“Do I have to dance?”: Mike Faist on moving from stage to screen for ‘West Side Story’

Mike Faist is speaking to Screen International from outside Columbus, Ohio — where he is visiting family members — when he breaks off to find a gift he received. He excitedly thrusts part of a tea set in front of the camera, sent by producer Kristie Macosko Krieger and Steven Spielberg to mark the Bafta nomination for his supporting role as Riff in West Side Story. 

“That was very, very sweet,” he says of what can only be this young actor’s latest pinch-me moment involving one of cinema’s most legendary filmmakers. 

The way Faist tells it, their collaboration was fated. “The movies that I grew up with were the old MGM films with Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, and West Side Story, and Steven Spielberg movies like the Indiana Joneses. It really is crazy. I remember sitting down with Steven, very early on in rehearsals, and telling him, ‘I was born to do this.’ This was meant to be.” 

He was just three years old when he first watched Singin’ In The Rain (“Seeing Gene Kelly dancing in the rain with an umbrella was huge”) and a couple of years older when he insisted to his parents that he join a dance class. Children’s and high-school theatre followed, accompanied by trips to New York to see Broadway shows. At 17, he enrolled in a New York conservatory. “Moving by yourself to New York City, from smalltown Ohio at 17, was terrifying,” he recalls. “But that’s the town to be in if you want to be in theatre.”

He was equally pragmatic about the next few years, which saw him combining the stage with odd jobs, which ironically included selling theatre tickets around Times Square. He worked as a courier in between the off-Broadway and Broadway productions of the musical Dear Evan Hansen, in which he played the suicidal Connor Murphy.   

Faist was Tony-nominated for his role in Dear Evan Hansen in 2017. By this time, he was adding TV and independent film to his credits, though it was his stage work that brought him to the attention of West Side Story’s casting director Cindy Tolan. Faist was still playing Connor when asked to send in a tape for the lead role of Tony. “So I had long hair and black fingernails,” he laughs. “They thought, ‘Maybe that’s not a good idea.’” 

Months later he was invited to provide another tape, this time for Riff. But Faist was reluctant when he was asked to go in and dance with everyone vying for the Jets roles. 

“I asked my agents, ‘Do I have to dance? Can I just do the scene work?’ To which I was told, ‘This is West Side Story.’ I’m not an ensemble dancer,” he explains. “I’m not good enough. I had no business being in that room, quite frankly. These were some of the best dancers in the world. So, for me, it was a case of Riff or bust.” 

Thankfully, the director did not share his doubts. “Mike Faist is one-of-a-kind,” Spielberg has said. “He can do absolutely anything.”

Family bond

Faist’s highlights from the West Side Story experience include the theatre animal’s excitement at working with the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning Tony Kushner, and the bonding experience with his fellow Jets. 

“The people who I spent the most time with, developing relationships and characters, were those 15 boys. We spent the entire summer together. We were a family. We were a tribe. And we had a lot of fun.” In fact, they became so close that one of their number, Harrison Coll, whose father had recently passed away, included his co-stars in a very touching ceremony. “Harrison asked the Jets to release his dad’s ashes into the East River with him. He said a few words, and we all sang the ‘Jet Song’. I’ll never forget that.” 

The 30-year-old recently shot low-budget film Pinball: The Man Who Saved The Game, and has been slated to star in Luca Guadagnino’s tennis drama Challengers, alongside Zendaya and Josh O’Connor. 

Having left New York at the outset of the pandemic and spent much of the past two years travelling around the US in his car, with his dog, Faist seems happy to remain in that mode for a while longer. 

“I definitely want to come back to theatre. I lived in New York for 13 years. It treated me so well, it shaped who I am. But right now, I’m kinda digging the open road.” He smiles. “The movies, they shoot everywhere.”

• West Side Story: Review