Michael Urie, who is best known for his starring role on Ugly Betty, had a breakout performance in WTC View, a new film about life in New York City after 9/11 that still resonates with film fans today.

Michael Urie On ‘WTC View’

Urie originated the role of Eric in WTC View on the theater stage before bringing it to the big screen with writer/director Brian Sloan. For Urie, the most difficult part of the process of moviemaking was acting for the camera instead of the audience at New York’s Bottle Factory Theater, which was just feet away.

“An audience member may be 50 feet away… so they can’t look into your eyes, they can’t really see what’s happening in your face or your soul. You have to turn all the emotions and feelings into behavior, and in the movie, that behavior looks weird,” Urie explained to uInterview exclusively. “When you turn something into behavior like that in a movie, it’s too much. All you really need to do is think it and feel it and the camera will catch it because that’s what a camera does. A camera can look you in the eye, so it was a bit of a learning curve.”

When Urie was approached to star in the stage production of WTC View, he’d just graduated from Juilliard in New York City. The subject matter was very personal and relatable to him, as he’d been living in the city on 9/11 and had experienced the phenomenon in which strangers, who’d typically ignore one other, came together.

“The movie is really a microcosm of what it was like to be in New York in the weeks following 9/11,” said Urie, who saw the hit Twin Towers while waiting for his subway. “Something happened here in late September of 2001 that I never experienced before and I’ve never experienced since. It was sort of this familiarity among New Yorkers.”

“Everyone had the same thing on their minds and we shared a common experience, a common tragedy. We helped each other, we comforted each other, we protected each other,” Urie added. “It eventually did go away, but it was this kind of phenomenon. New York was a different place for a few weeks and the play really accurately depicts what it was like.”

Last year, Urie returned to Broadway in Buyer in Cellar, in which he plays a confidant of Barbra Streisand, who works as the curator in the “shopping mall” basement of her Malibu home. He’s taking the show to London, where it will run for two months at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

WTC View is now available on iTunes.