Richard Thomas says “pride doesn’t enter into” his second Tony Award nomination

The Best Featured Actor in a Play nominee gives all the credit to The Balusters playwright David Lindsay-Abaire.

Richard Thomas has been gracing the Broadway stage since childhood. The son of ballet dancers, Thomas is an Emmy Award winner and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for the 2017 revival of The Little Foxes. Still, the veteran actor says he doesn’t think about awards or nominations when he walks into the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

“You try not to think about it. You want to do your play,” he told New York Theatre Guide after receiving another Best Featured Actor in a Play nod for Broadway’s The Balusters. “It doesn’t take anything away from the absolute honor” of the nomination, he said. “It’s thrilling and amazing and humbling at the same time. I would never, ever, in a million years, expect anything like that.”

In The Balusters, Thomas plays Elliot Emerson, the president of the Vernon Point Neighborhood Association. As the group debates the possible addition of a new stop sign on a historic-landmark street, Thomas “gloriously captures the way older white men hold on to power and wield it with almost evil authority,” Christian Lewis wrote in the New York Theatre Guide review.

“The play is so great and the part is so wonderful,” Thomas said of his experience. “It’s just been a feast right from the first day of rehearsal. David (Lindsay-Abaire) has written this gorgeous play, which is an opportunity for an ensemble to just really play together. It’s like chamber music.”

The Balusters is a true ensemble piece, featuring ten actors strapped into a “thrill ride,” Thomas said. “I get to watch these wonderful people every night, you know, not just to act with them, but to watch these performances. It’s really so much fun.”

When asked what part of his performance he’s most proud of, Thomas doesn’t hesitate to redirect the spotlight onto his fellow actors (Marylouise Burke was also nominated for Best Featured Actress for her performance as Penny Buell) and Lindsay-Abaire, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright. “Pride doesn’t enter into it. I love the character,” Thomas said. “I love what David has written, this complex man who you can spend the whole night thinking one way about, and then you have to see his humanity. You have to feel for him as a person, and that’s a wonderful playwriting achievement,” he continued. “To get to do that every night is a privilege. I’m gonna celebrate by doing this show tonight. There’s no better way to celebrate.”

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Photo credit: Richard Thomas in The Balusters on Broadway. (Photo by Jeremy Daniel)