You want to audition?’” Thus began the process of getting a role in The Lion King.īaldet was by no means a natural candidate: “I had never done puppetry before. The job offered an unexpected opportunity in 2004: “One day I was working as a reader and they said, ’You’re really good. (These included a number of shows with The Civilians theater company, co-founded by my late collaborator and friend, the composer Michael Friedman.) The relatively meager earnings from acting were particularly trying because Baldet and his wife were firmly in the red (“A lot of debt from school and credit card debt”).Ĭonsequently, Baldet sought out additional jobs to try to make ends meet: “I used to work as a reader for $15 an hour for a casting office.” (This meant he read scenes opposite actors actually auditioning for roles.) He tended to star in productions celebrated by the New York Times and other publications but by no means lucrative.
In the early 2000s, Baldet was a “downtown theater guy” in New York. This is what it’s like to be part of a global phenomenon, as experienced by one actor in one of the show’s many productions. (The character was voiced by Nathan Lane in the animated film Billy Eichner takes over in the upcoming movie.) It was a role he found both “great” and physically painful: “I was always hurting.” It kept him crossing the country for years and then sent him all over the world … plus twice brought him agonizingly close to Broadway, as he’ll explain. That was the case for Damian Baldet, who spent years playing the meerkat Timon.
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