How did you end up playing Lumiere in “Beauty and the Beast” on Broadway?
John Tartaglia: I’m known to be a huge Disney fan and my friend Dusty became the assistant to Thomas Schumacher who’s the head of Disney Theatrical Productions. I guess they were trying to figure out what to do with Beauty and the Beast and who would come in. Dusty was our assistant company manager at Avenue Q, Las Vegas. He asked me one day, “What are one of the roles you’d play on Broadway if you could?” I said, “Well, a lot of them I’m not right for, but one of them is Lumiere. I love that music, I love that show, it’s one of my favorite shows.” He said, “That’s really cool.” So he called me one day and said, “Remember that conversation we had two years ago out in Vegas? Remember you said you wanted to be Lumiere?” and I said, “Yeah…” He said, “Would you want to do it?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, I was talking to Tom Schumacher and I mentioned the idea of you doing it and he loved that.” I said, “Oh my God! Of course I would love that!” So I got to go meet with To
