Susan Misner is a seasoned performer, as both an actress and dancer, on both stage and screen. Her work on FX’s Fosse/Verdon allowed her to indulge in both vocations. In the FX limited series about the relationship between Bob Fosse (Sam Rockwell) and Gwen Verdon (Michelle Williams), Misner starred as Fosse’s second wife Joan McCracken. She also choreographed four episodes of the series. In our exclusive interview (watch the video above), Misner talks about digging into both McCracken’s tragic life and putting her own voice into Fosse’s legendary dancing style.
Misner says her first exposure to both Fosse and Verdon was while watching the film version of “Damn Yankees,” which marked the pair’s first collaboration. Misner remembers watching both the couple in the now-famous “Who’s Got the Pain” number: “I was quite young when I saw that, and it was my first ‘falling in love’ moment with them.”
In preparing to play McCracken, the actress and choreographer was attracted to the actress’s sense of wildness as well as the tragic arc of her life. She had numerous health problems, both before and after her marriage to Fosse, and then died in her early forties. For Misner it was important to balance the drama of McCracken while also showing the more eccentric qualities that made her a star. “The tragedy was actually inherent in the writing, so I didn’t have to do too much work there,” Misner says. “I was trying to find some quirkiness because she was so very quirky, but I think there was a real sadness to her.”
As a choreographer, Misner drew on her experiences taking classes with Chet Walker, who conceived the 1999 Tony-winning musical “Fosse.” During those classes she worked with many dancers who studied with Fosse and even got some personal tips from Verdon herself. She adds that she learned that Fosse’s style is more than just the “sinewy and sexy” imagery that audiences might know from the film and stage versions of “Chicago.” “The more that I researched him,” Misner says, “he was so much broader than we now associate with what he did. His work was so much more diverse.” She sums up Fosse’s work as “a combination of Vaudeville, meets sensuality… and acting.”
Misner is particularly proud of a fictional sequence that occurs in the program’s seventh episode “Nowadays.” In the episode, Verdon is rehearsing the “We Both Reached for the Gun” number from “Chicago.” The script called for an alternate version of the number, something miles away from the now iconic ventriloquist number featured in the number. “He really (aimed) towards vaudeville, and a dark vaudeville,” Misner reveals about his iconic dance moves. “I have to say my biggest compliments are when people are like ‘that was originally Fosse, right?’ and I’m like ‘No, actually that was not.'”
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