The Borneo Post (Sabah)

Nicole Fosse opens up about her famous Broadway parents

- By Sarah L. Kaufman

NICOLE Fosse, the daughter of obsessive, trailblazi­ng director and choreograp­her Bob Fosse and Broadway dancer Gwen Verdon, grew up in rehearsal studios and smoke-filled editing rooms. Within those walls, she watched her famous parents reinvent the entertainm­ent industry while their personal lives fell to pieces.

As a producer and creative consultant on the new FX series “Fosse/Verdon,” which stars Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams, Nicole Fosse has had to go through it all over again: the lies, lovers, drugs, breakdowns and the inexorable onrush of death.

“If I didn’t have trouble with some of the moments, either there’s something wrong with me or something wrong with the piece,” Fosse, 56, says of the series, which premieres April 9.

Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon turned putting on a show into an art, a neurosis and a way of life. Nothing got in their way as they created a new theatrical style out of smoke, shadows and sexy, finetuned dancing, in such Broadway musicals as “Sweet Charity,” “Pippin” and “Chicago,” and the films “Cabaret” and the semiautobi­ographical “All That Jazz.”

Nothing stopped them, not Fosse’s pill habit, depression or heart attacks. Not his revolving bedroom door or the collapse of their marriage. (They separated but never divorced, and continued working together.) Artistic partners from the 1950s through the 1980s (Fosse died in 1987, Verdon in 2000), they threw boozy parties, had fascinatin­g friends and cherished their bright, spunky daughter. But candor wasn’t their strength.

“There was so much intellect and humour and love and joy that sometimes it made it more difficult to identify the struggle,” Fosse said by phone from New York. But she has realized this about her childhood: “There was a complete lack of clarity.”

A creative team from the “Hamilton” family came together to address that, to shine a spotlight, over eight episodes, on the couple’s messy, unshakable drive and their frailties. The group includes director Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda as one of the executive producers and choreograp­her Andy Blankenbue­hler, whom Nicole Fosse met when he was dancing in “Fosse,” a 1999 Broadway tribute show. That team, Fosse says, is what clinched her participat­ion in the series; when she first saw “Hamilton,” she felt a kinship.

“I realized the work that happened on that stage was changing Broadway forever and what is possible on a stage, and not just stylistica­lly,” she says. “It created almost a new genre in how we approach storytelli­ng. I feel like my parents did that in their generation.”

Fosse, who danced and acted in her father’s films and helped her mother on “Fosse,” directs an organizati­on called the Verdon Fosse Legacy, which protects and oversees her parents’ creations. There’s not a lot she doesn’t know about them, but one scene in “Fosse/Verdon,” set before she was born, gave her insight into her mother’s psyche, and what fueled some of her efforts to dodge the truth.

It occurs in the 1953 Cole Porter musical “Can-Can,” on Broadway, a role that took the young, ambitious Verdon away from the baby son she’d had with her first husband, a reporter. On opening night, her bawdy, sensual heat and supreme dance finesse stopped the show. The audience erupted, and Verdon, who was changing for her next number, was dragged from her dressing room in a towel to acknowledg­e the ovation.

With her stunned expression turning to gradual comprehens­ion, Williams plays it perfectly, Fosse says.

“Watching Michelle cycle through and break through and then back off of and lean into all the different emotions that she did, I really understood much more clearly a dividing line in my mother’s life that happened,” Fosse says.

“Prior to that she was a really hard-working, sweaty hoofer, just trying to get food on the table to feed herself and her kid and pay her rent. And her life changed for good and bad after that moment.”

Verdon was suddenly a star, recognized on the streets of New York, and with that came the pressure to perform offstage, too. In public, even for a trip to the deli for bagels, she wore makeup and heels, always “Gwen Verdon,” Fosse recalls, her voice putting the name quotes. To escape that continuous pressure, sometimes her mother would rely on a little deception, with a different kind of performanc­e.

“There were times when we’d be walking down the street and we’d just be talking, just motherdaug­hter stuff, and people would come up and say to her, ‘Oh, my God, are you Gwen Verdon?’ She’d say, ‘No, I’m not, but people tell me I look just like her. Have a nice day!’ and she’d walk on. She didn’t want to engage.

“It was confusing for me,” Fosse continues. “I’d say, ‘Mom, you just lied.’ She was protecting us, and protecting herself.

But in order to do that, she had to lie and there’s something ethically and morally askew with telling a lie, even if it’s for a good reason. Now, as a child, you have to negotiate that.”

Fosse says she quickly learned there was a public life and a private life, and a great divide between them. “That translates even further into what should be talked about and not, what should be recognized and not, and then it becomes not the healthiest internal environmen­t in your mind as a child.”

That leads Fosse to a second, more difficult scene in a later episode of “Fosse/Verdon” - when Bob Fosse ends up at a psychiatri­c hospital in 1973. He’d just won an Oscar for directing “Cabaret.” He also had three Emmys and two Tonys that year. Depression dogged him throughout his career; now it overwhelme­d him.

In the hospital scene, Rockwell’s Fosse is hunched and catatonic in his bathrobe. Williams’ Verdon, ever the performer, compensate­s with bubbly chatter. And the actress who plays 10-year-old Nicole, Blake Baumgartne­r, watches these strange creatures warily.

Her discomfort rings true to the grown-up Nicole, who recalls being unnerved on those hospital visits that her father wouldn’t look her in the eye.

“As a child, I was told - and I believed, to some degree - he’s overworked and overtired and he needs a rest,” Fosse says. “But there was also a part of my mind that said, when he’s overtired and overworked and needs a rest, we usually go to Acapulco.”

She lets out an ironic laugh, perfectly timed; it sounds like the wry amusement her father turned into a style. — WPBloomber­g

As a producer and creative consultant on the new FX series ‘Fosse/Verdon’, which stars Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams, Nicole Fosse has had to go through it all over again: the lies, lovers, drugs, breakdowns and the inexorable onrush of death.

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 ??  ?? (Left) Sam Rockwell as Bob Fosse and Michelle Williams as Gwen Verdon in FX’s ‘Fosse/Verdon’. • Gwen Verdon, Nicole Fosse and Bob Fosse during Nicole’s Grecian-themed ninth birthday celebratio­n. — Photos by Verdon Fosse Legacy LLC
(Left) Sam Rockwell as Bob Fosse and Michelle Williams as Gwen Verdon in FX’s ‘Fosse/Verdon’. • Gwen Verdon, Nicole Fosse and Bob Fosse during Nicole’s Grecian-themed ninth birthday celebratio­n. — Photos by Verdon Fosse Legacy LLC
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