Mick Jagger visited us backstage and told us how much he liked our show. Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts came back too, and they wanted to get their pictures taken with us. Bill Wyman knew our chart positions. I couldn’t believe it.
Working backstage as a teenager made me realise there’s not much glamour in this profession – just lots of hard work. That’s a good thing to learn early on.
During intermission, we reward the loudest, rowdiest fans with backstage passes, so we have a meet-and-greet, and then, at the end of the night, we give all the fans an opportunity to actually get up in the ring and have their picture taken with a TNA star. So we’re very, very fan interactive.
My former bullies pay extra to come backstage and meet me after shows, and I pretend not to know them in front of their friends. It is the most divine pleasure to exact the revenge of the brutalized child that resides within.
The one thing in my contract that they have backstage for me is bananas. And usually my assistant will go and get me chicken broth.
Yeah, I did some small parts in high school and the first year of college and then fairly soon thereafter I settled into the backstage scenery, and then at the University of Maryland I was doing posters for their productions.
If you can’t get an acting job, then go backstage. Or take tickets.
Any time I have a promo with him – and I like R-Truth, too – but I always have the best chemistry with Miz. We really don’t stay on script perfectly. We kind of bounce off each other… He is the one I paid attention to when it came to promos. He helped me so much along the way with backstage segments.
What crushed my soul was hanging out with bitter, desperate comics backstage. They’re a different breed than the bitter yet eager psyches in the wings of an improv theatre. Struggling stand-ups have externalized self-loathing into an art form. They’re a hunching, quaking, unshaven lot.
Some genres of rock ‘n’ roll attract more of the party animals. I guess the Stones partied a bit. I think The Doors were more like The Beatles backstage – friends hanging out and whatever. It wasn’t crazy. Everything was pretty subdued.
I find out as much from the guy in backstage TV as I do from my C.F.O. Anybody can e-mail me. I do town halls with employees at least once every eight weeks. I’m out there, and it makes a huge difference.
I don’t think anyone in the WWE really knew that I did parkour. I mean, some of the guys have seen me doing it backstage in arenas before and have always asked about it, but the office didn’t know.
We get notes sent to us backstage from college students that say, ‘My parents used to play your albums all the time! I grew up with you, and I love the new stuff.’
The first year I was on ‘Les Mis’ there was strictly no filming backstage, then slowly social media proved invaluable to building an audience.
Our publicist at Warner Brothers is a young guy who has worked so hard for seven years with us and when we saw him backstage he broke down and cried. He couldn’t believe it happened. It was seeing him so overcome when we realised how much it really meant.
In 2011, I had a big chip on my shoulder, and I felt like I had a lot to prove every time I went out there. It led to good performances, but sometimes backstage, I could be – not to the talent, but just in general – I could be angry.
There are lots of ways to be a feminist. Beyonce, for example, is a beautiful example of feminine sensuality and is still really powerful. My character and my inner essence is more like an awkward 15-year-old boy, like a teenager backstage, like, ‘Yeah, what’s up?’ That’s what I’m trying to channel.
‘Breathe In’ was such a big deal for me. It was my first anything. Before that, I was going through ‘Backstage Magazine’ and applying for student films.
Hopefully everybody in the audience thinks, ‘That’s cool. I could do that.’ I don’t like the thought that they say, ‘I saw the Beastie Boys last night, and they’re mega-stars.’ I’m a lot happier when the kids who come backstage or to the hotel try to give us tapes of what they’ve done instead of just getting an autograph.
I got my Equity card from an audition out of Backstage. We did ‘Guys and Dolls’ and ‘Kismet.’
I have always wanted to work in the theater. I’ve always felt the glamour of being backstage and that excitement, but I’ve never actually done it – not since I was in 5th grade, really. But I’ve had many plays in my films. I feel like maybe theater is a part of my movie work.
Backstage, I get sleepy, and want to curl up and snooze. I never get nervous, whatever the event. I feel quite detached until I walk on stage, and then some gear inside me clicks and off I go like a wind up doll.
When you feel like you’ve had a good show, you go backstage and you talk to yourself about it, and if you have a bad show you talk to yourself about it.
My first role was in a Nativity play. My mom was playing Mary, and I was crying backstage, so she brought me out as Baby Jesus.
It’s like, backstage at ‘SNL,’ like, if you come back after a show or something, or a lot of times even at the after-parties, we’re just pretty tired and like, ‘Hey, what’s up.’ Just getting a drink and kind of chilling out. Nothing crazy.
I went into performing for the community. Being backstage with your company of fellows is the best part of working in live theater. That energy, that combined focus, the synergy – it’s addictive.
Most of my read on America is through looking through the front windshield of a bus and hanging out with country music fans backstage.
I have loved music so much from when I was little, and I don’t know whether it was because I saw my dad doing it and then I got the idea; I don’t know what came first… But I always had a hairbrush in the mirror singing. I was always with him backstage; I would go out and be pulled in for the last song.
The first thing I say when someone says they want to be an actor is, ‘Go get ‘Backstage.’ You know what’s going on, you know who’s doing what, and there’s work that you can find in there. It’s an incredible resource, and there’s nothing else like it.
When you go backstage at a Bruce Springsteen show, you don’t see a circus.
