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[0:00] Robert Bannon: Are you ready? It's The Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon.

[0:30] Robert Bannon: Her voice is incredible. She's worn green a lot. She's flown around Broadway and this country. She's done a bunch. I saw her in Between the Lines. So great voice singing down and around. And now she's up in the Cape, back in the Cape after her run as in Gypsy. And now she gets to be put on a spelling bee. Julia Murney, welcome to The Roundtable.

[0:55] Julia Murney: Thank you.

[0:57] Julia Murney: I've seen you on stage. I've watched you on YouTube videos of people secretly recording your incredible voice. It's so nice to have you here. It's so nice to be here with you in.

[1:07] Robert Bannon: Well, not really in the flesh, because here we are.

[1:10] Julia Murney: You know, I've been yelled at by in the flesh.

[1:15] Robert Bannon: Yes, you're there.

[1:19] Julia Murney: I don't know. There you go.

[1:21] Robert Bannon: I've been yelled at all summer long by all of your cast, Clayborne and the people who've done the shows before you, that I've never been to the Cape. I've never been to P-Town. And I'm a gay. I've never been. Well, that card is getting revoked very soon.

[1:39] Julia Murney: That's it. What is going on? What's it like there?

[1:43] Julia Murney: Well, I am going very, very soon because we have a day off coming up. And so now understand the I would say, let's see, the gentlemen in my company who are also going are going to have potentially a very different experience than I am going to have. And that's beautiful. That's a beautiful thing. It's very lovely. I love the Cape. I have my college boyfriend was from down the road from where I am right now. So and my parents are both New Englanders. And so I've spent some time here and have several friends who have houses out here, which is glorious. And it's I cannot recommend it.

[2:26] Robert Bannon: Where are you at? Where are you? Where are you now? Are you in New York?

[2:31] Julia Murney: I'm OK. So this is complicated. I'm right now. I'm in Detroit. My husband's from Detroit. So we go from Detroit to New Jersey.

[2:36] Robert Bannon: That's a very common commute. I've heard about that commute a lot. But where are you from originally?

[2:46] Julia Murney: Fort Lee, New Jersey.

[2:50] Robert Bannon: OK, girl, then there's no reason for you not to have come here. I've never been to Fire Island. I've never been to peace out. I've been to Palm Street. Do you hate freedom or.

[2:56] Julia Murney: I love, you know, I'm not a prude. I just, you know, I'm going to say I'm sure this is not what you wanted to do. I came out late in life, Julia. I feel like I got to give you my insurance. And God bless.

[3:10] Julia Murney: I'm so glad you did. I'm so glad I'm married to a beautiful husband.

[3:14] Julia Murney: Here's the thing. You have a husband. Yes. I've been straight my whole life and I don't have a husband. So get it done, Robert. You understand what I'm saying? OK, where have you been my whole life?

[3:26] Robert Bannon: Where have you been? So the Cape, my uncle, Bob.

[3:31] Julia Murney: Hi, Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob. I was just down the shore with my uncle Bob and he is a straight man. And he went to the Cape and has gone to the Cape forever. He might have been the only straight man at the Audra McDonald concert in P-Town. He might have been the only one. And I told me I saw this Broadway lady sing and she was doing a show and she was very good. I said, what's her name? He said, Audra McDonald. I said, yes, this is new to you. Besides the point he says is gorgeous. So people, everybody can be vacationing and having a good time in the Cape and go to the Cape Playhouse. Please go to the Cape Playhouse. And then, I mean, if you came to see Spelling Bee, for example, I'm just saying 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee running through September 19th.

[4:19] Robert Bannon: You it's going to take a two whole hours out of your day or evening. That's it. And I believe if I may say so, you will be wildly entertained and tickled and maybe a little moved. And then you just get to keep vacationing on the Cape.

[4:35] Robert Bannon: If you gentlemen in Provincetown are hearing this, you know, it's but an hour's drive.

[4:41] Robert Bannon: It is but an hour's drive. You can get down. And the shows, the evenings are at 730. It's done at 930. You can ski down on back and go out and party.

[4:52] Julia Murney: See, that's the thing. I want to see a show and I want to have dinner with you. And then I want to go home and be in my bed by 11 o'clock. I think that's it.

[4:59] Julia Murney: So I think this is the perfect night because if you want to start the night and party it up, you go to the show and then you're free to go out. If you want to have dinner at five o'clock and then go see the show, bring your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, friends, dog, cat, grandma, whomever. This show has a little bit of something for everyone. Why did you say yes? Why did you feel like making a fun in this? The world is on fire.

[5:15] Julia Murney: That's exactly why. That's exactly why I said yes. Because Claiborne Elder, who is our director and his husband, Eric Rosen, who is the artistic director of the Cape Playhouse. I have known a very long time. They used to live in my building. I sang at their wedding. And yeah. And so I when this opportunity came up, I was like, oh, my God, I get to go back to the Cape. I get to go back to the Cape. And it's just it's wonderful. The stuff that Eric has done, he's been there, I think, three years now as artistic director. The playhouse looks gorgeous. And Clay is just the best.

[6:00] Julia Murney: And I have to say the assemblance. Is that a word?

[6:05] Robert Bannon: It is now.

[6:06] Julia Murney: I'm saying it. The assemblance of the cast and the creatives, Jeffrey, our choreographer, Anna, our music director, and this cast is like is just. Am I allowed to curse on this?

[6:19] Robert Bannon: Yes.

[6:22] Julia Murney: God, you're right. They're a goddamn delight. It's what a goddamn delight. You know, they're stars. And then there's new up and coming future stars and everybody's converged together to make just joy. It's that's and that's why I said yes, because what else was I going to do? Sit on my couch and I won't get into it. You know, watch nonsense and bloviating and feel devastated by everything. No, I would rather go spread joy and love. Otherwise, I'm just going to eat pizza and cry.

[6:54] Julia Murney: Oh, let's be clear. I'm still eating pizza and still sometimes crying just for fun. But I also get to do the show. So what are you from New York?

[7:05] Robert Bannon: Yes, because you went to LaGuardia.

[7:10] Julia Murney: I did. I did some research.

[7:15] Robert Bannon: There's a little shred of decency to this show. Minor. So you went to LaGuardia. Why? What did you see? What was it that moved you to say? Did someone tell you you had a voice or did you? It wasn't me.

[7:23] Julia Murney: No. In my junior high, I.S. 44. I mean, I grew up in Manhattan and my we the choir teacher. At I.S. 44, a bunch of my friends in sixth grade when we all moved from the elementary school to the junior high were like, we're going to do choir. And I was like, OK, I had no I mean, I liked to sing the way a kid likes to sing, sort of. And my dad's an actor. So it was a very familiar notion to me, the whole thing. But and Miss Morris, Josephine Morris, she was the choir director and she was extraordinary. And she challenged us really hard. We sang songs in other languages and we were a bunch of just like Yahoo's in a public junior high. But she challenged us and also would like play and give us free reign.

And she was disciplined, a disciplinarian for sure. And one of the smarty smart things that she knew how to do was that in terms of auditioning for LaGuardia. She made us all sing some song from this book called 24 Italian Songs and Arias, where I think the majority of the eighth graders who are auditioning to be vocal majors at LaGuardia are singing pop or Broadway tunes. And we walked in singing Italian. And that book is sort of like, at least at the time, I don't know about anymore, but at the time it was like the Bible of the voice majors at LaGuardia. And so she was using her noggin because it's not like every the student body there is so large that I think a lot of the acceptance rate is sort of, oh, you can carry a tune.

Great. Come on in. Yeah, it's a public school. And a bunch of us got to go there. It felt like because of her and that I never did a show musical rather until a summer after my freshman year, I went to a summer camp called Stage Door Manor. Do you know the movie Camp?

[10:06] Julia Murney: Yes. It's that's that's Stage Door. It's made by a Stage Door grad, Tuck Graf. And I basically went there under protest. My parents were just I wasn't old enough to work at a regular job. And my parents like you cannot hang around the city again. They put all the names in a hat and pulled one. And that's where I went. And it totally changed my life. And the first show I ever did was at that camp. It was very appropriately applause.

[10:20] Robert Bannon: Sure. Yes. Yes.

[10:29] Julia Murney: I was I was third chorus dancer from the left and I thought it was was a thrill. And there's actually this year is Stage Door's 50th anniversary and they're doing it. And a lot of mucky mucks have also attended there and they're doing a big concert at Town Hall in September. Something or other. I'm singing in it. I don't even know what you are. That's professional of me. I don't know. You're perfect here that hopefully I'll show up. But yeah.

[10:39] Julia Murney: And then the movie. Hmm. People should see the movie. Nathan Lee Graham is so funny. And go see the movie camp. And the only musical I did in high school proper. They only did one my whole four years. It was my senior year. Another very appropriate show. It was Follies, a show about older people looking back on their lives.

[11:02] Julia Murney: Yeah. I think I'm still here. I was 17. So.

[11:07] Julia Murney: Look, at least your parents were in this business. I wanted to be an actor and a singer, and I begged my parents to take me on an audition from New Jersey to New York. And they took me to the Boys Harbor Conservatory, and the show was Ain't Misbehaving, which apparently there's no role for me in it. Oh, Sugar Plum, there is not. No, my parents were lost in the sauce. They had no idea. So for you, I didn't get the part, by the way. For you, when you—

[11:32] Robert Bannon: I'm glad for you that you didn't.

[11:34] Julia Murney: Thank God. Thank God. So when you decided to go to Syracuse and you went to school, when did you fall in love with theater? You only got to do one show in high school. So was theater always the goal?

[11:47] Julia Murney: It was Stage Door, honestly, going to that. Because I went there two summers. I did five shows maybe total. And then, I mean, I wasn't like—I knew, especially from that camp, there were a lot of campers there who had headshots, and managers, and agents, and some of them had been on—I was very appropriately—all my shows were very appropriate as a child. I was definitely Anita in West Side Story.

[12:20] Robert Bannon: Okay.

[12:21] Julia Murney: Sure, sure, sure, sure. And my Maria had been one of the orphans in Annie on Broadway. She basically belted Maria, and it was amazing. But I also recently discovered Shaina Taub, everyone's favorite Tony winner, at least mine. She came to see Spelling Bee, and we were chatting, and I went, are you a Stage Door girly? Because there are some 50 years, and if you didn't fall at the same time, and she is, and we discovered we both played Anita. There is nothing that's correct about that. So apologies to all. It was a different time.

[13:04] Robert Bannon: It was a different time.

[13:06] Julia Murney: Yep. So luckily, it was a time before video. So it was horse carriages and gas lamps. So we were fine.

[13:14] Robert Bannon: It was not, Julia. When you make it and go back to New York, I'm assuming, and now you're going to start hitting the pavement, is there a relief? Do you remember the first real, real job? Like the first—I know you've got the nominations and stuff. You've done a lot of work before Broadway, I believe, if I'm not right.

[13:32] Julia Murney: Before Broadway proper, yeah. Most of my work has not been Broadway. Most of my work has been off or—

[13:38] Robert Bannon: Off. What's it like to get that call where, you know, there's a lot of—there's doubt. Like, am I going to make it? Am I good enough? Am I going to—or maybe there was no doubt. You were hell-bent and let's go.

[13:49] Julia Murney: No, there's doubt right now. What time is it?

[13:52] Robert Bannon: Of course.

[13:52] Julia Murney: There's doubt right now. And I get to do a show in a few hours, and there's still doubt. Can you explain that? Because I think people think—I said once that this is the only business where, I think, where the mountain keeps growing. So maybe you want—I'm on an off-Broadway show. I want to book a regional show. I want to book a tour. I want to book Broadway. Then I want to be the lead on Broadway. I want to be original on Broadway. The goals keep going. It's never like I'm a plumber and I'm just going to go to work today.

[14:20] Julia Murney: Here's my analogy for it. You can stand at a pond and you can see all of these beautiful lily pads spread out in the pond. And each lily pad could represent something that's meant a lot to you or an achievement inside of this business, however you want to define those things. And they're beautiful, and they can make you feel really good. And then if you decide, oh, I need to get to the other side of the pond, and you decide to take all the lily pads and stack them up so you can step on them to get over to the other side, they will sink under your foot. They are not solid. It's not that they're not real, but they're not finite, and they're not rock. And that is just what it is.

[15:12] Julia Murney: And as much as I can impart that to somebody younger or whatever, or someone who's asking for advice, it's advice I have to consistently remind myself of too. I mean, the older I get, the more I can bounce and also be like, all right, fine. That's okay. That was not for me, or whatever it is. But it's definitely, obviously, getting the call of, like, it's yours is far better than the call that's like, so it's not going to go any further. And you're just like, oh. And that happens, the latter happens much more often than the former, no matter who you are.

[15:56] Julia Murney: No matter who you are. And you could talk to anyone. And I guarantee, like, whoever your favorite is, I guarantee you, they will tell you a version of the same thing.

[16:08] Robert Bannon: Absolutely. I think that's such an incredible truth. And that's what's incredible about what you do. And then people, when they come to see you, is because all of the hard work, aside from the blood, sweat, and tears, truly, every single night, there'll be 1,000 plus people that are going to go see your show tonight. And they've saved their money, and they've bought their tickets, and they're going to be entertained, enjoyed. And I hope you realize the gift you give us, and we owe you a thank you.

[16:34] Julia Murney: Thank you. To be fair, it will not be 1,000 plus people. This is a sweet little play. But I will say to that end, I can't believe, for example, with this show, when I was learning it, the I Love You song. I don't know if you know the show.

[16:56] Julia Murney: I had only seen the show twice. I'd seen it on Broadway originally, and I saw the revival that's happening right now. And I didn't know it super well, but listening to the I Love You song, again, with my sweet Celia singing, and I was like, oh my god, I can't believe I get to sing this song. Now, would I have also enjoyed getting to sing it in New York? Sure. But it turns out there is a revival of it happening right now, and they're closing. And so there is no room for me to be like, oh, could I throw my hat in the ring for that? But at least I get to do it.

[17:38] Julia Murney: And yes, Broadway is lovely. Broadway is awesome. Broadway is capitalism with jazz hands. And that's the bottom line. And I find the more you understand that, the more you can be like, okay, so that's what that is. But I have had the opportunity. I got to play Mother in Ragtime. I got to play Rose in Gypsy. Would anyone have ever let me do that on Broadway? I don't know. Probably not. But I got to do it. They should. But like, that's a whole other, you know, like, it just...

[18:12] Robert Bannon: And you did it.

[18:17] Julia Murney: Yeah. When I came to Detroit, what moved me, growing up like you, very close, I was across the bridge in New Jersey, and you were in New York, is that I took for granted the arts at my fingertips. When people go to vacation at the Cape, or when I come to Detroit, and I go to the Fisher Theater, and the show rolls in, that's the only show in town. There are people who love art and culture, but when you do what you do there, everyone around the world deserves art. Everyone around the world deserves to experience live music and theater.

[18:45] Julia Murney: 100%. 100%. Absolutely so. And I mean, the thrill, when I toured with Wicked, it was the first time the show was hitting any of the cities it was hitting, because it was so long ago. And I mean, those audiences were banana pants, and those theaters are easily twice the size of any Broadway theater. So it's so many people, and they're screaming, like, Taylor Swift is on stage, not Taylor Swift, wasn't even born then. But you know what I mean? But it's really exciting. And it's exciting to feel their excitement.

[19:20] Julia Murney: And that is, you hit a very good point. That's especially very true when you're dealing with tours, or regional theaters, or summer stocks. It's just that people, for example, yesterday, we had two shows, and it was a gorgeous day. And in between shows, a few of us went to have lobster rolls over at some picnic tables by the water. It was delightful. And this lovely gentleman came over at one point, and he was like, I don't want to intrude, but my wife and I just saw the show this afternoon, and we just loved it so much. And he was very, very sweet. And they chose to take, let's say, two and a half hours, whatever, out of a gorgeous day to come inside. And they did. And that's not lost on us, that they chose to do that.

[20:21] Julia Murney: And it's, so we better try our damnedest to give them something.

[20:29] Robert Bannon: You're going to give them something in a few minutes and hours and, and give them something into September as the summer closes. This is the perfect place and time. It's a great time to go up there because it is beautiful. The weather is getting a little, little, it's still gorgeous and hot. And it's perfect right now.

[20:42] Julia Murney: It's perfect. It's perfect. I love this show. I love that this theater keeps ticket prices affordable. I love that this ticket makes it a mission to be able, it's 100 years next year, their season, and they've been here for 100 years and keep art and culture in the Cape alive. And I love that you are spreading the love. You have to listen to her album, everybody. Listen to her voice, listen to her music, go back in the archives, find the music and the songs, search her name, listen to one of the best voices to ever hit the stages here in New York and around this country. That is you, Julia. And we really, we are so lucky to be able to spend time with you.

[21:20] Julia Murney: Thank you, Robert. You are very sweet. I'll pay you later. Thank you.

[21:25] Robert Bannon: I have Vemmozelle.

[21:31] Julia Murney: Okay, wonderful. You got to get your tickets, everybody. Make sure you see this. And you're my kind of people. You're a good time.

[21:36] Robert Bannon: I try my best. We're, we would, we are a mess. We were a messy fun. The best interviews are the ones who come to play and you are, you are on my team, girl. Let's go.

[21:41] Julia Murney: Let's go.

[21:48] Robert Bannon: Follow her. Stay up to date to see what's up with this and then what else is up her sleeve. And when she's in concert, if she's doing a symphony gig, if she's back on stage, make sure you do not miss a moment with you, Julia. Thank you for being here.

[21:56] Julia Murney: Thank you.