Juan Pablo Di Pace on His Broadway Debut in Schmigadoon! and the First Love That Inspired His Film

Juan Pablo Di Pace landed in New York from Los Angeles at seven in the morning. By two that afternoon, he was rehearsing at the theater for his Broadway debut in Schmigadoon! He had a week and a half to learn the show. His castmates had just enough time to find neck braces.

For this edition of Broadway Time at Carmine’s, we took lunch down the street to Virgil’s Real BBQ in Times Square. With corn pudding in Schmigadoon!, it felt like the right place to talk about the musical, the long road to Broadway, and the personal film Di Pace released the same week he stepped onstage as Doc.

Di Pace still remembers the phone call asking him to join the company. “And of course I said yes. When? Now. Okay.” He started by rehearsing with one cast member, then five, then half the company. By his put-in, the rehearsal where an incoming performer runs through their role with the full cast, everyone was there. And everyone had dressed for the occasion.

The cast has a tradition of picking a theme for each put-in. For Di Pace’s, they showed up in bandages and neck braces, some with fake bloody noses. “It was hilarious,” he recalled. The joke made an intimidating day feel like a welcome. “They take the job seriously, but also they kind of welcome you in their silliness.”

Audiences may know Di Pace from Fuller House or Mamma Mia!, but his first professional theater job was in the West End production of Chicago. He danced in the ensemble, understudied Billy Flynn, and went on for the role in his early twenties. For a Bob Fosse fan, getting to learn the choreography from people who had worked with him made that first job especially meaningful. He went on to play Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever in Spain and Danny Zuko in Grease. “Before I even was in front of a camera, I was on stage,” he said.

Stepping into Schmigadoon! meant finding his place in a company that already knew the show inside and out. “It’s like a puzzle,” Di Pace said. To make Doc his own, he drew on his Latin roots, his love of Desi Arnaz, and Christopher Plummer in The Sound of Music. His favorite song to perform is “Suddenly,” his duet with Isabelle McCalla. One of his favorite moments to watch happens from behind a door. Before he makes his entrance near the end of Act One, he gets to see the ensemble dance in “Cross That Bridge.”

That same week, Di Pace released Before We Forget, his first feature, which he wrote and co-directed with childhood friend Andrés Pepe Estrada. He spent five years on the film, drawing on an experience he had at 17, when a scholarship took him from Argentina to an international school in Italy. He arrived without speaking English and eventually returned to the school to shoot the film.

Before We Forget follows a filmmaker trying to finish a movie about his first love, moving between his school days and the present. “It deals with memory and how we romanticize memories,” Di Pace said. “And how we sometimes build our own version of memories.” Getting to share that story in the same week he made his Broadway debut gave him a rare chance to take stock. “For 30 years of my life, been knocking on these doors,” he said. “And it finally happened.”

During the Broadway Time Quick Round, Di Pace picked Company as his favorite Broadway show, Sweeney Todd as his dream role, and Bernadette Peters as his dream co-star. The best advice he’d ever received came from a ballet teacher. He remembered her putting it this way: “You can do it. You will die one day, so get it right.”

Juan Pablo Di Pace plays Doc in Schmigadoon! at the Nederlander Theatre through November 22. Watch the full interview on Broadway Time’s YouTube channel.