- 4/22/2025
"Beetlejuice" is in town! Actor/singer, Justin Collette, who stars as the spectral "bio-exorcist" Betelgeuse, stops by the studio to talk about his time at Second City, how musicals are developed, and working with kids on stage in "School of Rock: The Musical" on Broadway.
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00:00the musical beetlejuice is showing at the academy of music right now it's going through june 11th
00:06but i did not know is that this is the first stop on a nationwide tour how about that we get it first
00:11here we finally rank which is fantastic but uh it's going to be going until june of next year
00:15and the gentleman sitting to my left is the title uh he has the title role of this show please
00:22welcome justin collette this morning yeah thank you thank you everybody congratulations on you
00:28the title role of this show that's fantastic that's right that's right they can't cut me no i can't be
00:35cut they're committed yeah yeah they can replace you oh god i never even thought about that oh no
00:42uh that is a that is a beefy role to take on is a big beef boisterous you know over the top other
00:50words that start with b type of role yeah it's every b word for sure and uh it's got to be so
00:55much fun to play it really really is i mean he's just such an unhinged character that gets to go
01:00out and interact with the audience and you can tell them off and people love it i gotta assume that
01:05you have the element because it's so you know whatever you throw into it you can change it from
01:10night to night yeah at your discretion right yeah it keeps it alive and it feels like uh it it uh it
01:17doesn't get boring yeah which is really nice you know you're doing something eight times a week it's
01:20really nice to be able to have the audience believe that something is like bespoke and for sure for them
01:25you know i talk to them so much during the show that they it is that's an issue a lot of times
01:30some people get like worn down if they i mean i i couldn't see like doing inherit the wind
01:34what's inherit the wind like what any dramatic players i mean i love inherit the wind but you
01:41couldn't all this wind will be yours someday my son i watched it i was there on wednesday night i was
01:47there with my daughter and the energy in the crowd was great but uh and i was curious as to uh
01:53what was uh ad libbed and what was improvised and what is in the script because like you do play with
02:00the audience yeah uh quite a bit it's very cool and it's really really cool and really funny stuff
02:06but i was like man i'm like i wonder if that was in the script or if that is just you know so just
02:10curious like do you get to improvise a bunch or no yeah i mean sometimes you have to too when the
02:15audience decides to speak to you directly uh but i honest i don't remember because every show is so
02:20different i don't even know what i did on wednesday so what would what would cause them to speak to you
02:24directly because you're in the audience myself that question every show every single show what is
02:30causing you to speak to me directly right now now sometimes it's fun sometimes they'll cheer at weird
02:34moments or in dc there was like a like a 12 year old boy sitting in the front row that just kept
02:39cheering me on during my last monologue wow i i told them to f off and everybody cheered and it was like
02:44my dream a full dream of mine um yeah no they uh i think they feel by the end of the show that
02:50beetlejuice is like a friend of theirs and they just want to talk to him so badly that act two gets a
02:55little dangerous from people want to interject and give me advice beetlejuice is a malevolent character
03:01ultimately but a little sensitive yes you know what i mean true true yeah i just want someone to look at
03:05me so with the with the movie being as as uh classic as it is now i mean it's you know it's a part of
03:11people quoted and and and you know it was michael keaton just a huge role for him and obviously
03:16they're going to do it again they're making a sequel to it how much of what he did on screen
03:20informs of the the character that you're playing and and maybe some of his style any of it or
03:26did you take it all on your own or to have some nods to what he did oh total nods to what he did yeah
03:31no i wanted to do like a superhero version of beetlejuice where alex brightman who played him on
03:36broadway did such a great original job of making that character kind of his own and i thought going into
03:40this that i wanted to take you know bits and mannerisms from the both of them uh and then
03:44just attack it with the same spirit both of them did which is just you know pure animal instinct
03:50yeah how you react to any situation well i will say uh it was um i mean other than like the the
03:56the outfit that you were wearing i didn't it was all it was all you and your interpretation of the
04:01character oh thank you yeah yeah i find that sometimes i do like little like you know what i mean
04:05like there's like a couple things he says in the movie that like you can't they're so addictive
04:09and such ear candy that you want you just want to do well by the way this this this musical i would
04:14say is r-rated oh okay pg-13 is what it is right yes i'm looking at the marketing person right now pg-13
04:24yeah okay please bring your child yeah well i did i brought my 17 year old i probably would have
04:28brought my 14 year old as well but you know there was that but it was funny man yeah it's honest yeah it's
04:34honest and it's not cruel but you will you'll learn some stuff uh does it follow the storyline
04:40exactly do you guys take some twists and turns with it from the film yeah no it it's uh so beetlejuice
04:45and lydia have a total of like i think 12 minutes of screen time each in the movie like his first scene
04:50isn't until like an hour plus into the film um the movie is more about the maitlands and uh our show
04:56is way more about beetlejuice and lydia it takes more like i think the cartoon vibe of like following
05:01their relationship and what the two of them want to do so uh it really follows lydia's uh story it
05:07follows like the the narrative of the movie exists and is there but we really flesh out a bunch of
05:11different stuff yeah on a stage version you default to the beetlejuice character more than the other
05:15stuff and make more sense yeah totally i mean lydia is such a huge part of the show it really is it's a
05:20really nice like sweet and sour candy where her story is like she's lost her mom and she's going on
05:24this really beautiful journey to figure out how to deal with like death and grief and i think a very
05:28sincere way right and then i pop out and i'm hosting you know like a game show full of skeletons
05:33and speaking of which um lydia is played by this young woman named isabella esther
05:38who like just graduated high school yeah she's a unicorn she is a uh she's a powerhouse she's an
05:45absolute force up there yeah she's an unbelievable person she's very she's very smart very kind very
05:50hard work like if i had that job when i was 19 i would not i don't know how she's doing it it's
05:55it's incredible you mentioned alex brightman and he uh he is a big um movie fan and a big uh um you
06:02know he he likes uh cult movies you are yourself right you're a big horror fan are you not yeah yeah
06:07yeah so so and you do what was i reading my neighbors are dead yeah the podcast i was unfamiliar
06:13with this explain what that is so this is a great podcast i was doing a show in detroit and uh i i went
06:18to the and i did the second city in chicago uh when oh my god like forever ago and then i did a lot of
06:23improv and sketch comedy forever before i fell into this world and someone in that community had
06:28come to see the show in detroit and asked me to be on their show i think it's a great premise the
06:32idea is they uh interview somebody who is on like the periphery of a famous horror movie right get
06:37their point of view on what's going on so i i think for that one i played the guy who's in charge of
06:42the pool at the overlook hotel for the shining you've never been trying to get people to come back and
06:46hang out at my pool despite the horrible stuff that's happened at the hotel that's great still a great
06:51place for your family come down to the pool we got a buffet please uh i wanted to ask you played uh
06:59the lead in school of rock i did on broadway right that's right um and that had to have been a fun one
07:06as well i mean there's so much great music and you are a musician yes yeah yeah yeah i played in a punk
07:11band when i was a teen for a while my first shows were like playing in smoke-filled bars uh so then
07:16doing the winter garden was a fun a fun switch i actually got a teaching degree as like a backup
07:21plan right before i booked that job on broadway and it was easier for me to do that than to get
07:25a real teaching job uh yeah no my co-star was 13 10 year olds actually uh one of the the kids who
07:31played tamika uh went to the show last night and there's actually another kid from school
07:35rock coming to the show tonight it just was such a fun it's gotta be wild like a real teacher would see
07:40yeah you see all these come back yeah i mean we i think we would change like seven or eight of the
07:45kids every like six months so i was there for almost two years so there's like 30 35 of them
07:50that i got to perform on broadway with and now they're like full adults some of them are are like
07:55like famous some of them are going to be like doctors it's just it's it's wild you just feel so
08:00proud proud of my kids it's great source material if you follow the trajectory of michael keaton
08:06is batman in your future at some point oh i can't wait i'm gonna what's let's let's get nuts
08:12i can't believe that's the catchphrase they kept for that flash trailer by the way i thought that
08:18that was more of like a blip we wanted to forget not just like it's showtime i think it became so
08:23so like not mocked maybe perhaps but it was just like that's kind of a weird delivery that
08:29they're sort of acknowledging it in the in the track because even everyone goes i'm i'm batman but
08:34even in the trailer he goes yeah i'm batman i'm about yeah yeah he's so over the the better
08:39catchphrase and then i think straight down the barrel of the camera went let's get nuts like a
08:46dad at a baseball game have you ever had a chance to meet him michael keaton no no michael please
08:51yeah come say hi i you know he's just one of my favorite actors and he nails the beetle juice role
08:57but he's like so subtly funny you know in the mannerisms and um are you are you able to be subtly
09:03funny at a broadway show or a show up on stage because the the way that you deliver comedy on
09:09stage is different than on screen i think so uh yeah i think that because it's beetle juice i get
09:14to do such a range uh so i think some of the stuff that i get to do is like very broad very big very
09:20cheesy like i can hit those musical theater moments but i think it adds to a lot of the
09:24tension when i break and just do something that i would do if i was in like a club performing for 80
09:28people because we're miked so i don't actually have to project like you know i'm in a greek theater
09:345 000 years ago so it does pick up on like little mannerisms and depending on what theater we're
09:40playing like this theater is one of the most gorgeous theaters i've been in in my life but
09:43it's it is amazing it's so tall and you feel like they're surrounding you at all times that it's very
09:48fun to be able to look anywhere i know you're like looking dead in the barrel of someone's eyes
09:52uh there's some songs that are you know entrenched in films and you think of the scene immediately and
09:56obviously there's there's a couple of them you know harry belafonte and uh and beetlejuice in
10:01the film um do they make their way into the musical absolutely okay absolutely yeah yeah
10:06harry belafonte just passed away uh uh such a fantastic artist activist uh yeah his uh his music
10:13is it it just gets an applause break when it comes in the show almost every night yeah those are the
10:19only songs that i actually knew going into it although you know no no there's a song called dead mom
10:22dead mom of course you have a teenage daughter right yeah you know dead mom well no so i so i
10:27have a two of my daughters they love to sing and so my one daughter was in a singing showcase two weeks
10:32ago and one of the girls uh that was performing did dead mom and i had no idea what it was from
10:38and so that was the first time i heard it was some you know like 10 year old girl uh like kelly
10:43music in havertown i was like okay and then so when i got to hear isabella sing it uh it was i mean
10:49it just blows your socks off yeah the thing about the music in this show that i think is very cool
10:54is i haven't seen a lot of musicals where they kind of tailor the genre of the song to the character
10:59who's singing it so isabella's songs like lydia's songs are kind of like like punk rock musical theater
11:04like it's like it opens with a chugging palm muting chord that goes it's it's so cool all my stuff is
11:10just stream of consciousness chaos all right the maitlands who play like the straight characters i'd say
11:15would have like more classical musical theater numbers that are just like straight like rogers and
11:19hammerstein stuff it's it's really kind of it's exciting and the genre doesn't get boring so we
11:24have we have a friend who uh who uh works on broadway justin guarini uh who's from philadelphia
11:29and he's doing uh once upon and one more time is his show right now and he said he they've been
11:33working on that show for like years six seven years or something like that normal yeah that's
11:39what he was telling us it's insanity i was just talking to our uh director alex timbers about this
11:46the other day about how long a development process uh takes in this and there's just you know you'll
11:50do like a reading and then you'll meet with all the producers and be like i think that was great
11:54let's do it they're like yeah exactly we'll do a second reading yeah six months everybody available
11:58and everyone's like no yeah all right so like it takes forever to get all these people that show corn
12:04they were saying took 10 years a decade that they had been working on it and now it's a huge hit they
12:09started working on beetlejuice in 2010 wow and you had so so you take something that's starting
12:14from scratch you had a source material yeah and that's with a movie right that's amazing yeah when
12:21they go just absolutely from the page to the stage without a you know uh refracting through something
12:26else unless you're andrew lloyd weber who he got school of rock up in nine months wow geez where he
12:33just walked in like two months into rehearsal and was like guess what's happening in november so so if
12:37you're an actor if you're a stage actor and you go and you you start going through this audition
12:41process how can you focus on one thing when you don't know if it will be around in five years or
12:47not you know what i mean oh this job isn't secure this is not a normal job no you just like you hope
12:54that some of your stuff gets picked up and some stuff that you don't i mean i i auditioned for this
12:59for like 10 months wow wow yeah it's like you even get to a point where you're like i don't even know
13:05if i want this thing anymore every single day of my life look in the mirror when i get to work
13:12well i'll ask you a technical question you mentioned being miked so how many is so you have 11 people
13:19on stage everyone has a separate mic oh yeah okay so you know what's really complicated too is they're
13:24area labs so they they take up everything that's around your your your face like they're hanging in
13:29front i mean that's not that's that's a different was right i'm like there but we don't have monitors
13:33because of that because it would give feedback so you're not wearing personal transmitting mics
13:37they're covered by yeah we have wireless personal oh you are okay like stick through our wigs and
13:42they just kind of hang and you don't you don't have uh in-ear monitors no so wow how do you hear
13:48the music and muscle memory we can hear the music because the music gets pumped back in us but you
13:52can't hear what's coming uh out of each singer individually not really it's got to be a nightmare
13:58yeah okay so wait you answered a question i had for uh you were wearing a wig that whole time
14:03because at one point that's not my natural hair well no i'll reveal it here on the preston and
14:07steve show i wasn't sure if it was like uh hair sprayed and because at one point your your hair
14:12changes yes and then it changes back and i'm like how do they do that they do that there are a couple of
14:17times where like like you appear on the stand like where the hell did he come from like yeah i'd love
14:22that stuff i mean yeah me too away yeah um i want to ask about the you know being professional actor
14:28and you're talking about how long it takes for a production to get on stage and i think i uh heard
14:34about this with like dear evan hansen when they change the evan hansen parts out that like you get
14:39like one rehearsal with the cast and that's it is that what was it yeah that's it right yeah i mean i
14:45was uh so i i'm the first person to play beetlejuice on this tour so i had a full rehearsal process we were
14:51in new york for a few weeks and then we uh put the show up in paducah kentucky paducah is actually
14:56very nice spot uh and but for school of rock i rehearsed across the street from winter garden for
15:01three weeks and then if they want to put you on stage they got to pay like 12 unions to get you
15:06like through the front door of that building so they don't do it until the very last day so the day
15:11that i made my debut i get what's called like a put-in where you get to do the show once uh and not
15:16everybody's always in costume all the house lights are on oh you don't get all the stuff they only
15:21want to pay like half the like it's all the critical unions like that make like trap doors work and
15:25stuff but you get to walk through it once once before you go on stage oh wow yeah and i stopped
15:31the show three times in the rehearsal i couldn't get my shoes on i almost broke brandon niederauer who's
15:37one of the greatest guitar players on planet earth i almost i almost broke his arm wow i was supposed to
15:44throw him in one of these scenes and he was like hey throw me a little harder justin i was like no
15:47problem i flipped this kid all the producers lose it the director's laughing because he knows the kid
15:52told me to throw him hard i was just like losing my mind something's got to go wrong in every single
15:57show i would think with so many moving parts i mean and and i'm talking about something obvious or
16:02glaring but there's got to be some little mess ups that happen in almost every single show i were sure
16:08for sure one of my favorite ones that stopped the show was when we first opened in san francisco we
16:12have fog for this netherworld scene and the frog fog machines broke and they flooded the whole stage
16:18and like you could not see through this mist and so it's in this netherworld scene where there's all
16:25this big it's like the biggest dance number in the show so all these dancers are dancing in the mist
16:30and then all you see is like a miss argentina poke her little head above all the mist and then get
16:35dropped down so we had to stop the show and that we had that night we had like a particularly insane
16:39crowd and then one of the stagehands had to go out with a giant fan to try to blow all the smoke
16:46off the stage just this like amazing like teamster head of props walked out with a fan and he got the
16:51biggest applause of the entire show into my dressing room after he's like hey they like me a little more
16:56than you uh it's justin colette if you're just tuning in and he stars as beetlejuice which is at
17:04the academy of music uh now through june 11th and uh and then it moves on and you so this is the
17:10beginning this is this is the full uh national tour and you're you're in this for the whole year right
17:15i'm in this for a whole year wow yeah do you get breaks uh between cities from time to time where you
17:20can or is it just one to another uh it's mostly just i mean our day off is technically monday but
17:25it's a travel day and honestly it's the day i hate the most oh really it's the way yeah you got to
17:28like pack up your stuff yeah into a car get to an airport or drive somewhere yeah like your it's
17:34horrible are you like an organized uh like most of my bags i've all my stuff is in bags sorry
17:43what were you saying no no because you're constantly moving so like you'd think you think
17:48i'd sit down one day and be like let's get this together won't happen i did i i gain more bags
17:55and i just throw them into a car and i drive them around at a certain point that's what happens if
18:00ever you do anything preston was in a rock band i did stand up for a while and if you're yeah you're
18:05just like that dog forget it yeah yeah and i think at some point if i just you know sat down and
18:10got organized and measured stuff and figured it out but i i don't i don't know kathy he needs a
18:15consultant yeah i do want me to i can come pack in packing cubes for you here's your underwear
18:19here's your socks you say packing cubes yeah oh i have packing cubes every time i do laundry they
18:25didn't just get stuffed in the bottom of the suitcase i'm like whatever whatever uh where are you
18:30originally from justin i was born on the east coast of canada oh no kidding new brunswick no one
18:35knows where that is even in canada um but yeah i live there i went to uh i went to college there
18:41and then i moved to chicago for a year uh then lived in anyway yeah toronto when were you doing
18:47second city by the way because i was there in thousand i mean i did i did the conservatory program
18:52there in like 2009 and 2010 and i used to go to a theater called io i think it's called improv
18:57olympic now or no it was backwards she got sued for calling it improv they changed it to
19:02olympic improv yeah it was when it was across the street from uh wrigley field and it was amazing i
19:07got to like um when i was there like ad bryant nicely strong jordan klepper like a bunch of just
19:12incredible like comedians were making their way up that's a good collective it was a really good
19:17collective and you know i got to do i mean i don't know if you feel the alt comedy scene but i got
19:22to work a show called tj and dave every week for a year tj jagodowski and dave pasquese just the best
19:27improviser comedians in the world have you have you ever uh considered making your run at snl or
19:33or anything of that nature they all come from the world of improv yeah all those different troops
19:38it's the only job that has a worse schedule than i do yeah yeah yeah it's true it's very it crushes you
19:44yeah it's where i i started wanting to do that i think i mean that's obviously i think why i went to
19:49second city was i i just liked i i was obsessed with uh i like will farrell like that whole that
19:54whole that whole cast of saturday night live was right right in the sweet spot for me and
19:58um i thought they were so funny and i uh that's what got me into improv and got me into sketch and
20:03doing that and then just the more sketch i did i think i kind of branched out into like writing i was
20:09doing everything right i just i didn't care what what broke i would have taken any job i think is the
20:14real answer to that and you've done writing you've done it for an animated show oh yeah yeah i've
20:17ever written i've written for cartoons uh i've written i was in a sketch comedy group uh up in
20:22canada that we were you know briefly worked with like bruce mcculloch from kids in the home yes
20:26great yeah i mean did you see the new uh the new uh series yeah one of the girls in my sketch group
20:31actually was the the the showrunner for that the head writer for it he picked it right up man they
20:36didn't lose a beat it's so good yeah i was so blown away and they did full frontal nudity
20:40in the first episode yeah there were cops when they were doing that right yeah i gotta see it
20:46i love a couple of nicked cops this is probably a stupid question but the writer's strike doesn't
20:50affect your line of work at all does it well it's not affecting my exact like line of work right now
20:57but i don't know if you've been following there's like a bunch of drama around the tonys
21:00about whether or not they could have right the wga for a while they're gonna do it though right
21:04they're gonna do it in a modified version they're just gonna put them in a bin at the front door
21:07did you deserve this tony there's a bin outside of it some of you have earned them some of them
21:17have not oh so you know broadway yeah i don't they they i vaguely kept an eye on it where they're
21:26saying like screenwriters have or sorry stage writers have stepped in to cover i don't know
21:30if they're in a different i don't know they're working it somehow because there's some shows
21:33that are on and are clearly somebody's writing something but they're getting a pass i don't
21:38know like you know how that's working i think because our show is already written and up it's
21:42like allow anything that was like written before i think is allowed to be produced but nothing can
21:47be written after and then be produced i think that's probably right yeah i think it's how it's
21:50working yeah well listen we want to point people in the direction of the show beetlejuice at the
21:55academy of music it's now through june 11th has the casey boy seal of approval yes yeah thank you
21:59absolutely loved it and you can get tickets at kimmelculturalcampus.org um thanks for coming
22:05in this morning thank you for having me we appreciate it and good luck with everything thank you all right
22:09let's hear it for justin collect guys
22:10you
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