Steven Weber on Replacing Matthew Broderick in The Producers, and the Co Star Who Was Fired Two Weeks In

Steven Weber joins Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes on Dropping Names to tell the story of taking over Leo Bloom from Matthew Broderick in The Producers on Broadway, opposite the acclaimed British actor Henry Goodman, who was abruptly fired about two weeks into the run for wanting to do something other than what Nathan Lane had done. Steven admits he was probably on the bubble himself, that he was doing an imitation of Broderick instead of finding his own Gene Wilder, and that the show was such a juggernaut you could have put two bowls of manure on that stage and the audience would have cheered. He also recalls Mel Brooks giving notes, sitting at the feet of Harvey Korman on Dracula Dead and Loving It with Leslie Nielsen and Amy Yasbeck, and Richard Kind currently grinding through Max Bialystok in London.

There is a lot more here from a career that runs from Wings with Tim Daly and Tony Shalhoub to Chicago Med with Oliver Platt and S. Epatha Merkerson. Steven talks about playing opposite Julianne Moore on As The World Turns when she was winning an Emmy playing her own twin, taking a gay lead in Jeffrey with Patrick Stewart in a pink beret and the moment a New Yorker on Christopher Street yelled Kirk at him, playing a Bajoran on Deep Space Nine, and watching Klingons smoke cigarettes on the Paramount lot. He performs the entire Tchaikovsky patter song from Lady in the Dark from memory, delivers his Burt Lancaster impression, the one that fooled Kevin Pollak into thinking he had found real archive tapes, and reads out the John Simon review that called him too comically homely for The Seagull.

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