\n\tWhen Will Brill got home after winning his first Tony award, he was a little, well\u2026.spooked. \u201cI was in bed and somebody texted me like, \u2018How are you feeling?\u2019\u201d Brill recalls. \u201cAnd I was suddenly hit with like, There\u2019s a Tony in this house. It can\u2019t be seen. It is lurking!<\/em> So weird.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA week after winning best featured actor in a play for his performance in Stereophonic<\/em>, Brill admits it still \u201cfeels a little weird.\u201d His portrayal of Reg \u2013 the hilarious, endearing, and often frighteningly coke-and-booze-addled bass player in Stereophonic<\/em>\u2019s fictional 1970s rock band on the verge of mega stardom \u2013 made Brill the only cast member from the most-Tony-nominated-ever play to bring home hardware. But on Tony night, Brill made sure to give his full cast its due: in his delightfully off-the-cuff acceptance speech, he asked all his castmates to stand up for an ovation (he also, memorably, thanked his therapist).<\/p>\n \n\tLike his fellow Stereophonic<\/em> cast members, Brill wasn\u2019t an experienced, trained musician before joining the ensemble. But acquiring the skill to convincingly play one onstage (and perform the play\u2019s Tony-nominated score by Will Butler there) was the kind of deep-dive experience Brill has long relished as an actor: His wide-ranging roles have included Dr. Astrov, in the hyper-intimate off-Broadway production of Uncle Vanya<\/em> that took place in a private New York loft last year, as well as Roy Cohn in Showtime\u2019s miniseries Fellow Travelers<\/em>, and the peddler Ali Hakim in the 2019 Broadway reimagining of Oklahoma!.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tAs Stereophonic<\/em> continues its run on Broadway through Jan. 5, 2025, Brill spoke to Billboard<\/em> about adding Reg to that list, as well as about his action-packed Tony night.<\/p>\n \n\tHave you started to come to terms with cohabitating with your Tony?<\/strong><\/p>\n Sort of\u2026 I mean, people keep like asking, \u201cWhere are you going to put it?\u201d I don\u2019t know\u2026. wherever it\u2026looks good? Wherever it fits? Like, I had to put my bike in this one corner because that\u2019s where it fit. I don\u2019t have a lot of art in my house, and now I have this thing I\u2019m like, obligated to display.<\/p>\n \n\tYou have to put it somewhere unexpected, like the bathroom.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tTotally. My idea, which I believe is a step too far, was to put it in<\/em> the toilet. So it\u2019s really a surprise to anybody who is using the bathroom. I have a buddy who keeps his in the fridge. And I heard that Ian McKellen keeps his many awards on his roof so that they can \u201crest.\u201d I don\u2019t know what that means, but that\u2019s allegedly what he does.<\/p>\n \n\tBefore we discuss anything else, I need the story of your ensemble for Tonys night: the pleats, the jewelry\u2026 it was a look!<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI was working with a stylist, Savannah White, and we had bounced around a lot of ideas of stores and designers and we were largely on the same page: Vivienne Westwood, Thom Browne, Commes des Garcons, and Issey Miyake, who I didn\u2019t really know of until he passed. I just saw an article about him and started Googling him and was really moved by his aesthetic. <\/p>\n \n\tSo then Savannah came back with the two looks [of Miyake\u2019s] that I wound up wearing. I was like, \u201cOh my God, this is so unlike anything I\u2019ve seen, and I have to imagine it\u2019s going to be totally unlike what anybody else is going to be wearing.\u201d I wanted to be wearing something that wasn\u2019t following a gender binary, and I feel like Issey\u2019s stuff hangs on any human body beautifully. I felt really lucky that we sort of nailed it. Everything was sort of flowy and weird and off-kilter \u2014 and few straight lines except for the pleats themselves. It was really a fun fit.<\/p>\n \n\tYour speech was iconic, to say the least. When you thanked your therapist, it became one of the most-memed moments of the night. How did you hear about that?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tMy PR person came up to me and was like, \u201cThe internet loved your speech.\u201d And I was like, \u201cOh, that\u2019s so nice. I just assumed that it was like, either the internet loves your speech or hates your speech \u2014 I had no idea that me shouting out my therapist was going to be any kind of a big deal or that shouting out the rest of my cast, for that matter, was going to be a big deal too. But they both sort of showed up everywhere. I got a really sweet text from my therapist that at first was all caps, \u201cHOLY S\u2013T, YOU WON! F\u2013K YEAH!\u201d And then, two minutes later, \u201cOh my God Will, this is so sweet,\u201d which really made me happy.<\/p>\n \n\tYou also gave a shoutout to your bass teacher. What was the process of learning the instrument like for you? You really get the physicality and personality of a bass player down, as well as the technical aspects, which seems uniquely challenging.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIt was really important for me to look authentic. I had experience learning an instrument for a [project] before \u2014 I learned to play 12 songs on the guitar for this David Chase film Not Fade Away<\/em>, and that\u2019s actually where I met Robbie Mangano, who was in The Grandmothers of Invention and is an astonishing guitar and bass player. He taught me and Jack Huston how to play guitar for the movie. <\/p>\n \n\tBut it was a different thing; we really just needed to look like we were playing the songs, which were pre-recorded by essentially the E Street Band. We didn\u2019t actually have to play for sound, we just had to look like we knew what we were doing, and there were all sorts of ways to cut around the fact that we didn\u2019t know what we were doing.<\/p>\n \n\tSo for this show, I called Robbie to help me learn the bass. But Robbie was also weirdly at the intersection of my life where I started to think about sobriety, which is like another huge part of Reg. I got really drunk at a show of Robbie\u2019s, and he wrote me this two-page letter, where he was like, \u201cI\u2019ve seen too many talented people not have the life that they should because they got caught up with drugs and alcohol, and I really believe in you and I count you as a friend and I hope that that would not be something that happened to you.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tAt the time I couldn\u2019t hear it, and I actually wound up not talking to him for several years because I was so embarrassed. Years and years later, I got a divorce and then I got sober and then [Stereophonic<\/em>] came back around. So by the time I called Robbie to start learning the bass again, I was two years sober and got to tell him that he was a big part of that. And he wound up saying to me, \u201cWow, that\u2019s crazy. I am recently sober too.\u201d It was really crazy and moving. So he\u2019s been a very special touchstone in my life.<\/p>\n![Will Brill accepts the Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play award for \"Stereophonic\" onstage during The 77th Annual Tony Awards at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on June 16, 2024 in New York City.](\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/will-brill-tony-awards-win-2024-billboard-1548.jpg?w=1024\")