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[0:01] Moe Brady: This episode is brought to you by our friends at Actors Connection, a professional development home for actors at all levels of their careers. Check out their website at actorsconnection.com to register for a free seminar, learn more about their self-tape services, or sign up for a completely free one-on-one program consultation. And guys, since Actors Connection is such a big fan of The Ensemblist, they have given us an exclusive discount code for our listeners. So you can use this code, it's ENSEMBLE15, at checkout for 15% off of your next purchase of a class or intensive. Honestly, Actors Connection is a great place to hone your craft, build your business mindset, and connect with both peers and industry guests. So give it a try!

[0:51] Moe Brady: You're listening to Fosse & Verdon from The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. I'm Moe Brady. Earlier this week, FX launched a new limited series, Fosse & Verdon, based on the 2013 biography by Sam Wesson, with a focus on his marriage and collaboration with Gwen Verdon. Now, there isn't a theater choreographer more associated with their own unique style than Bob Fosse. The award-winning director and choreographer created his own signature technique that distinguished shows like Chicago, Pippin, and Damn Yankees into masterpieces, and much of that work was created with and fueled by his relationship with Verdon. This spring, The Ensemblist will be speaking to some of the artists with Broadway cred who helped make the series possible.

[1:46] Moe Brady: In the first episode of the TV miniseries, we meet Fosse and Verdon on the set of the film version of Sweet Charity. Adapting their Broadway success to the big screen, Sam Rockwell as Fosse and Michelle Williams as Verdon stage one of the show's most famous numbers, Big Spender. Playing the actresses on the bar are many of today's most beloved Broadway dancers: Sasa Hutchings as Helene, along with Georgina Paskukin, Eloise Kropp, Claire Camp, Samantha Polino, Paloma Garcia-Lee, and Morgan Marcel, who we spoke to for our first episode in this podcast series. The setting then transfers locations to Munich, Germany, where Fosse and Verdon work together to turn Cabaret into one of the most seminal movie musicals in the history of film.

Performing "Mein Herr" are our quartet of Broadway dancers, including Colton Kraus and this episode's guest, Skye Mattox. Skye Mattox made her Broadway debut as a replacement in the 2009 revival of West Side Story. Since then, she has performed in Broadway revivals of On the Town and Carousel, the latter for which she was nominated for a Chita Rivera Award. She's no stranger to bringing musical drama to the small screen. Skye and I first worked together during the winter of 2013 on the second season of NBC's Smash. Here's our conversation.

[3:09] Skye Mattox: Hi Mo! So good to have you here. Will you introduce yourself and say what your role in Fosse/Verdon is?

[3:18] Skye Mattox: Sure! So I'm Skye Mattox, and I was one of the cabaret girls in "Mein Herr."

[3:24] Moe Brady: So what was your relationship to Fosse, his style of movement, prior to working on the series?

[3:28] Skye Mattox: In terms of actually dancing it, I was very minimally, like, you know, well-versed in Fosse. I always grew up watching his stuff, and I knew his body of work super well as a kid because, like, you know, just growing up as a dancer, I saw his movies and his choreography, and I was just drawn to the movement. I just grew up knowing who he was and stuff, but I never danced it. And it wasn't until really I came across The Legacy that I actually got to dance actual choreography and learn sort of his technique, if you will. It's not really a technique, but his style.

[4:03] Moe Brady: What is The Legacy? We keep, I think, we're hearing about that a lot.

[4:08] Skye Mattox: Who I primarily took from was Valerie Pettiford and Lloyd Culbreth, and Nicole Fosse basically oversees everything. They have all of his stuff from archives and movies and stuff. They teach it, basically, and it's the best way to learn stuff from him, or like as close to the actual choreographer as possible, you know, Bob Fosse himself. Because these people worked for him and danced for him and were given notes from him, and so they're able to teach it now and pass it on.

[4:41] Moe Brady: Did you audition for The Legacy?

[4:47] Skye Mattox: It was like a paid thing. You could pay to take classes, and then they started inviting us, and it was just like a thing that you could pay to take and learn the choreography, and that was so wonderful. Just like a drop-in class?

[5:02] Skye Mattox: Kind of. It was like a three or four-hour ordeal thing at first, and you would go and spend all day learning one piece. Like one day we do "Beat Me Daddy" from Big Deal, or "Something Better Than This" from Sweet Charity, and yeah, it was really cool.

[5:18] Moe Brady: So how did you find out about Fosse/Verdon, the television series?

[5:22] Skye Mattox: I felt like I was living under a rock for a while because I was doing Carousel at the time, and people started talking about it around the theater, and I was like, what is this? What's going on? They're like, it's a TV show. Everyone and their mother is going in for it. So I reached out to my agent, and I was like, can you tell me about this? What's happening? I just went in for it one day when they were having calls for it, or like an invited call or whatever it was.

[5:48] Skye Mattox: No, it was just for the series in general. We all just kind of got called in. We learned two or three combinations. There were different days. The day I went, there was like a bunch of things happening. We learned some of Andy Blankenbuehler's choreography because there's a lot of choreography that's his or Susie Meisner's in the show.

[5:52] Moe Brady: And did you audition just for the "Mein Herr" number, or did you?

[6:10] Moe Brady: Who's Susie Meisner?

[6:10] Skye Mattox: She was also the choreographer on the show. Andy sort of handed the project off to her when he had to go over to London and work on Cats, yeah. And she is incredible. Oh my goodness. She also plays Joan McCracken in the show.

[6:26] Moe Brady: Oh! Yeah. Okay. And she's been an idol of mine for a very long time, so that was really cool to work with her later on in the project. And then we learned like "Who's Got the Pain," and I think we learned one other thing that day. And it was just kind of a general, let's see what everybody does best, where they fit, where we can use everybody. And everyone got placed in different numbers and throughout the season from that call, I think.

[6:54] Moe Brady: Did you then get an offer to do multiple episodes or just the one?

[6:54] Skye Mattox: Just the one. I'm only in the pilot. I did some pre-production for other stuff and for promos and stuff, but I'm only in the pilot.

[7:05] Moe Brady: Oh, the promo where it was like on stage?

[7:10] Skye Mattox: Yeah, yeah. It's like these little snippets of everybody. I want to ask you about that now.

[7:15] Skye Mattox: Yeah, sure. When was that? When did you film that?

[7:15] Skye Mattox: That was after we filmed the actual episode. We got called in on a separate day to just do some little things. We didn't even really know what we were going out there to do. We got into hair and makeup, like our "Mein Herr" get-up, and they would just call us down and, hey, can you do this? Can you do that? And Marianne Lam was running the day, basically, and she would just bring us up, have us do like a little thing. They'd shoot it for five, ten minutes, and then move on, do just these cool little snapshots. And so I have this one moment where I'm like kicking over a chair and sitting down in it and looking back at the camera, and that ended up in the promo, which I was really excited about. And just being there on that day with Marianne Lam, too. She's incredible.

[8:00] Moe Brady: Explain for people who don't know who Marianne is.

[8:04] Skye Mattox: So Marianne is a Fosse dancer. She's just, I mean, you can see her in so many of his shows and movies, and, you know, but she's absolutely incredible and another person that I just really look up to. So being there with her that day, she, like, in that moment in particular, she was like, can you just do, like, something like this? There's a chair there. She just did a fan kick over the chair and, like, sat down in it. I was like, oh my goodness.

[8:30] Moe Brady: So tell me about filming the episode. You did your scene in "Mein Herr," and we see it both in rehearsal and as filming, right? And then you did the bar scene?

[8:37] Skye Mattox: Pretty much it, yeah. I think we had four shoot days total. It was a very quick process. I think I worked maybe a total of eight or nine days. We had, like, four days of rehearsal to learn.

[8:53] Moe Brady: That's a lot, though.

[8:58] Skye Mattox: It was, yeah, and we didn't really know. What ended up happening was we knew, or we found out, that we were gonna only use, like, half the number that was actually gonna make it, like, in performance when they were filming the movie, within the movie. But we ended up learning the entire thing. Valerie Pettiford set it on us. She's another, like, a Marianne Lamb, like, an amazing Fosse dancer. She's just one of the greats. And she set it on us, and she just taught us the whole thing. And we were, oh, it was just so wonderful. We were so excited to learn the whole thing. And so we learned the entire thing in maybe, like, two days. And we were rehearsing that, drilling that, and then we spent another couple of days sort of blocking out, like, scene work with Sam Rockwell.

He would come in, and we were just playing around with staging, and Andy was a big part of that. He would come in and just try to figure out who's where, what's he saying, or who's he saying this to. Tommy Kail would pop in too. So that was the majority of rehearsal. And then we had, like, one day of rehearsal in the space, and then we just filmed it. And we filmed the rehearsal stuff in a couple of days. We shot the dance in one day, and then we had a random day out in Bay Ridge at a beer garden, and that was it. It was, and we were joking about it, like, all the, our little group of cabaret people, we were joking.

[10:19] Skye Mattox: We filmed the episode up in the Bronx at Silvercup Studios. The promo we filmed at a different studio out in Brooklyn. But yeah, we were uptown at the Silvercup Bronx location, which I had never been to. It's beautiful. It's nice and new.

[10:41] Alan Seales: How much of the space, that theater space, was actually built out that you were rehearsing and performing "Mein Herr" in?

[10:55] Skye Mattox: Well, they pretty much built a replica of the set, the cabaret set, the stage and everything. And that was on one soundstage. The stuff like the beer garden was out at an actual location. But I think, yeah, the majority of what we did was a set built at Silvercup.

[11:26] Alan Seales: And because you were doing a number that is on film, you had like a direct link. You were playing the same role that somebody played. Did that ever come into dramaturgy, talking about who that dancer was or what that role was?

[11:42] Skye Mattox: Yeah, we had talked about it because we found out that some of the dancers were local hires from Munich. So that was pretty cool. And we didn't really know who was who. You can spot like Catherine Dobie is one of the cabaret girls, and we know she's like one of Fosse's primary dancers. But then some of these other girls like we didn't know. That was cool to talk to Nicole about. Nicole Fosse, she came in and gave us a little bit of insight about these girls and who they were and like within the movie and then actually who the dancers were like as, you know, performers.

[12:22] Alan Seales: And are you wearing the same thing that the person is wearing? Okay, talk about that.

[12:27] Skye Mattox: That was bizarre. So they told me I remember going in for a costume fitting and they were like, "Okay, so you're going to be sparkle bra girl." So I'm the girl. She's got like curly red hair, a sparkle bra and these black shorts and knee highs and stuff. And so we were able to like go back and watch which person we were going to be and our makeup plot was similar. And that was really cool. I loved that.

[12:50] Alan Seales: When they show it on film, are they replicating shot by shot the actual movie or is it so they weren't really focused on that while you were there?

[12:56] Skye Mattox: When we were initially shooting it, they were talking about like, for instance, the shot where she goes bye-bye and the girls pop up from their chair. We were we definitely shot that actual shot like from the movie.

[13:14] Alan Seales: When I was watching it, I was so interested in like how you film in that space, especially because you have cameras, right? There's prop cameras and then there's...

[13:23] Skye Mattox: Yeah, that was a little bit trippy.

[13:24] Alan Seales: Were they filming on the prop cameras?

[13:26] Skye Mattox: No, that was they're just props.

[13:29] Alan Seales: That's crazy. Yeah. So where are they? Are they hidden? Or are they just like changing the angle?

[13:35] Skye Mattox: They were there. It was a little funny for us because we had to remember as you're performing and it's dimly lit and it's smoky not to look into the camera because it's like you forget which camera is which. And they're just out there. You just change or turn around. And so you don't see the camera. But for us being on stage and looking out, you see two sets of cameras like the 2018 cameras and then, you know, cameras, prop cameras. So that was kind of funny for us to negotiate.

[14:09] Alan Seales: What was the music? Was it recorded for the episode? Were you singing to the original soundtrack from the movie?

[14:15] Skye Mattox: Kelly Barrett came in and did her vocals and then they had it was prerecorded for us and we were singing. We were lip syncing, but it was on a prerecord. And so sometimes we would have a playback in the room and then sometimes we would have an earwig. So we just had the playback in our ears because we needed whether it was like dialogue for Sam and Michelle because they were talking as we were dancing. So we couldn't have playback happening.

[14:42] Alan Seales: That was weird. I had never worn an earwig before.

[14:44] Skye Mattox: That's a weird feeling.

[14:46] Alan Seales: Does it feel like you're underwater?

[14:47] Skye Mattox: I haven't either. It's kind of weird. You just have one in one ear and they don't fit super well all the time. So you have to be conscious of keeping it in your ear. Yeah, it does feel a little bit weird. And then your equilibrium is a little bit off because you've got music in one ear and then nothing in the other ear. So you feel a little off balance. It's very strange.

[15:08] Skye Mattox: It's like when you see people in the recording studio when they have a piano over their ear and they're really feeling it.

[15:14] Alan Seales: One of the moments that I just got so excited about knowing you was in the preview where we saw you in the chair with Gwen and she's putting the makeup on you and she's telling the story about like, maybe this was a society girl. Maybe this is a woman who doesn't want people to know who she is. And that's why she's so made up. When did you find out that that was going to be you?

[15:37] Skye Mattox: I found out in one of my fittings, they said she's going to be the eyelash girl. And then they elaborated on that. So I knew before we even went into rehearsal that that was going to happen. And they were telling me it's a crayon. And what she actually did was she came in and melted crayon like they show in the pilot. But she actually did that. She came in and melted a crayon and painted it onto the tips of the girl's lashes to give it kind of like a clumpy effect. And she just went around the set and did little touches like that.

[16:09] Alan Seales: Where did you were you just on the same like set? It was hard to tell where.

[16:11] Skye Mattox: Yeah, we were. So if you're looking at the stage, there's all the seating around it. We were just at a little table in the seating in the same stage.

[16:21] Alan Seales: And how long did it take to film?

[16:23] Skye Mattox: That probably took. It was quick, I think it was probably a half hour or so.

[16:30] Alan Seales: Oh, my God.

[16:32] Skye Mattox: Yeah, because it was so intimate. It was just Sam and Michelle and me. And, you know, there are very few people involved. And it's such a quiet scene. It was so quiet on set. But yeah, it was pretty breezy at that point. That was I we did that after we filmed the dance. We were done with the dance and then we came back and did that. And then I think we did like one more shot for the day. So that was one of the lesser involved scenes. And I think it's pretty quick.

[16:56] Alan Seales: And had you talked much to Michelle or Sam, I guess mostly Michelle, because you're like you guys are in each other's face.

[17:04] Skye Mattox: I know. Yeah, I hadn't really, because we other than that, we didn't really have any scene work with her as the "Mein Herr" dancers. Most of our stuff was with Sam. So he would come in when we were rehearsing at Pearl Studios and like come in and do that. But really that I think we had maybe said hi in passing, but that was the first time you just sit down and then all of a sudden you have to do this scene together and be super comfortable with somebody that you don't even know. But I guess we kind of do that anyway. As dancers, you say hi to somebody and then you're partnering with them.

[17:40] Alan Seales: And it's like one of the things I think is so interesting about film or TV versus theater is you don't get a full script as a performer.

[17:46] Skye Mattox: Right. You're getting what are they? What are the pages called?

[17:50] Alan Seales: The dailies.

[17:52] Skye Mattox: The dailies. Yeah. So you're just getting the pages that you're on. And sometimes you don't even get those because I didn't even get that because I've had no lines. I was just sitting there sort of reacting. So I was learning on the fly. We had had like a blocking rehearsal a few days earlier and I kind of got a feel for what the scene was. But yeah, I didn't know. They were just like, "Okay, sit here. She's going to paint some stuff on your eyelashes." And I was like, "Okay, how am I supposed to feel? What is my relationship with them? Do I even speak English? Like, am I a do I understand what they're saying?"

[18:30] Alan Seales: What do you think about that?

[18:31] Skye Mattox: Because I was like, oh, it's Sky.

[18:32] Alan Seales: Yeah, I know. Yeah. You have to like kind of come up with that for yourself.

[18:35] Skye Mattox: And quickly. Yeah. Sam even asked me something at one point in character. And I just was so like unprepared. I was like, I don't even think I know who I am. Like, do I? I came up with a character name like on the fly. But I was like, is she German? I think my character, I think my girl is probably German. So would she know? Do we have a rapport or are you asking me as a person? Are you asking me as a character? It's, you know, it's really funny.

[19:08] Alan Seales: What's your favorite moment from working on the episode?

[19:11] Skye Mattox: I mean, filming the dance was really great. It was really pretty amazing. And it's great because you feel like you're doing a performance for these people. And we, like I said, we were the first dancers on set. The crew was really excited about it, too. You could tell they were like really into filming dance. And so that was really nice. And our group, our little cabaret group was so great. Kelly was amazing. We just had like a really tight knit rapport with each other. So that was really nice. But I think yeah, I think filming the dance was really like the highlight of it.