After closing in Six Degrees of Separation this past weekend, Tony-winning actor John Benjamin Hickey (The Normal Heart) appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to talk about his limited run on the Main Stem.

Even though the show opened with a closing date set (originally July 16), Hickey admits he got emotional in the last performances. “You’re trying not to be too sentimental about it all,” he told Colbert. “You’re also slightly thrilled because it’s the greatest honor in the world to be in a Broadway show as an actor. It’s like the epicenter of the acting universe, but it’s also like being in your very own existential Groundhog Day because you’re doing the same thing over and over.

“And the last few shows you’re trying not to cry and—I’m a little bit of a control freak so you also want everything to be perfect in the last few shows,” he explained. “And in the last moment of the play that I have with Allison Janney—a beautiful moment and we were feeling it, we were full of emotion—a cell phone went off in the audience and it was so loud and it was an old-school ring and the play takes place in 1989. So people in the audience thought it was part of the play.”

Hickey was, needless to say upset, and added to the ongoing discussion about cellphones in theatres saying, “There should be a fine.”

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