An Interview with Actor, Director, and Screenwriter Geoffrey Allen Murphy

 by Paula Gail Benson

Geoffrey Allen Murphy

As many of our readers and all my blogging partners know, I love theater, both live and on screen. When I hear, “go to a show,” it’s like a dog hearing, “take a walk.” I’m ready. Any time. Any place. 

So, imagine what a thrill it was to hear that my friend’s (excellent writer Carol L. Wright) son Geoffrey Allen Murphy was on Broadway in the company of To Kill a Mockingbird and that he alternated in playing the role of Boo Radley. Talk about theater geek girl overload!

I very much wish I could have seen Geoff’s Broadway performances in To Kill a Mockingbird or The Nance (with Nathan Lane). I am delighted to have watched him in this year’s season finale of Elsbeth. (If you haven’t seen it, go now immediately to CBS or Paramount Plus.) He plays Rocco, a prison guard with a love of cats.

Geoff’s looks have often led to him being cast as the heavy in the work he has done. He’s now involved in a very personal project—So, You’re Dying—a short film he’s written, is directing, and in which he is playing the leading character. Reading about it made me want to contribute to the funding. Check out what he says in this interview and see if you might feel the same.

Welcome Geoffrey Allen Murphy to Writers Who Kill!

Geoff, I just saw your performance on the season finale for Elsbeth. You were fabulous! I hope they ask you back as a regular. It looked like a good possibility from the storyline.

GEOFF: Thank you so much for your kind words. Working on Elsbeth was a true delight. Carrie Preston, Showrunner Jonathan Tolins, the episode director Lionel Coleman, and the whole team could not have been a kinder, more generous group of insanely talented professionals to work with.

When did you know you wanted to become an actor?

GEOFF: It is hard to say when exactly I knew. I had been involved in school theater as a child and my parents took me to see theater from a young age. It was always something I enjoyed but I think I only got serious about it when I reached high school. Part of that was that we moved from a town where there wasn't a community theater scene to one with a thriving community theater program. Making theater with people who took it seriously, even though it was purely a labor of love, told me this was something I really wanted to pursue.

Geoff Murphy in
A Funny Thing
Happened on the
Way to the Forum

You trained at Julliard and with legendary performers from musical theater. What were those experiences like? Is that the kind of training you would recommend for aspiring actors?

GEOFF: I had my heart set on studying at Juilliard from the time I started looking at colleges. The history it has, the caliber of teaching, to be training at the best acting school (possibly on the planet), all of it was appealing. But as anyone can tell you, getting into Juilliard is a challenging endeavor. I was rejected twice before I was finally accepted as I was leaving my undergraduate studies.

It is a magical place to study as you walk through the labyrinthine halls and hear the echo of music played by virtuosos. I've never felt as cool as I did when I was studying there. That said, it was impossibly challenging. The incredibly long hours of class followed by rehearsal for plays and rehearsals for scenes for class... I think I never had more than 4 hours of sleep for 4 years. It was psychologically draining in a way I have never experienced anywhere else. I am incredibly grateful for the experience though. I learned a lot about myself. I learned a ton about the craft of acting. I made lifelong friends. And I acquired a lot of emotional scars—hahaha.

Do I recommend it to others? Not necessarily. It is a lot to put yourself through, and there is nothing that you learn at Juilliard that you cannot learn somewhere else. What makes Juilliard Drama (and its unofficial sister programs Yale Grad and NYU Grad) special is that all of the knowledge and skills and elite teachers are all put in one place for your mandatory participation. When you hear about getting your 10,000 hours in, those programs will make you do that. There are tons of incredible actors who have trained elsewhere and others who haven't trained at all.

With acting, you learn by doing, and doing it poorly, and then doing it again a tiny bit better. The greatest and most important skill in an aspiring actor is resilience, and perhaps a tad of stubbornness. You are going to be told “no” a million times, but if you keep going and most importantly putting in the work to improve while being rejected, eventually you will find a place in the business.

Another important thing to remember though is that training at a program like Juilliard in no way guarantees a career in the business. A large number of Juilliard Drama graduates don't wind up working in the field through a variety of turn-of-life events. And that can be great. The important thing is that people pursue their own happiness. The famous thing you will hear over and over is that if you can be happy doing anything else, you should. This business is too hard and heartbreaking and unpredictable to go into unless you absolutely have to.

Geoff Murphy with the cast of The Nance

What was it like to work with Nathan Lane in The Nance?

GEOFF: Nathan is one of the greatest performers living today. I continue to feel lucky that I was able to work with him for 7 months. To observe his process, to get to know him. He is an enigmatic person, and his dedication to the craft is total. His knowledge of the art form and the history of theater and comedy is comprehensive. I've worked with many great actors over the years, but I certainly haven't worked with anyone I would describe as being better than Nathan

There are many kinds of great when it comes to acting, and Nathan is a unique kind of great. One of the magical things about Nathan is how meticulous he is in crafting his work. He is better than anyone I have ever seen at making a planned moment feel improvisational even to those who are performing with him, and the way he can dissect why a moment did or didn't get a laugh is incredible. Sometimes it really is just a matter of standing a foot further downstage when a moment happens.

How difficult is it to find work on Broadway, in television, and in the movies? What is it like to work with an agent and casting directors?

GEOFF: Oof. It is incredibly hard. It is incredibly random. After I got out of school I learned three rules right away: (1) It is never going to make any sense. (2) It is always going to come down to something you can't control. (3) Those who care least win.

Getting work as an actor is in large part about luck. Did a writer write a part that is right for you in terms of type? Are they lucky enough to get that piece produced? Can you even get considered for the role due to your resume and who you know? It honestly is a miracle that anyone ever gets a job. And, in my experience, it never gets profoundly easier.

Having an agent is helpful, but most agents can only get you "in the room" (more metaphorical these days in the "self tape" era). Having casting directors who believe in you is fantastic, and I am lucky to have a few of those. But again they can only put your hat in the ring. The decisions are made by a group of people (producers, creatives, etc.) with different opinions and priorities and tastes.

For every person who gets a job, there are dozens of people who would also be great in the part. It often comes down to things you can't control. You're too tall. You're too short. You look like someone a member of the team doesn't like from high school. It is random. All you can do is try and put out your best work and then forget about it. Hope for the best, but forget about it, and be happy if you get the gig, and try not to be too bitter when you don't. When you do get a job, it is important to be grateful, and save your money, because in this feast or famine business, when you feast, you must prepare for the famine. The famine always comes.

Geoff Murphy backstage in War Horse

You come from a family of writers. (Geoff’s father is Dr. Bruce Allen Murphy, who has written biographies of U.S. Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia, Abe Fortas, William O. Douglas, and Louis D. Brandeis and Felix Frankfurter, and has co-authored 10 editions of an American Government textbook, Approaching Democracy; his mother is Carol L. Wright, a member of the Bethlehem Writers Group and noted author of short stories and cozy mysteries, including Death in Glenville Falls and Apple, Table, Penny . . . Murder; and his sister Emily P. W. Murphy has written short stories and a children’s picture book as well as edited Hook, Line, and Sinker, the Seventh Guppy Anthology.) When did you decide to try your hand at writing and how would you describe your screenplays?

GEOFF: It is an unusual thing that everyone else in my family writes. I didn't really know that as a child but looking back it was kind of odd in that my Father was frequently home but also "at work" up in the attic working on one of his incredible biographies. My mother got serious about her writing later in my childhood, and my sister shortly after that as I recall. I was the last one by a mile, and I only did so out of a desire for a form of artistic expression that I had control over.

As I said earlier, an actor has essentially no control over what he gets cast as and considered for, and when you look like me, you almost exclusively get hired to play murderers, and cops, and cops who murder, and cop murderers etc. etc. If you want to show your range, you have to make your own work. Something that I recommend to any actor, and something that is impossibly hard as well (there is a theme here).

I had dabbled in writing here and there, but only became more serious about it in the last few years. I have a couple half-written-terribly plays on an old hard drive somewhere, and some bad pilots and a half-written hackneyed screenplay from years ago, as well, but like the acting thing I said earlier, you have to make bad art before you can make good art. I am still working my way towards being the writer I want to be, but everyday I come a little closer. Long way to go yet. I gravitate towards screenplays and plays because that is the writing I come in contact with more often due to my line of work, and because I am trying to write projects that I can act in as well.

My writing tends towards what I would describe as dark comedy, which I feel is a fairly accurate description of life. Perhaps that is a little pessimistic, but bad things happen in life all the time, and the way I cope is through laughter.

Tell us about the project for which you are currently seeking funding. How can people contribute?

GEOFF: One of the profound challenges of writing something as a screenplay or play is that the only real way for it to be consumed as intended is for it to be produced. Screenplays and plays can obviously be read but that is not how they are intended to be experienced. They are blueprints for production. And getting things produced is very hard and very expensive. Which leads to why I wanted to write a short film. Something I could conceivably make myself. But I had no idea what to write about. Short films are tricky. Many of the best short films don't have a traditional narrative arc. They more capture a feeling, a moment, an experience. It was while I was looking for a short film idea that I had a pretty profoundly bad day. My doctor told me I was going to die. Not crazy soon, but within the next few years. I then had to go to work catering for Micro Influencers while I processed that information and figured out how to break that news to my fiancée. It was a bad day.

I have an, as yet still undiagnosed, vascular disorder that causes the inner lining of my arteries to tear, which we only became aware of in the last few years. It made sense of a lot of mysterious medical problems I had experienced in the years prior (a stroke and some cardiovascular events). I had been dealing with that but had been told that if managed properly I should be able to live a full life. Then that doctor appointment happened. It threw my whole world off kilter. I was a wreck. My therapist told me to write about it, mostly from a therapeutic standpoint, so I did, and out came "So, You're Dying" a fever dream of all my complex and confusing medical experiences over that previous decade, a window into my mind at the most bleak moment I had ever experienced. It was a dark comedy. Two weeks later, thank God, I received a better prognosis from a very respected doctor, but the short had still been written. I decided to make it. Maybe it could help others. I have been hard at work assembling a great team (luckily I know a lot of great actors), and right now we are in the unpleasant phase of raising money for the project. It's not the fun part of making art, but it is completely necessary. That is why we have our crowdfunding campaign running currently on Seed & Spark which has a little less than two weeks left. If anyone would be interested in contributing I would be very grateful.

I think the film is going to be very special.

The link for the crowdfund is: https://seedandspark.com/fund/so-youre-dying

Thanks so much for helping me get the word out there, Paula!

Geoff Murphy in A Flea in Her Ear at Williamstown 

Geoff, thank you and break a leg or two with your film (and your prognosis). For anyone who wants to read more about Geoff’s career, here’s a link to his website: Geoffrey Allen Murphy - Home.