‘I hope you learned something:’ Q&A with Kevin Chamberlin

Broadway actor, singer, TikTok icon and former Disney Channel star Kevin Chamberlin visited Oxford as part of Miami University’s lecture series on April 6. Before talking to a sold-out crowd in Hall Auditorium, The Miami Student sat down with Chamberlin to talk about finding creativity, the “Ratatouille” TikTok musical and the actor’s ever-changing career.

Questions and answers have been edited for concision and clarity.

What made you want to be an actor?

Chamberlin wasted no time diving into the story. Despite the eccentric characters he plays on the stage and on screen, the actor spoke softly and honestly about his childhood and early career.

“Well, I was a chubby kid, and we moved around a lot, which [makes it] hard socially, you know, to build friends,” Chamberlin said.

When he was young, Chamberlin saw the movie “Oliver!” which irrevocably changed his life. Soon after, he got the book for the musical, which included the vocal selections and sheet music that he would play on the piano. After some time, his family settled in Moorestown, New Jersey.

“The final time we moved was to South Jersey, and a community theater was doing ‘Oliver!’” Chamberlin said. “They [did] a bunch of shows. They did ‘[The Adventures of] Tom Sawyer,’ and I got cast as Huckleberry Finn. And my mom was like, ‘You should audition because you love musicals.’ She did musicals when she was a kid, and she knew that I was kind of having a rough time socially … [So] that theater program really formed who I was as a young actor, and then I started doing shows in high school and just kept going. I got the theater bug.”

While the theater formed who Chamberlin was from an early age, his later work on “Jessie” as Bertram the butler impacted the lives of thousands of children, including many Miami students.

You were a childhood icon for so many of us because of your involvement in “Jessie.” What does it mean to you to have that legacy?

Chamberlin said he wasn’t sure why Bertram was so beloved, and even turned the question around to ask us what we thought. We told him that we grew up quoting “it’s so far,” and that our generation loved how funny the character was.

“The writers and the producers were incredibly gracious toward me, because I was a well-known theater actor,” Chamberlin said. “I was a big Broadway guy, and I think they were really grateful that I took the kids under my wing as students, and I was very paternal because I don’t have any kids myself, and then [I became] their mentor, you know. And Debby [Ryan] and I both, because she had grown up being on TV and I’d grown up in the theater, so just the wisdom that we imparted to them, I think, was invaluable.”

He also said he got to see Peyton List and Karan Brar perform in their shows off-Broadway, calling himself a “proud papa,” which acted as the perfect segue into the next question.

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You recently reunited with Ryan, Brar and List. What has it been like to watch them and their careers grow?

“[It’s been] really thrilling,” Chamberlin said.

He said he recently read an interview where Brar had credited him as a reason he decided to try his hand at live theater.

“I’ve said [to him], if you really want to consider yourself a true actor, do eight shows a week off-Broadway or on Broadway. Broadway separates the men from the boys.”

During the pandemic, you were involved in the ‘Ratatouille’ TikTok musical, which ended up going viral online. What was that experience like for you?

“It was literally one of the most artistically gratifying things, and it just happened out of necessity,” Chamberlin said.

The “Ratatouille” TikTok musical was a crowdsourced production that streamed online for 72 hours at the start of 2021. Chamberlin was involved as both an actor and a songwriter.

He was reluctant to join the TikTok platform at first because he witnessed the negative social media experiences the “Jessie” kids were having firsthand. However, a friend of his, Sam Kite, who worked in digital advertising, told him he needed to be online.

“It got me composing again, because when I first started in my early 20s, I wanted to be a musical theater composer, and so I used that talent to do commercials for big branding deals,” Chamberlin said. “I got a big branding deal with Sprouts, the grocery store, and so I did musical commercials with them as a producer, director, but the ‘Ratatouille’ thing was unique because Sam said, ‘You know, this thing is trending, you should write a song.’ So literally right as it started to peak, I posted the song and in a day, it had 2 million views. And that was the first thing that went viral for me.”

He described the experience of joining in the trend as unique because most of the content for the show was by theater amateurs, while he was an experienced Broadway actor.

“There was a guy from Australia, a composer in England, and in a matter of three or four weeks, I had my song orchestrated by a Broadway orchestrator,” Chamberlin said. “It was recorded by an all-female student orchestra. This is all during COVID … I found myself on Christmas Eve listening to a song I had written weeks before with a full orchestra.”

While the production was done remotely in the middle of a global pandemic, people from all around the world came together to take on different roles both in the production and behind the scenes.

“I had been sent the choreography from the choreographer via YouTube, so I was learning all the little moves that she wanted me to do,” Chamberlin said. “Lucy Moss, who directed ‘Six’ the musical on Broadway, was the director. She was directing from London, and it was the first-ever crowdsourced musical. What a wild thing to be a part of.”

The streaming performance raised over $2 million for the Entertainment Community Fund, formerly known as the Actors Fund, an organization that supports workers in the performing arts.

Last year, you performed in a one-man show, “Finding the Joy.” What was it like getting to perform your own work for a live audience?

After creating and performing parts of his own work online, Chamberlin finally had the opportunity to perform his original work on stage. However, this came with its ups and downs.

“It’s really hard to just stand at a mic for an hour and sing and tell stories,” Chamberlin said. “I told the whole TikTok story … and [the stories] I have over a 40-plus [year] career. I mean, I just kind of sat down and just started writing, and I was like, ‘Wow, I’ve [made] quite a career for myself,’ and I’ve had to reinvent myself so many times.”

Chamberlin realized that a running theme in his career is his ability to find joy in his work, and that rubs off on those he works with.

“If you’re fun to work with, and you find the joy in your work, [the work will come to you],” Chamberlin said. “That’s why I called that show, ‘Finding the Joy,’ because your eye will go to the person that’s having fun.”

If you could give your younger self advice when you were first starting in the industry, what would it be?

“Don’t give so much power to the people behind the table,” Chamberlin said immediately. “That immediately sabotages you. If you worry about what they think of you, you become self-conscious, and self-consciousness is the number one enemy of an actor.”

He said it’s easy to tell when an actor is feeling self-conscious and isn’t fully present in the scene.

“If you go see some friends in a show, in a community theater production, watch their hands … when they’re self-conscious, the fingers go up like this,” Chamberlin said, clenching his fist. “If you see anyone standing with the fists, they’re not comfortable, and they’re very self-conscious on stage. We don’t stand in real life like that, right?”

Chamberlin said that in real life, we usually don’t even think about our hands, but when we’re self-conscious, they can make it obvious.

“One of the best definitions of acting that I’ve ever heard is being truthful under imaginary circumstances,” Chamberlin said. “Great definition, Sanford Meisner, and that when someone is truly in the moment, in the truthful moment, using their imagination, whether they’re an animal in the Jungle of Nool in ‘Seussical’ or they’re one of the ancestors in ‘The Addams Family’ … I will always [look] to the person that’s being truthful in the moment.”

You have been involved in quite a few Broadway productions in addition to your on-camera acting career. How is the process of putting on a stage performance different from something for film or TV?

While both require memorization and putting on a performance, there are major differences.

“Well, [in] film and TV, you can stop and go back,” Chamberlin said. “You can’t stop during a play. You’re also doing the same script for eight performances a week when you do a show, so you learn to direct yourself. If a joke isn’t working on Tuesday, well, how am I going to make that work for Wednesday matinee?”

While you have the opportunity to go back and redo anything for film and TV, the art form comes with its own challenges, too. He also said that in a filmed performance, a lot of the work is done in the eyes.

“You can be much more internal,” Chamberlin said. “That doesn’t fly when you’re performing in a 2,000-seat house. It’s a totally different style of acting. But the thing I love about film and TV is that it’s permanent and it’ll be around even long after I’m gone, whereas theater is temporal, and what happens on Tuesday night is not the same as what’s going to happen at the Wednesday matinee. It’s what happens that night with those couple hundred people, and it’ll never happen again. Just goes poof into the air, and every performance is different, each audience brings a different thing.”

The talk you’re giving is called “Be Curious, Be Kind, Be Ready: A Career of Continual Becoming.” What does this mean to you?

Chamberlin started by touching on the things discussed in the Q&A: Being kind, finding joy and treating others the way you want to be treated. However, he also gave a sneak peek into his lecture.

“I have seven rules that I will talk about [during the lecture] on the stuff that I’ve learned over my career, and [how] I’ve learned how to reinvent myself,” Chamberlin said. “Whether it’s as a composer, as a writer, a director, producer, and just a student of life. I kind of figured out I’m still learning, still to this day.”

Despite much of his life and advice being geared toward acting and “showbiz,” Chamberlin’s guide relates to any career or professional relationship.

“These rules also apply if you’re going on a job interview to be an engineer, media consultant or whatever. You have to be savvy … You have to be street smart. You have to walk into a room and be able to read the room and read human behavior. [It’s] so important and so many people are bad at it and sabotage themselves.”

Chamberlin has had a varied career, extending across the spectrum of the acting industry. He has worked alongside small, independent creators, as well as award-winning actors like Meryl Streep. He has seen the peaks and the pitfalls, and he remains honest and kind through it all.

“I hope you learned something,” Chamberlin said to end the interview.

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