Interview: Christian Borle Talks "Smash" and Those Inevitable "Glee" Comparisons

After what seems like months of anticipation, NBC launches it's ambitious song and dance drama Smash tonight. The series chronicles the making of a Broadway musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, and each episode will take us inside the creative and personal trials of the people involved in the production. At the center of it all are lyricist Julia Houston (Will & Grace alum Debra Messing) and composer Tom Leavitt (Broadway’s Christian Borle) who are writing the musical together.

Borle, recently sat down with AfterElton to chat about getting Broadway right on television, how it feels to be part of a show that has so much buzz going for it, and just how gay Smash will be given that Borle’s character is an out and proud gay man.

AfterElton.com: I just watched the pilot for the third time…
Christian Borle: ….did you enjoy it?

AE: I did! I think it’s one of those pilots where you’re left wanting to see more, which is a good sign in television.
CB: Good! It’s been really exciting and we’re starting to fall into a nice rhythm. I feel very, very lucky!

AE: When I looked over who helped bring this project together, it’s quite a list!
CB: I pinch myself every day! The whole Spielberg thing…Spielberg was so important to me growing up! At the first table read we had he was on speakerphone and it was unbelievable. It was an out-of-body experience. It was crazy.

The cast of Smash: (l-r) Jack Davenport, Katharine McPhee, Megan Hilty, Raza Jaffrey,
Debra Messing, Christian Borle, Anjelica Huston, Brian d’Arcy James, Jamie Cepero

AE: You’ve been a part of the Broadway community for a long time. Were you concerned early on that maybe the powers that be wouldn’t get it right for TV?
CB: Yes, I thought the project had a lot of potential pitfalls, but the lucky thing was that in developing it they got people who just know the theater, and even getting Michael Mayer (Tony winner for directing, Spring Awakening) to direct the pilot…he’s become a consulting producer, so he isn’t going to let it not be real.

AE: There’s such a gay presence in the show, too, which I think is also very true to Broadway whether you’re talking the actors, dancers or the patrons who go!
CB: It’s one of the reasons that the theater is such a special place. It’s more progressive and it’s ahead of everyone else in terms of acceptance. There are so many gay people in the theater, and I think it’s represented really beautifully. It just seems like the truth of the world.

AE: Tell me more about Tom. We get a little window of who he is in the pilot, but what more can you tell me?
CB: Tom is a composer and Julia (played by Debra Messing) is his writing partner, so they’re a writing team and they’ve achieved a level of success in the business. They’re Tony Award winners, they have a show running on Broadway that they just opened in the West End, so they’re successful people. I think they’re both incredibly intelligent people. The musicians and the composers that I’ve worked with over the years in the theater all seem to have a similar intellect and a super smart sense of humor. I think there’s something about the way that people think about music that comes from a different part of the brain.

And in regards to the sexuality, Tom being a successful young gay man in this business, I think what we’re exploring now is what that modern relationship is. Someone in the theater, I think, his first instinct is to maybe date someone outside of the business because that seems safe, but I think what inevitably happens is that [theater people] realize they love theater people because they understand each other. I think that’s going to be something of struggle with Tom and whether or not he wants to shit where he eats, so to speak.

Tom (Borle), Julia (Messing) and Eileen (Huston) take in Ivy’s (Hilty) audition.

AE: There’s a moment in the pilot where a chorus boy greets Tom, who doesn’t quite remember the guy, but you assume something happened between them. Is that a way of telling us that Tom is promiscuous?
CB: No, I think they were playing with that idea and in certain drafts of the pilot he was more promiscuous, but I think the idea is that it might be more interesting in this day and age to have the tension be between my character, Tom, and the director, Derek, played by Jack Davenport, who is straight. [The producers] thought it might be more interesting to not have the gay character be the more promiscuous one, but have the straight guy define that.

AE: There’s definitely a rivalry between Tom and Derek in the pilot. Does that escalate?
CB: I think because they’re writing television stories and they want some drama it’s safe to say yes. I love Jack Davenport so much. He plays such a good bastard and a moustache-twirling kind of guy but he couldn’t be nicer in real life so it’s funny to see him play that character.