Jesse Williams and Patrick J. Adams are taking it all off!
The two stars got candid about their Broadway debut in Take Me Out in an interview with ET.
“Everything debuts, [it’s] not a partial debut,” Jesse joked.
In the show, he plays professional baseball player Darren Lemming, who decides to come out as gay. Patrick plays his teammate, Kippy Sunderstrom, who warns him against doing that.
The show first debuted off-Broadway in 2002, moving to Broadway a year later and eventually winning the Tony Award for Best Play. It includes several nude scenes set inside the team’s locker room.
“This has gotta be the smartest play that involves nudity,” Jesse says.
“there’s something about it, it’s so fully integrated into the play. When I first heard about Take Me Out, and I just heard naked guys in a play, you sort of make assumptions that maybe it’s sort of gratuitous or not necessary. But with this play, it’s so fully integrated into the fabric of really what it’s about: people being stripped bare and getting down to the basics," Patrick said.
It’s kind of great in that way. You feel like you’re servicing such a beautiful play.”
The play was originally written in 2002, before any U.S. professional athlete had come out while still an active player on a major sports team.
“We’re drawing attention to the fact that even though this play is 20 years old, we’re basically still in the same circumstance," Patrick added.