When Alec Baldwin returned to Broadway in 2013 with Lyle Kessler’s three-hander Orphans, he clashed with co-star Shia LaBeouf in rehearsals (eventually leading to LaBeouf’s dismissal from the production). The very public back-and-forth between Baldwin and LaBeouf is a reason why Baldwin won’t make another Broadway return… at all.
When asked on the red carpet at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts 50th Anniversary Gala if there was anything that would get him back to Broadway, Baldwin quickly responded, “No!”
“I did Orphans,” he said, “and that killed my Broadway enthusiasm. [I’d do] Off-Broadway, but not Broadway.”
Baldwin, a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, was the host for the April 5 gala. The actor offered to quit Orphans after his clash with LaBeouf, but instead LaBeouf was replaced with actor Ben Foster.
Although a Broadway return is unlikely for Baldwin, he is an advocate for education in the arts.
“I think a general education is imperative for people who become actors,” he said, “because I just feel like you can’t play parts… No one wants you to play the lawyer or the doctor or the judge or the prosecutor—an intelligent character—unless you have some education. And, I always tell people, ‘Go to school and study drama.’ Take your dramatic acting courses, and take your studio acting courses, but major in something else as well or minor in literature and read all the books you can.
“The condition of undergraduate students at Tisch is the same for students everywhere, which is when you leave here, you’ll never have as much time to read as you once had. It’s painful. I always tell people, ‘My God, the time I [spend] reading.’ I’m up to 1 o’clock in the morning; my wife is like, ‘Go to bed!’ That’s the only time I have, but I think that people need to have that kind of well-rounded liberal arts education.”
