Masterful Life: Joel Grey on coming out, being Emcee, and writing his memoirs

METRO WEEKLY: Let’s start with your memoir, Master of Ceremonies, which comes out February 16. Do you feel celebrities are obligated to write their memoirs?

JOEL GREY: I don’t, I don’t. But it has been in the back of my mind for the longest time. I guess I got so much from reading memoirs — so many things that helped me understand myself — that it was just like a plan. I didn’t know when I was going to do it or what, but I had a bag full of thrown away notes — this and that, just random — that I thought might be things I would want to talk about in a memoir. And then, when I read Andre Agassi’s memoir, I was so taken with it, with his struggles [with addiction] and his success, that I thought, “Yeah, that feels right to me.”

MW: How difficult was it to sit down and conjure up memories from your life?

GREY: How about difficult with a capital “D.” It’s a challenge but I’ve always been interested in the examined life, as just a part of who I am. So this is a real extension and compilation of all those thoughts.

MW: Obviously the title plays off the role you made iconic. What is it like to be so closely identified with a specific part?

GREY: It’s all good. There was nothing bad about it, except the struggle to get the part in the movie. That was against quite a few odds.

MW: Wait, there was even a question of you reprising your Broadway performance on film?

GREY: Oh, yeah. Bob Fosse was hellbent on not using me. He looked at every other possibility. The producers were, luckily for me, always in my corner. There’s a scene in the book where it’s six weeks from shooting and he goes into the producers and says, “Well, gentlemen, the moment is finally here. It’s either Joel Grey or me.” And the producers said, “Then it’s Joel Grey.” Now that has almost never happened to an actor and a director because the director in the film is always the top dog.

MW: Why was he opposed to you?

GREY: Maybe he wanted to do it himself or God knows what, because he’s such a complicated, gifted genius. Nobody ever got an answer out of that. There were no whys.

MW: After so many years, what was it that finally sparked you to come out publicly last year?

GREY: Well, my friends and family have known about me forever. As far as I was concerned I was out, but when [LGBT rights] turned out to be such a conversation and such a legal and important movement, and I was writing a book and telling the truth about myself, it just seemed right. Also, I liked the idea that perhaps my story might be of some solace and/or inspiration to young people.

MW: Were there challenges for you coming out?

GREY: Yeah, but I didn’t even know what they were except that I had been forced by society to keep it quiet for so many years. It was just impossible. It was not a discussion. I thought it’s not like that. And now I also wanted to stand in solidarity with the gay community.

MW: Do you feel that the community has embraced you?

GREY: I do. I went to a Human Rights Campaign event last year and was totally comfortable.

MW: Donald Trump has implied that he would install Supreme Court Justices that would overturn gay marriage.

GREY: That’s pretty good. He just campaigned himself darker than he usually does.

MW: Well, he has to appeal to Evangelicals.

GREY: I guess so. Hi, Nick! My puppy just came in.

MW: What kind of puppy?

GREY: A long-haired chihuahua. He’s a great little creature.

MW: As somebody who has watched society for awhile —

GREY: A long while.

MW: — did you ever imagine we would see marriage equality and such strides in transgender rights?

GREY: No. It had caused me so much pain in my childhood that I couldn’t imagine. I was watching guys being rounded up and sent off to jail for being in a bar. And plainclothesmen, what was that called when they would come on to gay guys and then take them to jail? Entrapment. Those are things that were heavily influencing to a young person. Also, you couldn’t have a career if you were known to be gay. There were no out gay people when I was starting out. There was no other way [but to be in the closet].

MW: You got married, you had children.

GREY: That was always a part of my plan, too. I always knew that somehow I wanted to be a dad and a husband and live that life. So I made that choice. I paid the price of not having it all for having that.

MW: Certainly there were some good results from that part of your life.

GREY: I have wonderful children. I adored my wife and we had 24 years. Somebody might say that, “Well you were always bisexual.” But I don’t know any of that. All I know is following one’s heart and belief is the only thing to do.

MW: How do you feel about the current Oscar controversy, this move toward the Oscars trying to become more diverse?

GREY: It’s an Old Boy’s Club, the Academy, and it needs to be challenged and freshened.

MW: I recently re-watched Alias — I’d forgotten you were “the other Mr. Sloan.”

GREY: That’s me!

MW: You were also in a story arc in Buffy, another huge show.

GREY: I was! I got to have a tail. It was good. Teenagers would stop me on the street to look.

MW: What do you think of the way television has changed — particularly the way we’re watching it, by means sometimes other than our sets?

GREY: Well, I haven’t watched anything — and I really do mean anything — for almost two years while I’ve been writing. I’ve just not been able to take in anything on television or radio actually. And no music for the first time in my life. Everything needed to be turned off, all the other outside stimuli.

MW: It sounds like a monkhood.

GREY: Except I was living in those pages.

MW: Coincidentally, we’re also interviewing Alan Cumming for this issue, who, like you, played The Emcee in the Broadway production of Cabaret. What did you think of that production?

GREY: The whole concept of that production was so far from what we originally did in the ’60s. Sam Mendes saw Cabaret in a very contemporary way, and it was shocking in a very different way from ours. It was more explicit. They had a different notion about presenting it and it was certainly very valid and I thought he was terrific.

MW: Was there any emotion attached to watching another actor play a role that you created?

GREY: Not really, because great roles are always played by any number of actors. To be in good company is all you really hope for.

Master of Ceremonies (Flatiron Books) will be available at Amazon.com and other booksellers on Tuesday, Feb. 16.

Joel Grey will appear in conversation with Leon Wieseltier, a contributing editor at The Atlantic, on Tuesday, Feb. 23, at Sixth & I Synagogue, 600 I St. NW, at 7 p.m. Tickets are $16 (or $30, including a purchase of his book). A signing will follow the talk.