Josh Gad on Returning to Broadway With Andrew Rannells in ‘Gutenberg! The Musical’

When looking for his first project back on Broadway since starring in The Book of Mormon, Josh Gad knew he would find a show with humor and one that ideally also included his Book of Mormon co-star Andrew Rannells. 

Gad and director Alex Timbers initially discussed doing a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, but dropped the idea after running into issues with the rights. (A revival of Forum, directed by Timbers and starring James Corden, was in the works in 2014, but was postponed when Corden got his talk show.)

And then Timbers sent Gad a copy of Gutenberg! The Musical, which Timbers had previously directed Off-Broadway. It also was designed for more of a limited run, which worked well for Gad, who has a family in L.A. and at the time, had a busy schedule as the voice of Olaf in Frozen, as well as other upcoming acting and voice acting projects. 

The show itself, written by Scott Brown and Anthony King (Beetlejuice) follows two friends, Bud and Doug, who are conducting a backer’s audition for the musical they wrote about Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press. The two know little about Gutenberg and so deviate from their Google research into an imagined version of history that sees the two running around with different baseball caps and character voices to represent all the townspeople. 

When Gad read the script he thought it was “one of the most insane things” he had read, but also found it “refreshingly original.” An informal reading with Gad and Rannells took place in March 2020, “the entire world shut down” four days later and then the script was resurfaced at the end of 2022 and Gad found himself drawn back in. The show is now playing at the James Earl Jones Theatre on Broadway and opens Oct. 12. 

“It was so damn funny, which I knew anything that I did after Mormon had to be as funny as humanly possible. But what was very enticing to me was it had such an enormous heart. I was absolutely blown away by how much you felt for these two clowns by the end of the show and rooted for them,” Gad said. 

The Beauty and the Beast actor spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the timing of the show now, as the writer’s strike ends and a resolution for actors may be on the horizon, figuring out the hat choreography each night and plans for the future. 

It’s been about a decade since you were last on Broadway with The Book of Mormon. Were you trying to get back during that time period or did you want to take that break?

I never imagined I would take such a long break. I had been exploring a number of things over the years, and I would get close to pulling the trigger and then because of my schedule, because of my family, it just never felt right. And the way it worked out is strangely poetic, because this is now the third decade of my adult life I’ve done a Broadway show. I did The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in my 20s. I did Book of Mormon in my 30s, and I’m now doing Gutenberg in my 40s. There’s something I really like about that, because stage is the great equalizer for a performer. You can’t fake it. You go out there, the audience is going to hold you accountable. You don’t get multiple takes. If you forget something they’ll know. And I sort of love having that check in and reminding myself of what it means to work super hard to get that laugh, to keep people engaged for two hours, to have that communal relationship with an audience that is so unique to this form of entertainment. And I really missed that. I missed that engagement.

Given the long lead times for Broadway shows, I’m assuming you didn’t time Gutenberg to take place during the dual strikes, or did you? 

Everybody keeps coming up to me and being like, “Wow, you really picked a good time to go back to Broadway.” I had no idea. Frankly, I thought I was gonna miss a bunch of opportunities, and then it all just worked out this way. But it was surreal to have the timing be what it was.

As a SAG-AFTRA and WGA member, how are you feeling at this current moment? 

I’m feeling very excited, I think like everyone else, that our industry can get back to work. There are so many members of unions that don’t get benefits from this negotiation, whether it’s IATSE or Teamsters, or any of the number of people who work on crews who aren’t writers and actors. And frankly, my heart breaks significantly for them, because they didn’t sign up for this. They’re out of work, as a result of standing in unity with their other guild members. And I’m really happy that those guilds in particular, who again, didn’t get to benefit from any of this, but hopefully will benefit in the future, can get back to work in a meaningful way and we can get back to the business of making things. It’s been really hard and sad on a personal level, not even being able to promote my own work, which I really want to, but it’s impossible as the SAG strike is still ongoing. So I hope that SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP can finish up here, and once I’m done with this, I can go back to my day job.

Does it feel any different being back on Broadway now?

Yeah, it all fucking hurts a lot more. My body definitely is not spry as it was in my early 30s. I wake up every day, I have to do half an hour of stretches, a 45-minute vocal warm up. And you know, it’s definitely harder, but at the end of the day, it’s also that much more rewarding because I now know what I know. And getting to work with somebody as fiercely talented as Rannells, who is like a brother to me. We really just have a shorthand and I know that he’ll always be there for me onstage, and I’ll always be there for him. And when you have each other’s backs like that, it just makes it that much more fun. And I think the audience can smell that. I think that part of the reason you know the show is getting, hopefully the kind of buzz that it’s getting is that people really trust us together and they really like seeing us together. And frankly, that’s authentic. I love being on that stage with Andrew, because I never know when I’m going to crack up in the middle of a show because he’s doing something that’s so out of the norm or brand new in a way that is just so damn funny.

In this show, you and Andrew have to alternate between wearing one of dozens of hats to represent the character you’re playing in the moment. How do you feel about the hats and how do you know which hat to grab when? 

I looked at Andrew [during the reading], and I was like this is gonna be the easiest thing we ever do. We’re at music stands, and it’s just like the two of us being idiots. And then Alex Timbers pulls me aside and says “We should talk about the hats.” I’m like, “What hats?” He says “Well, for each of the characters, you’re going to have to wear hats that represent the character,” and I almost had a heart attack. Because I am among the most uncoordinated people you will ever find on Broadway. I literally got an anxiety attack. I was like, I don’t know how to do this. And to Alex’s credit, he held my hand and everyone was really incredible, including our amazing movement coordinator and choreographer, Nancy Braun. They really handled it with kid gloves and made it as foolproof as possible, so that when I’m on the stage, I feel confident and not scared. Having said that, the other night, we picked up these hats that are connected by a pole and when we did it, it knocked two of the hats off of a stack that I needed for later. And I had a full panic attack, because I’m running into another song, and I have half a second to get those hats and look for the two that were knocked off. 

Another example was, we were doing the show the other night and at the end of the show, we have like ten hats each on. And I slightly leaned over, and as I’m speaking as a character, all of the hats start tumbling off my head. So there’s always an element of “Oh God, what’s going to happen?” that definitely keeps us on our feet.

If this is the Broadway show for your 40s, what’s the show for your 50s?

There are two roles I’ve always wanted to play. One is Pseudolus [from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum], one is Tevye [from Fiddler on the Roof] and who knows if I’ll ever actually do it. But I wasn’t searching for Gutenberg. Gutenberg found me, and I wasn’t searching for Book of Mormon, Book of Mormon found me and I wasn’t searching for Spelling Bee, Spelling Bee found me. So something tells me that whatever my theater future has in store, hopefully this time it won’t be a decade out, I’ll know when the time is right. And it will most likely be unexpected.