Behind the Scenes of 'Newsies' Musical

Hannah Berg here for Young Hollywood, about to take you for a backstage exclusive at Broadway's hit musical, Newsies.

Look at me, I'm the king of New York. Suddenly, I'm respectable staring right at you.

I'm here with Corey Cott, who plays Jack Kelly in Newsies. How are you?

I'm great. How are you?

We are here in your dressing room. There there's not much space around here, so this is kind of

Yeah, it's uh, it's a little tight. It's a little tight, but it makes do, you know, it's, I'm lucky to even have my own private space. A lot of the guys share. There's upstairs, there's a guy, uh, room that I think there's like 14 guys in there. 13 guys. They're all crammed together. Oh, yeah. This is actually like the master suite. Master suite. With a shower and a, you know, everything you really need. I could live in here, pretty much. I do live in here.

So do do you shower in there?

I do. Yeah.

Okay. Take me through, like, pre-show process. Show me some of your cool things. It's decked out in here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is. Literally, this was nothing when I started, but people make us stuff all the time, like the FanZies. The FanZies are crazy awesome. They like make me, they make all of us these like trinkets and I got, yeah, I even got here. I got like a, I got a Jack Kelly, you know, stocking for this year and, um, they they make us tons of stuff. I mean, most of this stuff is stuff that they've brought me. Um, picture collages, like just quotes from the show. I mean, everything. CDs and DVDs and

Where is this picture from?

These both are from Disney World and we did the Christmas Day parade. So these are this is me and one of the castmates, Jess Le Prado and another guy, Ryan Steel and all of us down in uh, in Disney World in front of the castle. We got to do a big, there were 500 of us dancing down Main Street. Yeah, it was incredible. This is actually a cool thing, too. Um, every celebrity that's come, I've gotten them to sign this poster. So there's like Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas and uh, Elvis Costello and Diana Krall and there's people like that that come to our show, people like James Franco and Naomi Watts, these people that like are huge deals.

Okay, so behind us, we have the set. It's moving around. Can you kind of explain what's going on?

Yeah, these towers all move by themselves and uh, each other piece of the set, we control, kind of coming in and out of scenes and character to kind of shift it as like the Newsies are kind of controlling their surroundings. And each one weighs two tons.

What scene is this?

This is actually our distribution uh, set how it's uh, formed for the show and pretty much that's how it's all shaped up, like pretty much staggered like that. And it's cool because they change and that kind of they kind of form the show throughout the, you know, different scenes.

It is so dance intensive. I saw it and was my mind was blown. Do you have to do anything on your off days?

Oh, yeah. I know for me, uh, before the show, which is I'd probably come in about an hour and a half before the show, make sure my body's warmed up. And a lot of the guys come in actually before the show and just stretch out anything, do any exercises, warm up, cardio exercises.

What's like the main stretch that you do? What's like the main stretch? If I was if I was going to be on Newsies, what would it be?

Oh, yeah. Well, I do a lot I do a lot of these. I got to get my thighs going. Okay. Because this stage, you know, thankfully, you know, we have a good amount of cushioning underneath it. So we have like a little spring to it. But you never know. So you just have to make sure everything is all taken care of.

So you perform eight shows a week. How do you keep it fresh?

Um, you know, it's a combination of a few things. The audience is always different. Every day the audience is different. So, listening to them is actually really important, making sure that they're part of the show, they're part a character in the show. Um, also our um, our cast is usually different day to day. People are hurt, people are uh, on vacation, people are swinging out, you know. So different cast members uh, will make the show completely different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They make different choices than other people do. Um, so being aware of that and just listening. Always listening on stage, always being aware of and present. Most of the show, we're pretty much all on stage together. Yeah. And then also it's our audience. So that keeps us going too. Thankfully we have a great audience that's so supportive and you know, we I've never heard a reception like this. Right. In a show where it's like it feels like it's a rock concert.

How is the fan reaction and does it affect your performance?

I mean, it affects us in a really positive way, I'd say. You know, if we, you know, when you do a five-minute really strong dance number and you get this amazing reaction afterwards, it really just helps us fuel for the rest of the show and it's says it's says that people are appreciating what we're doing.

Yes. And you work so hard.

Oh, so hard.

So, let's talk about FanZies for a second because I was outside and I saw the line and it was three hours before the show. Have you had crazy encounters with the FanZies?

Of course.

Yeah, what has it been like?

Of course. I remember there was one Halloween, uh, where one FanZy dressed up as one of our Bowery Beauties in the show from head to toe. Head to toe and they made the costume themselves and I'm like, how did you do that? So their dedication really goes beyond. They're loyal. They're loyal and they've been to the show. I've seen many people who have been to the show more than once, more than twice, probably more than 10 times. But it's their passion and their love for the show that kind of keeps our show going.

Do you know, I mean, I'm sure you do know that Broadwayworld. com has crowned you the number two sexiest man on Broadway.

I did hear that. I did hear that.

How how do you react to that? How does that feel?

I don't know. It it's like it's so silly to me. It's like, I mean, that it it goes to show how awesome our fanbase is. The FanZies. The Fans, oh my gosh, they're amazing. They're die hard. They're outside. They've been outside for hours. And how awesome my mom is because I'm pretty sure my mom just made 20 different accounts and just voted every day. So, thanks mom for voting me sexiest Broadway male. Second. Not even we didn't even win. Oh. Gotta start thinking for Franco. We got a fight call. Uh-oh. Gotta go do some fights.