Welcome to Always Great, a new Awards Insider column in which we speak with Hollywood’s greatest undersung actors in career-spanning conversations. In this entry,Michael Urie takes us from Juilliard to Ugly Betty to his new Apple TV+ comedy, Shrinking, a journey he likens to “growing up.”
Michael Uriehas played a lot of gay guys. On TV, in Emmy-winning hits likeUgly BettyandModern Family, and on Broadway, from major revivals (Torch Song) to hot premieres (Grand Horizons). As the out-and-proud lead of a sinfully sweet rom-com, in Netflix’sSingle All the Way, and as a closeted historical figure in an Oscar-tipped biopic,Bradley Cooper’s upcomingMaestro. When he was first starting out as an actor, Urie, who identifies as queer, would be warned of getting “pigeonholed” in such parts. He was told he needed to branch out from the gay guy. But if you’ve seen his work in these projects, you know his range. You know the breadth of his characters. You know his secret sauce.
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TakeShrinking, his first regular main role on a series in more than a decade. Urie calls the Apple TV+ dramedy “adult,” and he means a lot by that. He’s acting opposite film stars inJason SegelandHarrison Ford,and has the backing of a mega-streamer as well as a powerful showrunner, that beingTed Lasso’sBill Lawrence.He’s portraying a prickly lawyer negotiating an estranged friendship, an impending marriage, and several professional headaches. Oh, and having made his name in mostly LGBTQ-targeted projects, he’s now meeting a whole new audience. “I’m recognized by totally different people than I used to be—a lot of straight people, a lot of men,” he says. “When I look back and I see that I’m in this show that’s almost all straight people, and I’m the queer element…there’s a part of me that feels like I’ve bridged this gap of visibility, and I’ve been allowed to grow up in it.”
Urie takes pride in that career arc—that of a working actor who’s stayed true to who he is and found great variety within that, who’s been challenged by the pressures of his industry without ever succumbing to them. He’s witnessed what can happen when you stick it out, and things finally start to change.
Torch Song.
Just before graduating from Juilliard in 2003, Urie says, he performed in a show for the famed arts conservatory and cracked the audience up. He was funny—really funny—and caught the eye of a manager nabbing talent from his class (which also includedJessica ChastainandLuke Macfarlane). The manager took Urie out for coffee and told him he could almost see Robin Williams, a comedy legend in waiting, but that he needed a tad more convincing to sign him. Urie pitched himself as someone who could do it all. “He stopped me and he was like, ‘See, that hand gesture? Just not sure,’” Urie recalls, acting out the scene for me over Zoom. “It was obvious what he was getting at was,You’re a homo.That’s what he meant. That’s what he said.” They went their separate ways.
Hiding was not exactly an option for Urie, even though few actors were publicly out at the time. In the transition from student to professional, he wasn’t auditioning for, say,Law and Order—the typical entry-level New York stuff. He attracted a “really good” agent and manager who found him a specific lane. “They sawSean Hayes,”Urie says. There was a model for that in a Sean.”(Will & Gracewas at the height of its popularity around this time.) Within a year of graduating, Urie played a gay best friend in a filmed pilot, which put him on the sitcom radar. While doing a basement play, he bumped into the casting director forUgly Betty, who was impressed; he decided to audition on that pilot for a mere “costar” credit (as in, below “guest star”) that Urie says paid about $3,000. “There was a character [description] that just said, ‘bitchy, gay assistant,’ and I was like, I bet I could get that,” Urie says.
StarringAmerica Ferreraas the gawky new hire at a fashion magazine, the flashy ABC series was picked up, with Urie’s Marc St. James swiftly welcomed into the core ensemble. The initial plan forVanessa Williams’s imperious Wilhelmina Slater was to give her a different assistant every episode, but Williams herself pushed for Urie to stay on, enamored with their tart chemistry from the pilot. Urie’s trajectory kept taking off from there: The show was a critical darling, then a ratings success, then a prized Emmy winner; over four seasons, Urie was a sassy standout while given the room to go darker and deeper, as when Marc told his unaccepting mom, played byPatti LuPone,to get out of his life forever.
