John Benjamin Hickey's Tumultuous Year – A Starring Film Role, Acting & Directing on Broadway & COVID-19

Eytan Fox's powerful new film "Sublet" was to have its World Premiere at this year's Tribeca Film Festival (the filmmaker's 4th time at Tribeca). The Fest was postponed, but some selections were made available to press. This is Fox's first feature in seven years, and as with most of his films he delves into timely and potent queer themes.

"Sublet" examines a few days in the life of Michael (John Benjamin Hickey), a New York Times writer who travels to Tel Aviv to write a piece on the city's hot spots. Michael sublets an apartment from Tomer (Niv Nissim), a young, somewhat arrogant film student, and finds himself fascinated with both the young man and the locale. Along the way, a poignant bond is created that helps both characters move forward with their lives. Fox insightfully examines intergenerational themes in this moving work, and Hickey delivers a rich and nuanced performance worthy of awards attention.

It's no surprise that the ubiquitous thespian impresses onscreen. In the last three decades he's been seen in numerous films, including "The Ice Storm," "Flags of Our Fathers," "Pitch Perfect," and "Mapplethorpe," to name a few. But this is one of his few starring roles. On TV his credits are numerous, and include his Emmy-nominated work on "The Big C" opposite Laura Linney.

On Broadway he originated the role of Arthur Pape in Terrence McNally's "Love! Valour! Compassion!," starred as Clifford (the Isherwood character) in Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall's masterful reworking of "Cabaret" opposite Natasha Richardson, won a Tony for the 2011 revival of "The Normal Heart," and, most recently, portrayed Henry Wilcox in Matthew Lopez's ambitious gay epic, "The Inheritance," which transferred from London's West End.

Prior to the mid-March shutdown he was making his Broadway directorial debut with the revival of Neil Simon's "Plaza Suite," starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick. The day of the invited dress rehearsal he received word about the theatre closings and tested for the novel coronavirus (it would come back positive). Over the next few weeks Hickey would battle for his health, alone in his NYC apartment.

EDGE spoke with Hickey about "Sublet," "The Inheritance," and the startling revelation that he fell ill after testing positive for COVID-19.

An Inchoate Sadness

EDGE: How did the "Sublet" script come your way?

John Benjamin Hickey: Eytan Fox contacted me through an agent of mine. This was four years ago. I was doing a play at Lincoln Center called "Dada Woof Papa Hot," a Peter Parnell play which had a couple of the same themes, this middle age existential malaise of the gay man who made it through all that... he made it through, and finds himself feeling very... normal – wondering what it means to be gay anymore... Eytan contacted me and said, "I've written this script and I wrote it with you in mind."

I jumped at the opportunity, because I had already seen Eytan's movies: "Yossi and Jagger," "Yossi," "Cupcakes." I love his movies. I think, in many ways, he's the Israeli Almodovar... And then I read the script, and just thought it told such a beautiful and profound story about middle age and grief and loneliness and the generational difference between a gay man of a certain age and a gay man of a younger age... So I said I'd love to do it.

EDGE: The film presents a generational dialogue with how queer men of differing ages regard sex and monogamy.

John Benjamin Hickey: And it does it in a way without overstating it. There's a very obvious reason why Michael is grieving and his heart is broken – but there's also an inchoate sadness in him that I think is endemic, is part of the DNA of our culture, which generally worships the young and the body-beautiful and all of that. And for Eytan to meditate on what it means to get to a certain age and look at somebody who has it all ahead of him, and the sadness that that can make a person feel.

EDGE: With gay men, when they reach a certain age, it often feels they've aged out, that they're a lot older than other men.

John Benjamin Hickey: Exactly! I guess it happens in the straight world, too, but it's a very specific feeling in our world where you kind of age out of being that thing, and suddenly you're "daddy." And not just "daddy" figuratively, but you're literally going to be a dad, too! There are so many things that we are afforded in middle age now that the generation before wasn't. The generation before Michael's – his character lived through the epidemic – but it was men five to ten years older than him that were dying. In great numbers. He feels like a real survivor.

Playing Queer Roles

EDGE: In "The Inheritance," a major theme explored is how the idea of having a family and children was never even a thought for the older gen. Today's gen can have it all, but some feel our identities as gay men are being stripped away – hetero-ized.

John Benjamin Hickey: It's so interesting, especially with what we're going through right now, isn't it? The fact that suddenly we're in the midst of another epidemic, another pandemic, another plague, which, of course, AIDS was all of those things. I came to New York in 1983 and I had seen two things on the cover of Time magazine that stayed with me when I was still living in a small town in Texas. One was Madonna; she had a huge influence on me. And the other was the AIDS epidemic...

I came to New York in 1983, scared. And it might have saved me... I can't really say for sure, but I came with this fear, and it took me a long time to come out as a result of that... I feel like my generation – those who made it – are so fortunate to be faced with this kind of existential malaise or this identity crisis of who are we now. When we just have to adapt. And what a wonderful thing that we're conventional. And hopefully, those of us who are not conventional, who are queer as we can possibly be, can stay that way... there's something kind of wonderful about being considered, what, part of the mainstream.

My partner is executive producer and one of the head writers on "Modern Family" (Jeffrey Richman) – for the entire run – and I think that is an extraordinary example of a gay couple that got folded into the fabric of American life in a way that had no controversy attached to it whatsoever.

EDGE: You're someone who has continued to play queer roles and tell queer stories. Have you felt a responsibility, is it something you just gravitate towards?

John Benjamin Hickey: I'm sorry to say that I never felt a responsibility. I never felt like it was political or that I was doing something that represented me. I really went where the good parts were. I really did want to work with people like Terrence McNally, Joe Mantello, Craig Lucas, Sam Mendes, who's straight. In the world that I was in, there were a lot of gay stories being told and a lot of them were my stories, but I mainly wanted to be an actor who was considered really cool. I was as shallow as that. And if you wanted to be considered one of the cool kids, which I never really was in high school, you busted your ass to be in a Jon Robin Baitz or Terrence McNally or Tony Kushner play. And, later, on a Matthew Lopez play. And those happen to be queer stories... I went where the good work was, and I was lucky enough to get to tell stories that had a personal resonance.

London vs. Broadway?

EDGE: I attended the very last performance of "The Inheritance" in London, which was magic. Can you speak a bit about the London vs. Broadway experience?

John Benjamin Hickey: I loved the experience I had on Broadway... But I will say that in London, that's where we all created it. So the second family that came in in New York were all amazing and equally as brilliant as the young company in London, but that was where it all first started. So all of us had that experience of the very first time in the rehearsal hall, we ran through the entire thing. And it was about ten hours long. And at the end of it, Vanessa Redgrave had brought champagne for everybody. And we just sat there getting drunk and looking at each other, like, 'What the fuck did we just do?' Nobody had ever experienced anything like it, like getting to live inside of a novel and do it onstage like that.

I don't want to compare London to New York, but they're completely different business models, I'm sorry to say. There's not as much money at stake in the West End, so a thing can be long and uncommercial and still have this really vibrant life. And in New York, if you are not considered commercial... it starts to have a suffocating and enervating effect on the run... Maybe it should have been a shorter run. Maybe it should have gone somewhere else first. Maybe there's a universe in which the London press is saying it was the greatest American play of the 21st century, and then coming to New York and the New York press is thinking, wait a minute, not so fast, we get to do that. There's so many factors that combine...

I am so sorry because I was going to direct "Plaza Suite," and then a day later I was going back into "The Inheritance," and I didn't get to do that. It was a glorious experience on Broadway. In London it was a fabled experience. I think you might have felt that when you saw it.

EDGE: Very much.

John Benjamin Hickey: It's a harsher climate. Broadway. The air is a little bit harder to breathe. And I say that having done a lot of Broadway shows, and Broadway is my first love. But there's something about the fact that you could see "The Inheritance" in the West End for thirty bucks for both plays, if you got a cheap ticket. And the cheapest you could see it on Broadway was $250. That just makes things different... I think history will be very kind to that play, and it will have a long life. It will be intrepid and courageous producers who produce it, but it's such a beautiful story and it will live again. And I hope I'm around to see it.

Living Through COVID-19

EDGE: You were directing "Plaza Suite" when the lockdown began. You were about to have, was it your first preview?

John Benjamin Hickey: It was our invited dress. And it was so extraordinary that day. I wasn't feeling so well. So I was a little freaked out and staying away from everybody... but I left the meeting in which we got shut down and went to my doctor's and got tested and tested positive, and spent the next few weeks very, very sick... I went through it big time. Thank God I was never so sick that I needed to get to a hospital, but I was very, very sick with it... We got to work that morning at 10 a.m., and the actors got into their costumes and I'm watching Sarah Jessica and Matthew brilliantly running through the play one last time before they were in front of an invited audience for the dress that night... and people were whispering in the theatre – so it was a little bit like we were the orchestra on the Titanic just playing valiantly, especially all the actors in the play, valiantly playing their instruments, and we knew that something was coming. God knows we didn't know it was going to last as long as it's appearing to last... they left stuff in their dressing rooms that's still there – it's really crazy. So that was a heartbreak on many levels, because we had done three weeks in Boston and... we sold out every night, people just loving it, so to go from that large a group of people elbow-to-elbow to absolutely nothing is a real heartbreak. But we will hopefully get to do it again.

EDGE: So sorry to hear you were double whammied.

John Benjamin Hickey: Most of my company and cast stayed very well, so thank God I didn't pass it along. Broadway got pretty decimated by it. I have no idea how I picked it up. And six weeks later I'm just kind of getting back to myself. But, my God, when you read the stories about people and their hospital stays and what people are suffering through, I consider myself only fortunate that I got just really sick and nothing worse than that...

EDGE: I have a good friend who had it bad. He lost all sense of smell and taste.

John Benjamin Hickey: Me, too... in some way you start to feel like you're disappearing. It's weird. I've tried to explain it to people. It doesn't resemble anything – there's something when you get the flu or a cold there's something comfortable about the road marks... like, 'I know what this thing is, and I'm just going to ride it out.' That had none of those familiar feelings. It was the feeling like a huge black cloud was on your chest and over your body and the loss of senses! You just felt like you were not there. You were not present... My partner was flying in for the first preview of "Plaza Suite," the day I got tested. My doctor was saying, "Oh, I'm sure you don't have it, but just in case you should tell Jeff to go out to Long Island and not see you." And thank God he did. So I rode it out alone. And I'm kind of glad that I didn't have anybody around, because misery would not have loved company. My superintendent brought food and looked after me, but, boy, it's a hard thing to be so isolated as people are right now.

EDGE: So much is unknown about what the future holds post-corona. And with theatre, in particular, it may be a long time before we can gather again...

John Benjamin Hickey: We don't know when we'll be able to come back to do what we do. The only thing I know for certain is how much we need it. That it does have to come back. It may not be the way we did it before. It may be some kind of normal. But we have to have that kind of conspiracy in that form of art which is the relationship between live human beings onstage and an audience watching... And we need those stories, and we need that kind of connection and that kind of experience. When is another question... but the other thing I'm certain about is that when it comes back it's going to be like the Roaring Twenties!

"Sublet" is currently seeking distribution.