Welcome back to Hot Takes and Deep Dives, and you might know my next guest from two very different corners of showbiz.

Jonah Wheeler is a musical theater director and composer, orchestrator.

Your work has been performed by everyone from Kristen Chenoweth to Molly Pope,

but you kind of left Broadway and musical theater behind to become an only fan star and an internet, I guess, sensation.

I'm very compelled by this juxtaposition.

Hi, Jonah Wheeler.

Hello, how are you?

I'm great.

How are you?

I'm delighted.

Yeah.

So I was introduced to you. I was on vacation with two of my really close friends, Ben Rimmelauer and Dan Fortune.

And we were in Puerto Vallada and they said, by the way, we are going to this show.

It's Jonah Wheeler and John Coons. And they're a couple. And like one of them was a theater director.

He's now doing porn. And And, like, one of them was a theater director.

He's now doing porn. And I'm like, what? So. I'm still shocked. I'm, like, the only one. Are you the only one? I'm not technically the only one. There was a, I'm a, to be specific, I'm not a director. I'm a music director, which is like down in the pit playing piano conducting. I don't do the stage organization.

But there is another theater musician.

Well, no, I'm being entirely incorrect about this.

There is a actor who is in, I think, the 42nd Street Revival.

So this is like 20 years ago who went on to have a career in porn and then sort of flirted back with like piano bar kind of stuff. Okay. But, you know, since then, I don't know anybody else who's doing it in that kind of a way. Listen, that was the hook. I mean, I guess that's the hook of this episode as well. But like, that was enough to be like, all right, like, I'm interested. And then we said hi. We met briefly at Mark Hartman's show at Act 2.

Yes.

Turns out we have a couple mutual friends.

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