All right, everybody, listen up: Jack Wagner, the veteran entertainer whose very name oozes showbiz hunkdom, is about to make his Broadway debut in Jekyll & Hyde. But don't laugh. This 40-year-old Washington, Missouri, native was hitting the boards long before the roles of Frisco Jones on General Hospital and Dr. Peter Burns on Melrose Place made him a soap icon. And heaven knows the man can sing; he blessed us with the lite-rock smash "All I Need" back in 1984. But did you know that he studied with Stella Adler? Or that he plays golf and likes to hang out with cops? We didn't. TONY met Wagner for beers and buffalo wings at one of his fave haunts to get the lowdown on daytime TV, touring and what happens when Page Six hears you bragging about sex with your wife.
Time Out New York: You're drinking beer. I take it rehearsals are done for the night.
Jack Wagner: Oh, yeah. Although beer is wonderful to open your throat up for singing. The problem is you can't go back on-stage. When I was making music, though, I'd always drink a beer before recording. One beer, man, and I'd sing like a bird.
TONY: Tell me how Jekyll & Hyde came about.
JW: There were a few Broadway-type things in the works, like The Scarlet Pimpernel. They also wanted me to play Scrooge at Madison Square Garden in A Christmas Carol and a couple of other things. But I got a call from Frank [Wildhorn], and I was like, Wow, Jekyll & Hyde. So I flew in and saw the show. But I wasn't really crazy about what I saw.
TONY: Why not?
JW: I just felt that it was missing a few things. But we went through the play piece by piece - what was being said and why this was staged that way. It was basically a week of enlightenment. It reminded me of why I'm doing this, which is to find my juices again. You get real flat in television, you know. In something like this, you have to bring it, man. You have to kick ass.
TONY: You studied with Stella Adler in the '80s. What was it like going between that and General Hospital?
JW: If you had asked me in drama school if I'd ever do a soap opera, I would have laughed at you. But I'll tell you something: Put the DeNiros, the Oliviers, the Hoffmans, the Streeps on a soap opera for six months. Give 'em about 30 pages to memorize a day and tell me how long their bag of tricks lasts. Let's see how many times DeNiro goes, "Are you talkin' to me?" You can do it in one movie every two years, Bobby, but that ain't gonna fly on a daytime show. People will think you have a speech impediment.
TONY: How does Broadway compare with soaps?
JW: It's another world, baby.
TONY: Did you ever party it up the night before a rehearsal, like Woody Harrelson did during The Rainmaker?
JW: No, man. I haven't done that since l982. I was like 20 minutes late. The director said, "Remember one thing in the theater: Never tell a director why you're late, because it doesn't fucking matter." This is the real deal. There are no take twos here.
TONY: Are you more of a Jekyll or a Hyde kind of guy?
JW:That's what I'm really finding interesting about this whole piece - how true to life it is. And it was written in, I don't know, 1915 or something. We all have Jekylls and Hydes. We all have dark sides and funny sexual tendencies, and we all can be good to people and be helping old ladies across the street. I don't go as far as actually killing stuff, but you do find that there's that tell-it-like-it-is side to Edward Hyde. And there's this Dr. Jekyll who has this kind of noble passion for the truth and the good. We all have little twists in us - a little Twisted Sister. [Laughs]
TONY: Where was the strangest place you heard "All I Need" in public?
JW: I was in an airport about three years after "All I Need" had happened, and it was on Muzak - I'm now in the Muzak archives. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
TONY: Probably a good thing. What were your biggest influences musically?
JW: Neil Young. Steely Dan. James Taylor. Crosby, Stills and Nash. I'm very much into that Midwestern Dan Fogelberg-type stuff. Also, I'm really into the Marshall Tucker Band - Southern rock was my thing.
TONY: Your last album came out nine years ago. Ever feel like making another?
JW: Not really. VH1 just did a big Where Are They Now? piece on me. I'm in that category now.
TONY: If VH1 did a Behind the Music on you, what would it uncover?
JW: That the clean-cut teen idol really was kind of a sick degenerate. [Laughs] I had my fun, brother. That's what the road's about. That's what youth is for. I could party all night, and I could do whatever I wanted. Nobody cared whether that guy from the soap opera was drinking beers and hanging' out with a bunch of girls. The tabloids didn't write about me.
TONY: Well, there was something about you In Page Six recently....
JW: Oh, yeah, about rambling in a bar about having sex with my wife.
TONY: And hanging around with guys packing heat. Did that piss you off?
JW: [Leans closer] I'm just happy they heard me talking about my wife. I was just having dinner with a couple of buddies - they were detectives, actually. I haven't been a victim of that very much, because I'm not that big a star. It's not like I'm Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. I don't think many people give a shit about what Jack Wagner is talking about or what I'm drinking or who I'm drinking with. Not right now, anyway.
TONY: Do people recognize you more for General Hospital or Melrose Place?
JW: It's the same. I get a lot of Friscos still. Of course, it's nice when people say, "Hi, Jack." Jack is nice.
Jekyll & Hyde is at the Plymouth Theatre.