When Take Me Out stars Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Jesse Williams signed on to Richard Greenberg’s 2002 baseball play, they didn’t know that they’d be called in for a second inning. After the success of its 2021 revival, which earned the cast four Tony nominations and a first-time win for Ferguson, the team was ready to pack it in, but talks of a second run commanded the attention of fans and theatergoers everywhere. And while the cast of the popular show was flattered by the idea of returning to the stage, they weren’t exactly sure if they were ready to swing their bats again just yet. 

“I’ll be honest, my first reaction was, ‘No, I’m tired,’” Williams recently told Businsiders with a laugh. “It’s a pretty emotionally devastating experience for me. That my character has to go through that level of constant and repetitive pain is not easy to sustain. It’s not easy to gather yourself and go do it again in two hours and do two show days and do it over and over and over again.”

In his role as Darren Lemming, Williams portrays a mixed-raced star player on the Empires baseball team who grapples with the fallout from his teammates and society when he reveals that he’s gay. The play follows the character as he deals with racism and homophobia, all while, in the midst of controversy, he forms an unexpected friendship with his gay financial manager, played by Ferguson.  

“I was emotionally spent and I also missed my children. I wanted to just go be with my kids for the summer. So I was interested, but I wasn’t able to make an affirmative decision because I had two other things that I needed to serve. I needed to be with my kids, so there’s no real discussion. So that kind of made it both hard and easy for me to say, ‘No, thanks,’” the former Grey’s Anatomy fixture admitted. “But as I did have a wonderful summer and a lot of quality time with [the cast]…that also gave me time to zoom out a little bit and just feel the absence of it, and I really missed it.”

After the play ended its limited run last summer, Williams found himself running scenes and lines in his head again and again, explaining that his muscle memory from doing the show for five months was still very much intact. He felt a deep connection to the cast, the story, and the stage. 

“I’ve never done a play before. You have all these things going on and then when you get nominated for Tonys and the audience is coming with that expectation, everything is super loaded,” he explained. “I wanted to work with the guys again. I knew we had more to do. We were in high gear in June when we finished—the show was so good and electric. But you can’t always say that as an actor about the work that you’re doing. Sometimes our movies are not good. Sometimes you can’t tell. You’re not going to find out for two years until it comes out. But that shit was really good. I don’t have to wonder if people meant it sincerely when they say it’s a good show…I know that the show was really compelling and unpredictable and magnetic. So I was like, ‘I want to get back out there,’ and I just wanted to.”

Similar to Williams, Ferguson eventually came to a realization about a second run, though at first, he admits, he was a little skeptical. 

“It was bantered about a little bit while we were still doing our original run at Second Stage. It was not a great time to ask us, because we were all exhausted. We were going right through to Tony Awards season…there was a lot happening and we were all exhausted. And so I think we pushed it aside because we were all ready to finish,” the former Modern Family actor said. “But then we ended on such a high and we won a Tony the day after we closed and none of us got to celebrate together. And so when the opportunity came back…and we all got to take a little bit of time away from it, I think it became appealing to us again.”