Raúl Esparza

Next month, I am going to New York for my birthday and I'm super excited.

I'm gonna be seeing Raul Esparza in Galileo.

It's his first time back on Broadway in like 15 years or something.

Super excited.

The film stars Max Theriot as Adam Boog, Hellerman, who is one of seven teenagers chosen to die following the anniversary of a serial killer's death.

Denzel Whitaker, Raul Esparza, and Sharika Epps also star.

The film's title comes from a line...

Okay, who cares? My Soul to Take was released by Relativity Media and Universal Pictures on October 8th, 2010.

Yeah.

And, oh my gosh, why am I blanking on his name? Who plays Wilson in that one? Raul Esparza.

Raul Esparza.

Mm-hmm.

I think that there, what he excels at is like, even at his most dastardly, there's still a bit of charm to him that was like, okay, I can fall into this.

And I was very lucky a few years ago.

I was understudying the fabulous Raul Esparza in Oliver at City Center in New York.

And he was playing Fagin.

Yeah.

And so, for me, making a cash recording is about preserving the show, but also, like, leaving a bunch of little mysteries for you to solve.

Because I love listening to, you know, stuff like Sunday in the Park with George, Where I'm just like, you know, before I saw the 1984 video and then I saw Raul Esparza do it while I was in college at the Sondheim celebration at the Kennedy Center, I felt, you know, before I had seen it, I had my own version in my head from the cast recording.

And I was, you know, I had in many ways like a different understanding of how the songs connected and because you don't have the book there to sort of string it together.

But that is part of the fun of a cash recording.

he sells it online.

Raul Esparza sells this, but this is the dumbest fucking thing.

I know.

Yeah.

So, you know.

Have you seen the videos of the new musical Galileo or whatever that Raul Esparza is doing? Oh!

I compared who you were comparing in Hannibal 2 to a different man.

Oh, wow.

But it was also a time before I knew Sondheim as in-depth as I do now, so I didn't know any of the lore behind Roadshow.

I didn't know that it had had... different versions and had been worked around a lot and so so i went with like no expectations i thought it was pretty fun but also at the end i was like oh wait that's that's it like that's how it ends i i didn't really know what to make of it as a whole i still had fun with like specific moments in the show and um that cast was uh raul esparza and brandon uredowitz who i thought were both pretty good but um i mean i have a huge crush on raul esparza yeah

right yeah I mean, that's the version I've seen.

I would love at some point to be able to see an actual production of Roadshow, which, again, I keep saying I know is floating out there somewhere in the ether.

Mm-hmm.

and it sort of forces you almost to consider how much that's true and how much that's like a sort of press angle of it.

And in the vaudeville one, like, I don't know how it was staged, but I can almost see it where Willie is like puppeteering them to say things like that so that he can like make himself seem like a better person of like, yeah, I, I, play fast and loose but everyone is still in love with me so that's great and so i think again in this slightly more naturalistic version with roadshow the fact that people are so like falling over themselves to praise willie is for me it worked because i just love raul esparza as a performer and i was like you know what i would believe that of him But I think if you don't have a performer that you love in that way and that you would believe, it's kind of like, this doesn't really make sense.

And especially when Mama is also like, I prefer my son that will keep me entertained over the son that will keep me housed.

Mm-hmm.

But anyway, what is the teacher doing in this moment? Raul Esparza.

Love him.

[laughs]

So it's like he's kinda powerless in this as well.

But the part that really pissed me off about him is when he shows up at the school, at the classroom because the, they had to cancel the drill 'cause Carrie dropped a TV on someone's foot.

He whispers to Raul Esparza's teacher character, "Which one is she?" And I turn to my wife, who is a principal, and I said, "Which one is she? You have the prayer girl who was on the news, who is attending school for the first time ever.

You are the principal of the school and you don't know which one she is? You didn't meet with Margaret and Carrie, like, in the days leading up to her first day? You didn't assign, like, a student or someone else to, like, help her understand, like, what this process is? W- what, what are, what are we do- like, what are class periods? Like, what is ...

So I'm a little limited and I'm staying on the same track here.

I'm going to go the 2006 Revival of Company with Raul Esparza.

Because I watched it on

KQED.

And I mean, he's great.

Neil Patrick Harris can do no wrong.

But Raul Esparza brought this kind of broody, kind of chewy darkness to Bobby that I really liked.

I just...