In the Envelope: The Actor’s Podcast features in-depth conversations with today’s most noteworthy actors and creators. Join host and senior editor Vinnie Mancuso for this guide to living the creative life from those who are doing it every day.
Ever since her 2017 breakout role as Hannah Baker on Netflix’s harrowing (and controversial) teen drama “13 Reasons Why,” Katherine Langford has been an actor willing to challenge herself. That’s readily apparent in her current project, an 18-week run as Sally Bowles in Rebecca Frecknall’s West End revival of “Cabaret.” Not only is Langford’s take on the iconic character her introduction to the London theater scene, but it also marks her professional stage debut.
On this episode of In the Envelope: The Actor’s Podcast, Langford takes us behind the scenes of her West End adventure. Listen and subscribe to hear the full conversation:
While preparing for “Cabaret,” Langford revisited an old journal entry about a low point in her career.
“I had a workshop in Australia that was hosted by a really, really prolific acting teacher from New York. Every top actor in Australia came to watch this workshop, if they weren’t doing it themselves. I remember…I did the scene, and I bombed. I remember it so vividly—I was like, Oh, my God, this is not good. I was 18, and I’ve bombed in front of literally everyone who’s anyone. Am I supposed to be doing this?
Then, the next day, I called my scene partner and said, ‘I’d love to work on this.’ We workshopped it. I came back in—and I don’t want to say I nailed it, but I came back and did the thing that I know that I can do. This teacher, he said something like, ‘You are going to be an artist, but you need to do XYZ.’ So, if anything, reading that and looking back in those personal journals, the greatest [reminder] for me was: You can do this. It’s scary; it’s challenging. That’s partly why I wanted to do [“Cabaret”]…. [To come] over to London and [open] something on the West End—having that little lesson from the past was really helpful and lovely.”
Her opening night as Sally Bowles was eventful, to say the least.
“Basically, I come up in a tube, like Taylor Swift, from the bottom of the stage. Before I come up, there’s a glass that gets smashed onstage. On the first night that I ever do this, our crew opens the doors, and they put the light on this small, little podium that I’m supposed to get onto with bare feet, and there’s glass. They go, ‘OK, Katherine, there’s glass on the stage. Just cover your eyes when you’re going up and it will be OK.’ I’m like, ‘Cool, cool. Yup.’
I get into this tiny tube, hunched over, knees bent, head ducked with my hands covering my eyes as it’s raining glass, and I’m just hearing the intro [to my song]. That was my opening night, me coming up through the tube with glass pouring in from the sky and all over the floor.”
A quote from the late, great Maggie Smith guides Langford’s choices.
“There’s a great quote…one that I love from Dame Maggie Smith, may she rest in peace: ‘If in doubt, don’t’—which I think is such a beautifully, powerfully freeing mantra to live by. Do what you love, because if you love it, you’re going to do a great job on it. I think a lot of us can get overwhelmed, especially in an industry that is frenetic in energy and in nature. And I think that it’s easy to get overwhelmed. And being overwhelmed, I think, is not always about doing too much; it’s about doing too little of the things that fulfill you. So, my best advice—if anyone wants any advice—is…to just remember to keep living your life. Know that your work is part of you, but it’s not your whole life.”
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.