The business of being Frankie
Broadway singer Hayden Milanes played Frankie Valli for five years. Now, he’s back in the red jacket for the New Zealand production of Jersey Boys. Bess Manson met him and found a guy who likes to sing and dance and shed a few tears.
Hayden Milanes has a good story. Quite a few of them, actually. His big break into what would turn out to be a five-year run as Frankie Valli in the Broadway production of Jersey Boys involved a train, a little old lady and a dollar bill.
You gotta hear this, he says leaning forward. He’s got a light in his eye, this guy, and a set of teeth only an American could lay claim to.
He’d auditioned to play Valli in Jersey Boys and without waiting to hear if he was successful or not he packed up what he could fit into a carry-all and bought a one-way train ticket from his home in Tampa, Florida, to New York City.
It was a two-day train journey – ‘‘very Some Like It Hot’’.
‘‘On my way back from the restroom a woman stopped me.
‘‘Right off the bat you could tell she has this eccentric, out-there energy, like she was going to read my palm. I’m so resistant to that kind of stuff. I’m a Cancer, I’m like, I don’t need my palm read, lady, but she took my hand, she put a dollar bill in it, and she said to me: ‘I want you to know that something very special is going to happen to you. Your life is about to change’.’’
Thirty seconds later he’s back at his seat and his phone pings. It was an email saying he had a callback for the Jersey Boys audition.
So he gets the part and gets shot out on tour. It was a five-year gig, a great earner and a career-defining role.
‘‘I’m a firm believer that there are no accidents. It’s hard to believe. Maybe even sounds like make believe, but I love moments like this.’’
Milanes is ready for his closeup as Frankie Valli for the Aotearoa production of Jersey Boys. Frankly, this guy could have gone 10 rounds with Muhammad Ali and still be ready for his closeup. Those teeth, that smile, that hair (which he hand combs in the lens of the photographer’s camera before the shoot): You get the impression Hayden Milanes was born ready.
He is certainly convincing as the lead Jersey boy.
At a rehearsal with the Kiwi cast he breaks into song with Frankie’s trademark falsetto voice. It’s pretty mind-blowing.
Milanes says he thought he’d left Frankie Valli behind him years ago.
After playing the role from 2011 to 2016, he vowed he’d never sing Sherry Baby again.
But G&T Productions couldn’t find the right voice for Frankie Valli in New Zealand. They tapped up Milanes and, long story short, he was cast.
He was initially resistant. To play Valli again seemed like a step back. But with his role in Wicked in the United States in pause mode because of Covid he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Besides, New Zealand had long been on his bucket list.
Frankie bootcamp
Learning the role of Frankie Valli was something of an education when he started out in 2011, says Milanes.
In fact, there’s actually a Frankie Valli bootcamp for actors taking on the lead role in the show.
There are two people who have to green light anyone taking on the role and that’s Mr Frankie Valli
himself and fellow Four Seasons member and writer of most of the band’s songs, Bob Gaudio. Any potential imposter has to get past them, so they are put through their paces at the Frankie Valli camp in New York City.
Milanes was first flown to Nashville, Tennessee, to Gaudio’s ranch and recording studio.
‘‘I was able to have a three-day intensive with him, so I stayed, and we sang all day. He cooked me lunch, and I’m pinching myself because I’m sitting in Gaudio’s breakfast nook with him, and he’s telling me stories . . . It was just one of those surreal moments: here’s a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-er, and he’s talking to me about what we’re having for lunch!’’
Bootcamp was just the beginning. ‘‘You graduate but in actuality you’re just getting started with your career. The growth never stops. I finished camp but didn’t stop learning. I didn’t stop growing. I didn’t stop failing . . . And then I went on to Frankie University. Now I’m on a Frankie 10-year reunion.’’
‘‘I’m not one for the limelight’’ Milanes, 35, is a pro now. He’s been in the business one way or another since he was 15. He still finds walking onto the stage intoxicatingly thrilling. The stuff that goes with it is a little trickier.
There’s a balance that one finds, he says. ‘‘I’m still searching for it. I’m fighting for it. I’m an introvert. I’m not one for the limelight, believe it or not.
‘‘So it’s a tightrope act; marketing, branding, press interviews, a lot of sacrifice on the personal front in order to make that 21⁄2 hours on stage the best that you possibly can to meet everybody’s expectations, because everyone’s looking to get paid. At the end of the day, it’s show business.
‘‘Without the business aspect there is no show.’’
It’s a good thing he did know a thing or two about the business side of things. When Covid shut his last gig down he and his fiancee (model Sarah Simmons Trujillo) started investing in real estate, but it’s not a back-up plan, he insists.
Rule No 1: There’s a Plan A or another Plan A. There’s no Plan B, he says.
‘‘If you have a Plan B going into this industry you’re going to eventually fall into that Plan B because you are going to fall and fall hard. You’re going to fail, but you need to fail forward and fail better each time.’’
Milanes, who, as you can see, is partial to Hallmark style self motivational, positive affirmation statements (We have to walk by faith, not by sight), was raised in Tampa, the third of four siblings.
His was a military family. His parents instilled in him a rather serious amount of discipline.
His Cuban father, in particular, was an arbiter and a stickler for the rules. Self-discipline was paramount. ‘‘I didn’t go to homecoming. I didn’t go to parties when I was young. I was at home working on my voice.’’
He resented the discipline in a lot of ways, he says.
His parents played good cop (mother) and bad cop (father).
‘‘There was a healthy balance, I guess, but I don’t harp on about that too much. The main thing is that theatre changed my life. It was an outlet that provided an escape from the environment that I was in that was really just very black and white, there were no grey areas.
‘‘It was a controlled environment, very result based, you know, do your homework, make your bed, practice your baseball. Baseball was a big thing in our family.’’
He went for his first audition at the age of 15 spurred on by a television talent show. He auditioned for a part in a stage production of The Wizard of Oz. He hadn’t prepared a song so just belted out Happy Birthday.
‘‘It was bad, but they needed a boy, so they put me in the show. I went back and told my dad. I told him I wanted to step away from the baseball team, that I wanted to do this show. He wasn’t having it. So, back to baseball I went.’’
Fortunately, his sister got wind of her little brother’s keenness for the stage so quietly looked into an audition for a performing arts high school.
At this revelation Milanes’ eyes fill with tears. His shoulders heave and he buries his head in his hands for a good old cry.
‘‘You know,’’ he says between uninhibited sobs, ‘‘it’s a great thing because it changed my life. It’s because of her that I’m here. She got me an audition. I had to do a monologue. I didn’t even know what a monologue was. I had to Google it. I didn’t really know what acting was, I just knew that that’s what I wanted.’’
He got a place at the school. ‘‘From that point on my whole life changed . . . . I just felt like I was in my element, like this was what I was meant to do. This is what it feels like when you’re stepping into your calling, when you’re stepping into your purpose in this life.’’
Of course, his parents really didn’t fully support this radical swing from a life on the diamond, but they came around.
The fact there was some prestige attached to the school that specialised in the arts helped, he says.
Following high school he had an aborted crack at college. That gig was not enough of a challenge, he says. So he got a job at Disney World performing in its elaborate, big-budget shows.
That led to work on the cruise ship circuit doing shows and seeing the world.
‘‘Travelling was the best way to get to learn about myself, to grow as a person, you know, eat, pray, love.’’
Then Jersey Boys entered his orbit.
He saw John Lloyd Young performing a song from the musical on TV one night. In that moment he knew (‘‘I knew, I knew, I knew’’) that this was his role.
The odds of getting it were slim to none, he says. So he went about setting the odds in his favour. He hired a voice teacher, acting coaches. He worked hard.
‘‘I’ve never been afraid of the work. In fact, I love the work. If it’s not work then it doesn’t excite me.
‘‘I thought, if I can pull this off . . . to be this kid who was not raised with the privilege of going to dance classes . . . If I could do this then that would be something else, and I made it happen.’’
To ram it home he Googles a photo of himself in a tearful embrace with Frankie Valli who had surprised him on stage after a show in Los Angeles.
‘‘That moment had an immense amount of meaning for me. I worked hard for that moment.’’
Milanes is certainly a big, bright, shiny star these days, but he’s no diva, he insists. In fact, he says in Hallmark parlance, the only thing he is allergic to is a diva. He’s rather thankful there’s not an ego in sight in this production.
He doesn’t have any riders outside of wanting to have a good time and tries to live by the words tattooed on his wrist – ‘‘Here, Now’’ inked in his parents’ handwriting. There’s also a tattoo of a cross. His faith, he says, is in love. He sees acts of kindness as prayers.
‘‘Everyone I come across, I want to make their day better. I want to have a positive impact. My values are extremely important to me because it’s taken me a long time to come round to them myself.’’
Sing, dance, pray, love. Hayden Milanes is Here, Now.
Jersey Boys opens at The Civic in Auckland next Saturday and at the Opera House in Wellington on May 21.