The Scarlet Pimpernel : Broadway's Most Intriguing Musical.

Interview with Nan Knighton

This is the part two of the interview with Nan Knighton. If you haven't already, read the first part.

In this section, Nan told me about her tireless efforts to keep the show alive. Believe me, she is someone you want fighting on your side!

NR: In the CD liner notes, you talked about Douglas' (Sills) audition. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

NK: We were really beginning to get a little nervous because we weren't finding Percy. It's a very hard role to play. To ask somebody to be hysterically funny, which was always my number one thing that I would look for, and a hero who you believe can have the utter loyalty and devotion of all these men, AND romantic, and have some edge, and be able to sing Frank Wildhorn songs - it's a daunting thing. Over and over again, we'd seen someone who was a great hero and sang well but he wasn't funny, or somebody who was really funny but he couldn't sing. That's why we went out to L.A. Originally, we weren't even going to go to L.A. to cast. We went out there for two days and we were given a list of all the people who were going to come in. His name was on the list and none of us had ever heard of him. We didn't know who he was. He walks into the room in this blue shirt, this gorgeous blue shirt, and came right over to us, smiling, and stuck his hand out and said, "Hi, I'm Douglas" and shook hands with all of us. Right away, he lit up the room immediately, just being "him." He was just charming and handsome. I know I've mentioned that before and he's TOTALLY obnoxious about it, but he knows that I think he's handsome.

He had come in prepared to do both Chauvelin and Percy. Actually, part of my notes that I have from him that day are that I'd like to hear him do Chauvelin, because Douglas does have an "edgy, dark side" to him that I felt like I saw that day, but he was so wonderful as Percy that we never got to the stage of having him do Chauvelin. I can't remember what song he sang first. I think he sang a Wildhorn ballad.

NR: I think he said he sang "Someone Like You." He didn't know it was written for a woman.

NK: Yeah, and Frank had never heard a man sing it before, but Frank was quite taken with that. So, we knew from that, "OK, guy can sing, sings really nicely." Then he sang, "Into the Fire" and then we started to get excited because he really sang the hell out of it. So, then it was like, "OK, now let's hear you read." At each stage, we would all take a deep breath - Peter (Hunt) and Frank and I, as well as Douglas on his side, because all of us knew as we went from one stage to another to another that this was looking good.

NR: Really? Douglas knew that too?

NK: Yes, I'm sure he could tell. Somebody who auditions that much, you get to know the feel of an audition. If you're auditioning for a lead role and you're in and out of there in 15 minutes you know that you're being considered but that nobody was blown away. By this point Douglas had been in the room 15 minutes and we were asking him to go on, so he knew, as well as we knew, that we were really interested. So, then he did a comic scene and we all were hysterical, and that's when I became really excited because that to me was always the toughest thing, to find somebody who could be funny too. I knew that the show I had written would not work unless we had a really funny person. So, he was incredibly funny and then we had him do one more scene. I think we had him read three scenes, and I think he ended up singing three songs and we were all a little breathless at the end of it, because we all, including Douglas, were getting excited about this. I think he was in the room over half an hour, maybe 35 minutes, which is very unusual. When he left, he said, "I just want to tell you that when I was a kid..." - you know that story he's probably told you about his childhood thing.

NR: Oh, yes, he's told me. (Nan was referring to Douglas' famous "Leslie Howard" story. If you're not familiar with it, you can read it in my interview with him on Talkin' Broadway.)

NK: So, he said, "I would really love to do this, but even if I don't get it, I'm going to be there opening night because I want to see it." We were all charmed by him. We loved him. He walked out of the room and we all looked at each other and said, "I think we just found the Scarlet Pimpernel." And then of course you second guess yourself because none of us had ever heard of him before. We thought, "Well, if he really is the star we think he is, why has he never done anything before?" And so, we kept calling him back. We called him into New York. He walked into the Houseman Theater and I was standing outside having a cigarette with Julie Hughes and he walked in and I said, "Oh, good, you're wearing the same blue shirt!" because I wanted him to be exactly like he'd been in L.A. And I said, "Just do everything EXACTLY the way you did it in L.A." and he said, "Oh, thank you. Thank you so much." (pretty much indicating how much pressure THAT statement had put on him.) Altogether I think we flew him in three times because we kept second guessing ourselves. We'd see him and we'd say, "He's perfect" and then we would say, "Are we crazy?" Then, finally, Bill Haber flew him in as a surprise for one last time. He didn't tell us and it was a really smart thing to do because it was the moment when we all decided that this was the guy and did it. It was just so clear from the very first day of rehearsal, from the very first time the whole cast sat around and read the play and everyone was hysterical at Douglas. It was just so clear that we'd made the right decision.

NR: James Judy told me you were all rewriting scenes from the very beginning.

NK: I have rewritten this show so much, you have no idea. I am one of these people who believes it can always get better. I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's The Iceman Cometh, it can always get better. What you need with somebody like me is you need somebody to come along and say, "All right, now you CANNOT rewrite it anymore" because otherwise I'll just keep rewriting till the cows come home.

NR: James told me that the cast would come offstage and you would all come up with a few more lines and then they'd run back out.

NK: I was just always rewriting. I would say through both productions, particularly the first one I remember, I was so exhausted. I had no idea what it would be like to be in rehearsal all day and then I would go home every night and do rewrites. You do a lot of adjusting around your actors. Like, in Douglas' case, it was obvious that he was so funny, that I would give him even more that was funny. I would often test out laugh lines on him. Sometimes he would come up with a laugh line.

NR: SOMETIMES?

NK: Exactly. Right.

NR: Now, how did you feel about that?

NK: Douglas tends to, on occasion, ad lib. He of course has been reined in now, but in the first production...My attitude was always, with Douglas, and only with Douglas, (I don't think I would feel this way about another actor because he is so quick on his feet and he is so naturally funny) that I always would listen to what the ad lib was, and then I would make a decision as to whether I wanted it in or not. Often I didn't. Often it just wasn't right, but sometimes I did. What I usually did was take what he had ad libbed and refine it. For example, the thing where he now says, "Please give warning before you heave about like that" - that stemmed from an ad lib of his but the initial ad lib was something like, "Please don't do that." Then I said, "No, I want it to be, `Please give warning before you heave about' and he said, `Why do you want that?' and I said, `If you're going to do it, let's do it right.'" and in fact that did get more laughs than just "Please don't do that." Then I took the "all that black" stuff and I listened to what he was ad libbing and then I refined that. So, every time he would do an ad lib that I knew I wanted, I would take it off and fiddle with it. But, there's at least one line that he suggested to me and it's one of my favorite lines in the show. I don't know if anybody ever even hears it because he's so out of breath when he says it and the mike isn't up high enough, but it's at the very end when he goes onto the boat and he stands behind her and he says, "Lady Blakeney, your husband would not have left you had he known about your past." Douglas suggested that line. I was in his dressing room one day in rehearsal and I was saying, "I want him to stand behind her as the Pimpernel." I wanted to recall to the audience that moment when he stood behind her on the footbridge and I want him to say, "Lady Blakeney, something" so that we go back to that moment, and he started just reeling off things and he said, "Lady Blakeney, your husband would not have left you..." and I just said, "That's it." That line was "pure him."

What I ended up doing with the ad libs for the second production was to go through very carefully and decide once and for all what ad libs were in and what were out, because Bobby (Longbottom) is a very different director and the whole production was becoming much more structured and it just wasn't going to work anymore to never know what Douglas was going to do. So, it was really a case of deciding once and for all what was in and what was out.

NR: How much did Bobby have to do with the rewrite?

NK: He certainly was very helpful to me in terms of structure. We had a wonderful week and a half of meetings at Radio City Music Hall with Bobby and me and Ron Melrose and Tom Kosis and David Chase. We would sit around and just bat ideas around right and left. "What if we did this here instead of there?" Like, the "Grappin" thing came out of that meeting. "What if we don't save up the surprise of who Grappin is? What if we tell them?" It was just major, major brainstorming. Then after each meeting, which would be four or five hours in the daytime, then I would go home and write that night. We were really under the gun. We were under the gun to the extent that it got to the point that I didn't even have time to go to the brainstorming meetings anymore and I was just writing and I would be faxing to Bobby one or two new scenes every day. It was wild, it really was. Bobby is a great organizer. He's great at structuring and he's great at style. He and I just had wonderful, productive talks together. Every once in awhile we had something we didn't agree on. He really wanted me to cut Tussaud and I said no. He wanted to cut down Marie and I said no because the "Marie/Tussaud" thing is something that is totally mine and something that I injected when I found out in my research that Madame Tussaud had not only lived at that time, but had been imprisoned and that she first started by molding heads of people who had died in the revolution. When I found that out it just seemed to me such a natural to make her part of Percy's band.

NR: I didn't know that.

NK: Yeah, I think the audience thinks that it's just this fun little gambit, but in fact she really was married to a Parisian vintner named Francois Tussaud and her name really was Marie Grosholtz and she really was an artist and she started modeling the heads and she really was in prison, and I just felt like, "This is just too perfect. I'm going to make her a character and I'm going to make her a really strong character who resents this revolution and who fights against it." So, I was unwilling to let her and her husband go as characters. They were very important to me.

NR: (laughing) And you'll definitely have to spell Grosholtz for me. It's not in the program anywhere. I've looked.

NK: No, you know where I found it? The summer that I wrote the book I had already started thinking about using her as a character. I went to Madame Tussaud's wax museum in London in July of '93. I went without my husband because he said, "I AM NOT going to the wax museum with you." So, I went without him and was fascinated. I saw all of her early works. I got the booklet from the museum and that told about her early life, that her name was Marie Grosholtz and she married Francois Tussaud.

NR: That's a great line. That gets applause every night.

NK: I wish they knew. I wonder if I shouldn't have put a note in the program, but she was part of that whole revolutionary scene and she really was at one point imprisoned and maybe about to go on the block herself. The fact that I have her working with Percy's band is fictional, but she really was there in the thick of it.

NR: Are there parts of the old show that you miss?

NK: Hmmm, yeah. The old show really was such a different entity from the new show. I don't know. I mean, I'm very glad that the old show is preserved in Lincoln Center and I'm now going to get on the producers' backs to get this new production on tap at Lincoln Center too. I think it would be very interesting for anyone who wants to go in there and contrast the two because the main difference is a stylistic one, and that's major. The first one has this extremely loose quality to it and the new version is very tightly woven, and quite frankly, it's this new version that will work, and has worked commercially. So that, saving the life of the show meant doing that. It meant structuring it better, making it more clear, bringing in choreography, tightening it. And it also meant doing things like taking out what everyone loved so much which was Douglas' nightclub act at the beginning of Act 2, but it just would have been out of place in this show. I know that a lot of the actors feel that they love the old show and they miss the old show. For me, it's like two different children and I love them both for different reasons. But I do know that this version is the version that has legs on it and can travel and the other one didn't.

NR: This one is not as dependant on the star either.

NK: No, not at all. That was a very deliberate thing that Bobby and I did as well, which was to really beef up that triangle and to really make sure that this was a show that could be done by someone other than Doug Sills.

NR: Is there a song or a scene that you're most proud of?

NK: It's sort of funny you should ask that because the other night we had dinner with some friends and one of them asked me what song I had ever written that I liked the most. I really stopped and was thinking. There were a lot of different possibilities going through my mind including things that are not in Pimpernel, when Douglas interrupted and said, "Well, it's got to be 'Into the Fire'" and proceeded to actually tell me things I didn't know before, like, firemen in fire houses play it. Also, what I did know because I got a phone call from a guy in the army who said they wanted to make it the theme song for the Green Berets. I was thrilled, just thrilled. They're having a big ball in April or something and they're going to have a whole Special Forces Chorus do "Into the Fire." In many ways, "Into the Fire" is the song I'm proudest of because I still vividly remember sitting down at my desk and writing that song and wanting so badly for it to end up being a song that would inspire people and get their adrenaline running.

NR: And you came up with the staging, which is incredible. It's magnificent, it really is.

NK: Oh, yeah. When I wrote that book, I kept thinking that somebody would come along and tell me it was impossible. I can't tell you how amazed I was when people said, "OK, now we have to figure out how we're going to do this shift from the library into the boat." I kept waiting for somebody to say, "Nan, we can't do that" and nobody ever did! That was what I wanted. I knew that dramatically what I had to do was get from Percy and his men deciding to do this to it being ongoing because there just wouldn't be enough time to show the first rescue. So, I knew what I had to do was essentially go from the library scene to "and now they've been doing it for five weeks." The only way I could see to do that was to do this transition from the library, onto the boat, into France, and the next thing that happens is that Robespierre comes out and says that this has been going on for five weeks.

One of the things that really has been fascinating for me, both with this and with Saturday Night Fever has been the fact that you can write things in your scripts that you think, "Nobody's going to let me get away with this" and then people will turn around and say, "OK, now how are we going to do this?" It was amazing to me.

NR: Well, they did it on Broadway with this huge budget and this huge theater. What do you see in the future? Do you see our grandchildren doing this in their high school somewhere?

NK: Oh, God, I hope so.

NR: I hope so too, but how? Well, right now if they do move to another theater...

NK: It's looking close to definite that we're moving to another theater. We've already been and looked at the theater. We started having meetings and I'm crazy about the theater and I think the show will actually play much better in a smaller theater than it does in the Minskoff. We always wanted it in a smaller theater because the show really is intimate and it really is about three people.

NR: But this boat is not intimate and this prison...

NK: I think that the changes that we're going to make to adapt it to a smaller stage are going to be actually quite wonderful. The way I'm feeling about it is it's gradations up each time and I think this is going to be even better.

NR: Scarlet Pimpernel 3 is on the way?

NK: It's crazy, isn't it?

NR: (laughing) Are you going to live through this?

NK: I hope so, because I'm also doing... Saturday Night Fever started auditions and we start rehearsals in July and we open October 21st. And then Pimpernel will be adapting for a smaller stage and rehearsing it simultaneously and going to another theater. It's going to be a wild six months coming up. But, to answer your question, yes, absolutely my fondest hope is that it will be done by my grandchildren's high school. My happiest moments are when somebody comes to me and says, "I like to start off the day playing `Into the Fire.' It really makes me feel like I can go out there and do anything." That's a wonderful feeling. That's really wonderful. You know, the show was about to fold right after the Tony's.

NR: Douglas told me. He described you to me as "the big engine of proactivity for the show."

NK: Awww. I had just come back from England. Saturday Night Fever had just opened in England and I had just gotten the nomination for the Tony Award and I was really flying high and so excited. My feeling was the producers would now really promote the show like crazy because we probably didn't have a shot at winning anything but Best Actor, but we really had a shot at Douglas winning Best Actor in a Musical. So, I thought they would really take out ads, and nothing happened. I was stunned and I started calling up Bill (Haber) and Pierre (Cossette). By the way, I have nothing but good things to say about Bill and Pierre. Other producers would have closed the show down in January and Bill and Pierre were just dreams of producers, but they had basically reached the end of their rope and there was just no money left. I started to realize that they were getting ready to close. They were waiting to see what happened with the Tonys and then they were getting ready to close. Then it became clear that they were probably going to close right after the Tonys even if we did win something. So that's when I kind of jumped on my white horse.

I can't really explain to you what was driving me...well, no I can. I always have gone into the theater once a week through this whole thing, mostly to hang out with the actors but sometimes also to go into the back of the house and watch. I went in the back of the house when I got back from London and heard the audience and heard them laughing and heard them clapping, and saw them walking out with all of them smiling and I just felt that if I didn't try to keep it alive that it was really criminal. If I did possess the ability to keep this thing alive that it was really morally reprehensible for me not to do it because what I had hoped, which was that people would walk out of the theater feeling happy, was what was happening. If I didn't try to keep that happening then it would have just been wrong, and that probably was what drove me more than anything else. In terms of my own personal dreams, I had had the show run for a nice long run and I had been nominated for a Tony, so I could have kind of checked out then and been OK, but I really felt that this was not meant to close. So, that was when I called Bill and Pierre and was really putting on the push, but it was clear from them that they had reached the end of their ropes. Then I sent a fax to Ted Forstmann, and it was a real business fax because he's a real businessman. I absolutely didn't have one emotional sentence in it. I just said, "This cannot close. I know this can run and I know it can run for a long time. Would you be willing to finance a television commercial because that's one of the reasons I feel like we've never done what we could do? People love this show, you know they love this show but they don't know about it. We've got to do a TV commercial. Would you put more money into it?" A couple of people on the producers' side knew that I was going to write this fax to them and basically were saying to me, "Fine, you can write a fax that will end up in the trash can." Nobody thought anything would come of it, but Ted called me within two days and said, "OK, let's talk about this." Then, as soon as I knew that there was a shot, I was like a cocker spaniel with a bone in my mouth. I was not about to let go. I kept at it and at it and at it. I faxed Ted every three days with more and more reasons of why we should keep going and what we could do. I'd write him ten page faxes of advertising ideas. Then he said, "Would you be willing to change?" and I said, "Are you kidding? I've always been willing to make changes." Plus by that point, I'd been able to have a full year of standing in the back, cringing in some places and there were certain scenes that I would walk out of the theater because I couldn't stand to watch them anymore. I said, "I would love nothing more than to get in there and fix the weak spots."

Then there was a moment that was really tense right after the Tonys. We went on Ted's boat. Teddy has an incredible yacht and he invited Douglas and Christine (Andreas) and Terry (Mann) and me and some of his own friends. We went on Teddy's yacht and sailed around Manhattan and it was just an amazing night. But I kept hoping that at any moment Teddy was going to turn around and say, "I've decided to take over the show" and he didn't so I finally cornered him after dinner. It was hysterical because I was standing talking to him and on the other side of the boat, everybody was just staring watching, because they knew what I was doing. They knew I was trying to convince him. He at that point said, "Well, you know, my heart says yes and my head says no." I kept at it. I said, "I really believe in this, Teddy. I really believe that we can run for a long, long time." I think the thing that tipped it finally was when he got together with Dave Checketts. I think for Teddy it was probably that he did believe and he did want it to be as good as it could be. He had always said, "This show right now is B minus level but it could be A." So, I think he really did love the idea of getting in there and taking charge and trying to improve the show but he also knew that he couldn't do the day to day producing. He runs this huge business, this huge conglomerate. So, he got together with Checketts. I still don't know exactly how that happened because I've heard so many different versions of different people taking credit for getting them together. But, they got together. Dave was a friend of Pierre's and he had always loved the show. He'd been at the show five times so he was immediately interested and suddenly it clicked. There was still a period of about six weeks waiting to see if they could make a deal, a very complicated deal. I would go to the theater every week, and the actors, who were hearing a zillion rumors would corner me and say, "What's happening? What's happening?" and I would say, "Just hang on. Just hold tight. You don't see a closing notice up, right?" But it was like a weekly death watch. I couldn't tell them anything. Finally it was official and that was just an amazing moment when we called the whole cast together and told them and it was wonderful.

Then, we had to move like gangbusters. Then I met with Bobby and a couple other directors. It was instantly clear to me that Bobby was the right person to do it. He and I just clicked right away on what needed to be done. We just started meeting. My summer vacation went down the tubes and we just did it. The whole rehearsal period was wild.

NR: Yes, I've heard lots of stories. I remember watching them coming out saying, "We're in boot camp."

NK: There was no way on earth to have done what was done without working the way we did.

NR: That's obvious. It's mind-boggling. People say to me, "How different is this?" and I say, "I can't even begin to tell you how different this is."

NK: Bobby and Tom really amazed me. At one point I just took off my hat to them. I remember the day we did "The Rescue." I was watching a rehearsal and they were just starting to block "The Rescue" and by the end of two hours it was done.

NR: Wow.

NK: That's because Bobby and Tom planned out every single move, not only orally, but Tom had charts for each step of the way - who was standing where, who was doing what. Everything was planned out to the nth degree. I did go up to Nantucket for a little while in August just because I had to and I still worked up there. Bobby and Tom came up for a couple of days. Bobby and I were having meetings and Tom would be in the next room working on charts. Everything was laid out and Bobby did it. I really offhand can't think of anyone else who could have done what he did in such a short space of time.

NR: I've heard from others that the League helped keep the show open. Can you tell me what influence they really had?

NK: The League has definitely influenced the progress and history of this show in so many different ways. I remember the first time I heard that "this guy named Sal" was going through the TKTS line and urging people to go see Pimpernel. I was so amazed and touched, and the first time I met Sal, I just had to give him a big hug. When I would hear about things like this, I'd tell Bill and Pierre. I also sent Bill and/or Pierre copies of things people had written on the SP Playbill message board. Although this sort of thing never has a decisive impact on "the money guys," it definitely has a psychological impact, an emotional impact. Bill and Pierre loved and believed in the show, and every time it was reinforced to them that there were lots of other people out there who also loved and believed in it, and were FIGHTING for its survival, I know that made an emotional impact. Most producers would have closed SP in January of '98. Bill and Pierre and Teddy kept it going. I remember being amazed at the support and enthusiasm at that first lunch at Barrymore's when I first met League people- that made a real impression on me, made me so happy. I also remember that during the period when I was regularly faxing Teddy in May and June that I would often tell him about the Internet support and enthusiasm. I guess I can really only give a definitive answer here by saying that the devotion of the League influenced me enormously, and helped give me the backbone and determination to get in there and really fight for the show. If audiences and the League had been apathetic, then I might just have crawled into my depressive hole and given up. But your spirit helped mine burn brighter. There is a lot of "Into the Fire" in my sentimental soul, and I really set out like a soldier last May through July to try and save SP, and it's a hell of a lot easier to fight battles when you know you've got an army standing behind you. Lots of nights I'd read things on the Playbill SP board and it would renew my faith- you know, I'd think, "I'm not crazy- this show does make people happy. Damn it, I am going to fight for it." It's awe-inspiring to know that you've been part of a show that has touched and inspired others. It makes you braver and more determined. Without knowing how many people loved the show, I don't know how I would have fought the battle. It's hard to fight all alone.

NR: So, what's ahead for you in the future...other than Saturday Night Fever, which must be very exciting?

NK: Yes, that's very exciting. It's a big hit in London, which is great. I think it's the most exciting choreography I've seen in ages. It's really wonderful fun. Arlene Phillips, the director, and I have a great working relationship and I've been very happy with that. I'm writing a murder mystery/comedy for the stage. It's not a musical. I'll probably be finished with that in another month and then start seeing what I'm going to do with that. I'm working on another musical called Open House with a different composer named Howard Marren and the whole thing takes place in a dollhouse, but it's not a kids' musical. It's definitely for adults. The characters are the dolls and different creatures that live in a doll house over a long period of time as history changes around them. I got the idea because for years and years I kept walking by my daughter's dollhouse and I'd notice that the father had been standing in the middle of the staircase for three years and I'd think, "This is a major metaphor for life." The whole family had been sitting around eating wedding cake for two years and I always kept thinking for years, "This is a musical, this is a play. You know, to go into this dollhouse and make these people characters." One Christmas my daughter was given an extra father, so suddenly, there she was with her dollhouse but she had two fathers. She came to me a few days later and said, "Well, I've worked it out. The old father is now going to be the babysitter and he's going to live in the attic. The new father..." I thought, "This is a show. This is absolutely a show." I've written it. I actually wrote it years ago and most of the music is done too but it now needs a major overhaul and we now have a director so I'm going to start major work on that fairly soon too. So, those are my most immediate projects.

NR: It sounds terrific. Thank you so much. This has been so fascinating.

NK: You're welcome.

This interview was truly an honor. How often do you get the opportunity to discuss a work that you love with the person who created it? I am very grateful to Nan for the time she has given me. I wish her much success with Saturday Night Fever and cannot wait to see her other projects come to fruition. She deserves nothing but the best.

Questions suggested by:

Marc Roselli, Kia, Joanne Kwak, Joanna Morton-Gary, Phyllis Palemire, Mary Helfrick, Dani Biancolli, Andrea Barranti, Susan and Lauren Cassidy, Kathy Thurlow, Carolyn Peters, Jan Kolb, Andrew Reith, Tom Robson, Naomi Solomon, Shari Perkins, Kelly Honig, Sara Taddeo, Lois Colpo, Ken Miller, Colleen Rosati, Linda Guenette


Interview conducted and photographs by Nancy Rosati.

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