Tom Hanks Reunites With ‘Bosom Buddies’ Co-Star for Broadway Debut

Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari are acting together again. Unfortunately, they won’t be dressed in drag this time.

The former Bosom Buddies co-stars will reunite onstage in the late Nora Ephron‘s play, Lucky Guy, which also is Hanks’ Broadway debut.

STORY: Tom Hanks to Make Broadway Debut in Nora Ephron’s ‘Lucky Guy’

The actors have worked together a number of times since their drag queen sitcom days. Scolari, who recurs as Lena Dunham’s father on HBO’s Girls, appeared in Hanks’ directoral film debut, That Thing You Do! (1996), and the Hanks-produced HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon (1998).

Although this production marks Hanks’ Broadway debut, the two-time Academy Award winner is no stranger to Ephron’s words, having starred in Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, both of which she wrote and directed.

According to the announcement, Lucky Guy “marks a return to [Ephron’s] journalistic roots” and is a play “about the scandal- and graffiti-ridden New York of the 1980s, as told through the story of the charismatic and controversial tabloid columnist Mike McAlary (Hanks).” 

McAlary was a popular — and powerful — New York City tabloid reporter best known for exposing the 1997 torture of Abner Louima by NYPD officers, for which McAlary won the Pulitzer Prize. He died of cancer in 1998 at 41.

The play is chock-full of other real-life New York journalists. Scolari will play columnist Michael Daly alongside an impressive ensemble of television, film and stage veterans, including Christopher McDonald (as lawyer Eddie Hayes), Richard Masur (as editor Jerry Nachman and editor Stanley Joyce), Peter Gerety (as editor John Cotter) and Deirdre Lovejoy (as reporter Louise Imerman and editor Debbie Krenek).

Additional casting announcements include Michael Gaston (as columnist Jim Dwyer), Dustyn Gulledge (as Dino Tortoricci), Danny Mastrogiorgio (as reporter Bob Drury) and Stephen Tyrone Williams (as Abner Louima). More casting announcements will be made soon.

Lucky Guy is scheduled to open April 1 for a limited engagement at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theatre. Previews will begin March 1.

The play will be directed by two-time Tony Award winner George C. Wolfe and is produced on Broadway by Colin Callender, Roy Furman, Arielle Tepper Madover, Roger Berlind, Stacey Mindich, Robert Cole and Frederick Zollo, David Mirvish, Daryl Roth, James D. Stern/Douglas L. Meyer, Scott and Brian Zeilinger, in association with Sonia Friedman Productions and The Shubert Organization.

Email: Joshua.Stecker@thr.com; Twitter: @joshuastecker