Analyzing Jake Gyllenhaal's Musical Theatre Potential for 'Little Shop of Horrors'

It was announced today that Jake Gyllenhaal will be playing Seymour in a short-run concert production of Little Shop of Horrors. Does this seem like a strange choice? Gyllenhaal has been hitting the acting renaissance/image reformation pretty hard recently. He’s definitely carving out a name for himself as one of the most underrated actors working today. But Seymour? Instinctively, he seems perfect for the shy, nerdy Seymour, made famous by Rick Moranis.

Until you remember that the Jake Gyllenhaal in your mind looks like this:

Or maybe even like this:

But actual Jake Gyllenhaal now looks like this:

Hmm, right. Okay, but can he sing? Well, he certainly has the ability to sing words from his mouth.

Here he is singing a little bit. (Okay, it’s basically just Anna Kendrick smiling.)

But have you ever heard him talk about singing? It apparently freaks him right the f*ck out.

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Even thinking about singing makes him make Chrissy Teigen face.

Okay, so singing might not be his favorite thing or even a thing he’s great at, but we DO know that he has the ability to overcome that fear and commit 100% a performance when demanded of him.

So sure, this may seem like a strange choice, but this isn’t a Broadway run he’s taken on. It’s a two-night concert production and he’ll be sandwiched in between Taran Killam as the dentist and Ellen Greene, the original Audrey. So I think we can all be sure that this show will be fun and fine and pretty much none of us will see it anyway.