ANDY DRACHENBERG: Gregory, you’re widely known for playing President Charles Logan on the hit television series 24. You also received a Tony nomination for your performance in The Kentucky Cyclewhere you played several powerful men. In ENRON, you’re once again the top dog as Enron’s CEO Ken Lay. Was this role an easy transition for you?
GI: No, but mostly because of the medium over anything else. I’ve grown very comfortable in the clothes of Charles Logan and I played him for forty plus episodes, and from the beginning I had a sense of who he was. So the dilemma here was: you get to do it onstage, and, you get to do it on Broadway! There’s a difference between just being onstage and being on Broadway. Was there ease about that? It grew easier, but it’s a scary proposition because you’ve got to go out there and sell the goods. And you’ve got to know it in your head, and doing that in front of a camera is different from doing it on stage.
GI: What you basically think about are the lines, and you find a way to use the lines, and so on. There was a point where all of a sudden just I went “Wait a Minute, this is my company–” as the actor Greg getting into the character Ken Lay– so there was a certain “puffing up,” shall we say, a certain sort of, “I can do no wrong here.” Sort of like how I occasionally felt playing Logan; when I was the President. It’s sort of the same thing with Ken Lay, only it’s a little more proprietary… by that I mean he birthed this company. It was his company. So that sense of ownership was a little different than being elected to President of the United States. It made it easier to play and took some of the doubt out of walking onstage. If I walked out onstage as the guy who owned the company, I just sort of put that whole thing in my back pocket… to try to make that the cornerstone of what I was doing, and then see what happens after that.
AD: It seems like holding positions of power runs in your family – your father was the former mayor of your hometown, Burlington, Wisconsin. Do you think being raised in a family with a political authority figure has influenced your approach to playing those roles?
GI: I didn’t really think about it much, but Lord knows that’s pretty much been my career — playing people in power. Be they CEOs or… I’ve played CIA agents, FBI agents, not many grassroots guys. My dad was a career marine for twenty-four years, so he had that, and it’s a big thing to have. It gave him the thing I was just talking about, in a certain way: pride. Once you’re a marine, you’re a marine. So that sense of who he was carried on into other things. When he came home to Burlington, he was always a man in service, you know? After he retired, he worked at a family business for a little while, and then he started another twenty year career as one of the officers of the Bank of Burlington. He was always a guy in power. He was an alderman, then he was a mayor, and he was a county councilman, and his life was about being a politician, and being in service… So I’m sure that was an object lesson for me.
GI: But I always thought I wanted to play the cop, or the captain of the police department, or this or that. Whatever it is, my wife says there’s a certain “sophistication” about me, and the look of me. It’s not blue collar, it’s more white collar. I end up being cast in those roles because it’s a lot about how you look and carry yourself.
AD: Do you secretly hope and dream of the day when you get to play Joe Schmo? Or do you like all types of roles equally?
GI: You play who you play, and however that falls out. The fathers and those kind of roles don’t come my way very often. I’m usually the guy who’s a little twisted, something along those lines, and I don’t mind.
AD: Unlike other central figures in this story who are serving out their sentences in jail (Jeffrey Skilling and Andy Fastow), Ken Lay has passed on. Do you think this difference has been significant in your experience with ENRON compared to other actors?
GI: I’ve definitely had a different process with this piece because of who we are. I mean, I am the old guy. I’m the father figure, I’m the owner of the company. I’m talked about in various ways … Skilling says Lay is basically the smartest man in the company, or the stupidest mother-F***** in the world. When you look at him in real life, I understand how Lucy [Prebble] got that. He made this company, he hired the people, and turned them loose … and the company became hugely successful! If you look at him he’s a bit “aw shucks-y,” but then you see what he did and you say, “Could he have done this if he was thosethings?” “What’s up with this guy?”
GI: With Enron, you take what’s on the page and you move moment to moment and scene to scene. Sometimes you back off and look at the arc of the character. While this is based on real events that actually did happen, at the same time you have to look at it like a piece of fiction. What are you going after? What’s going on in this scene? What’s being said in this scene? What’s not being said in this scene? There are a number of scenes, as Norbert has said, where you have to decode the language of the scene.
GI: Those kinds of things help you develop your character and find inner strength to do the scenes you do, and a few reviewers have noted he’s a man who seems more interested in the wallpaper on the jet than things in real life. Well that isn’t what’s really going on there, it may look that way to some, but that’s not what it means. Lay is totally aware of what’s going on, but he’s given the power of running this business to these guys, “So take care of it, Dammit!” … and they don’t. So he takes over again. It’s amusing to me.
AD: As a play about a real event – the people, the choices, and the aftermath, has history played a part in how you work on this play? Or, has ENRON the play affected how you look back on history?
GI: I didn’t think about Enron too deeply at that time. I witnessed it, and as an actor thought about the possibility of portraying something … I knew X amount of what went on because I lived in California at the time, so I sort of formed an opinion, and when I was watching the trials and other things, I looked to Skilling, and I said, “I could play this guy.” At the time, I was actually about the right age to play him. I could see there was so much going on in him that was hidden. And that’s the kind of character I like to play.
GI: The way Lucy chose to do Enron was totally new to me. And that’s what is exciting about this piece to me … this story told, and the way it’s told. The reason I took this part in the first place is because this is an ongoing thing, I mean, it’s not “Ooh, look at this;” it’s the event which we are talking about, it’s part of what is going on right now, which is what I think makes it so uncomfortable for audiences. The ending monologue of the piece saying there is “Greed and hope and faith … but the greatest of these is money,” is an indictment of who we are and how we live! It intrigued me, and playing ‘the boss guy’ intrigued me. I’m not saying I knew what the thoughts about it were, so everything was kind of new to me as I went along. But I was delighted by the way Lucy put it all together.
AD: Today, we see an economic recession caused by a similar financial crisis. Corporate scandals have clearly had an impact on our country, and these stories are still very real in people’s lives. Do you think there are other Ken Lays out there, and other Enrons? Do you think history may repeat itself again?
GI: They’re everywhere, but even smarter than that too! Are there Jeff Skillings out there? That is really the question. People who say exactly what it is. The people who say “the system said ‘do this’ and we did it! What’s the problem here?” You know what I mean? They’re myopic. The fact that there were no moral questions asked as they did these things is now looked upon as egregious and terrible.
Gregory Itzin is making triumphant returns to both Broadway, where he was Tony-nominated for The Kentucky Cycle, to star in Enron, and to television on 20th/Fox’s 24, where he scored an Emmy nomination for his multifaceted portrayal of President Charles Logan. “I am lucky that I have remained employed, being able to work on stage, on film and with a microphone doing books,” Itzin says modestly. Well, with awards and kudos being heaped on him, most would agree what Itzin has are skill, talent and chops. As Enron honcho Ken Lay and as the disgraced former leader of the free world, Itzin shows the many levels of flawed leaders in his performances. “They are complex doers, prime movers. It’s interesting to find their initial motivating wound that drives them to be top dog and justifies their actions,” muses Itzin, “and they are far more interesting than your run of the mill characters.”
On returning to Broadway in Enron, Itzin states, “It’s a very exciting and innovative piece with a critically acclaimed director. On stage, you’ve got to do it right the first time, every time and that only increases the anxiety/excitement level, it’s challenging and dangerous and actors need to scare themselves regularly.” He describes coming back to 24 as “coming home, that’s a rare feeling in this business but everybody was so happy to have me back and they made it apparent, and the quality of the show is so high, it’s a privilege to show up for work.”
“I guess the apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” Gregory Itzin says, smiling, on his penchant for playing princes, politicians and leaders. “My dad was a 24-year career Marine who retired and moved us all to his hometown of Burlington, Wisconsin.” Once there, during another 20-year career in banking, Itzin’s father pursued a parallel path of public service as Alderman, then Mayor and later a County Board of Supervisors member. During a successful 33-year career on stage, screen and television, including Emmy, Tony and Drama Desk nominations and numerous other acting awards, Itzin has made a career of playing FBI and CIA agents, attorneys, District Attorneys, Mayors, Governors and the Attorney General. It seems inevitable he would play both the President of the United States and the President of the most successful-on-paper-only US business now known as the universal symbol for flameout and disgrace.
After performing in dinner theatre and several Illinois venues, Itzin realized, “I wanted to be a classically trained actor.” He was accepted into the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco and found his niche. After two years as a student, he was accepted into the professional acting company and taught in the Young Conservatory and evening extension as well. In 1977, Itzin moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. Itzin met his future bride, Judie Goldman (“the best thing that ever happened to me”), when she came to visit a friend at a backer’s audition in which he was performing. Two children and 30 years later, things seem to be working out. His first notable theatrical venture in Los Angeles was a production of Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come!for which Itzin garnered a Drama-Logue Award and an L.A. Drama Critics Circle nomination. His favorite theatrical roles include the title role in Richard II, Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Clov in Endgame, his work in the Pulitzer Prize winning The Kentucky Cycle, and his award-winning performances in The Homecoming, The Birthday Party and Waiting for Godot.
He has made his living as an in-demand actor for many years, on over 140 television shows with multiple and recurring roles on LA Law, Star Trek, Picket Fences, The Practice and Boston Legal. Itzin was a series regular on The Nutt House, with Harvey Korman and Cloris Leachman, Something Wilder with Gene Wilder, Murder One with Anthony LaPaglia and his favorite pre-24 role, as a Russian videographer/porn producer with Russian mafia ties on Comedy Central’s Strip Mall. His movie credits began with Airplane and include The Fabulous Baker Boys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Original Sin and most recently, Law Abiding Citizen. He’s had the pleasure of working with Angelina Jolie and Meryl Streep.
In December 2004, Itzin was offered the role of President Charles Logan on 24 without an audition. Working on 24 is “the best experience I’ve ever had in this business,” crows Itzin. After Logan was stabbed by his on-screen wife, Jean Smart, Itzin left 24 to star in Donald Margulies’ tour-de-force stage production of Shipwrecked where he received glowing reviews. Next came a recurring role as Agent Virgil Minnelli, “a crusty but benign agency chief” on The Mentalist for two seasons and just as that role came to an end, Itzin received the devastating news of his father’s passing and then the offer to return to 24. “A final gift from my father,” notes Itzin.
In his free time, Itzin enjoys golf, writing poetry and teaching acting and Shakespeare when the opportunity presents itself. Some people are born leaders and destined for a life of public service, others get to portray them on the stage and screen.