Sam Pinkleton
We met up with the Tony Award-winning director Sam Pinkleton for a BARE photo shoot at Studio 54, where his campy, glorious revival of The Rocky Horror Show is running. (It’s just been extended through November 29, 2026.) Sam was game for taking some fun shots inside the iconic theatre (formerly the infamous and fabulous 1980’s disco) eating donuts in the wig and costume room and posing on the tinfoil-covered front row seats. That day, The Rocky Horror Show had been nominated for 9 Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Musical. Sam has been on a wild ride since directing the mega-hit comedy Oh, Mary! (and winning a Tony for it) and things aren’t slowing down anytime soon. He also directed Can I Be Frank? an Obie Award-winning solo show written and performed by Morgan Bassichis at The Soho Playhouse (through June 27, 2026). Next, he’s helming You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown for New York City Center Encores!. Writer Gina Way talked to Sam about the similarities between Rocky Horror and Oh, Mary!, the meaning behind his tattoos, his deep love of The Wizard of Oz, and his Bare Essentials.
Gina Way:How does it feel to bring the cult classic Rocky Horror back to life again?
Sam Pinkleton: The wild and special thing about Rocky Horror is that everybody’s experience of it is different. People come in with their own baggage and history and expectations or their own ‘what the hell is this?’ so my goal is to make a space that feels welcoming and joyous and meets people where they are. Our team’s greatest wish is that people come and feel like themselves here, and we were very intentional and detailed about creating a space that could welcome in a lot of different experiences. It was a very pure process in that way and I’m very proud of that.
GW:Studio 54 is hallowed ground for hedonism and glitter, the perfect home for Rocky Horror. How has the space and history/residue informed this production?
SP: Studio 54 set a high bar for how I made the show in a way that isn’t bullshitty and fake. To me Rocky Horror is untamable and jagged, so the spirit of the space and the material really complement each other. I mean, if you can’t be weird as hell making Rocky Horror what’s the point? The thing I love about Studio 54 is that it actively has a sense of decay, and we wanted Rocky Horror to feel like it could only exist in this place, like it was always there. I come from downtown theatre, the land of sticky floors and DIY, and there’s something about Studio 54 that’s always made me feel more at home than other Broadway theatres. I also take very seriously the ancestors of Studio 54 and the shit that’s gone down in that building, and I don’t want to disappoint those ghosts.
GW: Speaking of downtown, Oh, Mary! started at the Lortel and has become a massive hit on Broadway and the West End. Has this blown your mind?
SP: I haven’t gotten used to it, if I’m being honest. I loved making it, we were so proud of it, we had such a good time, and it very much felt like we were making something temporary. It felt like we’re going to do this with Cole downtown, it’s going to be a delight, oh my goodness it’s going better than we ever could have dreamed, okay that’s enough. I just continue to exist in a perpetual state of awe and surprise. I think it’s a testament to what a great play Cole has written—that it started as this small thing that was so personal to us and now has these many lives with our heroes in it!
GW: How involved are you with the show now?
SP: I’m talking to you right now from the Oh, Mary! office at the Lyceum, so I do stay close to it. We obviously have an amazing team, so it’s not a one-man-band by any means but I do try to be involved because I love it, and I care about it, and all of these legends of comedy are trusting us with their time and talent and I take that seriously. Like, Maya Rudolph is one of the most generous and kind people I’ve ever worked with so why wouldn’t I want to be around?
GW: What draws you to a new project like Rocky Horror or the upcoming You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown?
SP: I would say fear—a combination of terror and joy. If I’m as excited as I am scared, that probably means I want to do it. I feel very strongly that the theatre should be a place where people come to experience joy. I just think that despair is free all day and we’re being handed it in buckets, so I’m always thinking about what would be joyous and funny. I also just love to do things that are not like anything I’ve ever done before. After I did Oh, Mary! the last thing I wanted to do was a gay, irreverent historical comedy, and now after I’ve done this giant, horny spectacle on Broadway, I’m excited to do a sweet little musical about elementary school students at Encores. I’ve always had an affection for that material. I love how much dread is in it, how existential Charlie Brown is, and how honest it is about the puzzles of being alive. It’s not shiny, or saccharine, or sentimental.
GW: Are you excited for that Mickey & Judy Let’s Put on a Show vibe at Encores?
SP: Completely, yeah, and that’s my favorite part. The thing I like the most is making shows. So I’m excited about it, and love Encores because you make something in two weeks and then it exists for two weeks and then it’s gone. That is the antithesis of the amazing and exhausting experience of doing a Broadway show.
GW: A common denominator in Rocky Horror and Oh, Mary! is a feeling of empathy and emotion. When Frank-N-Furter has his Judy Garland moment and sings “I’m Going Home” it’s a heartbreaker.
SP: I think both shows have the same secret: a giant heart. Cole Escola is a very funny person with a completely singular mind but they first and foremost to me have a giant heart. If we didn’t care about and root for Mary, we’d just be watching funny gags. Heart is what powers the thing. With Rocky Horror, I wanted to embrace the heart of it. This thing has endured for over 50 years and has saved lives. That’s big stuff. I’m very sincere as a human, and I’m very sincere in my work—and so is Cole, and so is (Rocky Horror creator) Richard O’Brien. All the craziness and chaos is part of it, but the container is one of love, and all of those things can be true at once. Every great queer narrative we have has tacky, ridiculous, dirty things and also a big fucking beating heart. I have no apologies for wanting to put heart into everything.
GW: What sparked your interest in and passion for making theatre?
SP: I went to the university of The Wizard of Oz and Mr. Rogers and The Muppet Show, and these are still my core texts as both a human and as a maker. Those are the weird and tender things that got me into theatre. I did also fall in love with theatre very early in a cliché gay boy loving musicals way—doing Godspell in high school and dancing around holding a ladder.
GW: How would you describe your personal style?
SP: Clothes make me feel closer to myself. My personal style is the closest thing I have to affirm how I identify beyond language, because I don’t think those things are a fixed point, they are constantly in motion. I love images as identity markers and with my style I get to embody an image. Clothes and how I present myself are often the most honest ways that I can say, “Here’s who I am and how I’m feeling today.”
GW: You’re not wearing glasses right now, but you often wear cool frames. Do you have a collection of them?
SP: I’m not like wacky glasses lady. I kind of wish I were, but I don’t think I ever had the time or money to invest. I do feel that I’ve cultivated a character for myself that wears glasses, which was unintentional. So when I’m not wearing glasses I feel like I’m being naughty in some way, and I also feel that I look like such a boy when I don’t wear them. I have a couple pairs that I love: The chunky black glasses I often wear are vintage frames from Fabulous Fanny’s in the East Village, where I’ve been getting glasses for 20 years. I’m also obsessed with Akila that has a Keith Haring line of glasses that look like somebody drew an outline of glasses on my face.
GW: We love your tattoos. What’s the story behind your favorites?
SP: Most of my tattoos are connected to death or show business in some way. I’m obsessed with the writer Anne Lamott. She has gotten me through some really hard times. She wrote an incredible book called Bird by Bird about taking things one at a time, bird by bird, so I have these two birds. Last summer I was having a really hard time and Anne Lamott has a book about prayer called Help, Thanks, Wow, in which she essentially distills the whole notion of prayer across faith to these three essential words, so I have Help and Thanks on each hand. I think my Wow exists here (in my head). Even though my tattoos are a little hardcore, my favorites are actually dedicated to a lefty, Bay Area writer lady. I don’t have a ton of preciousness about my body. I love continuing to change it, and (tattoos) are a weird marker of time and where I was at various points, so I’ll probably keep going…
GW: The brand of those polka dot oxfords you wore on the BARE shoot?
SP:Camperlab - my absolute favorite.
GW: Do you have any go-to grooming or skincare products?
SP: Saie Tinted Moisturizer and Charlotte Tilbury Magic Vanish! are the only reasons I do not look like a decrepit hag at all times.
GW: You have a slammin’ body. What is your workout regimen like?
SP: Omg thanks. All I really want is to be seen as a body and not a brain. I had a near death experience last year and it really changed my relationship to my body, and I decided to start taking fitness seriously for the first time in my life as a way to fend off death.
GW: What have you read, watched, seen, or listened to lately that you loved? A song on repeat, a favorite movie of all time?
SP: I am listening to Letta Mbulu's "Sweet Juju” nonstop, like every single day, for the last several months, because it's a song that really says, "get over yourself, the world is joyous." I've watched The Wizard of Oz probably more than 1000 times so...that?
GW: What is the best advice you’ve ever gotten and what advice would you give to a young creator starting out?
SP: Don't listen to just one person's advice. Ask people for advice who disagree with each other so you can form your own opinions.
GW: Who was your first childhood celebrity crush?
SP: It was either Captain von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) in the Sound of Music or it was the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) from the Wizard of Oz.
GW: What are a couple of your favorite Brooklyn neighborhood spots?
SP: I live down the street from Metropolitan Bar on Lorimer Street, a place where I spent many nights in my 20s dancing violently on a postage stamp-sized dance floor to Grace Jones and becoming absolutely gay as hell. It's still there and feels more or less the same as it always has and I love to go and have a cheap beer (and in the summer see the great Charlene Incarnate on the back patio) and be reminded that not all of New York City is being taken over by robots and corporate overlords.
GW Potential dream project you’d manifest for the future?
SP: A rest.
GW: What are your 5 Bare Essentials? (5 things you can’t live without right now, or ever.)
SP:
My two dumb dogs Rocco and Verna
My one dumb husband Andrew Russell
My associates on Oh, Mary! and Rocky (Sunny Hitt, Georgie Ranckom, Tiffani Swalley, Kedian Keohan say their names loudly)
My most MVP stage manager / sister / bully who holds my shows together, Bryan Bauer.
(Sorry, that's more than 5 but PEOPLE > OBJECTS OK?)
