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Tom Lenk - "Rock of Ages" Play - He will his make Broadway debut

Webmaster — 2009-09-02T08:46:09Z

Tom Lenk, who starred as Andrew on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, will make his Broadway debut as Franz in the Tony-nominated musical Rock of Ages on Sept. 14. Lenk originated the supporting role, the son of a German developer who wants to demolish the Sunset Strip (including LA's favorite rock club), in Los Angeles and Las Vegas productions. He phoned EW to give us the scoop and the often hilarious backstory.

• A UCLA theater grad with formal voice training, Lenk went to college with Rock of Ages‘ Tony-nominated director Kristin Hanggi. They've worked together before — on a production of Ann E. Wrecksick, an Annie spoof about bulimic orphans, in the basement of a Mexican restaurant in Silver Lake, Calif. the summer after his first season on Buffy. She knew he was also friends with Rock of Ages writer Chris D'Arienzo, and phoned Lenk to tell him that D'Arienzo had a role that might suit him. “In Ann E. Wrecksick, I had done a character of a German fashion designer. I'd also been doing this sketch for years about a German character who's obsessed with Star Trek and Melrose Place, based on my time having been invited to appear as a random Buffy person at a Star Trek convention in Germany and a friend's Hungarian husband who was obsessed with Melrose Place,” he says. “So they knew I did this German thing, and it happened to be perfect for the show.”

• Franz's big moment, the song “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” comes when he starts a relationship with Regina, who works in the Mayor's office and protests his and his father's plans. “I'm a little nervous. The way I performed it in LA and Vegas is not nearly as exhaustive as the version that's happening now on stage. I would stand and sing, and then do some dancing. But now it's dancing while I'm singing, so I have two weeks to become Beyoncé,” he says. (Thankfully, he'd already been taking dance classes at his gym and doing Silver Lake's Sweaty Sundays, “an all-level ironic jazz dance class.”) He also has additional motivation : At the beginning of the song, he rips away his costume to reveal “a bedazzled onesie, so to speak.” If memory serves him well, that was actually his idea back when the show was being workshopped. “I think offhandedly, I was like, ‘Guys, this song is just missing something. What do you think if I ripped off my clothes to reveal a sparkling unitard ?' And the director was like yes and yes.'” To prepare for that moment, he's hired a trainer, reinstating the “TWAT system” — “Tan it, Wax it, And Tone It ” — which he and the other Ann E. Wrecksick actors developed when they had to appear on stage in their underwear. “Here's the thing : When we did Rock of Ages in LA [in 2006], I ripped off my clothes and it was funny and everyone had a good laugh,” he says. “I went to see the show last month in New York, and the guy ripped his clothes off to reveal a totally rockin' bod. I was like, Ohmygod, you can be funny and arousing ? If I'm gonna take my clothes off every day on stage for six months on Broadway, I might as well get a date out of it. So I'm gonna try to get some biceps and pectoral muscles by Sept. 14.”

• He begins rehearsals today, but he won't actually get to perform with the actors he'll share the stage with until the afternoon before his evening debut. “Which makes me want to have a complete heart attack/throw up,” he admits. “I know I should be prepared for this. I do have a theater degree. I do theater all the time [at LA's Upright Cabaret]. I did a tour of Grease in Germany like 10 years ago, but I was an understudy for Doody and Eugene and I never went on. So I never got my big put-in rehearsal.” Clarification : He could have gone on once as Doody, but he'd booked a German Audi commercial that was coincidentally shooting in Austria on that same evening. During that commercial audition, Lenk, who speaks passable German and will use a thick accent in Rock of Ages, was asked if he skied. He lied and said yes. “I get to the set, and I'd missed something in the translation — it was ski-jumping. They let me freak out for awhile until they revealed that I had a stunt double,” he says. “I only booked the commercial because ski jumpers are like jockeys, they have to be tiny and lightweight. They already had the costume, and they needed somebody to fit it. I was too big even. It was crazy. I missed my big show, Grease das Musical, which is fine.”

• Lenk, who made his “Broadway-adjacent debut” last month with a sold-out-thanks-to-Twitter performance at Don't Tell Mama, plans to do more solo shows while he's in town. (Dates and venues to be announced.) His typical show features original, belted comedy songs (like “The Master Cleanse”), mash-ups (sample : “Gimme More”), as well as sketches and stand-up comedy. One of his favorite things to do is read the responses to an old online article about “Your Next Crush : Tom Lenk” : “It has the range of the most amazing to the most horrifying to the most sexually explicit comments that teenage girls wrote about me. I read them back-to-back, and I do all the voices of what I imagine them to be like. That makes me laugh, always.” He also sings original song lyrics he wrote in junior high and intended to send to bands like the B-52's. “They'd never seen the light of day, until I did them at the show Mortified.”

• We tried to seize the opportunity to get some details on The Cabin in the Woods, the Joss Whedon-Drew Goddard film in theaters Feb. 5, 2010, but all Lenk would say is that he has a small role, Ronald the Intern, and that the film is a combination of genres that he doesn't think anyone's seen before. Also, that he signed a confidentiality agreement.

• He's shot a role in the indie romantic comedy My Girlfriend's Boyfriend, starring Alyssa Milano and Christopher Gorham (who was a year ahead of Lenk at UCLA and whose wife, Anel Lopez Gorham, appeared in a midnight Scooby-Doo Live production with him in the theater department's sculpture garden). He plays Milano's brother/sidekick, “a guy who accidentally ends up in a gum commercial and becomes a local celebrity. He's famous, but he didn't get any of the good stuff, the money, that comes with the fame. Just the ‘Hey, aren't you that guy from the commercial ?' Not that I can relate : [Taco Bell] burrito commercial, Blockbuster Video commercial, iPhone commercial…”

Tom Lenk is Mortified on August 14-15, 2009 in San Francisco

Webmaster — 2009-08-13T12:00:27Z

Click on the link :

http://culturemob.com/blog/get-awkward-with-mortified-at-the-make-out-room

Tom Lenk - "Last Minute Show" on July 8, 2009

Webmaster — 2009-07-05T20:18:40Z

Click on the link :

http://www.donttellmamanyc.com/reservations.php

Happy Birthday To Tom Lenk, 33 Today !

Webmaster — 2009-06-17T13:17:34Z

Date of Birth : 16 June 1976

Location : Westlake Village, California, USA

Birth Name : Thomas Loren Lenk

Height : 5' 7½" (1.71 m)

Mini Biography

Thomas (Tom) Loren Lenk was born in Westlake Village, California, USA on June 16th, 1976. Tom attended Moorepark College until his junior year, then transferred into UCLA's theater program. It wasn't long before others began to notice Tom's talent, and in 1997 Tom won the Carol Burnett Award and Scholarship.

Tom graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from UCLA. Since graduating, Tom has had a wide variety of acting jobs, be they in film, on television, or on stage. Most notably, Tom toured with the European Cast of Grease playing the role of Doody. Acting and singing are not Tom's only talents, he is also a playwright, having written three plays to date. Playing geekster Andrew on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1997) with cohorts in crime Warren (Adam Busch) and Jonathan (Danny Strong) is where Tom is at now, and there's no telling what this talented actor might be up to in the future. IMDb Mini Biography By : Jayded

Trivia

He is the son of Fred Lenk, a computer programmer, and Pam Lenk, a teacher in the Pleasant Valley School District.

Named #9 of the Top Ten Sexiest Men of the Buffy / Angel universe in a fan poll by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanzine (2004).

Appeared in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1997) Real Me (#5.2) as one of Harmony Kendall's vampire minions. He later had a recurring role as Andrew Wells in the show's sixth and seventh seasons, and Andrew later appeared in two episodes of "Angel" (1999)'s final season (which, ironically, was the only season in which Harmony actress Mercedes McNab was credited as a series regular).

Was the drum major his senior year at Adolfo Camarillo High School, in Camarillo CA.

Appeared in the original Los Angeles run of the stage musical Rock Of Ages.

Personal Quotes

"There's no such thing as a part-time Buffy fan ; people watch it compulsively." [at a BtVS convention in Northern Ireland, 30 Sept. 2002]

"I approach every scene as if it's the last." [on knowing that "Buffy" creator and executive producer Joss Whedon could have killed his character, Andrew, at any time]

Tom Lenk - "The Cabin in the Woods" Movie - He joins the cast !

Webmaster — 2009-06-08T09:10:58Z

From his Twitter :

Since it's officially been in the trades...

I'm finally allowed to say I finished filming a role in Cabin in the Woods a few weeks ago :)

Tom Lenk joins Twitter.com

Webmaster — 2009-05-18T14:27:06Z

Click on the link :

http://twitter.com/tomlenk

Tom Lenk - "A Sort of Homecoming" Musical - He joins the cast !

Webmaster — 2008-11-14T16:29:51Z

Click on the link :

http://www.artistsgiveback.org/homecoming/

Tom Lenk makes out

Webmaster — 2008-10-28T19:04:09Z

Tom Lenk, aka Andrew from"Buffy", is officially out !

The latest issue of The Advocate features icon Harvey Milk on the cover, but a minor icon of geekdom, Tom Lenk (who played Andrew on Buffy the Vampire Slayer), also makes news by officially coming out in the issue (the online site doesn't feature the article).

After the jump, read more about Lenk's gay role on a recently canceled sitcom, his homophobic management and more !

It probably doesn't come as that big of a shock to fans of Buffy that Tom is gay, which probably isn't fair, as no doubt Lenk is capable of playing a wide-range of characters. Nonetheless, Lenk pinged quite a few gaydars including Buffy creator Joss Whedon, who told The Advocate that Andrew hadn't been planned as gay, but when Lenk auditioned they decided to take the character that way since "Tom has a bit of a fey thing going on in his persona that, you know, you can't really deny."

Technically, Andrew was never gay, but when we included him on our list of the "Ten Best Gay and Bisexual Science Fiction Characters", Whedon himself wound up weighing in on the topic.

Lenk says his coming out now was supposed to be timed to coincide with his first television same-sex kiss. The Buffy alum had been cast as the boyfriend of Jesse Tyler Ferguson's character on Fox's Do Not Disturb. Alas for Lenk, DNR didn't make it past its second episode before Fox showed mercy on us all and canceled the sitcom.

Lenk also discusses his less-than-pleasant childhood growing up in Camarillo, California, a town north of Los Angeles, where he was "constantly tormented", how theater was his escape, and how, post-Buffy, he learned his own management company was mocking him behind his back for being less than butch.

Despite the setbacks, Lenk stays optimistic about his future. And as Whedon says about Lenk, "He's very, very f**king talented." Here is hoping Lenk finds the right vehicle to express that talent.

In the meantime, enjoy this Wendy's commercial that Lenk did which is much more amusing now that he's an out gay man. Hold the irony !

Tom Lenk - "Do Not Disturb" Tv Series - He will play with Jerry O'Connell

Webmaster — 2008-09-22T18:12:30Z

Tom Lenk (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) has booked a role on Fox laffer “Do Not Disturb.” His credits include “Transformers” and “Boogie Nights.”

Do Not Disturb (Previously known as The Inn) is an American television comedy series, which debuted as a Fall entry on FOX's primetime lineup on September 10 2008. The multi-camera sitcom will be co-produced through Reveille Productions, Principato-Young Entertainment and Fox Television Studios. It is about the going-ons at a once-popular New York City hotel as seen through the eyes of its employees. Fox has ordered 13 episodes of this series, with Jason Bateman directing the pilot.

Tom Lenk was on Emma Caulfield Radio Show "Dark Matters" yesterday

Webmaster — 2007-09-17T10:24:24Z

TOM LENK - BUFFY AND BEYOND

Sunday Sep 16, 2007

This week Dark Matter welcomes actor Tom Lenk to the program. Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans will recognize Tom from his role as Andrew Wells on the program. Andrew is introduced in season six of the series in a group known as the Trio made up of three students with their own unique characteristics. Warren is power hungry, Johnathan is in need of excitement and thought the group could provide it, and Andrew started with the need for excitement, but as his skills grew, so did his greed and need for power.

Dark Matter's Michael Parker and Emma Caulfield will have an open floor to discuss anything on your mind about the show, life or what ever else you might want to ask Tom.