Matthew Broderick Talks Getting COVID And Starring With Wife Sarah Jessica Parker On Broadway

Matthew Broderick loves working with his wife on the stage.

This week, the actor appeared on SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Show” to talk about his Broadway play Plaza Suite, in which he co-stars with Sarah Jessica Parker.

Talking about the experience of working with his wife, he remarked on “how good on stage she is and why her comedy chops, as they say, are just so good, which certainly wasn’t like in any way a surprise, but it might be a surprise in that she’s just so, so good in it. And so easy to act with.

He continued, “People say, ‘Is it hard to work with your wife,’ or whatever. It probably would be harder if I wasn’t so at ease with what she does. She’s a good partner on stage.”

Broderick also talked about the play getting shut down at the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020.

“They stopped us in the middle of our final dress rehearsal,” he recalled. “We were in full costume and wigs and everything.”

He added, “And they said it’s gonna be two to four weeks. And I think, and then the producers said to me, ‘Between you and me, it might be six to eight weeks,’ but don’t tell anyone, but we’re saying two to four.”

Of course, it turned out to be a much longer delay than just eight weeks, and that led to some uncomfortable moments when picking things back up again recently.

“I fit almost everything except my Act Two pants,” Broderick laughed. “They said, ‘We’re going to have to build you some new pants.'”

He added, “But I’m happy to say once I got working again, I shrank down to my normal, slightly pudgy self from the two years earlier. So I think I’m back.”

The actor and his wife also unfortunately got COVID just as they finally got the show up and running, leading them to shut down for a bit longer.

It was really disappointing, cause we’d been so careful and we both never got it,” Broderick said. “You know, our daughter had it and somehow, we didn’t get it and then my son got it. And around December, I think it was this year, this new variant that’s so contagious, I guess. And we still missed it.”

He continued, “I started to think maybe I was one of these people who doesn’t get it, but I was completely wrong. I got a booster, a second booster and that day I thought, ‘I must be sick cause of my booster.’ You know, but then I was coughing and every time I looked up side effects from the booster shot, there was nothing about having a cough. So anyway, I got a booster and COVID on the same day. So, your conspiracy theorist can figure that one out for me and send me a note about how that happened.”