Key Points
-
Jay Armstrong Johnson remembers joining other Broadway actors to play the gay men’s chorus in Sex and the City 2.
-
The actor, currently on stage in the Heated Rivalry musical parody, recalls dancing with Kim Cattrall and watching Liza Minnelli dance to “Single Ladies.”
-
“I still get $37 residual checks,” he says.
Before Jay Armstrong Johnson made a name for himself on the Broadway stage in productions like On the Town and The Phantom of the Opera, before he became Ilya Rozanov in this summer’s Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody, he got his start dancing to “Single Ladies” with Kim Cattrall in Sex and the City 2.
“It was just a really cool, wild, interesting, ridiculous moment at the very beginning of my career that I still get $37 residual checks for, which I’m happy about,” Johnson tells Entertainment Weekly. “I still have never seen the film all the way through.”
Johnson’s made a career with standout performances in Parade, the U.S. tour of Moulin Rouge! The Musical, and TV’s Quantico, but his first movie role came about the same time he made his Broadway debut in 2009’s Hair.
Jimin Moon and Jay Armstrong Johnson in ‘Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody’
Credit: Matthew Murphy
The Texas-born actor played a bit part as a member of the gay men’s chorus at the wedding of Stanford (Willie Garson) and Anthony (Mario Cantone). The background players cast in the choir felt like a who’s who of Broadway at the time. Andrew Rannells, before he blew up with The Book of Mormon and HBO’s Girls; Nick Adams, known for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the film Fire Island; and Max von Essen, a Tony nominee for American in Paris, were some of the others surrounding Johnson.
“It was two weeks of shooting out at some random studio in Queens,” Johnson recalls. “I remember SJP came over and talked to us for a bit on a break. She was like, ‘Oh, you all do Broadway? God, that’s hard. I never wanna do Broadway again.'”
If you rewatch the film, Johnson is most visible standing next to Cattrall’s Samantha as the crowd watches Liza Minnelli perform Beyoncé‘s “Single Ladies.”
“I can’t even believe that’s a sentence that can come out of my mouth,” he continues. “That was real, right? And I remember Liza forgetting the choreography and getting a little frazzled, and then everyone going on a break. And then I could see her changing backstage before coming on and doing another take. It was just like, I can’t believe I’m on set with Liza Minelli dancing with Kim Cattrall in a white tuxedo. This is absolutely bonkers.”
Liza Minnelli dances to “Single Ladies” in ‘Sex and the City 2’
Credit: HBO
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
The job also required filming close-up shots of the choir boys’ shocked reactions to Minnelli emerging on stage for the first time. Johnson acknowledges, “There were only a handful that were maybe straight that were in this gay men’s chorus, so the reaction was easy.”
“F—ing Liza’s here to officiate this wedding and do a Beyoncé number. How gay can this get?” he adds. “And then it only got gayer.”
Johnson is currently starring on stage in Off-Broadway’s Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody, opposite Jimin Moon as Shane Hollander. Performances at the Culture Club of New York City run through Sep. 7.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
