John Gallagher Jr. on Wilmington upbringing, Duncan Sheik and being ‘Almost Ok’

Wilmington-raised actor John Gallagher Jr. wasn’t sure he had what it took to play a serial killer when he was cast in the 2016 slasher “Hush.” But director Mike Flanagan insisted on Gallagher because nobody would expect his boy-next-door look underneath the mask. 

During the three weeks of 12-hour night shoots that followed, Gallagher learned fight choreography, performed most of his own stunts and even climbed up the side of a house.

“The freedom that comes with a filmmaker believing in you and trusting you is an incredible feeling,” Gallagher said.

Flanagan’s vision paid off. The Netflix film received positive reviews during its premiere at South by Southwest and online praise from horror icons like author Stephen King and “The Exorcist” director William Friedkin. Today, it holds positive audience and critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes.

Ten years after “Hush,” Flanagan has taken the reins of the franchise Friedkin started with the upcoming “The Exorcist: Martyrs,” which Gallagher makes a brief appearance in.

“There’s something cosmically full circle about that,” Gallagher said.

Gallagher will reflect further on his horror roles in a panel Saturday at the inaugural Horror Fest Film Festival in Wilmington, where he’ll also play a set of his original music on Sunday. 

Known for his parts in rock musicals like Duncan Sheik’s “Spring Awakening,” Green Day’s “American Idiot” and The Avett Brothers’ “Swept Away,” Gallagher has become a disciple of his own brand of “emo folk rock” in the past decade. He released a new EP, “Almost Ok,” in May.

Ahead of his hometown appearances, the Hollywood actor reflected on his career and future in a conversation with Spotlight Delaware.

‘A wooden statue’

Gallagher, 42, left Delaware for New York to pursue acting as a teenager. But he still visits his parents in Wilmington several times a year and hits up his favorite restaurants: The Charcoal Pit, La Tolteca, Kid Shelleen’s and Rita’s Italian Ice. 

Gallagher attributes his artistic successes to Wilmington community theater and his parents, who have performed as a folk duo locally for decades.

He first decided he wanted to become an actor around 11 years old, when he watched his mom play the stepmother in Wilmington Drama League’s “Cinderella.”

“She brought a playful energy to it, and she was really funny,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘Gosh, I want to try that. I want to see if I can get up on stage and help tell a story.’”

So, Gallagher’s mother took him to a casting call. He sang “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from “Mary Poppins.”

“I stood there like a wooden statue. I didn’t get cast. I was crushed,” he said. “I was like, ‘I never want to do this again!’ Very dramatic, as I was wont to be at that age.”

But he bounced back and auditioned for Wilmington Drama League’s “Frankenstein,” adapted from the book by local playwright Scott Mason. Gallagher said that role was “life-changing.” 

An introverted and shy kid, Gallagher found friendship and encouragement in Delaware’s theater scene as he performed alongside a cadre of future Hollywood A-listers like Aubrey Plaza and Neil Casey. That gave him the ambition to throw himself into the merciless machine of New York theater. 

‘Raw, imperfect quality’

Gallagher landed his breakout role as Moritz Stiefel in “Spring Awakening” at 22, earning a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. 

The pivotal role wouldn’t have been possible without composer Duncan Sheik, who died last week at 56. 

“He was a very quiet, sensitive, mercurial person. Very introspective. You can hear it in the music,” Gallagher recalled. “It’s very compelling, and that was the first thing that jumped out at me when I heard the ‘Spring Awakening’ songs for the first time.”

The first version of the score Gallagher listened to was a demo CD recorded and performed entirely by Sheik.

“I wish that could also get released alongside the cast album, because hearing him play all those songs is really unique and really special,” he said.

Gallagher described himself as a bit of an “outcast” in the world of musical theater. He hadn’t been going to see vocal coaches his entire life; he’d gotten most of his practice from performing in rock bands. But Sheik didn’t want perfection from Gallagher; he wanted authenticity.

“The character that I was playing is this wayward and depressed teenager struggling to make sense of his life. I was encouraged to mine all of that and bring a raw, imperfect quality to the role,” Gallagher said. “He wanted people that felt real.”

‘Almost Ok’

Fittingly for someone who’s starred in so many rock musicals, Gallagher exhibits a theatrical quality in his own songwriting. 

The lyrics drop the listener into hyper-specific settings, like a family trip to the Jersey Shore (“Never Leave”).

“New Jersey Transit is a great place to be sad,” Gallagher sings. “You can stare out the window racked with guilt and feeling bad about the time you raised your voice and were mean for no reason to your dad.”

Other tracks follow Gallagher grappling with a problem like a character in a musical. “Tough Spit,” an upbeat lamentation of the digital age, follows a doomscrolling Gallagher resolving to leave the house before ultimately deciding to further isolate himself.

Gallagher pulls his bare-faced vulnerability from the folk icons he saw perform at the Philadelphia Folk Festival as a kid, like Richie Havens, Janis Ian and Buddy Guy.

“There’s something so powerful and vulnerable about these people just getting up with a wooden instrument and telling their story and baring their soul,” he said. “I remember thinking, ‘God, that’s a superpower.’”

That superpower is what Gallagher channels on “Almost Ok.” 

The EP was born from the closure of The Avett Brothers’ “Swept Away” after only two months on Broadway. Feeling deflated, Gallagher threw himself into the studio, recording snapshots of his life from the past couple of years in a matter of five days.

The theme of the record can be found in the title. If life is a dial ranging from horrid to heavenly, Gallagher is still searching for the right level of blissful ordinariness. 

“I talk about this all the time with my therapist. I don’t need the dial to be at 100. … But I also don’t want to be down all the way to the left at zero,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to get in the vicinity.”