Every cast and crew member working on the 2016 tribute and remake of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was a rabidly devoted superfan of the original musical, according to director Kenny Ortega.
“There was a line for every role and job,” says the director. “It just showed the sort of love affair people have with this project.” This included a team of “wonderful triple-threat” actors Ortega praises every chance he gets, as well as a “crew and design team out of Toronto that is the best I’ve worked with in television—all ‘Rocky’ fans! Everywhere we turned, it brought more and more to the party.”
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again,” Fox’s new adaptation of Richard O’Brien and Jim Sharman’s 1973 cult classic musical and 1975 film, revives that party on the small screen Oct. 20—just in time for Halloween. Starring Emmy nominee Laverne Cox (“Orange Is the New Black”) as the twisted transvestite scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter, the TV movie event is the latest example of Ortega’s ability to bring gutsy onscreen musicals to fruition. (He’s also behind the Disney Channel’s “High School Musical” and “Descendants” franchises, among other films and concerts.) Ortega is further qualified thanks to his obsession with the first Los Angeles production of “Rocky Horror.”
“It was this wonderful new energy—this great piece with Tim Curry and all these incredible actors,” he remembers. “I must have seen the show four times.” After working with “Rocky Horror Picture Show” producer Lou Adler on a fundraiser revival timed to the film’s 35th anniversary, Ortega was asked to create something that was part homage, part reimagining.
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“I went back to the original theatrical production for a few things and remembered what inspired me,” he says. In assembling the perfect cast, he wanted actors not to “fill other people’s shoes—to respectfully pay homage but to wear their own shoes. It’s definitely recognizable if you’re familiar with it, but it takes on its own kind of energy and life. It was one of the most joyous experiences of my directing career.
“We looked outside the States; we were open,” Ortega says of that casting process. Filmed entirely in Canada but drawing talent from the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere, the production really began to take shape, he says, when Cox came on board as Frank-N-Furter, a role she’d dreamed of stepping into all her life. “Having her wanting to play the role gave us all the confidence that there was true reason to do a reimagining. She’s like no one I’ve ever worked with before. She’s extraordinary.”
After countless auditions and negotiations, the rest of the cast fell into place: Tony Award winners Ben Vereen and Annaleigh Ashford, Christina Milian, Reeve Carney, and newcomer Staz Nair as Rocky. Best of all, says Ortega, was getting Curry himself involved as the Narrator and Criminologist, particularly after a stroke in 2012 caused the actor to take a leave from the industry. “I went to his home and his pianist was there. They were rehearsing songs for a cabaret show Tim was considering doing. He started singing and I lost it. Like, are you kidding me?”
So what does Ortega look for in his auditions? In short, “an actor who’s going to bring something to the party every day. Somebody who’s bright and has an imagination and is willing to go out on the edge and take the leap with me.”
The bar was certainly set high when Ortega directed 1993’s “Hocus Pocus” and was introduced to a young Leonardo DiCaprio. “We chatted about what he was up to,” he remembers. “I was completely smitten: his energy, his honesty, his presence, his ability to just come into the room and be himself. I was so blown away.
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“It’s those first few minutes where they step into a space where you feel a person has a kind of bravery and sense of themselves. They’re not there to get the part. That’s not the thing at the front of their mind. They come in, they’ve done their work, they look you in the eye, they’re ready, and they deliver and surrender themselves in the moment. That’s what I look for.”
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