By Soo Youn ’96
Wendy Rich Stetson ’91 saw a James Lapine play while at Amherst. This year, she acted in one. [Interview] Actor Wendy Rich Stetson ’91 may be the only alum whose résumé lists, as special skills, five dialects: American Southern, Standard British, Irish, French and Scottish. We caught up in late summer.
What are you working on now?
If Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner can be said to have a villain, that would be me. I am in Boston playing Hilary St. George in a new play version of the classic Hepburn/Tracy movie at the Huntington Theatre Company. Hilary is not remotely pleased with who’s coming to dinner, and she gets her comeuppance in the end. It’s a lot of fun.
I play a lot of spinsters, lesbians and maids.
But didn’t you play Fortinbras off-Broadway?
It was an ill-fated production of Hamlet at the Public Theater with Liev Schreiber, directed by my former acting teacher Andrei Şerban. I played one of twin Fortinbrases.
I ended up going on as Gertrude for several performances, even though I had no idea I was understudying her. I got a phone call saying, “We heard you’re a quick study—can you go on tomorrow?”
What are you going to say? So I went ahead and did it. It actually has helped me. I always say [any new challenge] can’t be more scary than the Hamlet situation.
Tell me about being in a play with Santino Fontana, who did the voice of Hans from Frozen.
It’s Act One, the new play written and directed by James Lapine that just closed at Lincoln Center Theater. The cast was incredible—it was an amazing and humbling room to be in. When I was at Amherst, I saw and fell completely in love with the musical Into the Woods. James Lapine wrote the book and directed that show, and it was a big part of why I got into this business. Being able to tell that to James Lapine on opening night was a great moment.
Is there a particular role you really want to have?
It’s fun to do contemporary work. I’d like to do a play in jeans, instead of a corset. I’d like to do more Shakespeare. I’ve taught Shakespeare for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival; despite that, I haven’t done a lot of Shakespeare.
Amherst is also where you met your husband, Pete Stetson ’92.
He was a Zumbye. Now he’s a general medicine practitioner and an informatician at Columbia. I like being married to a doctor. He provides free medical care to my actor friends.
And you have a 7-year-old, Cate.
Recently, while watching a video together, she asked if [the actors] were really crying. I explained that I wasn’t very good at crying before and now I’m a much better crier. “Oh, that’s because you listen to me cry all the time,” she said.
I heard you’re writing a screenplay. What made you want to do that?
Sitting and waiting for the phone to ring is one of the lousiest parts of being an actor. I have taken to heart the idea that I need to create my own work, to be involved in projects over which I can have ownership. And, of course, the opportunity to showcase my awkward teenage years in a coming-of-age film set in the mid-’80s is just an added bonus. Have I used the word humbling yet? In reference to this entire artistic journey? Humbling.
Soo Youn ’96 is a New York- and Los Angeles-based journalist.