Fosse/Verdon

About

Cast and Crew

Steven Levenson is the Tony Award®-winning book writer of Dear Evan Hansen. His plays include If I Forget, The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin, Days of Rage and The Language of Trees. Honors include the Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama League Award and the Helen Hayes Award. He worked for three seasons as a writer and producer on Showtime’s Masters of Sex and is a founding member of Colt Coeur and an alumnus of MCC’s Playwrights Coalition and Ars Nova’s Play Group. His work has been published by Dramatists Play Service and Playscripts. A graduate of Brown University, he is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Inc. and the WGA. Upcoming projects include the film adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s tick, tick… BOOM!

Coming of age as a dancer in Chicago’s burlesque houses, Bob Fosse, portrayed by Sam Rockwell, always dreamed of being Fred Astaire. When his career as a dancer in Hollywood fails to take off, Bob finds a second act as a Broadway choreographer. It is only when he meets Gwen Verdon, though, that his talents truly blossom.Through a series of groundbreaking shows together, Bob and Gwen will reshape musical theater, as Bob transforms the choreographic vocabulary he first learned in the tawdry burlesque houses of the 1930s into his own singular aesthetic. Eventually, he will bring his unique vision to cinema, becoming one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of his generation. But Bob’s success will come at a terrible personal cost. Driven by a relentless need for perfection, and haunted by the demons of a troubled childhood, Bob will spend his life caught between his aspirations to greatness and the seemingly irresistible pull toward self-destruction.

Quite simply the greatest Broadway dancer of the twentieth century, Gwen Verdon, portrayed by Michelle Williams, grew up – like Bob – performing in burlesque shows as a child, before she went on to an early career with famed choreographer Jack Cole. Gwen soon found fame on Broadway – where she met her lifelong collaborator and second husband, Bob Fosse.Once a household name, Gwen will find herself increasingly in Bob’s shadow, her pivotal role in his work too often overlooked and unappreciated. While Bob’s star as a director begins to rise, Gwen watches her own celebrity fade, a victim to changing tastes and the entertainment industry’s cult of youth. As her husband’s volatility and philandering make their marriage increasingly untenable, Gwen will struggle to break away from Bob and build her own identity, but again and again, the two will be drawn back together, bound equally by love and ambition.

A brilliant playwright and screenwriter, Paddy, portrayed by Norbert Leo Butz, is one of Bob’s few true friends, a force of nature who never shies away from telling the painful truth. When he speaks, Bob listens. But even Paddy will struggle to get through to his friend as his behavior, and his appetites, grow increasingly out of control.

Ann Reinking, portrayed by Margaret Qualley, knows the talent she has – and that’s why she’s determined to avoid a potentially career-jeopardizing romance with her director, Bob Fosse. Eventually, though, a romance blossoms between them, Bob’s only serious relationship after Gwen. As their relationship proceeds over the years, though, Ann gradually comes to question the emotional toll of life with Bob Fosse.

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Levenson is the award-winning book writer of Dear Evan Hansen. His work has been published by Dramatists Play Service and Playscripts.

Steven Levenson | Executive Producer & Writer | Fosse / Verdon on FX

Steven Levenson

Joel Fields

Lin-Manuel Miranda

George Stelzner