No doubt about it, Daniel Dae Kim is going to have the best vacation stories when he returns to the set of “Hawaii Five-0.”
Starting Tuesday, he’ll adopt the imperial persona of the King of Siam in the hit Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The King and I,” singing and dancing at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center for the next eight weeks.
It’s actually a homecoming for Kim, who’s mostly known for his TV roles as Chin Ho Kelly on the CBS drama “Five-0” and Jin on the ABC mystery “Lost.”
He earned a master’s degree in fine arts from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, studying classical theater. He lived and acted off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway for eight years before moving to Los Angeles in the late 1990s. His first professional job was a part in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”
“I didn’t necessarily have TV dreams or film dreams as much as I had theater dreams,” he said Wednesday in a phone call from New York. “I learned how to sing. I learned how to dance. I learned how to do Shakespeare — all here.”
Performing on Broadway was always a dream, said the 47-year-old Kim.
“When I was young and broke on the streets of New York, I always said someday when I make it big, I will be at Lincoln Center on Broadway,” he said. “Someday is now.”
Kim was offered the role at the end of last summer, and the only question in his mind was whether the performances would conflict with his “Five-0” schedule. At the time he didn’t know whether “Five-0” would return for a seventh season — it will, with production starting in July — and the “The King and I” contract had a clause that would have kept him on Broadway longer if the crime drama were to be canceled.
Kim will make his Broadway debut opposite three-time Tony Award nominee Marin Mazzie, who will play Anna Leonowens, the widowed schoolteacher who arrives in Siam to teach the children of the autocratic king. They will drop into roles for a production that has already won Tony Awards, including one for Hawaii native Ruthie Ann Miles for her featured role as Lady Thiang. Kim’s part in the revival was originated by Ken Watanabe.
For Mazzie the part marks a return to Broadway after spending much of 2015 battling ovarian cancer.
Kim said Mazzie is a joy to work with.
“Her voice is like silk,” Kim said. “Just listening to her in rehearsal, even if I am not in a scene, I will stop what I am doing and watch because I so enjoy it.”
Kim describes his own voice as somewhere between bass and baritone but noted it has been seven years since he sang on stage, coincidentally in the same role at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He flew to New York the day after “Five-0” wrapped Season 6 shooting early last month (the season finale airs May 13), and the first thing he did after arriving was contact his old singing teacher.
Singing again was one of the key reasons Kim wanted to return to the stage.
“There is something revealed about a person when they sing,” he said. “How people see me on television is only one slice of me. We are all multifaceted.”
If the past is any indication, Broadway audiences should be in for a treat.
Kim’s 2009 performance in London earned him praise from reviewers. The Telegraph said the actor eclipsed memories of Yul Brynner, who played the part for decades and won a best-actor Oscar for his performance in the 1956 movie version. Kim brought touches of “authority,” “cruelty,” “touching vulnerability” and “palpable sexual spark” to his time opposite the tutor, Anna, the reviewer said.
On stage, Kim can connect with audiences in a way that film and TV cameras won’t allow. It’s one of the last communal experiences in entertainment, he said.
“Nowadays, with everyone being able to watch their own show on their own device, it’s a very independent, segregated experience,” he said. “But when you are in a theater, not only are you with hundreds of other people, sharing that moment in time, but it’s different from film in that anything can happen in that moment because it’s live.”
