May 16, 2012 Harvey,Interviews Comments (1) Connie
Beloved for playing a quirky social outsider on TV’s “The Big Bang Theory,” Jim Parsons talks about his passion for the stage as he begins crafting the equally odd misfit Elwood P. Dowd in Broadway’s Harvey.
Jim Parsons has two TV Emmys, but deep inside he’s a man of the theatre.
“Theatre was my first love,” Parsons says. “I can’t take the theatre out of me. And I wouldn’t want to. To me it’s home. For an actor — maybe not all actors, but for the type I feel I am and the type I want to be — there’s not a better place to hone what it is you do.”
Parsons won the 2010 and 2011 Emmys for Best Actor in a Comedy Series by portraying theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper on “The Big Bang Theory.” Now, on summer break from CBS, he is again romancing his first love, starring on Broadway in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of Harvey. He’s playing Elwood P. Dowd, an otherwise ordinary man who says he has an invisible friend named Harvey — a pooka, or mythological creature, who resembles a 6-foot-3-½-inch-tall rabbit.
Mary Chase’s classic 1944 comedy won the Pulitzer Prize and lasted 1,775 performances, making it the sixth-longest-running play in Broadway history. Antoinette Perry, for whom the Tonys are named, directed; Frank Fay was the first Dowd. Jimmy Stewart portrayed Dowd in the 1950 movie. Parsons’ co-stars are Jessica Hecht and Charles Kimbrough; Scott Ellis directs.
Parsons, 39, grew up in Houston and made his stage debut in school at age six as the Kola-Kola bird in The Elephant’s Child. He was hooked on theatre.
• THE BIG BANG THEORY
• THE NORMAL HEART
• THE MUPPETS
• THE BIG YEAR
• HARVEY
