Christian LeBlanc is celebrating more than returning to New Orleans later this month to reprise his role as Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The Young and the Restless star, who plays Michael Baldwin, shares news related to an important health update.
Christian LeBlanc: Big Daddy Is Back
LeBlanc is headed to his home state of Louisiana to take part in a Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival later this month. Actor/producer Matt de Rogatis, who played Brick in a recent production of the play in which LeBlanc starred as Big Daddy, was contacted by a high school teacher in the Cayman Islands who had recently studied the play. “He wanted to know if Matt could come to the festival and do Act 2,” LeBlanc says. “We’re doing to do that…which is largely Brick and Big Daddy and is the heart of the story.
“One of my favorite things to do is talk to students of literature and acting, after the performance, we’re going to do a Q&A. It’s going to be one-night-only on March 23,” the actor says. “It’s going to be a really interesting experience. We get down there two days before. It’s a very different stage. Matt’s never been to New Orleans. I’ll have to show him around.” The festival includes a “Stella Shouting Contest,” a nod to another one of Williams’s plays, A Streetcar Named Desire.
LeBlanc says his favorite activity when he goes back home is not necessarily visiting old haunts but rather spending time with family. “I’m such a genealogy freak. New Orleans is the one place I can go to find a house, sandwich, or storefront [involving] my family from 100 years ago and it’s still there,” LeBlanc marvels. “I walk so much that I can walk from one district to another. It’s the simple things. Like having a café au lait right by the river.”
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Christian LeBlanc: ‘I Feel Great’
Last year, LeBlanc traveled to Louisiana to participate in a cancer benefit with The Bold and the Beautiful’s Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke). While there, he was interviewed by TV journalist Eric Paulsen and shared news of his cancer diagnosis. Now, LeBlanc is giving Soap Hub a happy update. “I’m doing great,” he says. “Multiple myeloma is one of those cancers that after you get through the scare of trying to figure out what is going on and the diagnosis, they sit there and say, ‘you have nine months to heal and this is what we can do to get you there.’ Luckily, I had no strange reactions or surprises. I did a bone marrow transplant with my own stem cells. Not everyone can do that. I was able to. They freeze half of it in case you have to do it again.
“There’s a maintenance that you do,” LeBlanc says. “Everything worked out great. This is my first flight, my celebration. So, I’m going to a Tennessee Williams festival.” Adding wryly, he says, “Why don’t we bring back the whole second act where I don’t shut up for an hour and be at the place where everybody knows Tennessee Williams!
“The end of March will be the end of the nine months,” he adds. “I’m back [on top of] the world. I’m healed.”
If you’re in New Orleans from Sunday, March 17 to Sunday, March 24, and want to check out the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Festival (LeBlanc’s appearance is set for Saturday, March 23), click here.
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