How Billy Magnussen Got Rapunzel’s Prince Role

Actor Billy Magnussen told the New York Post that he got his role as Rapunzel’s prince in the upcoming musical “Into the Woods” through the efforts of actress, Meryl Streep. The Oscar-winning actress recommended the 29-year-old actor after seeing him in Broadway’s “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.”

Magnussen laughingly told the Post that the first day of rehearsal, Streep told him “Listen, I want you to know, I got you this f–king part.” (The comment was used as a headline with no indication that it wasn’t said  in anger, much to the irritation of readers who hate misleading headlines.)

We actually have a few recaps on here that Billy Magnussen appeared in. He was in two episodes of Boardwalk Empire when he played the ill-fated Roger McAllister, who happened to look so much like Gillian Darmody’s missing son, Jimmy, that she was inspired to help Roger stand in for Jimmy at the crematorium! Magnussen is not the only Boardwalk Empire connection to “Into the Woods” either. The late Tom Aldredge was the narrator in the American Playhouse 1991 “Into the Woods”.  He played Ethan Thompson, father to the grown-up Nucky and Eli, on Boardwalk Empire.

In “Into the Woods” Rapunzel’s Prince is the brother of Cinderella’s Prince, and the two princes sang a song called “Agony” in Act One and then did a reprise of it in Act Two. The word is that the reprise has been cut so you’re not going to be hearing about the very upsetting dwarfs, which is surprising indeed. For many, it was a favorite and better than the first “Agony”.

Here are Robert Westenberg and Chuck Wagner as the two princes (from the American Playhouse 1991 “Into the Woods”) singing the reprise that was cut in the film.