Josh Malina on the set of Leopoldstadt (2023), which ran on Broadway for a limited engagement and won 4 Tony Awards, including Best Play.
Josh Malina was in high school when he found himself swept away by The Real Thing, a Broadway play written by Tom Stoppard, starring Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close.
At the time, he was already decided on an acting career, but little did he know that some 35 years later he would be cast in one of Stoppard’s highly acclaimed productions, Leopoldstadt.
Winning 4 Tony Awards, including Best Play, Leopoldstadt follows the story of a multi-generational Jewish family living in Vienna during the first half of the 20th century.
“You could say that I’m in the 3rd act of my career...an older guy doing theater again,” notes the 58-year-old who had temporarily moved back to New York from Los Angeles to assume the role of Hermann Mertz, the family patriarch in Leopoldstadt.
A versatile actor who employed his craft in all three mediums – stage, television, cinema – Malina is probably best known for playing Will Bailey on The West Wing, a serial political drama that ran on NBC for 7 seasons from 1999-2006.
But his passion for the stage never left him. “Theater was my first love,” he says in conversation with Rmag.
Less than a year after Leopolstadt ended its limited engagement on Broadway, Malina is heading to London for a new production whose name he is guarding until the full cast is officially announced.
An exciting addition to his bucket list, he also hopes the play will make it to New York at a later date.
The acting life has never been easy, especially for older artists whose careers seem to fade in the rearview mirror with every passing season.
Between gigs, Malina keeps busy with other projects such as co-hosting a weekly podcast, “Unorthodox”, and shooting low budget B-movies when he sees a worthy script.
Malina grew up in New Rochelle, New York, and attended Horace Mann, a private school in the tony Riverdale section of the Bronx.
He honed his skills at camp, in community theaters, and in high school. “I was completely committed to being an actor from a young age.”
He enrolled at Yale where he majored in Theater, overlapping with a number of luminaries such as Jodie Foster and Paul Giamatti.
The younger Giamatti made a memorable impression on Malina when he was first exposed to his talent on the campus production of Glengarry, Glen Ross.
“He was already on another level as an undergraduate playing a role that was much older…he was brilliant.”
After college, he toyed with the idea of going to graduate school but then opted to launch his career in the Big Apple.
Like most stage actors hoping to strike it big in Gotham, Malina tended bar and picked up odd jobs to support himself.
Staying close to the business, he served drinks between curtain calls at the Broadhurst Theatre where Les Miserables was playing.
“Broadway bartending is the lowest possible rung of being a bartender in New York City,” he laughs as he thinks back on that period of his life.
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During one of his dry spells, his mother suggested that he call his cousins who were close friends at Scarsdale High School with Aaron Sorkin, a rising figure in the theater scene.
They were introduced and soon enough, he became a regular at Sorkin’s weekly poker games. When Sorkin invited him to audition for his new play, A Few Good Men, Malina leaped at the chance.
He made his debut in November,1989 and stayed through its 15-month duration on Broadway, upgrading to more important roles in the second half of its running.
More than just a dream job, Malina landed a professional relationship with Sorkin who would later cast him in his growing repertoire of TV and film scores.
“Acting is one of those professions that if you have ANY [emphasis] connections, then you should exploit them fully.”
After the play ran its course, Malina learned another hard lesson in the world of show business – past work doesn’t guaranty future work.
He stuck around New York until the money ran out and in 1992, packed up for Los Angeles where most of his peers were relocating.
In Hollywood, he came under the wing of Sorkin again who put him alongside Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men (1992) and Michael Douglas in The American President (1995). He also appeared next to Clint Eastwood in In the Line of Fire (1993).
On TV, Malina’s first role as a regular was in 1999 on the sitcom, Sports Night (45 episodes), followed by The West Wing (71 episodes), and then the longest series, Scandal (112 episodes).
The biggest challenge of transitioning from stage to film was learning how to interact directly with the camera instead of a live audience.
He learned on the job and has nothing but praise for the A-actors who were supportive of him because “they were already stars and had nothing to prove.”
“Jack Nicholson was the consummate pro,” he remembers. While some actors just step away in a scene when the camera turns on somebody else, Nicholson remained at 100% performance.
Overall, Malina compiled a resume of some 15 film credits and 4 dozen TV shows.
Reflecting on how the industry has evolved in the past 3 decades, he points out that one of the seismic shifts has been the explosion of channels and streaming services.
With wry humor, he says “I’m always trying to figure out, why am I out of work with 500 channels on TV?”
Despite the wide range of available entertainment outlets, including the opportunity to produce personal content, the economics of the game have changed dramatically.
Top Hollywood names are still commanding big pay days with their blockbuster hits, but where a long-running TV series in the past created relative stability for B actors, today it’s down to just 2 or 3 episodes for guest shots on TV.
For this reason and for his love of theater, he’s glad to be back on stage.
“Both my kids are in their 20s, finishing college and graduate school, and I can afford to do theater again,” he chuckles.
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