Michael Urie Just Can’t Resist Texas

Michael Urie has a lot on his mind. 

The 40-year-old actor, who rose to prominence between 2006 and 2010 with his role in Ugly Betty, can currently be seen in the Apple TV+ dark comedy Shrinking. It stars Jason Segel as Jimmy, a grieving therapist who starts to break the rules by telling his clients exactly what he thinks.

Playing Brian, Jimmy’s best friend, has been genuinely life-changing for Urie. “I’d never been in therapy. I’d never really talked to a professional about my own mental health,” said Urie, who started seeing a therapist after working on the show. “It’s been great to talk about what’s going on with me, where I want to improve myself, and where I want to learn more about others. I hope that the show does that for other people.”

At the same time, Urie is also hard at work as the director of the play Silver Foxes. The comedy, which revolves around an ensemble of queer men who rescue their best friend from a homophobic assisted living facility, will debut at Uptown Players in Urie’s hometown of Dallas, Texas, on Thursday March 2, running until Sunday March 12.

The Texas Observer spoke with Urie about why Texas is the perfect home for Silver Foxes, Shrinking’s unique exploration of grief, and growing up queer in Dallas. 

How did you get involved in Silver Foxes?

I loved the script. Stan Zimmerman and James Berg, the guys who wrote it, they are friends of mine. I know them from LA. They’ve mostly written for television before. They knew that I’ve done a lot of theater. So they asked me to weigh in on it. We started talking about what I thought would make it more theatrical and less like a television story. We had a great working relationship, so they asked if I would attach myself as director. We did some readings in LA—this was during the pandemic, so we did it over Zoom. When Uptown Players caught wind of it, they thought it might be right for them. We invited them to one of the readings that we did in Los Angeles at Stan’s house. That’s how we ended up in Dallas with the world premiere. 

What stood out to you about the comedy and Silver Foxes’ characters?

It’s about older gay guys who are helping each other grow old. I’ve always found the idea of chosen family to be really potent. Not just in the queer community—although it is very strong there—but in all alternative communities like the arts. Anyone who grows up in a family who aren’t necessarily like them, I think they eventually find a chosen family of people. This is about a chosen family, but it’s also about how our society is still very heteronormative. There’s a lot of protocol in place for people to get older. But queer people of a certain age might not have the same kind of assets that straight people of a certain age do. The older generation is less likely to have kids. That’s constantly changing obviously. But they’re less likely to have the benefit of adult children that can take care of them. They might also be less likely to have had normal jobs that had pensions, 401K’s or proper retirement funds. So the play is also about the ways in which our society isn’t exactly set up for queer people to get old.

Considering the Republican leadership’s treatment of LGBTQ+ rights over recent months, why was it so important to make Sliver Foxes in Texas?

I love that you brought that up. While Texas may seem like an unorthodox place for this play to premiere, I’m so proud as a Texan to be back with it and to be working with this theater company. Uptown Players is about 20 years old and has been fighting this fight all along. There are states and governors, like Abbott in Texas and DeSantis in Florida, who want to roll back the things that we’ve fought  fought for over decades in the queer community. Not just the queer community. Lots of minority communities and at risk communities. But Dallas has a huge queer population and a huge gay scene. As always the people who are trying to roll back time, like the governments in Texas, Florida, and lots of parts of the government in the United States, they don’t represent the majority. They represent their own interests. This play, like all theater, is its own form of activism. Even though it is a comedy, and it’s heartwarming, it is a piece of activism.

How else do you think people can help fight this battle?

The easiest thing to do is give money to candidates who are supporting positive LGBTQ+ legislation and other minority group legislation. Voting is a huge thing. A lot of people say they are allies. But if they vote for the people who are rolling back our rights, then you are not an ally.

How have you been dealing with this fight?

I’ve been out for a long time. I’ve been sort of in the public eye for a while. I spent a lot of time playing queer characters and working on queer roles in theater, movies and television. A couple of years ago, I started a four day queer theater festival called Pride Plays in New York. We chose plays that were about the future and the ways in which the world could be for so many people. We wanted to focus on the hope, joy and pride of queerness. Not the trauma, fear, and the stigma of queerness. I think that’s a huge way of helping to change the way people look at it. I also did a gay Christmas rom-com [Single All the Way] a few years ago, which was in a ton of living rooms. That was wholesome, sweet and didn’t have an agenda. That was an opportunity to change someone’s mind about people falling in love.

Talk about your connection to Texas. 

I grew up here. But left when I was 19. I went to New York to go to Juilliard. I fell in love with New York. I’ve always had a foot there. But I’ve always had a soft spot for Texas and Texans. They’re great. They’re really great people. The Texas personality is very infectious. I love being around that. I was driving by a gun range yesterday and I heard a literal machine gun being shot. I don’t love that. But I can eat my weight in chips and salsa. My parents actually left for a few years and I missed it a lot. I still take any gig I can get in Texas. I love coming back here and looking at what has changed in Dallas. Plano has changed so much. I’m currently staying in a neighborhood I’ve never hung out in. I’m falling in love with the city in a whole new way. Specifically the Dallas theater scene. That’s had a special place in my heart ever since I was a little kid. Now I’m working there. 

What was it like growing up as a member of the LGBTQ+ community in Texas?

I have an older sister, who is seven years older, who is queer. I remember she took me to Oak Lawn. That was my first time where I was like, ‘Oh, wow! I think … you know.’ It had never occurred to me. I’d had inklings. I didn’t really know who I was until I had left. Not really. I had ideas and I had a very supportive sister and parents and friends that I knew would be supportive. But it was great to see that neighborhood, go to some bookstores in that area, and know that there was a community available. New York and Los Angeles have queer people everywhere. But Dallas was the first queer neighborhood that I saw. In fact, when I went to that queer bookstore with my sister the first time I bought a copy of Angels In America that I still have today. 

How did you get involved in Shrinking? 

I auditioned for it. My audition material was actually from later episodes. I did not get the scripts, though. So I really only knew what they’d told me about my character Brian. I did read the script for the first episode, which I’m not really in. I got the tone of the show from that. It was such a good script. It was so tight. I could see the comedy and feel that it was still a show about grief and using humor to battle the grief. I found it really exciting that Jason Segal was a therapist that was going to break the rules. I knew that I was playing this kind of happy go lucky, ray of sunshine human. I knew that eventually there was going to be more to him. That he wasn’t just going to be a one dimensional character. They do a pretty incredible job of peeling away the layers of my character, too. 

What do you hope audiences take away from the show?

I hope that they look inward a little bit. It certainly made me do that when we were shooting. I have never really battled depression or anxiety. When I would have a problem, I wouldn’t consider therapy because I thought, ‘Why would I need that?’ The truth is, we all need mental tuneups. There’s no shame in that. I hope the show is a way for people to heal in a communal way. We’re all coming out of this pandemic. We all watched more than a million Americans die from it. We are all in grief for the people we lost and for the ways life has changed. Shrinking shows how grief itself is really tricky. It can be sneaky and crafty in the way that it hits you. Having resources to look after yourself is really healthy and you should do it. Humor is healing and I think the way this show deals with these things is going to really mean a lot to people.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

Silver Foxes runs from March 2 through March 13 at Theatre 3 in Dallas, Texas.