David Alan Grier didn’t want to be a posthumous Tony winner this year.
Despite earning his fourth Tony nod for Best Featured Actor for “A Soldier’s Play” on Broadway, the 64-year-old actor beat feet to get out of New York when the play closed slightly prematurely due to the city’s spring shutdown.
“I just got really concerned because Trump was going to restrict traveling and all that stuff, so I got on the first thing smoking,” Grier told Page Six. “I’m not a gangsta when it comes to COVID. I’m soft as pudding. I told people, ‘Hey, let’s hook up in 2022.’
“The last thing I want is a eulogy saying ‘He succumbed to COVID, but he was a good guy that was loved by his family and owes $20.'”
Charles Fuller’s loose adaptation of Herman Melville’s “Billy Budd,” “A Soldier’s Play” opened in 1981 and was later adapted to film as “A Soldier’s Story” in 1984. Grier first starred in the play in an off-Broadway run in 1982 and went on to anchor the film version two years later; the 2020 run was the play’s Broadway debut.
“We were always on a limited run, and when they shut down Broadway on March 14 or 15th — it was a Thursday — we were scheduled to close on Saturday, so I actually feel very fortunate that we pretty much got to complete a run,” Grier explained.
“But theater is an intimate activity, and we were yelling and screaming and sweating and hollering and spitting all over each other,” he continued. “I thought for sure I had been exposed to COVID. And when I finally got tested and it was negative, well, I said, ‘Okay, that’s a good sign, I’ll take it.'”
The 2020 Tony Awards — originally scheduled for June — still have no airdate, though Broadway World suggested this week that a December broadcast is likely.