"OZ," HBO's prison drama set in the fictitious Oswald State Correctional Facility, recently celebrated its upcoming final season with a monster wrap party at Broadway's Noche restaurant.
A long way from the Bayonne, N.J. soundstage where the show has shot since it left Manhattan a few years ago, Broadway (both on and off) has long been the home base for more than a few of writer-producer Tom Fontana's raunchy repertory company. He's jokingly dubbed his testosterone-heavy show "Men Acting Badly," but there are no bad actors among such "OZ" regulars as Tony Award winners and nominees Terry Kinney ("The Grapes of Wrath"), B.D. Wong ("M. Butterfly"), Kathryn Erbe ("The Speed of Darkness"), Edward Herrmann ("Mrs. Warren's Profession"), and Charles Busch ("The Tale of the Allergist's Wife"). The show also features myriad theatre stalwarts, including Harold Perrineau ("Blue/Orange"), Tom Mardirosian ("The Butter and Egg Man"), George Morfogen ("Fortune's Fool"), Malachy McCourt ("Translations"), J.K. Simmons ("Guys and Dolls"), Elaine Stritch ("Elaine Stritch at Liberty"), and David Zayas ("Our Lady of 121st Street").
But even within such heady theatrical company, the final "OZ" season includes a very special group comprised of no fewer than five veteran musical-comedy Tony winners. Headed up by Rita Moreno ("The Ritz"), who's played resident nun-therapist, Sister Peter Marie, since episode one, the final eight episodes also feature semi-regular Betty Buckley ("Cats") as Suzanne Fitzgerald, the singer-mother of the O'Reilly boys, plus two new continuing characters: Patti LuPone ("Evita") playing prison librarian, Stella Coffo, and Joel Grey ("Cabaret") as journalist-on-death-row, Lemuel Idzik. Phyllis Newman ("Subways Are for Sleeping") also has a one-shot cameo as a Hillary Clinton-esque senator. Except for Buckley, whose role involves teaching singing as therapy for the inmates, none of the musical-comedy "Tony 5" sings or dances on "OZ."
Back Stage asked Fontana and his longtime casting director Alexa Fogel if they had purposely cast this batch of musical Tony winners against type. "It was completely by accident, but it's not really surprising," they both agree. Fogel, who continues casting "The Wire" (another edgy HBO series), explains, "Tom and I come from theatre, so it's a total kick for us to cast actors in the realm of the unexpected. He'll usually ask an actor, 'What haven't you done yet?'" Often typed in Latin "spitfire" roles during her 50-plus-year career, multi-award-winning Rita Moreno (Tony, Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy) had never played a nun before. "I'm so proud to have been part of the show since its beginning. It's done enormous things for me, especially in the way others see and cast me. I recently played Caroline Novack, a Chanel-wearing 'Dynasty' type, on CBS' 'The Guardian.' My only regret is that there's never been one Emmy nomination for the show, Tom, or any of the actors!"
"I've never been typecast," LuPone tells Back Stage. "And I really wanted to do 'OZ' before it ended, because Tom gives every actor the right to act and the characters he writes always have such real life on stage." She's also been in two of his pilots, but not because she's his cousin. "That's our dirty little secret," Fontana jokes.
He and Buckley worked together on stage 30 years ago and, she recalls, "I ran into Tom at a party and asked if I could pitch him a story idea for me to be on 'OZ.' I suggested the character of Suzanne Fitzgerald and, three months later, I was written into the show." Grey actively pursued his role. "I'm an actor who just happened to do some musicals. I never thought of myself as a singer-dancer. I told Blythe Danner [widow of Fontana's late friend and 'St. Elsewhere' producer, Bruce Paltrow] that I'd like to meet Tom and, when we did, he said, 'I have two characters, one does this and one does that, which interests you more?' I said, 'The one who does that.' All I can say is Lemuel is not one of the good guys." Fontana has nothing but praise for the "Tony 5," saying, "There wasn't a diva in the bunch!"
"For six years and 56 episodes, I've had the fun of writing for a cast of brilliant and talented actors I admire and trust," he continues. "Everyone wants to work with them." Perrineau did the "Matrix" movies while shooting "OZ," and during most of the final spring shoot, LuPone and Morfogen were both on Broadway--she in "Noises Off" and he in "Fortune's Fool." Several "OZ" prisoners and staff members currently appear regularly as defenders of the law on various "Law and Order" spin-offs: Christopher Meloni, Wong, and Simmons on "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit," Erbe on "Law and Order: Criminal Intent." ("Law and Order" producer Dick Wolf was also at the Noche celebration.)
So why end the series now? Fontana sums up, "Unlike 'Homicide,' which was canceled without warning, with 'OZ,' I felt we'd gotten to a point where I could finish everyone's story exactly the way I wanted to."