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The first time Lucy DeVito acted onstage \u2014 an electrifying turn as an ant in a second-grade play about insects \u2014 her father, Danny DeVito, watched proudly from the back of the room. (DeVito, who had already starred in the television series \u201cTaxi\u201d and appeared in films like \u201cTerms of Endearment\u201d and \u201cThrow Momma From the Train,\u201d didn\u2019t want to pose a distraction.)<\/p>\n
Now, as Lucy makes her Broadway debut, he has the best seat in the house: right onstage with her. Starring together in Theresa Rebeck\u2019s new comedy, \u201cI Need That,\u201d<\/a> they are playing the roles they know best: father and daughter.<\/p>\n Directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, the play, in previews at the American Airlines Theater, centers on the widower Sam, a recluse and hoarder facing eviction. His daughter, Amelia, and his best friend, Foster (played by Ray Anthony Thomas), beg him to give up and give in \u2014 give up the stuff; give in to some help \u2014 much to his chagrin, over the show\u2019s 90 minutes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Midtown Manhattan recently, the DeVitos sat in a rehearsal space, the detritus from a deli breakfast spread out on a table in front of them. The improvised set was a disaster, a small kitchen surrounded by piles of junk: board games, record players, plastic bins, garbage bags, clothing, shoe boxes. At one point in the show, Danny\u2019s character unearths a television set from several layers of trash.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The script was still pliable, and both of them were grasping to achieve the fullness of their characters. Danny was memorizing his lines, looking up toward the heavens every time he drew a blank. (When he focused, he curled into himself, hunched into a hug, his bottom lip out in consternation.) His riffs bejeweled every line: When the script called on him to invite his daughter in for breakfast, he instead laid out a menu. \u201cYou want breakfast? Coffee? Cereal? Eggs? Fruit? I got a really ripe plum!\u201d<\/p>\n Lucy, on the other hand, was more studious and probing. During her character\u2019s apex in the show, the plea for her father to change his life, her voice curdled from sadness into a resigned anger. While running those lines, Lucy pulled over to ask for directions from von Stuelpnagel: Where is her character, emotionally, right now? Should she remain hard or retreat back into softness? They talked it through, Lucy smacking a tiny Rubik\u2019s Cube into her palm to punctuate her points. Her father looked on, silent and smiling.<\/p>\n \u201cShe works a lot. She\u2019s really, really in there \u2014 she\u2019s in there, digging, and that\u2019s part of the whole idea,\u201d Danny said a few weeks later during a break from rehearsals. \u201cShe never lays down on it. She\u2019s always on it.\u201d<\/p>\n Danny, 78, began his acting career on the stage. Eager for something to do after graduating from high school in Summit, N.J., he began working at his sister Angie\u2019s beauty shop. She encouraged him to train as a cosmetologist at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and once he was immersed in the world of professional theater, he decided to try out acting for himself. After he graduated in 1966, DeVito acted in productions in New York, and in 1971 garnered attention for his role as Martini in the Off Broadway production of \u201cOne Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest.\u201d He also reprised the part in the 1975 film.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He soon became a bona fide star playing Louie De Palma, the tiny-but-mighty dispatcher on the sitcom \u201cTaxi,\u201d which ran for five seasons from 1978 to 1983. By the time the show ended, he had met and married Rhea Perlman, known for her role as Carla Tortelli on \u201cCheers.\u201d Lucy, their first child, was born in 1983. (The couple, now amicably separated, have two other children, Jake and Gracie.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Lucy, 40, performed in school productions throughout her childhood, acting in plays like \u201cFor Whom the Southern Belle Tolls,\u201d by Christopher Durang. In college, she said she finally admitted to herself that she wanted to be an actor. She did not expect it to be easy; if anything, she prepared for the opposite. Growing up so close to the industry, she said earlier this month, she was \u201cvery much aware of the hardships and how much disappointment there can be, how rough the business is.\u201d<\/p>\n After graduating from Brown University in 2007, Lucy moved to New York City, where she played an autistic girl in an Ensemble Studio Theater production of \u201cLucy,\u201d<\/a> by Damien Atkins, and starred in \u201cThe Diary of Anne Frank\u201d in Seattle, at the Intiman Theater. In 2009, she co-starred alongside her mother in a run of \u201cLove, Loss, and What I Wore,\u201d<\/a> the play adapted by Nora and Delia Ephron from Ilene Beckerman\u2019s memoir. (Lucy joined the show\u2019s rotating cast first.)<\/p>\n In Hollywood, nepo babies, or celebrity children who coast off their family connections to get work they may not deserve, rule the screen. In New York, they\u2019re pass\u00e9. When she first began acting, Lucy fantasized about changing her last name, not wanting her parents\u2019 reputations to precede her. (It doesn\u2019t help that she is a perfect, even split of her parents\u2019 faces, walking proof of the Punnett square<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She never got far enough to decide on a name, though her father had some suggestions. Why not Nicholson? \u201cDe Niro, even,\u201d Danny quipped.<\/p>\n \u201cLucy has always done the work,\u201d Danny said. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s ever been a time when either of us ever picked up a phone.\u201d<\/p>\n The Roundabout Theater Company has now given both DeVitos their Broadway debuts. In 2017, Danny starred in a revival of Arthur Miller\u2019s \u201cThe Price,\u201d<\/a> for which he received a Tony nomination. (Danny had to, among other things, wolf down a hard-boiled egg<\/a> while speaking his lines during every performance.)<\/p>\n Rebeck\u2019s play is not their first time playing father and daughter. In the 2022 animated FX series \u201cLittle Demon,\u201d Danny was the voice of Satan and Lucy played his daughter, the Antichrist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI Need That,\u201d scheduled to open on Nov. 2, will be the pair\u2019s second production directed by von Stuelpnagel. In 2021, they collaborated on the audio play \u201cI Think It\u2019s Working Pointing Out That I\u2019ve Been Very Serious Throughout This Entire Discussion or, Julia and Dave Are Stuck in a Tree,\u201d written by Mallory Jane Weiss, for the theater podcast and public radio show \u201cPlaying on Air.\u201d<\/p>\n Lucy asked von Stuelpnagel to keep them in mind for future projects, and he connected the family to Rebeck. After a few long consulting meetings on Zoom, Rebeck wrote \u201cI Need That\u201d with the family in mind, even integrating small details from their lives.<\/p>\n Von Stuelpnagel said their interplay in rehearsals, in the same mold as their characters\u2019 relationship, sharpened the production. \u201cLucy knows her father\u2019s inclinations for certain choices he might make and she nudges him to come at it in a different way, and he listens with great respect,\u201d he said. \u201cThat kind of collaboration is a special thing to witness.\u201d<\/p>\n In one scene, Amelia shows up at her father\u2019s house to discover that he has fallen and hit his head. She rushes to grab a bag of frozen peas for his head, checking his pupils, moving with the love of a mother and the brusqueness of a drill sergeant. It felt like both a role reversal of a familiar scene and a preview of the future: Who takes care of whom?<\/p>\n Though their real-life relationship inspired the play, Danny and Lucy see the differences between them and their characters, agreeing that, as a real family, they are less eccentric and less prone to yelling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou\u2019re a very capable human being, and Sam doesn\u2019t leave his house,\u201d Lucy said to her father during the interview. \u201cYou\u2019re one of the most social people I know. There\u2019s a different kind of fear and exhaustion that comes from that.\u201d<\/p>\n Danny agreed that he had \u201cdifferent problems\u201d than Sam. \u201cI feel blessed that I have kids who care about me enough not to write me off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n During the rehearsal process, the DeVitos sought to create a homey environment in a few ways, including, most importantly, by bringing in what Lucy called \u201camazing snacks.\u201d Recent holidays on set have included cannoli Sunday, chocolate Monday and taco Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been on a diet since I was 10 years old, and I\u2019m trying to figure out how to make everybody a little fatter than I am,\u201d Lucy said. \u201cIf you\u2019re around me, usually I\u2019m bringing a sandwich or a nice hunk of provolone with some anchovies and some bread.\u201d<\/p>\n In rehearsals, it\u2019s hard to tell whether Lucy is talking to her father or reading lines. \u201cThey have exactly the sort of chemistry you\u2019d expect a father and daughter to have, and that comes with playfulness, love and a history of irritations,\u201d said von Stuelpnagel. \u201cThat familiarity breeds a really deep, dynamic relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n