Charlie Flint

‘The Simpsons’ Star Harry Shearer on Protecting His Voice From AI After Death and Working With Tom Leopold on FBI Musical ‘Here Comes J. Edgar’

07 Jul 2026, 13:00 by K.J. Yossman · Variety

You’d be hard-pressed to call an hour spent in the company of Harry Shearer and Tom Leopold work. Not only is each a prolific comedian in their his right — Shearer best known for his roles in “The Simpsons” and “Spinal Tap” while Leopold has writing credits on numerous hits including “Cheers” and “Seinfeld” – but having known each other for more than half a century, they have a Statler and Waldorf-esque rapport that can turn even the most earnest conversation into a hoot.

The duo are in a particularly buoyant mood when we meet, at a rehearsal space in London, thanks to the upcoming premiere of their musical “Here Comes J. Edgar,” an endeavour that has been three decades in the making. Shearer and Leopold first wrote both the book and the lyrics alongside Peter Matz, Barbara Streisand’s musical director, who died in 2002, and it premiered on the radio in 1994 performed by Kelsey Grammer, John Goodman and Shearer’s “Spinal Tap” co-star Christopher Guest.

Over the decades, multiple attempts to turn the musical into a full stage show – and even a film adaptation – fizzled out before a chance conversation last year with the director of the King’s Head Theatre in London led to an offer. Now “Here Comes J. Edgar” is set to premiere at the 200-seat venue on July 10, directed by Josh Seymour with choreography by Bill Deamer.

The story is based on the life of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who infamously traded in secrets while hiding his own sexuality, including a lifelong love affair with his deputy, Clyde Tolson.

Riffing on late ’50s Broadway productions, the show sees Hoover on his deathbed while dreaming about his life as a musical. “What kind of musical would it be?” Shearer explains. “It wouldn’t be an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, it wouldn’t be a rock musical. What we told Peter is it would be Frank Lesser’s last show — and he got it.”

With tickets selling fast for the London run, the show is already looking at a West End or even Broadway transfer.

Ahead of its launch, Shearer and Leopold sat down with Variety to reflect on their own careers, the state of the entertainment industry and why it took so long to get “Here Comes J. Edgar” out of development hell.

Why did you decide to do a musical about J. Edgar Hoover?

Harry Shearer: We decided to do this because Hoover had been this crazily overhyped hero figure in American culture. He’d been dead at that time for a couple decades.

The show first premiered on radio in 1994 – why do you think it didn’t make the jump to Broadway at the time?

Tom Leopold: We came close. Both Kelsey Grammer and John [Goodman] wanted to do it on Broadway, and it just didn’t seem to come together. We had other fish to fry, as the President sings in the show.

Shearer: Yeah, in this business there are only two words that matter, and one of them is much easier to say than the other for the executives.

But I mean, we had several attempts to stage it here in the theater [in the U.K.] — that was my first choice. All of those went “Poof!” and then in some degree of desperation, I wrote a film adaptation and wasted a couple years [on it] with some other no-goodniks. And then this happened.

Why did you always want to stage it in the U.K.?

Shearer: I just thought that a show with this degree of edginess would initially appeal more to British audiences than to American theater audiences. I mean, there are American audiences that would dig it, but I think the Broadway audience is little tame.

There’s certainly been a trend over the past few years to open in London before transferring to Broadway.

Shearer: Well, partly because it’s so much cheaper to do theater here than in New York.

How did director Josh Seymour come on board?

Shearer: [The King’s Head] brought in Josh, who’s been wonderful to work with; very smart, very good with actors. It’s not the simplest show in the world. It’s working on different levels at the same time. One is the true story of a white, nasty gentleman who had more power than anybody in the United States for longer, and the other is a love story between two gay people at a time when that had to be way, way, way down low.

Leopold: He persecuted people.

Shearer: So there’s all these layers and we had written it that way, but I think Josh Seymour has done an amazing job of realizing how these layers work together in a staged way and in a production way.

How big is the cast?

Shearer: Well, most of them are normal size.

I walked right into that.

Shearer: It’s about eight people.

Leopold: There’s a lot of doubling. It’s wonderful to hear Peter’s music with our goofy lyrics and the songs are so moving and hooky and catchy that it really –

Shearer: Hooky and Catchy were the two dwarfs.

Leopold: Roy Disney cut those out. But it’s really — because you kind of hear about this love story, as evil and troublesome as this guy was, and the melodies under our goofy funny lyrics are moving.

Shearer: And they’re incredibly hummable.

Bryan Batt and cast in rehearsal for “Here Comes J. Edgar! A Comedy Musical” (Mark Douet)

Is it reminiscent of any other musicals?

Leopold: We’ve been talking about that. We don’t know if that scares us or relieves us to know it’s kind of its own thing.

Shearer: Yeah, I mean, we each have our own favorite musicals, but I think this is a different animal.

It’s a much faster-paced show because we’re going through a person’s life. So it has a very different pace than most musicals as a result, and both the scenes and the songs are kind of — they’re powerful, but we’re not wasting time.

When you work in comedy, there’s a big old clock: when we did this [or] when other people and I did the “[Spinal] Tap” movies, there’s always an awareness of “Man, if you’re at 87 minutes, you better be wrapping it up.” And the good and bad thing about that is you always find yourself taking out stuff that you really love.

In the musical Hoover is reflecting on his life and career. You both have had such prolific careers and spent many decades in the entertainment industry – do you ever reflect on your own?

Shearer: Every night around 2am.

I can’t tell if you’re joking…

Leopold: Neither can he.

Shearer: I’ve done a lot in the comedy world, but I’ve also done other things; I spent a couple years on the documentary about why New Orleans flooded. Because there are so many times when a project is delayed, as we’ve talked about, I try to find something to do to while away the hours and be productive during those periods. You know, it was 40-something years between “Spinal Tap” and “Spinal Tap II” so you had to do something between.

Leopold: I look back and to me it was just, how do I stay in show business? When you look back it looks like it all made some kind of sense, but it’s just swinging from one vine to the other job.

Shearer: You’re the Tarzan of comedy.

Leopold: This [musical] is just the thrill of a lifetime to see, because every painter and every writer has stuff [that’s left in a drawer] and this has always been one thing that never got to where we wanted it, even though we did get it done in a way, but to see it actually up on stage with costumes and wonderful dancing…

How do you feel about where the industry is right now with all the consolidation and the threat of AI?

Shearer: Well, look, there is a business right now whose job it is to hype how many people they’re going to put out of work: the AI people are doing that just to raise money, because they are so desperate to raise money. LA has had a weak time in the post-Covid period. People who know more about it than I do attribute more of that to the aftermath of two really serious strikes than a few people that are diddling around with AI … and there are always waves in Hollywood. Me personally, I think the times when I can get away with stuff are when the industry has sort of run out of steam on whatever they thought the formula was, and that’s in fact this moment. The Marvel moment has passed, and you look at the great movies of the of the latter part of the 20th century, and they were in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when everybody was going, “I don’t know what these kids want to see.”

How would you feel about your voice being recreated by AI in “The Simpsons” after you’re gone?

Shearer: I’ve thought about it, I’ve talked to legal people about it. There are people in the business now who are very actively involved in legal proceedings to trademark their name and likeness, I think that’s a good idea.

Taylor Swift is apparently trying to trademark her voice. Is that something you’ve considered?

Leopold: He’d have no business trademarking Taylor Swift’s voice.

Shearer: It’s on the menu… the whole AI thing. The problem I see with it is it’s all just a very sophisticated form of mimicry. It’s just statistically one word following [another].

Leopold: I think until AI is raised in a difficult family it can never take the place of a comedian.

Do you feel like Hollywood has run out of ideas?

Leopold: Yeah … it’s always seemed like that from the very beginning. One Western becomes a hit — I remember being a kid and every night there was 20 Westerns. Then detective shows.

Shearer: It’s not news that Hollywood is not the greatest source or producer of original ideas. Original ideas have to fight their way through whatever the formula is at that moment, and we know that story front and back.

This interview has been edited and condensed.