UrbanUpdate

What do you think a leading man on Broadway looks like? The dudes who sat by me in Drama 101 were good-looking, but definitely more Sondheim than Schwarzenegger. But not Tony-nominee and Broadway buff Ramin Karimloo.

I saw Karimloo during his 2014-2015 Broadway stint as Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, and from that night, I mostly remember the screams. Near the beginning of act one, Valjean is released from prison. “Why is he still wearing his uniform?” Karimloo remembers asking early on. “He’s free. He’d shed that like a snake sheds skin.” So Karimloo discarded his shirt, and the two teenage girls next to me lost their shit.

Karimloo is a surprising stage actor beyond looking more action hero than chorus boy. He doesn’t really like showtunes and has never seen The Wizard of Oz. (“I don’t even know what Judy Garland sounds like.”) But that doesn’t mean he takes those roles less seriously. In fact, he got swole as part of the job. Method acting is a technique in which actors aspire to complete identification with their characters. For Karimloo, that even means customizing workouts: If Jean Valjean or Gleb—Karimloo’s current posting in Anastasia—strutted into an Equinox in 2017, how would he break a sweat? I’ve been referring to Karimloo’s workout as “method ab-ing,” and at least two people have laughed.

GQ: You were the victim of some fat-shaming from a producer in a dressing room. That’s how you “found fitness,” right?Ramin Karimloo: [laughs] Basically. The undertone was, “You’re getting tubby.” He wasn’t being a dick; he’s like family, and he was right. I was just doing the Saturday night T-shirt muscles, then.

What are T-shirt muscles?Everything but legs. His wasn’t the only comment, so I started the INSANITY program six months before playing [Jean] Valjean. I didn’t even want the part. I thought, “What am I going to do with it?” For me, there’s only one Valjean and that’s Colm [Wilkinson]. But when they convinced me, I read the novel and, paraphrasing, it said: Valjean kept his body supple. He was in the prime of his life. Keeping in shape was an emotional thing—getting out of prison and taking vengeance with his body. I thought, I could play that. I haven’t seen a Valjean do that. I gained twenty pounds.

“If weights are more than an hour, you’re doing too much or talking too much.”

Bet you called that producer. Do you remember the first positive reaction?Facetiming my wife Mandy. She was like, “Holy crap—abs?” I was touring with my band then, exercising in hotel parking lots. Those 90-degree days in Texas I wanted to quit, but in my head, it was prep for Valjean. “He wouldn’t quit. He’d do these things.” I got skinny, but needed size. I started INSANITY’s sister program, Body Beast, and working with bodybuilder Dalton Brown. Any stars who go through Toronto who need to be fucked, end up working with him. I learned old-school bodybuilding techniques and by the time we got to Broadway, I was deadlifting almost 500 pounds and benching 300.

After they saw you were ripped, they added the shirt-ripping scene?[laughs] Let’s not deny [the shirt ripping] is a good marketing tool. And if it shows Valjean’s jacked physique, people will see, “Yeah, that guy could lift a cart. He’s strong as shit.”

The exercise was character research, in a way?I think so. There’s massive parallel between physical truth and emotional truth. Getting in shape for a film is hard enough, but maintaining it for seven shows a week for a year and a half… it became a way of life. Daily, I was eating 5,000 calories, bodybuilding between shows, and cycling 16 miles. I loved it—the science behind it. And like I said, it was Valjean. As an actor, when you show up, you are that part. With Valjean, we worked for strength. Now it’s switched; Gleb, a military man, is about endurance. They're trained like, "How much further can you go before you break?"

What would a communist general do in a gym today?I don’t want to take it too far, because I want to be a normal dude. [laughs] But I started looking at Russian-techniques and ring work. I’ve been following this guy Julian Smith on Instagram. He’s all about slow-tempo and high-volume. It’s easier to lift heavy-ass weights for five reps than to take half that weight off and go 4x slower for twenty reps. At some point, your muscle doesn’t know if it’s twenty pounds or 200, it’s just fucked. I’m also doing a lot of animal-flow stuff. Bear crawls and crab walks are good for a soldier because they take a lot of mental discipline. After three reps, I’m like, “Screw this.”

A standard week of workouts is…I’ll wake up every day with low-impact cardio, maybe treadmill hill-walks on a 15 percent incline at three mph with a 30-minute Netflix episode. Breakfast. Then, there will be a weight session that ends with five to fifteen minutes of high-intensity training, whether it’s 50 burpees, burpees and the box jumps, or the assault bike. I try and keep weights under an hour. If it’s more than an hour, you’re doing too much or talking too much.

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By 1 or 2 p.m. everything’s done. With every workout, regardless of the body-part days, I want supersets of compound moves. My main thing is time under tension. If you’re doing that, you can’t do your heaviest weight, so you’re not putting such stress on your joints.

Supersets? Compound moves?A superset is two or more sets back to back without rest. Compound moves are like squats or bent-over rows. It’s whole-body, not just isolation. A dead-life is the best compound move.

Is there anything you haven’t tried yet, but want to?I think I gotta start doing Pilates. A good core will make you stronger and give longevity so I can still be lifting when I’m 60 or 70.

How close to showtime can you exercise?I do it right before because it wakes me up. I’ve heard of opera singers sometimes running around the block before a show. Your voice is a physical muscle.

I wonder how many calories you burn singing.Yeah, I wonder. Shame your throat can’t wear an Apple Watch.

Are stage actors becoming more interested in fitness? Or, are you way bigger than others in your industry?With all these Marvel superhero things, you see everyone getting in shape. But at the same time, I think, and hope, people are responding to all shapes and sizes. I don’t think I’m that big, but I do have costume designers being like, “You sure his shoulders to waist ratio is right? That’s a 12-inch differential.”

Do you think your next workout will be influenced by your next role?I think the type of role that someone like me goes for or gets offered has a certain physicality, but who knows? Maybe if someone puts me in a character part, and I don’t have to work out, I’ll mess this up. I’ll eat as much as they need.

No end goal?It’s getting down to a science. I see little things, the waist cinch in or ab definition. But they’re only for me — my beach look or a fitness shoot. It’s not that important. As long as the doctor says you’re okay, that’s all that matters. When I do the 2000-meter run, I’ve gotten as low as seven minutes and twenty seconds. My coach in England is like, “Top athletes are seven or below.” I’m like, “Why do I need to be that fit? I’m an actor. Can they sing ‘Bring Him Home?’ Let’s call it even.”

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