Neil Patrick Harris reinvents Hedwig for Broadway revival

“I’ve embraced the glitter,” Neil Patrick Harris tells Good Morning America. “It’s everywhere.”

The actor has taken on the lead role in the Broadway revival of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which opens this month.

In the interview, composer Stephen Trask and creator and originator John Cameron Mitchell call Harris’s transformation “stunning” and say that he has been “reinvented.”

Becoming Hedwig takes Harris two hours, a process that takes place in his dressing room, which he had painted pink in honour of his character. He also reveals that he’s lost 20 pounds to look more feminine for the role.

“I’m becoming like Jared Leto manorexic,” he jokes.

“For me, it’s fun to play Hedwig and start the show with a lot of people kind of quizzically staring at me and thinking it’s for shock value and by the end feeling like they’re united with her,” Harris says. “That’s a really fun journey to get to take.”

Keep Reading

The cover of Perverts

‘Perverts’ shows the cost of sexual self-censorship

Mac Crane’s short-story collection follows queer and trans characters who are both stuck—and free
Sun

Rosalía’s ‘Lux’ tour taught me things I didn’t even know I could know

After years of pining, I finally went to the Catalan superstar’s concert. I wasn’t ready for what it did to me
The protagonists of Blood Lines embracing

The big twist in ‘Blood Lines’ is more than shocking

Gail Maurice’s queer Métis romance takes a massive risk—letting it dig deep into the pain and loss perpetuated by colonial structures
A still from Girls Like Girls

‘Girls Like Girls’ once meant everything to me. I’ve outgrown it

Hayley Kiyoko’s new movie tries to recapture the magic of the mid-2010s music video it’s based on. But time has dulled its revolutionary edge
Advertisement