West Side Story Star Mike Faist On Playing Riff & The 'Jet-Tivities' Weekend [Interview]

Riff is a difficult character to play, particularly in today's climate. So how did you approach him?

Well, you know, I think the way to approach any character is just with a deep sense of empathy for whoever it is, whatever position they're in. Obviously, of course, "West Side Story" deals with a lot of challenging and hard conversations, and the characters themselves are in tough situations. And there's a lot of complexity and nuance that goes with those things. You always have to come at every role as if your character is doing something — why they're doing it. They're always coming at it from a place of feeling, I think, as we do naturally, as humans, I think we always tend to play the victim in our own lives and we don't want to necessarily take responsibility for our actions. 

And so I think that's just that natural human instinct. It takes a very strong and smart person to think to accept what they're doing and learn from their own mistakes and lessons. I was always told and taught that you should always try to lean into the opposite of what is on the page. So you know, you always have to just try to find the good in the bad and the bad in the good.

My dad was telling me about gangs back in his day, and how it was almost more of a tribe or a friendship group. So what are your thoughts on the Jets?

Well, it is that. It is absolutely that in terms of tribalism. Was your dad in a gang at the time, or he lived in New York at the time?

He lived in New York, but he did not say. [laughs]

He did not say whether he was or was not?

Yeah.

At the end of the day, the Jets come from, obviously, very low income housing. And that low income housing, at this moment where "West Side Story" takes place, is being uprooted away from them — both the Jets and the Sharks at this point in time in the story. The Jets, coming from families that are not loving or no families at all — a lot of these kids are orphans, and they don't have opportunities. So I think naturally, with anyone that's in those situations — and I think we see this today, this isn't a new story in that regard, in the sense of, if there's a lack of opportunity that's in front of you today, you're going to cling to whatever you have. And for the Jets, it's each other. That is the family. That is the tribe. They protect each other and they look out for each other because no one else is really doing that for them. So that's the mentality that formed the gang and got all these guys together.

You guys had a rough shoot, too, in terms of heat.

Yeah, certainly. We started shooting shoot like early June. June 7, I think, was our first shoot date in New York, and it ended up being — as New York does over the summer — being hot, but this one was exceedingly so. There's a good story. There was a day we were shooting on film, and naturally what happens with film when you're shooting on it, it automatically kind of darkens, so you have to overexpose the lighting in order for the film to actually capture what's going on. But we were shooting outside – it's the scene at the very beginning of the film, during the "La Borinqueña" number, the Sharks sing that, which is incredible. And then they have the Jets on one side, and on the other side, with Lieutenant Schrank in the middle. And I remember it was like 95 to 100 degrees easily, that day and [cinematographer] Janusz [Kaminski] just kept screaming, 'More light, more light, more light!' They brought out these huge, giant stadium lights that were just searing us and I was standing there after having stood there for like four or five hours, and the Jets on this side of the line had this side of their face burned, and the Jets on that side of the line had that side of their faced burned. So you put us together, we were whole. We all had to like go get treatment done in order to fix it. It was crazy.

I had read that you said "West Side Story" was one of the things that convinced you to become an actor. And here, you get to work with one of the original stars [Rita Moreno] of the 1961 film. What was that like?

Working with Rita? She's incredible. [laughs] I think at this point now we've all seen Rita, either in interviews or if you've seen the film, and it's no doubt she's very authentically herself and wonderful. She was sweet. She left me a voicemail right before we started doing all the press tour stuff and we talked for a little bit. And I genuinely said to her, 'The only regret that I have is that we didn't have more of an on-screen time together,' because that one moment, that one scene that we had, it was so much fun to play with her. She's wonderful.

What do you want fans to take away from this version?

I think, look, this is a complicated story. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of layers, and I think it's important that people probably watch it a few times, if I'm being honest. One, I think it's good enough to warrant a second or third viewing. And two, I think it's worth doing because I think every time you watch it, at least for myself, as I've seen it, you just take away more from it every single time. It's going to bring about more discussions and conversations, which I think is great, naturally. 

But at the end of the day, the biggest thing that I think is the most important is that it brings people back to the theater. This is a theatrical piece, and the fact that it is going to be in a theater, shared amongst strangers, it's important. It really is a different experience. I'm biased. I can't really watch myself on the screen, right? But I watched it with the original cast, like five of us, in a dark theater. And then I watched it separate times with an audience, and it's just a different experience. The movie just jumps off the screen when it's shared like that, and you know, being in a theater and having that experience is extremely important I think for human empathy across the board. It's important to have that communal shared experience.