With Take Me Out now in previews, the first official images of the cast, including Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Jesse Williams and Patrick J. Adams, have been released. As ET previously reported, Williams and Adams will be going fully nude during their Broadway debut about members of a professional baseball team.
“Everything debuts, [it’s] not a partial debut,” Williams joked with ET about taking it all off as Darren Lemming, who decides to come out as a gay during the height of his career, opposite of Adams as his teammate, Kippy Sunderstrom, who warns him against that decision.
“This has gotta be the smartest play that involves nudity,” Williams said, with Adams explaining that “there’s something about it, it’s so fully integrated into the play. When I first heard about Take Me Out, and I just heard naked guys in a play, you sort of make assumptions that maybe it’s sort of gratuitous or not necessary. But with this play, it’s so fully integrated into the fabric of really what it’s about: people being stripped bare and getting down to the basics.”
Adams added, “It’s kind of great in that way. You feel like you’re servicing such a beautiful play.”
First written 20 years ago, Richard Greenberg’s Tony Award-winning play explores what would happen if a player in Major League Baseball had ever come out publicly during their career, while also tackling themes of prejudice, race and homophobia. Even though professional athletes in the MLS, NBA, NFL and NHL have slowly started coming out amid their careers, no one in baseball has and being LGBTQ in sports still comes with its own stigmas and barriers.
The revival directed by Scott Ellis hasn’t changed that much in the two decades since – and that’s what makes it even more relevant today. “We’re drawing attention to the fact that even though this play is 20 years old, we’re basically still in the same circumstance,” Adams said.
In addition to Adams, Ferguson and Williams, Take Me Out also stars Julian Cihi, Hiram Delgado, Brandon J. Dirden, Carl Lundstedt, Ken Marks, Michael Oberholtzer, Eduardo Ramos and Tyler Lansing Weaks.
Take Me Out is now in previews before officially opening on April 4 at Hayes Theater.
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