'Fosse/Verdon' dances through Broadway legends' entanglements ...

PASADENA, Calif. — He was the infamous choreographer and she was his interpreter, but the relationship between Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon was much more than that.
Married and the parents of a daughter, the pair set records with musicals like “Sweet Charity,” “Chicago” and “Damn Yankees.” And although they separated, they never divorced. Their love story is the subject of FX’s new eight-part series, “Fosse/Verdon,” premiering April 9.
The producers enjoyed a triple advantage in creating the show: They had Sam Wasson’s book, “Fosse,” the couple’s daughter, Nicole Fosse, now 56, as well as Fosse’s autobiographical movie, “All That Jazz,” to work from.
But Nicole Fosse says the film depicts only a partial truth. “‘All That Jazz’ was his version,” she says. “I mean, he never claimed it to be autobiographical. It’s sort of a bit of a whitewashed, sort of romanticized version of his life.
“I think this really goes much more deeply into what was really going on in his relationships with Gwen and all of the people in his life. And you get eight hours of this, that story. ‘All That Jazz,’ was told in an hour and 45 minutes,” she says.
The series stars Sam Rockwell as Fosse and Michelle Williams as Verdon. Rockwell says Fosse was a tricky role to play. “He’s a very complex guy, Bob. I think that there’s maybe a little bit of narcissism, but it’s also ... I think a very kind man; a very charming man. But I think there was an addictive thing with him. And Gwen was obviously his muse. And Ben Vereen was one of his muses, and Ann Reinking.”
Reinking, also a dancer, was one of the women who supplanted Verdon in Fosse’s affections. “She does become a very major figure. I mean, after Gwen, she was, I think, probably the second most important woman in his life, and lasted the longest of any other of his relationships. So, she’s a major character,” says executive producer Steven Levenson.
In an earlier interview, Reinking described her relationship with Fosse.
“He believed in me,” she said. “And he’s the person I worked with the most. And I had a natural affinity for his work. It was just there. And I adored going to work every day.
“I remember telling my dad, ‘I’m working 14- to 16-hour days, and I don’t care. I can’t wait to get back to work.’ I met him at the audition for ‘Pippin.’ The audition was great. I didn’t know what to expect. He had such a way of relaxing the whole group. There were hundreds and he made people feel very, very at ease,” Reinking recalled.
“He had organized the actual combination that he wanted, and he was very specific. He had a lot of use of isolations, also had pantomime and improv.”
Isolations, she explained, are where the dancer moves only one or two body parts. “Coming from the ballet world, isolations can be very difficult because the ballet dancer moves more as one entity than they do with isolations,” she said.
“I was really concentrating, and the whole room was. It went on forever — a couple of days. I remember saying, ‘Even if I don’t get this, this is the best day I’ve ever had.’”
One of the producers, Joel Fields (“The Americans”), says they were striving for authenticity in this version of the story.
“And having Nicole is an incredible asset because she’s able to share not only the facts as she remembers them, but the emotional experience ... Our goal is to explore a relationship between these two characters and to do it in an authentic way, and we are never looking to whip something up ... It’s been easy to follow what the truth was as we see it and to try to let the drama flow out of that,” he says.
While Fosse was quixotic and a philanderer, Verdon never gave up on him, says Levenson (“Masters of Sex”). “This really becomes the story of this marriage, which never actually ended,” he says.
“Bob Fosse actually died in Gwen Verdon’s arms on the way to the opening night of ‘Sweet Charity,’ the revival in Washington, D.C.”
“It was a chance ... to address the narrative of the lone genius and to try to look beyond that and see what’s happening — where your eye is not supposed to go,” says executive producer Thomas Kail, who directed “Hamilton” on Broadway.
“And it felt like this was a couple, it was certainly maybe the most crystallized example of that kind of collaboration of a woman who, in her prime, was the greatest dancer of her generation, of a young man who wanted to be Fred Astaire, and then was not allowed to be Fred Astaire. And he found her. They found each other. And watching that partnership evolve as he started to accelerate, as she had to find a different way to grapple with something that I think is very human, what the dancer does often grapple with, which is, who are you when you can’t do the thing that defined you?
“So the dancer dies twice. They die when they stop dancing, and they die when they die. And that was something that felt really rich for us to explore.”
Williams didn’t start out to be a dancer, though she performed “Sweet Charity” on the stage. “I danced a little bit as a kid, but not really anything to write home about,” she says.
“And then all of a sudden, the last decade, it just keeps coming up for me ... And it is a place that I have found an unexpected amount of joy, and so I keep wanting to return to it.”
A touch of humor invades British mystery
A lighthearted British mystery amongst the angst-ridden is just what the doctor ordered, says Julian Unthank, who created “Queens of Mystery,” premiering on Acorn.TV next Monday.
“I was speaking to some actresses, and they were talking about the problems of there are few parts to offer women over the age of 40 into a mainstream drama, rather than just being cast as sort of a serial mom, or that sort of thing,” he says.
“So I wanted to write a drama that has three actresses over the age of 40, and not be about being a woman over the age of 40. And that’s how it kind of started,” he says.
The series follows a young detective (Olivia Vinall) burdened with three mystery-writer aunts who insist on helping to solve the crimes she’s working on. They are played by Julie Graham, Siobhan Redmond and Sarah Woodward.
I really wanted to do something bright, more colorful, and something which is sort of a four-quadrant show, that you could watch as a family,” said Unthank. “So a 10-year-old and a 70-year-old can watch the show, can get something out of it. So that was the idea to make something sort of fun.”