In Richard Dreyfuss’s opinion, there’s extra to repair in The Shark Is Damaged than the titular animal. The Oscar winner says his emotions had been harm by the Broadway play, which chronicles the behind-the-scenes relationship between Jaws stars Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Dreyfuss throughout the making of Steven Spielberg’s epic 1975 blockbuster. “I went to see it, to see if it actually was gonna harm,” he says. “And it did.”
Dreyfuss, who starred as marine biologist Matt Hooper in Jaws, just lately caught a efficiency of The Shark Is Damaged, cowritten by and starring Ian Shaw—son of Dreyfuss’s Jaws costar Robert Shaw, who performed salty seafarer and eccentric shark hunter Quint. Ian used his late father’s diary as reference whereas he and Joseph Nixon had been cowriting the play, which first premiered on the Edinburgh Pageant Fringe earlier than opening on Broadway on the John Golden Theatre on August 10. Its remaining efficiency is scheduled for November 19.
After the efficiency he noticed, Dreyfuss posed for footage with the present’s three-person forged: Ian Shaw (enjoying his father), Colin Donnell (enjoying Scheider), and Tony nominee Alex Brightman (portraying Dreyfuss). However although he was smiling within the pictures, Dreyfuss says he was actually feeling something however happy.
Colin Donnell, Alex Brightman, Richard Dreyfuss and Ian Shaw pose backstage.Bruce Glikas/Getty Photographs.
“It was fairly terrible,” Dreyfuss says of his expertise watching the play. “Ian [Shaw]—who has greater than any proper to put in writing no matter he desires—by no means known as me and stated, ‘Give me some background.’ Or, ‘Give me your tackle this and this.’ They usually simply determined to make my character a giant jerk.”
The central battle of the play entails a supposed feud between Robert Shaw, a famend English stage actor and alcoholic in his late 40s, and Dreyfuss, who’s portrayed as a neurotic, fame-obsessed, comically insecure actor in his 20s, simply beginning his profession. However in Dreyfuss’s opinion, he and the veteran actor by no means fought. Dreyfuss says that whereas the late Shaw “had my quantity,” it was a “nice, nice honor” to work with him, including that the 2 had “a really unbelievable relationship” that “was all for the great.”
That’s to not say the 2 didn’t mess with one another every so often throughout the making of Jaws. “There have been folks on the crew who stated, ‘What’s this Richard Dreyfuss–Robert Shaw present that’s happening right here?’” Dreyfuss says. “After we had been surrounded by plenty of different folks, Robert would take digs at me, and I’d take a dig at him. However that was solely to make the hours go higher, sooner. We didn’t take any of that significantly.”
