Luke Evans and Sam Pinkleton on Reviving The Rocky Horror Show

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0:47This is The Run Through. I'm Marlee Marius, Senior Editor of Features and News. Today I'm joined in the studio by Luke Evans and Sam Pinkleton, the star and director, respectively, of the Rocky Horror Show on Broadway, which has actually just been extended through July 19th. Very exciting due to untamed demand, as the press release said. Untamed. And I was like, honestly, sure. Totally, I see that. Before we really get into it, what are we wearing today? Because let's start with you, Luke. Oh, I'm wearing Todd Snyder. Oh, fab. And some Levi's. Okay, cool. Yeah, I like this jaunty tie. I like this jaunty jacket.

1:23Yeah, I love it. I chose it out of a pile of ties. I love the bit, the paisley, little homage, part of the paisley design. It's just nice, you know, when you're wearing fishnets, jockstrap and corset eight times a week to sort of put clothes on. You can do it all. You can wear it all. It's amazing. And you, Sam, what's the shirt? The shirt is acne. It's acne from the, like, super headquarters in Stockholm. Oh, I love that. And I've never seen it anywhere else, and I love it so much. I love it. It's so good. Did you go to Stockholm to buy it? I did. I mean, I didn't just go to Stockholm to buy a shirt.

1:55No, no, no. If you go to Stockholm and you like clothes, you have to go to the acne. Correct. No, this is fab. Well, okay, congratulations to you both certainly on this show. I went with my mom to the matinee on Sunday, and we had such a good time. It was so fab. It's funny to walk into a show on 3 p.m. on a Sunday, and just sort of be like, what am I in for? And then it being amazing, and you walk out, and it's fab. We stage-doored. There was a whole thing. Incredible. Yeah, my mom is obsessed with doing this. Like, she loves to have everything signed. So we had the whole experience, and it was, yeah, it was so exciting.

2:27So congratulations. Did I sign it? Sure did. You sort of saw your adorable dog. Oh, you had a Lala. You had a Lala. It sure did. Dave's door moment. More on her later. We're going to, like, circle right back to that. But at the time of recording, we are, I think, a week out from opening night. One week. How are we feeling, guys? I'm good. I'm ready. I'm like, every day we finish the show, we spend every afternoon rehearsing for five hours, tweaking, layering, adding nuance, you know, doing all these fun, exciting things. And then we put them in every night. And I go home and I decompress, send Sam about 300 text messages.

3:08And I'm sure he's like closing his eyes in the phone with texts again. Just because I'm present in that moment and talk about the experience and what I think worked. And I love it. And I think you enjoy it too, the process of tech. Of course. Because it's like you still have the license and the freedom to try things and change things up. But if we open tomorrow, I feel very, very good about what we have, where we are at, and how I feel when I walk out on that stage. So that's a nice feeling. How are you feeling? I feel giddy. It's like always with live theater, you could tinker until death. Sure.

3:46And at a certain point, you have to be like, pencils down. And I think with this show especially, I mean, we've had such a good time making it. And we have such deep love, not only for each other, but for the material. Totally. That the experience of previewing it has really just been about getting to know the audience. Yeah. And at a certain point, you have to be like, okay, we have it. Yeah. I definitely, I do obsess about details. I think one of the reasons why we work so well together is because at midnight, we are both very excited to talk about details that only matter to you and I. And it's time.

4:23Like, it's time to just have a show. Totally. And I'm so proud of it. Yeah. That's very exciting. And I mean, I guess maybe we can jump right into that. I mean, everyone sort of has their sort of Rocky Horror origin story, and I'd love for you guys to both kind of talk about how this show kind of first came into your lives. Luke's is better than mine. It's not that great. Firstly, I was brought up as a Jehovah's Witness, so this kind of show would never have been seen on my television at home, or I wouldn't have seen it on screen in the cinema, or definitely wouldn't have been to the theater to watch it.

4:56So I was very late to being introduced to the show, and it was actually when I was in musical theater college, when I was in London, and I was about 19, and we did a showcase, and we were asked to pick a song from a show that was showy and impressed the potential agents in the audience. And I chose Sweet Transvest. I mean, extraordinary how I chose that song because I went on and played Chris in Miss Psychon and all these very macho. It was lurking underneath the whole time. It was just there. I thought maybe this is my last time to do something crazy because in musical theater college, it's a bit like fame.

5:32You can just do what you want and wear your ankle warm and prance around King's Cross and, you know, do that. And I was coming to the end of it. So maybe it was my last hurrah of being free and liberated and do something so sort of against type for me. Sure, yeah. Which is sort of the attraction that drew me to it 35 years later is this immense challenge for me and what people think of me and who I am. But to answer your question, it was when I was 19 years old. Sam? I knew the iconography of Rocky Horror just from being a human being. Like, I knew what it looked like. I knew fishnets. I knew Tim Curry.

6:15I knew. But I don't think I saw it until college. And the thing I remember is feeling rage. Deep rage that I had not seen it sooner. I grew up in a small town in Virginia. And it just was a thing that I think would have been a liberating force for me if I had encountered it when I was 13. That's interesting, yeah. And I felt like I was denied something. In a way, the gift of getting to do this now on Broadway, I've been working on a version of the Rocky Horror Show for like eight years. And so, so much of that work has been just talking to people whose lives have been affected by the Rocky Horror Show.

6:55And so many people have that story. Oh, I saw it when I was 15 and I realized that something else was possible for me. So I think I had a little bit of bitterness that I don't get to have that story. This is the kind of show, and I guess the film is this way too, where like if it found you at the right time, it seems like it really sticks on people's bones. And I wondered sort of, especially being so deep into it now, if you have like, yeah, a better sense or a different sense of like why that is. I think, you know, being a gay man and remembering what it was like to be a gay kid in an environment where I wasn't allowed to express that or even acknowledge it.

7:32if I had been able to have watched or seen just even a snippet of the film or the stage production, I think it would have allowed me to go, okay, well, I'm not exactly like any of these people on that screen, but there's something that they are doing and being fine about and feeling themselves, which would have triggered a massive reaction in me as a young kid if I'd have had that opportunity. So in answer to your question, I think what it has done, and I know this because for the last three and a half weeks, I go out to the stage door every night. I meet 50, 60 people every night. And during that progression from one side of the barrier to the end, I meet people in their 80s down to 14-year-old trans kids saying, like, this show changed my opinion of myself.

8:27I saw something in some character that made me see myself and allowed me to go, I'm not alone. Which is an extraordinary thing. Whether Richard O 'Brien knew this when he wrote it 53 years ago, who knows? I mean, I don't know Richard. I know who he is and I know a lot about him. But the effect it has is profound. And as funny and as silly and as absurd and as ridiculous and hedonistic and batshit crazy the show can be, there's messages that are timeless right and i think that's what i'm hyper aware of every night when i open my mouth and say certain lines that i know have been around for that amount of time half a century and the reaction and you hear gasps in the audience because they're going he's right you know you go wow you know you feel a real responsibility the gravitas of these these lines within this colorful spectrum of crazy there's some really strong timeless words and lines that I think resonate with every generation.

9:29They don't get old. And people feel many things about it. And often those things are in contradiction to each other, which is one of the things that I find to be the most delicious, the most impossible, the most worthwhile about Rocky Horror. It's like, I agree to the dominating narrative for people who have been transformed by Rocky Horror, who have a great affection for Rocky Horror, is some version of I felt seen, I felt embraced, I found my people, I found a way that I could expand. And there's so much nuance within that conversation. And I know nuance is so unpopular in 2026. Like, oh my God, like we can't do complexity.

10:16But it's actually what's so irresistible to me about this And it's the thing that has made me addicted to making it at the scale is the collision of experiences and histories that people bring to it. It's a thing that's really special about doing it on Broadway. It's like for every person who's like, I know every word, there's somebody who's like, what is this? And that is, it's this like incredible, again, impossible and really beautiful thing to say like, it's been this thing for 53 years and this is what it is now. And whatever you're showing up with is perfect. I've never encountered anything.

10:56Actually, that's not true because I was talking to a friend the other day who's writing the new Star Wars. and I was like, it's the same. It's the same. People have their stuff with this thing and we have ours and we're finding new stuff every day. It's wild. That's amazing. And I mean, it's so exciting to think that you are part of the Rocky Horror that's going to be like people's first experience with Rocky Horror, the thing that makes them obsessed with Rocky Horror, that's such a cool thing. It is. No pressure. Totally. I mean, it's a strange thing, isn't it? You know, picking up a piece of work that has lived for so long successfully, has broken records, has been in cinematic release for the world record.

11:39Totally. You know, being in a cinema somewhere in the world every day, every night for 50 years. It's very special. And it's not often you get to do that. You know, original stuff is very exciting to make. When you pick up something that's been around, you don't just pick up the product, you pick up everything that's attached to it. You pick up the legacy and the opinion. Totally. Yeah, totally. The crowd, you know. They're unique in their own way. Luke, this being your first time on Broadway, after having done a lot of work on the West End, I mean, people who work in New York and London sort of all have their kind of observations about the differences between the audiences.

12:13Are you kind of picking up on anything in particular? I mean, yeah. You mean, are you saying like a Broadway audience compared to a West End audience? That's what I'm asking. That's the question. so fortunately i can answer this very clearly because i two years ago i did a play on the west end which was a comedy so i have a very fresh memory of how audiences respond and they're very gracious and they love the show but they're much more contained in a very british way you know even though it's the 21st century but you know there's a certain way british audiences are and then there's a Broadway audience which like it's another planet of energy that I wasn't expecting.

12:59You know, I've watched many, many shows. You know, there's this thing that American audiences do, Broadway audiences do where, you know, every time the actor comes out for the first time in their car, there's a round of applause. Which does not, it started to happen in the UK because everything finally reaches us. But here it's a thing. It's like, yes, you're here. Well done, you know. Yes, we know you. And then they calm down. And of course, I'm playing Dr. Frankenfurter, who has probably like, as far as I can see, the best entrance of any male musical theater leading man could ever have on a stage.

13:32And I have this wonderful moment, you know, which is so iconic in the film. And, you know, when there's this vamp that starts and I would say 85 percent of the audience know what's coming next. and I'm standing behind a shutter and I can hear them starting to scream over my poor actor colleagues' lines because they know he's about to arrive. So funny. That doesn't happen in the UK. It's very, very, it's like I said to you, it feels like I'm doing a rock concert every night in full, you know, Gene Simmons, Freddie Mercury, you know. And I stand there and I mean, And it's a buzz of like nothing else I've ever done.

14:14And this show, you know, has an expectation behind it. You know, the audiences come expecting something, you know. And so all you have to do is deliver it and absorb it and just try and feed off it, which is exactly what I'm trying to do every night. We have a lot of steam we need to let off as a culture. Yeah, possibly. And this is the show to do it. I mean, the latest, well and true. Everybody arrives at the theater having been through it. Truly, and they're ready to let you know that they're enjoying themselves. I mean, I wondered, Sam, this being your second production that you're opening on Broadway as a director, were there kind of less sins from the O'Meara experience that you're applying now, or are these quite different beasts in your experience?

15:01They're totally different. I think they're united by a spirit of just wanting to absolutely delight sick, twisted people. You know, and I mean that. Like, they're mission aligned in, I think, their belief that everyone is deserving of a great night out at the theater that you could only get by putting your pants on and going into a room with strangers and all of the terror and joy that comes with that. O'Mary, however, was intended to exist in a small room for eight weeks with our dumb friends. And then something else happened. Totally, yeah. So it has been a very different experience knowing from the beginning that we would make this on Broadway at Studio 54.

15:48And frankly, nobody knew what O'Mary was. Totally. I was like, what the hell is it? Gay people and Mary Todd Lincoln. And this is like, oh, awesome. You're doing Star Wars. Yes, yes, yes. But I love working on Broadway. It's the second show I've directed, but it's crazily my 10th Broadway show as a something. It is for a thing that is, you know, in many ways for the masses and for hopefully people from all over and from many different experiences. Like, it's just a lot of nice people coming to work every day, trying to solve problems. And Studio 54 especially, and I don't know if this is because of the greatness of Roundabout, who is our producer, or just the ghosts of Studio 54.

16:38Like, it's really felt like making theater in a real way and not in a like, this is a Broadway musical. Like, sponsored by Pepsi. Like, that's not the vibe. So in a way, I think it's linked to O'Meary and frankly other things that I'm the most proud of in that it's just felt like a process with people. Do you agree? I absolutely agree. and I think the marriage of the Rocky Horror Show and this unique space that is Studio 54, it's so poignant to me. I remember when we first spoke and you said, did they tell you where we're doing it? And I was like, no, no. And he's like, Studio 54. And I was like, this just makes so much sense.

17:23Totally. Even though it is a theater, you walk through the stage door and you are literally on the stage. there's no sort of like formal little box with somebody inside getting you to sign it's just like you are there it's it's a it's an intimate space even though there's a thousand plus people in the auditorium you know you walk in and there is an energy there's a the paint may be peeling backstage or or you look up and you think you see something up there and you just think that's not been touched since 1982 you know and it sort of feeds into the history of what we're doing and what we're bringing back to the stage in its original form.

18:01And it just feels very, very special. It feels like the theater is one of the casts in a way. It's not our place of performance. It's one of the, it's part of our show. Sam, this is maybe a slight tangent, but I understand that like you as a high schooler would come into the city and volunteer as an usher at Studio 54. It's true. What do you remember of that experience? Oh, I mean, well, this was the incredible, iconic Sam Mendes production of Cabaret with Alan Cumming. And it was like the most formative experience of theater for me, that production. Yeah. And yeah, I would come up on the weekends and volunteer usher and sit on the stairs in the mezzanine and watch Cabaret.

18:49That's amazing. It's really wild. Wow. But that production was, I don't know, I just had never seen a thing do what it did with musical theater, which up until that point was like a very specific kind of jazz hands thing. I couldn't believe I got to be there. It felt like naughty in a perfect way. And Studio 54 has always been my favorite theater. So yeah, the serendipity is bonkers. That was amazing. Bonkers. I love that. The run-through will be back with more from Luke Evans and Sam Pinkleton.

19:39I did also want to ask about putting this amazing cast together, like this ensemble is unbelievable. And I wondered actually sort of like, which was maybe like the easiest part to cast and which kind of took you on a bit of a journey? It very much, you know, I mentioned I spent a lot of time talking to people who love Rocky and hate Rocky and have feelings about Rocky. And one of the threads through all of it was that Rocky horror has always been this kind of receptacle for folks who you're like, how did they end up here? It's what makes sense about it is that it doesn't make sense. Even when you watch the film, you're like, who are these people and how are they a family?

20:20And that is a thing that I love about casting period and making theater period is putting people together who you wouldn't expect to see together. And that felt really high stakes for Rocky Horror. And so it was thinking about folks from different corners of experience, right? Like from Broadway, yes, but from drag, from like alt performance, from comedy, from film. I also and I hope Luke agrees like I really believe in like kindness and generosity and collaboration being in the front seat when you're making something especially something challenging. And so I had a pretty fierce no assholes policy.

21:00Oh good. And I take that seriously. Yeah. Me too. And I vetted that seriously and I succeeded. You did. I think we can say. You did. Yeah. I just, I think that being like, okay, so there are some people in the room who I know so well, like, you know, Amber Gray or Michaela J. Rodriguez. We've worked together quite a lot. There's people I've admired forever, Mr. Luke Evans. There's people who are a wild card. In some ways, I think the hardest part to cast was actually the phantoms, the ensemble. And our ensemble, the amazing Larkin and Star and Radio and Paul and our amazing swings are such weird shapeshifters.

21:44it's a part of the Rocky Horror Show that can go in a million different directions you know in the film it's like a ton of people in tuxedos and finding folks who were able to really dip into the unknown there because there's it is a kind of undefined piece of it they're incredible they're incredible and they're playful and they're weird and they're different and they host the audience with real generosity which can be really scary sometimes and that was like an old-fashioned casting process. That was 5, 6, 7, 8, like sing the song. We always, me and my collaborators, the choreographer and the music director, like we always stand on the back and look at each other and we're like, we got them right.

22:27We nailed it. I mean, is it? Luke, in the story that Adrian Miller wrote about this show for our April issue, you talked about how when you got the offer to be frank and fertile, you were a bit nervous to tell your parents about this because both of them being devout Jehovah's Witnesses, and you were quite surprised by their reaction. I wonder, I guess, kind of how you understood the way that they kind of like embraced this part for you. Yeah, well, I wasn't nervous to tell them because I've been doing this now for a very long time. They just accept that anything could come out of my mouth about my next job or whatever it may be, and they just sort of, mm-hmm, okay.

23:07And I just let it sit with them, but they happened to be in Lisbon with me and my partner. and I always like to pass something by them because they see the world very differently to me. They live in a terraced house in a very small village in South Wales. They will not move. They're very, very content. Their life on a map would be a dot that just does this. It doesn't move. And they love it. But their world is small. It's not blinkered, but it's small. So it's very interesting to get an opinion from people who see the world like that. And obviously they're also religious. So there's that aspect as well, which all plays into why I'm always fascinated to see what their opinion would be.

23:41But of course, I have to give them the proper explanation of what this show is. They didn't know it. They didn't have any idea of what it was. And I just, well, I've been offered this thing and it's Broadway. And like, oh, Broadway. You've always wanted to do Broadway because I started on the stage, you know. And I explained the show and I said, like, he's an alien who has taken the form of a man but loves to dress in women's clothes. He's a big character. But the show has been around for 50 years. And it's really captured a huge fan base. It's broken these records, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

24:13I don't know what to do. What do you think? Just interested. Whether their final opinion would have swayed my opinion, I don't know. But I always want to hear what they have to say. They said, well, it sounds really special. The way I described it, they realized, yes, you should do it. And so then I chatted to you that night. Yes, my first time. I cried in a parking lot when you told me that story. But I remember you called me and you were like, I've talked to my parents about it. Yeah, they happened to be here. It was so moving. It was moving because it's, and it just says a lot about who my parents are.

24:47You know, they have their beliefs and their life and however small and quaint and content it is, but they were able to look outside their bubble, see my world, and have a very level, calm, excited opinion on what I could potentially be doing next year. And I just thought it was beautiful. And it was a lovely thing to hear that come out of their mouths. I love that. As someone who truly cannot walk in heels at all, like really, really can't, not even a block heel, I would love to know how long it took you to sort of, what sort of the rehearsal process was like in the shoes that you're wearing in this show, and also how physically painful that was.

25:28Well, I mean, it's not easy, as anybody who wears heels will tell you. I came over in December for a fitting. I was here for four days, and the wardrobe design, the costume designer, David Reynoso, and his assistant Matthew, the associate Matthew, gave me a pair of boots to take home. And they were a six-inch stiletto heel boot, just so I could try wearing them. By the way, I was shooting a TV show in Wales back in the UK, and I wore suits through the whole show. So I'd come home at night, take off my clothes, and then put a pair of boots on and make dinner. So I'd trot around. And it changes everything about you, your posture.

26:09the muscles in your legs start to activate, core muscles to stabilize you because you're basically tipping forward the whole time in these heels and they were six inch heels. Anyway, I thought, okay, well, I'm ready to start rehearsals. And then of course, two weeks into rehearsals, I go for a fitting and they show me these seven inch platform boots. Crazy. I'm like, okay, well, this is a whole different, this is a whole different animal, but you learn, you learn. And what I love about them mostly is that I walk very differently out of heels, but as soon as I put them on, and by the way, I'd never worn heels before.

26:46I mean, I tried my mom's on probably when I was a kid. You really fooled us all. Everybody thinks I have this other life that no one's worked out I have. I wear heels all the time, but I don't. But I worked out the trick of where you place your weight, how you can do it sexily, because Frank, you know, he can't work out how to do it. but there's something that happens when you put these boots on to me and I thought I would feel really self-conscious yeah very uncomfortable very nervous and vulnerable and literally none of those things happen when I put them on I felt confident I felt strong I felt powerful yeah I felt tall totally no kidding and it made my shoulders go back yeah I was like wow you know I mean, I wouldn't want to wear them for more than two hours a night.