At 82, Wallace Shawn is as frank and fired-up as ever. The character actor, known for roles in The Princess Bride and Marriage Story, has two hit stage shows running in New York and a summer blockbuster on the way. He's embracing being odd, he says, even if everyone doesn't quite get it.
A Candid Conversation
When asked how he cast his latest stage work, What We Did Before Our Moth Days, Shawn smiles matter-of-factly: “Well, I think that’s secret. I don’t think I’ll tell you.” It’s polite, to the point, and sets a clear boundary. Spending time with Shawn feels like stepping into his own constant sense of wonderment: something midway between a knowing shrug and puzzlement over his immediate situation.
Born in New York and a theater mainstay since the late 60s, Shawn has reached the farthest from his native island through memorable turns in Hollywood hits. After making his first big-screen appearance in Woody Allen’s 1979 film Manhattan, he popped up in cult hits like Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz and Alan J. Pakula’s Starting Over before indelible leading turns in My Dinner with Andre and Vanya on 42nd Street, both co-written with longtime collaborator André Gregory.
Pushing Limits
Shawn has been pushing himself to the limit this spring. On the two nights a week that Moth Days is not in performance, he has been restaging his blistering 1990 monologue, The Fever. He performed that solo two nights before we met, entering to valedictorian applause and asking for sympathy should he need to consult the script. He didn't end up needing it, and its indictment of capitalism and moral decay poured out of him like lava for two hours. “That’s a physical feat which is at the absolute limit of my ability,” he says.
Outside his collaborations with Gregory, Shawn feels disappointment that his ability to excel at avuncular, comic relief types in Clueless or Gossip Girl has not led to more dynamic parts. “Obviously, a lot of people don’t think I can act because otherwise they’d give me different parts,” he says. “I’m clearly not highly respected as an actor by a lot of people, even if I’ve been sitting here for many decades, totally available.”
Financial Realization
Shawn’s own financial situation was more or less solved in his late 30s. “I began to understand that I could make money by being a funny actor,” he says. “I was quite delighted to find that, even though my [stage] writing was not appealing to a large number of people, my acting apparently could be.” This realization spared him from having to water down his writing, leading to 17 singular stage works to date.
Moth Days, his latest, is a poignant yet darkly satirical study of one upper-crust family’s attempt to come to terms with grief. Performed by Hope Davis, Maria Dizzia, John Early, and Josh Hamilton, the play features four intellectuals detailing the ways a father’s affair influenced their lives. Shawn’s own father, William, was editor-in-chief of the New Yorker for over three decades and had a semi-public affair with one of its writers.
Politics and Activism
Shawn is a longtime member of the leftwing, anti-Zionist organization Jewish Voice for Peace. He designed The Fever’s time and place to be intentionally “vague and abstract,” but its rebel militias and warm climates evoke the mid-century destabilization of Central America. He was shocked when Columbia University penalized its students for peaceful protests against the school’s ties to Israel. “Instead of defending these students, these academic institutions have given in to their donors and into the evil administration of Trump,” Shawn says.
Has his open support of Palestine cost him opportunities? He demurs, saying: “I don’t know any people who are enthusiastic supporters of the genocide in Gaza. I know a couple who would rather not think about it, but I don’t hang out with people who would be defending that.”
Looking Ahead
Once Moth Days wraps, it’s back to his particular duality: a voice role in Toy Story 5 then portraying the visionary 60s architect Buckminster Fuller in the forthcoming drama The Man Who Changed the World. The few around him with whom he doesn’t see eye-to-eye, he quips, “either they secretly know I’m right, or they like me personally and they’re capable of making the adjustments that ‘Wally is odd and that’s how he is’.”
What We Did Before Our Moth Days and The Fever are at Greenwich House Theater, New York, until 24 May.
