The first time I saw Marc play Chauvelin, I thought the best word that described his interpretation was intense. Now that I've met him, I think it accurately describes Marc himself, as well as his character. He put a lot of thought into his answers, as you will very quickly realize.

NR: Tell me first about where you grew up.

MK: Fort Lauderdale.

NR: That's quite a ways from here. I notice you're wearing a Yankees hat.

MK: Well, I've lived in New York now for over ten years.

NR: What inspired you to become a performer?

MK: Honestly, I don't know if anything specifically did. I just got into it. I did a play in high school my senior year, so I can say, "I did a play in high school my senior year." In college I was a Poli-Sci major and I took theater as relaxation from doing Poli-Sci. I found that I was spending more and more time in the theater department, and less time in the Political Science department, partly because Poli-Sci was very depressing. I was saying to someone the other night that political theory is based on failure. It's all based on failure. Everything is designed based on when they think it's going to fail. How long will this run until it eventually falls apart? And, will we be out of office by then?

NR: OK, that's an interesting theory.

MK: But it is. Look at all of the programs, whether it be The New Deal, whether it be The Great Society, whether it be Reaganomics, because those were the three last major economic functions that we had in this century. The New Deal worked as long as we were in a depression because it was about rebuilding. Once things were rebuilt, it really didn't work anymore. That's when The Great Society came in. The Great Society was trying to be a check and balance between those that had money and those that didn't. It mostly backfired. Then in the mid-70's, that completely backfired on us. We went into a huge inflation with the gas crisis and the whole deal. That's when The Great Society caught up. Reaganomics came in. Reaganomics was a short term economics that lasted for ten or twelve years. It made everything look really good till Reagan was out of office and then of course we had to deal with the huge deficit that we had from what supply-side economics did to us. I think now we're in a completely different frame of mind due to the "regular schmo." I'm personally a fan of Clinton. I think the economy has done a great deal and I think it's largely due to his efforts. You can say what you think about the man but we don't have a deficit. We are back to manufacturing product. We are a nation of product and we are a nation of paper, and we are a nation of a strong economic backbone that is keeping itself surprisingly in balance.

But it was the failure thing that just made me laugh. I enjoyed that, but that was my favorite part of politics. Theater was something I could really believe in. At three in the morning I was building a set when I should have been studying. At the end of my sophomore year I finally decided to change my major, so that's when I got into theater.

I went to a real small school, which most people went to because it's three blocks off the beach. I was invited because I was in the top ten percentile in the state of Florida and it was the first four-year freshman program so my first semester was basically free. We were invited into it. It was a graduate school before I went there. While I was working for my degree in the Bachelor of Fine Arts, they were trying to figure out what their four-year program was, so my first year and a half, I was doing graduate work. I did graduate work to start with because those were the classes that they already had, and then I had to go back and fill in.

NR: That must have been a little strange.

MK: It was a little strange but they gave me a lot of independent study work because it was a small theater department. I did about twenty productions when I was in school and I directed three. It was that kind of thing where the experience paid off when I moved to New York. I worked for a year professionally in South Florida. I got into the union and I moved to New York, but I had under my belt way more experience than I think most people do when they get out of college, because it was really "hands on." I was very fortunate that I had worked in that atmosphere. So, good colleges, bad colleges, "name" colleges, it's more the experience.

NR: What's your favorite role that you've done so far?

MK: I don't know that I'd say I have a favorite.

NR: Are there some you liked more than others?

MK: I like this. I like this a lot. It's fun. It's a cool character. I think he's interesting. And also I don't have to jump and leap and dive off of everything known to man. Gaston was a great character but he was physically very tough. Bye, Bye Birdie - Conrad's another great character but also difficult physically. This is a great character but vocally demanding. I've been fortunate that the characters that I generally play are very tour de force kind of characters. They have big personalities and when they come on - Boom - they're there! And then they're gone. And then they're there again. Birdie was very much that and Gaston was very much that. George Kittredge in High Society, being more "real" and less heightened than the other characters, was still that kind of personality - very strong. I don't know that I have a particular favorite. I like them all. I've had the good fortune of being able to play a wide variety of very strong personalities.

NR: A lot of them seem to be villains. Is that by design or did it just work out that way?

MK: I think I'm good at understanding what makes those types of characters tick. I think I understand how to make them human, which is generally why I end up doing them. One - because I have a sense of humor and I'm good at comedy. But I understand comedy in the situation of it and not necessarily a "bag of trick" thing. Do you understand what I'm saying?

NR: Not exactly.

MK: There are a lot of people who are "personality" performers less than real actors. They have their "bag of tricks" that they will pull out pretty much in any show and they work. For every different character that I've played, every one of those characters has had humor to it, but the humor has been completely different given the context of the character and the situation in which the character finds itself. Gaston is humorous for different reasons than Chauvelin. Chauvelin is humorous for different reasons than Conrad, or George Kittredge for that matter. Each one of them is a particular kind of person that you can look at and recognize. You wouldn't necessarily empathize...I always end up playing the characters that people recognize, not empathize. Beauty and the Beast - it's the Beast you empathize with. Birdie is a character you recognize. Chauvelin is a character you recognize. It's more Percy or Marguerite that you empathize with.

NR: So, people probably aren't cheering for your character?

MK: Yeah. That's why I generally end up playing villains. Besides, I'm a dark baritone. There are a few people that still write for voices. The baritone used to be the leading man, but it's really become the tenor's role. When you're a baritone, you don't have to work hard for darkness. It's already innate. It's there. You can actually try to be, especially with Chauvelin, as romantic as possible. "Where's The Girl?" to me, is a very romantic song. It's not seductive, it's romantic. It's his version of pain, love, loss. That's what the song is about. "Falcon" to me is very poetic...very poetic.

NR: Poetic?

MK: Oh, absolutely. Read the lyrics. Don't listen to the song. The song is very "hard" because of the drive of the character, but what he says is so intelligent. It's so intelligently written. My favorite lyrics in the whole show are "I wasn't born to walk on water, I wasn't born to sack and slaughter, But on my soul, I wasn't born to stoop to scorn and knuckle under." That's not an idiot. "There was a dream - a dying ember" - all of that. "But I will resurrect that dream, though rivers stream and hills grow steeper." He's the only character in the show that really looks in. He's introspective. He's the only character in the show that you ever really get in his head. No one else really observes their situation and comments on it - not like that. I find "Falcon" to be very poetic.

NR: Hmm, maybe that's the answer to my next question. I was going to ask, "How did you make it your own?" considering that you had Terry (Mann) and Rex (Smith) before you, with two very different interpretations.

MK: It doesn't matter. It never matters who's done it before - NEVER. People will look and they will say, "He took a little bit of what this one did, he took a little bit of that one." Well, you'll recognize a little something similar, but it doesn't matter if they've done it ten thousand times or if I'm the first guy to do it. The way I approach a character is the same in any given situation. Plus, we had a full rehearsal process with this. I had very strong opinions about the character. I originally auditioned for it.

NR: Really? I didn't know that. For the first version or the second?

MK: The first one. I was requested in for the audition, and I went in the same day that Terry went in. I think I was in right before or after Terry. They had a different idea of the role at the time - obviously. Terry and I are incredibly different people. They did Terry and then they did Rex, and I think they just wanted to rethink the approach to the character of Chauvelin. I always approach a character from here (indicating his head.) To me, it's always about "why?" It's always the "why." Chauvelin's the villain - why? Chauvelin's evil - why? (If you want to call it evil. I don't call it evil.) It's always the "why." That's the important thing, because the minute that you get the "why," you now are getting that person's individual personality.

NR: Why is Chauvelin the way he is?

MK: Oh, come on. Look at him.

NR: I want to hear your version.

MK: He's lower class. There's no way ever he would ever be able to be in the position that he's in in any other situation than military. Consider it. Even Bobby (Longbottom) said the same thing. Always we draw a comparison to Hitler. Not to say that he's a Hitler, but here's a very bright man that's very lower class, that given a very unique situation, is able to use his charisma and his wit - his particular wit - and his driving ambition to raise himself to a status that he would not usually get to. Chauvelin is not a creature of society. Chauvelin is a creature of action. He's a creature of ambition. He's a Richard the Third. He was not built for times of peace. He believes in the French Revolution because he rationalizes that it gives him a great stature in that society.

At the same time, he's not one who likes to lose things because he never really had them to begin with. Marguerite is the closest thing he's ever had to love, so it's a very obsessive, visceral kind of thing. She's a real partner for him. She's got as much guts and fire as he does and he likes that. He doesn't want a woman that's just going to be "there." He wants someone that is going to fight. He likes the challenge. He's always up for the challenge. That's what makes him interesting to me. He's very desperate. He's very ripped by her. The fact that she would actually leave France...he felt the whole time that she was fighting next to him, that she was into it, that she was with it, that she understood it. Now she's going off with this...It's what makes it easy for me to understand why he misses Percy all the time because that's not the way they fought, not in this time period. Guys walked out in the middle of a field. They looked at each other head on and the better of the fighters was the one that was still standing - period. You didn't hide in the bushes. You didn't hide in a costume, or behind a different personality. You didn't. That was not a hero. Not according to Chauvelin, not according to the period. It was a very avant garde idea to disguise in another personality. Not such an old idea - Hamlet does it, then later, into the 30's and 40's, Batman, Superman. The idea of disguising oneself, but really the idea of Percy was a very original idea, which is why at the end of the show when we're fighting, and I say, "So, a hero" - there he is - finally. He's not disguised. In all his glory, there's the man I've been looking for. That's why there's humor in the situation because you see the frustration of him trying to find something that's right under his nose. It's there the whole time. It doesn't make him stupid though. That was very important to me. Chauvelin is not an idiot. He's just so aggressively trying to find...like you know, "Where the hell are my keys?" when they're in your hand. But you're so intent on finding them that you're not stopping to observe for a minute that they're in your hand. That's the kind of character he is...to me. He's driven and his humongous flaw is Marguerite.

NR: Let's talk about Marc now. You've got all these other projects going on at the same time. You have all these other shows, the Toyota commercial, all this stuff. Can you tell me a little bit about them? Let's start with Thoroughly Modern Millie.

MK: We just finished doing the workshop. It's supposed to go into production this coming fall. Millie starts in the summer and then it comes in in the fall.

NR: Do you think you're going to be doing that?

MK: Yeah. I have The Wild Party first.

NR: When is that?

MK: January. It starts in January and opens in the spring. I don't know how commercial it's going to be. It doesn't matter. I want to do it because it is what it is.

NR: You're just doing that for a short time and then you're going to jump into Millie?

MK: Yeah, as it stands now. They've already offered me Millie. It's that thing of, "Hey, I've got two jobs." Once again I'm playing...well, in The Wild Party the guy I'm playing is not very nice at all - extremely different than any of this. Very different. I'm playing a bisexual hedonist. I play a good guy in Thoroughly Modern Millie but I don't get the girl. I NEVER get the girl!

NR: Are you doing anything else?

MK: I did the Christmas CD for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

NR: Is that the one with Jim Hindman or the other one?

MK: Actually I'm doing both. Also, my fiancee and I and Carolee (Carmello) were rehearsing for the thing for Hillary Clinton at Ford's Center. The three of us sang and I sang "Soliloquy" with rewritten lyrics so instead of "My Boy, Bill" it was "My Girl, Hill." It was great, but it was a lot. It was wonderful stuff.

NR: That's a tough song.

MK: It wasn't the song as much as it was just remembering lyrics. Every baritone with his "badge" knows "Soliloquy." So, just remembering these lyrics, and then the fact that it is "Soliloquy," it was tough. Actually while I was doing that I came to the show and I had this little frog in my throat at the end. I can always tell if there's something wrong when I'm really tired because the "Where's The Girl?" reprise is the place to tell me. It's the hardest song in the show for me to sing. It's how it sits - it sits really high. I'm a baritone. I'm not a tenor. I'm not like Rex Smith. I'm a baritone. I'm more like Terry. I can sing it but it's very high in my range. I had a little frog in my throat on Thursday night and when I came back in I had the same frog. Everything else was great but it was right there. Then I started wondering, "What's this now?" I was praying that it wasn't a chronic thing. Saturday morning I woke up and as I was warming up, everything was fine until I got into the upper part of my voice. It just wasn't happening, so I thought, "OK, I know there's swelling, but why? Oh no, is this from me being tired, or misusing my voice?" I looked at my throat in the mirror, and sure enough, it was an infection, which made me so happy because it wasn't me doing something vocally wrong.

(While Marc and I were talking, there was a TV on in the background. Just at this point, Marc's Toyota commercial came on.)

NR: Look, there you are.

MK: Yeah.

NR: (laughs) Do you get abuse for that commercial? It's such a strange effect.

MK: Well, they stretch my face, which I love. I love the fact that I'm not all that recognizable. It's a great character. It's a lot of fun to do these things.

NR: Does that take a lot of time?

MK: Yes, and no.

NR: There's a lot of them.

MK: There's 35 of them. Then there's all the radio work too which is GREAT. It's the greatest job in the world. They can work around my schedule. We can shoot it anywhere. The voiceover stuff we can basically do anytime so we can work around rehearsals. It's the greatest job in the world for a theater performer. All of the Toyota radio commercials are me - all the TV voiceovers. Anything with a voice is me. Once or twice a week I go into the studio and every month when the numbers change I've got to do them. It's a job. I'm on a year contract with them and I'm renewing for a year. Next year I'm working with them again. It's a great campaign and it affords me flexibility in the theater. I can do anything I want - Thank You, God!

NR: How did you and Kristin (Chenoweth) meet?

MK: Blind date.

NR: Wow. Was it awhile ago?

MK: Yeah. Five and a half years. We were setup on a blind date.

NR: Does it make it harder or easier that you're both actors?

MK: I don't know. I think in the end it's easier because we're both performers so we both understand the kind of business that we're in. I've found it difficult in the past to date outside the business because it's a whole different mentality. It just is. The way that we look at things, our perception of things, the things that we find valuable are different. Performers can understand performers.

NR: Is it hard if one of you has a job and the other's looking?

MK: No. I don't think so. No. We both have our careers. She's obviously doing brilliantly, but there was a time when I was on Broadway, I was in a big show, I was doing really well and she was trying to get in. But that was because she was newer to town and she's so unique, and so uniquely talented. She wasn't going to just fit a slot. I always said to her, "Babe, you're just so unique, you're going to stick out wherever you are, and you're not going to just fill a slot. They're going to need to write for you." There's nothing better than that in the world and that's exactly what happened. All of a sudden people are saying, "Isn't this exciting? Isn't this exciting?" and it's something I've always known. Of course it's exciting but I always knew this. It took them long enough to figure it out.

NR: You've worked together a little bit here and there, right?

MK: We've worked together. Early on in our relationship we were cast together at North Shore Music Theater doing Phantom. We did Musicals in Mufti for the York Theater Company. We did Billion Dollar Baby for them. That was fun. That was the first time Billion Dollar Baby was done since its original inception on a New York stage, something like 53 years later. There's a recording coming out soon and it's the first time the show's ever been recorded. It's a good show. We did that together, Millie together. So we've done a couple of things together. I'd like to do more. She's good. It's very easy to work with her on a stage. She's one of those naturally funny, instinctively talented people, so it lets you be your best. You're out there with somebody that's completely there and is taking whatever energy you've got and giving it back to you. You can be very spontaneous.

NR: What do you wish you had more time for in your life?

MK: I wish I had more time for the two of us to just have time. That's all. I wish I had more time for weekend vacations. I wish I had the time so we could go and get married.

NR: Is there a date at some point?

MK: We're looking at May, June...we say that. I don't know if it's going to happen. I'm in a new show and she's working a pilot. I just wish there was more time.

NR: She's working a pilot? Can you tell me more about it?

MK: Paramount. She has a development deal with Paramount. She's got a pilot. Who knows? Maybe that time will come up.

NR: Well if that works and she's in California and you're here, what happens next?

MK: We'll be bi-coastal. I don't like L.A. She likes L.A. but she's only been out there when she's been working on great jobs. I was actually out there for a year working, but to live there and to be out there for a month are two different ball games. I'm not an L.A. fan. I don't like the west coast mentality at all. I would love to get on a series that films in New York and be doing the stage at the same time. Wouldn't that be the sweet thing? I'm not worried about that though. Obviously if she has a series and she's in California she can certainly afford to fly whenever she wants. Either of us can fly when we want to. My hope is we'll see what happens with The Wild Party. We'll see what happens with this when we close. Maybe we'll get a little bit of time so we can go and do something stupid.

NR: Do you have any dream roles you'd like to play?

MK: Yeah - it's not been written yet but it's my dream to do the musical version of The Count of Monte Cristo. I really want to play that. I would like to be on the creative end of that too. I just think it's a great story that has yet to be musicalized. It's intense.

NR: Maybe you should talk to Frank (Wildhorn).

MK: You know, Frank is the right kind of person to write it. It's such a wonderful story. Once again, it's about people in given situations. It's a much darker story. How awesome is it that there's a guy who's put in jail for fourteen years? Fourteen years! Wrongly put into prison - an absolutely innocent man, who goes from being this warm, wonderful sweet guy over the course of fourteen years to a hardened, ambitious, driven person who wants to just wreak revenge. He learns and studies and educates himself to the point that he has all the tools that he can have for when he gets out. It's the greatest prison escape ever written. He's thrown out, he becomes a pirate, finds the world's greatest treasure on the Isle of Monte Cristo. You would think anybody would live "happily ever after" after that, and all he can do when he looks at all this gold and treasure that would last him for the rest of his life is think about, "How can I use this to hurt and destroy everyone?" That's really what it is.

NR: I can see why an actor would want to do that.

MK: The theater is about people, relationships, situations, and it's about heightened emotion. In the end it's a happy story. It's a wonderful journey. The arc is huge. It's the course of thirty years in everybody's lives. It's epic proportions of real people, given some fantastical situations, but I think it has all the best qualities of shows.

NR: I hope you get to do it.

Marc's sorry that The Scarlet Pimpernel is closing in January, but it seems that he's about to move on to many more chapters in his life immediately afterwards. His Chauvelin is very different from any others that I've seen and it's an awesome interpretation. Now that I know how much thought is behind it, I understand why.

Questions suggested by:

Andrew Reith, Wendy Gibb, Bev, Jessica Parker, Sarap, Catherine, Dyann, Tripp Jackson, karen k. Norma Bucknor, Renee Girard, Chris Miller, Jan Combopiano, CJL, Kiersten Scarpati, Bec Finkelstein, Ken Miller, Stephanie Henkin, Amy Lovett