A recent reunion reminded Escola just how much their life has already changed. Deep into the play’s off-Broadway run, a colleague from their time in regional theater attended one of the shows—the actor Mike Faist, who’s also enjoying a breakout year as one of the stars of Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers.
“It was just a really sweet moment where we were like, ‘Oh my God, look at us,’” Escola says. “We did a musical called The Wind in the Willows Christmas in Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey. I played an otter, and the star, playing a mole, was Mike Faist.”
“It’s always so satisfying and delightful to watch someone known as a ‘scene stealer’ finally become the main attraction they were always meant to be,” Eichner tells me. “It doesn’t always happen, even when it should. For those of us who’ve known and watched Cole for years, it has been a real joy to see them get the kind of success and attention they deserve.”
After all those years pounding the pavement, it feels like the industry is finally acknowledging Escola as the singular talent they are and more importantly, finally ready to hand them a blank check. When they appeared on The View last month, for example, the legendary Whoopi Goldberg publicly pitched herself to Escola as someone they should consider for the next play they’re writing. (“Let’s play,” Goldberg said. “You come up with it, we can do it.”)
While they’re clearly savoring this moment, Escola is careful about getting swept up in the excitement. “I’ve had so many, ‘Cole, this moment is going to change your life’ moments that led to nothing,” they tell me. “I don’t need this to lead to anything more. Getting to do this show [feels like] I snuck booze into prom successfully. I’m not getting too caught up in what’s next, or what could come out of this. Hopefully, just some money to live off of while I figure out what’s next.”
“I just think everything ebbs and flows,” they continue. “And sometimes it’s your turn, sometimes it’s not your turn and you have to help the people whose turn it is. And then you go, Yeah, wait for your turn.”
After Oh, Mary!, Escola says they’re happy to cede the spotlight and go back to the relative anonymity of the writers room. “I definitely feel like a writer first,” they say.
Early in the off-Broadway run of Oh, Mary!, Escola started reading My Own Story, the memoir of Marie Dressler, an unlikely superstar of 1920s Hollywood who was queer, brusquely larger than life, and reached her career peak in middle age. One page in particular struck Escola, a passage where Dressler talks about seeing her name in lights on Broadway for the first time.
Escola sends me the photo of the page: “I pinch myself black and blue, but I cannot make myself believe it is my name there in letters of fire,” Dressler writes. “A great gawk of a nobody from the sticks, a star on the Street of Stars!”
