Mandy Patinkin Talks The Princess Bride & Homeland, Brings Joyful Music to The Suffolk in Riverhead

Most know Mandy Patinkin as the skilled actor behind iconic roles such as swordsman Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride and Homeland‘s beleaguered CIA spook Saul Berenson, but it turns out he also has quite a knack for belting out entertaining, feel-good tunes. Fans of Patinkin, or even folks who simply appreciate quality live music, will get a chance to enjoy both when he performs Mandy Patinkin in Concert: Being Alive at The Suffolk in Riverhead (118 E. Main Street) this Sunday, June 25 at 7 p.m.

For one night only, Patinkin will show off his chops as a Tony-winning stage performer, singing his favorite Broadway and American classics, and perhaps even a song or two he wrote himself — all with piano accompaniment by Adam Ben-David.

We recently spoke to Patinkin about his upcoming concert, his love of music and finding joy and life after the pandemic. He even told us a bit about playing the fatherless fencer from Florin and what it was like to work with Claire Danes and some of the most powerful people in U.S. intelligence.

A CONVERSATION WITH MANDY PATINKIN

With this concert, is there a set list and order to the songs?

I have a set list, but I also have changes that I insert on occasion, just so I don’t get bored, and I make it a little risky and I make myself a little nervous. I like being a little nervous. … My piano player is ready. He’s got it all.

How do you choose your songs?

We had a different concert set list before the pandemic in a concert we were doing that I called Diaries. It was based on a bunch of new recordings I made, et cetera, and then the pandemic shut everybody down. Then, about three years into it, we said, “Let’s go back on the road.” Then it was, “What are we going to do?” I said look, “I need to be happy. I want to feel alive again, I want the audience to feel alive again.” …

We went through like 13 hours of material and other new stuff, and I said, “Let’s just pick stuff that makes us happy and makes the audience happy — I want to have fun, and I want them to have fun. So we chose the first song, a way to say hello, and that leads me into, “What’s a good thing to follow that, or that idea, that feeling or thought?” And that’s how I put it together until I’ve got about an hour and a half, give or take.

Your acting is so strong, but it sounds like singing is really your passion.

Yeah, that’s my first love. If you told me I had to choose, and I could only do one thing, I’d pick the live concert venue. There’s nothing like it — you’re with the audience, you’re with whatever happened that day. … It’s everything in the world. A lot of the songs I sing are written by geniuses — men and women who are far more gifted than me. … I refer to those kinds of songs that you want to hear over and over again as classics …

Can you talk about those classic songs that people want to hear over and over?

I’m not the genius who wrote them. I’m just the mailman. I just deliver the mail, and I love being with a group of people and listening to them with company so I’m not alone. And they make me feel better. It’s like the little kid who says, “Mommy, Daddy, read it to me again, read it to me again.” That’s why we have different writers who want to read that book again, want to hear that song again. We need to hear it over and over again.

Are you aware that your Inigo Montoya character would be that for some people? A classic movie they want to watch over and over again and get so much joy out of. Do you ever make that parallel?

I actually have not until you asked me this question, but I would totally agree with you. I get more questions, and I get a lot of attention because of the good fortune of being in that film. People love it from generation to generation, they love seeing it over and over again, a family favorite, et cetera. And I think it very much is.

It’s William Goldman’s, one of the favorite things that he wrote. He’s one of the greatest storytellers, and as I said to Rob Reiner (director of The Princess Bride) years ago, I said, “Rob, I’m not a writer and I’ve written something and it’s all a mess because I’m not a writer, I’m a mailman, I’m an actor, but my teacher taught me that in acting you want to kind of pull that arrow back and shoot the arrow through the spine of the characters, the film, the play, the story, and see if you can say it in one word or one sentence as simply as possible where every word or character touches that theme.” I said, “The Princess Bride has so many stories going on and different people in different environments, how would you put that in one sentence?”

And Rob didn’t miss a beat. I hardly finished the question. He said, “Very easy, a little boy’s sick grandpa comes over to teach him the most important thing in life is true love.” And if you look through every character in that movie, whether they’re villains or good guys, they’re all looking for their version of true love.

Did you see your action figure?

The Princess Bride one? Yeah. They have a bunch of them — they’ve got an action figure, they’ve got a bobblehead, they’ve got all kinds of stuff. We collect them at times, they send them to us and then we autograph them and give them to charities. Some of them they can get a lot of money for them, so we give them to these charities so they can use them as fundraising items.

(Laughs) It’s very bizarre thing to have little miniature yous in different places.

What was your experience like with Homeland? It was such a magnum opus.

It was an extraordinary experience. … Everything about it was just a dream job. At its worst moments it was wonderful. We went all over the world. Claire and I were there from the first day to the last and working with her was like going to heaven.

And Alex Gansa, our chief writer, was extraordinary and a great leader. It was an embarrassment of riches all the people we had who came to direct and act in the piece. And we had the most extraordinary crew you could wish for.

Claire Danes must be intense to work with.

She’s a lot of fun. That intensity, she knows how to access it in an instant, and she can be as silly and goofy as anybody on the planet as well.

I was amazed how the show managed to evolve past the death of um.…

Brody.

I remember thinking, This show is done now, but you guys really kept it going.

We had an extraordinary team of writers, and that is another reason why the Writers Guild needs to get corporations to respect the gifts that they give us all. It was a training room for young directors, it was a training room for young writers. We had extraordinary writers who were able to absolutely reinvent the series year after year.

That doesn’t happen because of an artificial intelligence machine. That happens because of very brilliant, gifted human beings who sit in a room and speak to each other.

And every year we would go to Washington DC for a week and we’d spend 10-12 hours a day in Georgetown, in a secret location, meeting all the people who were the heads of intelligence and the heads of every intelligence agency, Pulitzer Prize-winning crime writers and political writers, all speaking about what was their greatest concern for the world, not just our country but the world at large.

They were advisors to us, many of them have become our lifelong friends.

Do you ever write your own music?

I have written my own music, and there might be one of my songs in the show.

Anything else you want to add?

If you’ve got nothing to do that night, come to the theater. I promise you we will give you a good time. … I’m going to deliver the mail from a lot of wonderful people.

Visit thesuffolk.org for tickets and more info.