URIE: I am a fan. I wouldn’t say I was a mega-fan, but I certainly respect and appreciate her. It wasn’t until I was deep into learning about her that I started to truly appreciate and love her. I always knew she could sing. And I knew there was something funny about her. And people found her funny, and people had a love/hate thing for her. But I didn’t realize how good an actor she was until I started watching the movies.

MW: Has she seen the play?

URIE: No.

MW: Do you think she will? Would you want to know if she were in the audience?

URIE: I definitely wouldn’t want to know if she was in the audience. And I wouldn’t want the audience to know if she was there either. Because it would mess it all up. But I don’t think it would be fair to her to have to sit and watch it with people.

MW: So maybe if you do it in her house — in her mall.

URIE: Yeah, I’ll do a command performance for her. It’s a weird thing. It’s not a real story, it didn’t really happen. There are a lot of things I say that are based on truth that Jon has found in interviews doing his homework about her. But if she can’t get past, “Nobody works in my basement!” she’s not going to enjoy it. And then everyone’s going to be laughing at her. I just don’t think it would be fair. I don’t think it would be fair for her to watch it with people. Maybe if we filmed it someday, she could watch a video of it.

MW: Streisand may be your diva of the moment, but previously, on Ugly Betty, you had Patti LuPone.

URIE: That’s right. Patti LuPone played my mom there. So I’ve been around some divas before.

MW: And you worked for Vanessa Williams.

URIE: And Judith Light was in the show. And we had Christine Baranski, and Bernadette Peters and Christine Ebersole and Donna Murphy and Faith Prince — I mean we had some amazing divas on our show. But yeah, Patti LuPone played my mom. And actually kind of looks like my real mom, which was cool. I’m part Italian, and she’s quite Italian. But it was awesome. She couldn’t have been cooler. She loved working on our set. We were all such fans of hers. And by the end of her time on our set, we were all huddled around a laptop in our director’s chairs watching her on YouTube with her.

MW: You watched random videos of LuPone?

URIE: Yeah. Saying, “Look Patti, this is you at the Tonys in 1979,” or whatever. It was so fun. She loved it!

MW: You weren’t out when you were on Ugly Betty.

URIE: Not the whole time. Not at first. It was a different time.

MW: But the character was out.

URIE: Oh, the character was out. He was way, way, way out. But me, nobody knew then. Nobody was out. I think it wasn’t until the second or third year that I was on the show that Neil Patrick Harris came out. And I was being told by certain people, “Don’t come out. If this show doesn’t make it…” But then I was like, “Come on!” I work way more out than I would have if I had been in.

MW: Explain what you mean.

URIE: Well, I play all these gay parts. I’ve done Angels in America and The Temperamentals and Buyer and Cellar. I was in this movie Petunia and this new movie Such Good People. I’ve just had a lot of jobs because I’m out. And not to mention getting to work with great organizations like the Point Foundation. And the Trevor Project.

My documentary Thank You for Judging, which I co-directed, played at OUTfest, L.A.’s LGBT film festival. It’s about high school speech and debate. We followed my old high school speech team to the state meet. The reason we were at Outfest is because one of the main characters is competing in original oratory. He’s written a speech about how it is socially acceptable for a young girl to be a tomboy, but the reverse, a young boy who likes to primp and moisturize, doesn’t get a cute term like tomboy. They’re generally referred to as sissies. It’s a brilliant speech. And he sort-of becomes the star of the film. And he’s gone on to do amazing things. He’s actually about to go to Harvard Law School.

MW: You were actually on that speech team in high school. Did you think you might pursue public speaking, or was acting always in your sights?

URIE: I first wanted to be a director. The first thing I wanted to do was direct movies, which I’ve gotten to do now. And I really loved doing theater in high school. And I loved and respected and looked up to my teachers so, so much. So then I thought I wanted to be a theater director — a drama teacher — that also acted. But it was actually in a speech tournament. I was doing a poetry interpretation where I was reading from a poem that I thought was extremely serious and dramatic. And I kept getting laughs. And in the middle of doing the thing, I was like, “Why are they laughing at me? This is really serious, and I’m trying to be serious.” And they just kept laughing at me. At my delivery, my inflection. And I thought, “Well shit, I guess maybe I’ll try to make it funnier. If they want it to be funny, maybe I can make it funny.” And so I switched gears and tried to make it funny on purpose. And it was nonstop laughs, and I won. And that’s the night I was like, “I want to be an actor!” Because that was such a thrilling live experience, of having an audience like that, of having them in the palm of my hand. That was the first time I’d ever really felt that.

MW: This was in high school. Did you like high school?

URIE: Yeah, I did. I loved high school. I had a really great experience in high school. Thanks to speech and debate and theater. Doing plays and stuff. And I was in marching band. It was great, I loved it.

MW: What instrument?

URIE: French horn. I was horrible. I mean, terrible. And it’s a great instrument, a beautiful instrument. But I was terrible. I quit eventually because I had to focus on theater. When I quit band for theater, my dad was like, “Are you crazy?” He has since taken that back. [Laughs.] He didn’t quite realize that I was terrible at band and good at theater. He just knew that I was in band. He liked going to football games and watching me in marching band.

MW: Right, this was in Texas, football country. Weren’t you encouraged to play football?

URIE: Not football, but when I was a little kid of course I was made to do T-ball. And I hated it, and they let me quit. And then they made me do soccer. But eventually they were cool. They knew I didn’t like it, and that I didn’t have a knack for it. And I have an older sister who was good at every sport, so I think that helped. She was really good at it, and she really liked it, and she did it. And they could tell that once I came along, that I wasn’t good at it and I didn’t like it and I was going to do everything I could to not do it. So they were not going to make me do it.

MW: And then you moved to New York to go to Juilliard from high school and haven’t looked back.

URIE: Yep, when I was 19, I moved to New York. I love Texas, I have a great fondness for it, and anytime I go back I’m always very happy and very pleased with what’s happening there, especially in the arts community. Just a lot of very cool things happening in the Dallas area. But New York is home.

MW: And in New York you’ve added directing to your credits. Talk about your first feature film, He’s Way More Famous Than You.

URIE: Halley Feiffer and my partner Ryan Spahn wrote the screenplay. It’s a meta-comedy. So in it we all play ourselves, and they’re writing a script and asking me to direct it. So there are scenes in the movie that actually happened, but it’s a warped version of the real world. A completely bizarre, warped, Curb Your Enthusiasm-type version of the real world. It’s hilarious. It came out a year ago — just over a year ago now in select cities and now it’s on DVD and VOD. And since then, I produced another film and directed a short film that are both traveling the festival circuits and looking for distribution.

MW: Have you ever directed theater?