was being patient and waiting for everyone else to catch up. And that was a hard thing to do. But I will also say that there's something beautiful about the gestation period. Just because you are ready doesn't mean that the rest of the world is ready. I'm grateful that what we ask for doesn't come in a nanosecond.
What I love about Oh Mary! especially is that, for me, it's just such a beautiful piece of queer art.
I've not even thought about the fact that it's a piece of queer art. I've not even thought about the fact that I'm a man playing a woman. What I've thought about is that I'm Black, and that Abe is Black. And that is up against a backdrop in a world where, still to this day, we are having to prove the world, as queer people, but also people of color, that this is as much our country, if not more so, than the rest of the world. And so that is what is on my mind, and that is what is downstage center.
I wish the real Mary Todd Lincoln could just pop in and walk into that theater...
She’s there.
She's there with you?
Oh, yeah. I’m a Pisces—like, damn near a witch—so I really mean it.
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