INTERVIEW: Cody Williams on his Broadway reopening documentary for PBS
Photo: Cody Williams directed and executive produced Great Performances — Reopening: Broadway Revival. Photo courtesy of Emilio Madrid / Provided by Matt Ross PR with permission.
There are few people who have worn more hats in the Broadway industry than Cody Wiliams. He has performed in some of the biggest musicals of the modern era, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, On the Town and Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella, among others. A few years ago, he left the stage to take on producing duties for NY1’s successful theater program On Stage, and now he is director and executive producer of the new PBS documentary Great Performances — Reopening: Broadway Revival, which premiered earlier this week and encores tonight, Jan. 21 at 10 p.m.
In the new film, Williams documents the topsy-turvy New York theater world as it came back to life following an 18-month closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He is there for opening night in September when musicals like Wicked and Hamilton raised the curtain once again before an excited, masked crowd. He was also there when Aladdin needed to shut down temporarily due to an outbreak. He charted the ups and downs of this bittersweet time, and along the way he was able to talk with recent Tony winner Adrienne Warren (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical), recent Tony winner Aaron Tveit (Moulin Rouge), Tony and Emmy nominee Sara Bareilles (Waitress) and Michael James Scott (Aladdin). Add in Chita Rivera, Alexandra Billings, Elizabeth Stanley, Kristin Chenoweth, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Norm Lewis for good measure. Williams had seemingly endless access to the Broadway family.
Alongside Williams every step of the way was Frank DiLella, host of the new documentary and also Spectrum News NY1’s On Stage. The two have had a long working relationship that dates back to Williams’ time on the Broadway stage.
“Long story short, I went to school for musical theater,” Williams said in a recent phone interview. “I was very lucky and started working professionally my first day in New York. I did Broadway shows for the better part of a decade, and in the middle of that, before everyone was making YouTube videos, made a YouTube mockumentary. And it kind of went viral, so I started producing these mockumentaries for fun. One of them starred Frank DiLella, who is this reporter at NY1 at the time, and about five years ago, Frank and I were hanging out. He told me that they were going to make him the anchor of On Stage, NY1’s theater show, and they wanted to revamp the show, move it from a talk show to a magazine program. So they needed to hire someone who can produce who also knew Broadway. He asked me if I wanted to do it, so I started producing NY1’s theater show On Stage about five years ago.”
When the pandemic hit in March 2020, Williams found himself facing an uncertain future. He was producing a show about live theater at a time when live theater was essentially not happening, at least not in the traditional sense. The team decided to cautiously move forward and produce a new episode every three weeks, but they needed to find stories that were outside the mainstream.
“In August of 2020, when things were super-dark, we had a really moving experience filming something on these arts workers who were really struggling,” Williams remembered. “We looked at a ton of different people. We ended up at a circus that was being performed upstate in the woods. We were like, it would be incredible to see this in a more whole way. If we could actually film this moment as Broadway tries to come back, so we put together a pitch and sent it around to some people.”
In May 2021, they were approached by a Los Angeles company called Studio City/PXL, and eventually PBS signed on board as well. They received the green light in early September 2021 and only had a few days — really only a few hours — to start filming.
“It was kind of a crazy thing because Frank and I, with NY1, did a 90-minute live special about Broadway coming back from the stage of the Majestic Theatre where Phantom is on Sept. 14,” he said. “You may remember that was the night Hamilton, Wicked, The Lion King, Chicago and the show Lackawanna Blues opened, and so at the exact same time that we’re doing this 90-minute live special, I had 15 people, I had three crews running around from various theaters. And so as soon as we finished that special, I ran at the door and literally sprinted up to the Gershwin where Wicked is and joined them, got into the fun, and it was nonstop filming, scripting and editing for about two-and-a-half months. Come Dec. 12 or 13, we gave PBS the cut that aired last night, so it was a whirlwind experience. And it kind of came out of this incredible opportunity that I’ve had with NY1, which was to cover the theater community throughout the pandemic.”
They were able to get so many Broadway performers to open up about the reopening because of Williams and DiLella’s shared experience and connections in the industry.
“We’re very lucky because Frank has covered the theater community for close to 20 years, so he has a great relationship with all of them,” Williams said. “Me being a Broadway performer in my previous life and then doing this with Frank, I know these people in a different sort of way. I first became friends with Adrienne when she was in Bring It On before she was the household name that she’s becoming. I did On the Town with Elizabeth Stanley from Jagged Little Pill. These are people we’ve known for a long time in various capacities, so they were all game.”
That said, getting everyone signed off and cleared to appear in a documentary was tough. Williams said there are numerous unions involved in each theater, from actors to musicians to crews to ushers to the box office staff. They had to navigate those contracts and respect everyone’s time. Then, there are personal press representatives and team members working for the individual shows.
“So you really are walking a tightrope when you’re trying to do this stuff with them,” he said. “The performers all were like, ‘Yes, let’s do it,’ and the shows were all like, ‘We’re excited about this, but we can’t have you giving us COVID.’ So it really was this leaning on people to trust us, to go through unbelievable amounts of COVID testing. We counted up, and Frank and I together in the three-ish months that we did most of our filming for the doc, we did collectively about 120 PCR tests. So it was an exciting experience that was not easy by any means, but it was unbelievably rewarding.”
The Omicron variant of COVID-19 disrupted the theater community in December and early January, forcing some shows to close for good and others to cancel performances. Somehow the industry has pulled through the worst of it — at least that’s the hope — and Williams’ documentary doesn’t shy away from the challenges that lie ahead.
“I knew the last story we were ending with was Aladdin, and the thing with Aladdin was they were the first people to get shut down because of a COVID outbreak in the building,” Williams said. “The version that we had sent to PBS wasn’t all happy-go-lucky. There was a bittersweet moment where there was hope for the future, but it was sad in the moment.”
That summarizes the Broadway community these past turbulent months: sad in the moment, but hopeful for the future — always hopeful.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Great Performances — Reopening: Broadway Revival, directed and executive produced by Cody Williams, is now airing on PBS. An encore presentation is scheduled for Friday, Jan. 21 at 10 p.m. Click here for more information.
