Leah Hennessey Reflects On Stepfather David Johansen Being ‘Vulnerable’ In “Personality Crisis’ (Exclusive)

There is a je ne sais quoi to Leah Hennessey. Even though it’s early when she speaks briefly with HollywoodLife about her involvement in Personality Crisis: One Night Only, Leah – an actor, singer, filmmaker, and model — radiates that indisputable, effortless cool that so many of us struggle to achieve a small fraction of. It’s very similar to the near insouciant zen of David Johansen, the lead singer of the proto-punk band The New York Dolls and crooner behind the Buster Poindexter persona. Both of David’s “identities” are spotlighted in the film co-directed by Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi. It serves as one part biopic, one-part performance, and one-part tribute to David’s remarkable career.

Yet, as Leah tells HL, it was one moment in Personality Crisis when David was at his lowest that resonated the most with her. “I think that David, he doesn’t go in for insecurity,” she explains. “He’s very emotionally intelligent and very thoughtful, but he never reveals any self-doubt. When he talks about his life, he doesn’t talk about it in terms of mistakes he’s made or things he wishes he did differently. He has this kind of candid-ish kind of passivity about like being blown about in the wind of life, and that’s part of his grace and part of his magic.”

“And he’s not a striver,” she explains. “He’s not the kind of guy who says, ‘I wanted to be the best’ or ‘I wanted to be famous.’ It is so anathema to him. And I’m always asking him, ‘Were you disappointed by this?’ Or ‘Did you wish this had been bigger’ or ‘Did you want more of this?’ And he’s so kind of accepting to the point of like sometimes I think kind of nihilism. When a certain kind of Buddhist acceptance verges on nihilism.”

Yet, in Personality Crisis, David’s zen faded when he expressed feeling “like a Bug” when he opened for Pat Benatar on a tour in the early 1980s. When speaking with The New Yorker, Leah said that this moment was very “moving,” because David’s endless detached confidence paused. “When David talked about that moment of feeling like a bug or feeling insecure and admitting to a kind of defeat, I thought it was very vulnerable and surprising,” she tells HL. “And I don’t think he thinks it’s vulnerable or surprising. I think he thinks, obviously, I felt that way and I’m human and who wouldn’t feel that way? But I found it surprising.”

Leah’s mother, Mara Hennessey, raised her daughter on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She was a single mother in New York City — no easy feat. Mara and David were friends before their romance bloomed, and the couple wed in 2013. By that time, Leah had already begun referring to Mara and David as her parents.

At the heart of Personality Crisis is a performance that David gave in January 2020 at Café Carlyle in honor of his 70th birthday. It was also a way for him to pay homage to his career as both a celebrated cabaret singer (Poindexter) and the cross-dressing wildman fronting the influential proto-punk band (New York Dolls.) Footage of David’s life and career is interspersed throughout the concert, along with moments of Leah interviewing David about the highs and lows of his life.

“It was obviously an honor and a privilege to be trusted with this work,” she tells HL, “and also, it was really a relief to have a reason to ask David these specific questions. And I think everyone kind of feels like they at some point will get the full story and the full access to their family and their parents. And most of us don’t really have that opportunity in such a straightforward way.”

Leah said that there was “so much I didn’t ask” because of time constraints and because most of David’s life is out in the public. Does she feel more able to ask him these questions now, since there are no more cameras? “Maybe,” she says. “I think it made me feel freer to fill in the gaps myself, if that makes sense. And it made me realize that maybe David doesn’t have a lot of the answers because there’s stuff he doesn’t remember.”

Leah Hennessey, Mara Hennessey, and David Johansen (Andrew H. Walker/Shutterstock)

“There’s stuff he doesn’t care about,” she adds. “There’s stuff that he remembers because of the way it’s been written about and remembered by other people. And so much of his history — and the history of the world he’s been a part of — is either lost or mediated beyond recognition. So maybe it made me want to ask more questions, but it kind of made me just want to do more research.”

Leah admits that this wasn’t “a hard-hitting journalistic effort” but about “letting David present himself as close to the way he’d like to be presented as possible.”

“It made it much more collaborative and fun,” she says. It also had the benefit of creating an environment where David felt safe and secure. ” I think the best thing that Scorsese told me when we started this process was ‘David’s not going to tell you anything he doesn’t want to tell you and don’t try to get him in a corner.’ He didn’t say in a corner, but ‘don’t try to catch him off guard and reveal something and don’t try to push him. Just give him the space to talk, and it’ll be much more interesting, and let him reveal what he wants to reveal.’ And I think the biggest challenge for me was just not interrupting.”

And how was it to work with such a cinematic legend? “[Scorcese] is a shockingly present person and meeting him the way I did, I just connected with him on a film level,” says Leah. I think he just breathes film and that’s the vibration he’s on. And I’m not that level of cinephile, and I don’t think I ever will be, but it is probably the thing that’s the most important to me as well.”

“When I met him the first time, we had this instant connection just because I was on an obsessive kick with this actor, Laurence Harvey,” she says, referring to the actor who appeared in such films as 1959’s Room at the Top, 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate, and opposite Elizabeth Taylor in 1960’s BUtterfield 8. “I was up watching every Laurence Harvey movie and kind of info dumping on people about Laurence Harvey. And then it just happened to be a time that Scorsese was there and it’s one of the only people in the world who cares that much about Laurence Harvey.”

“I mean, I don’t think Laurence Harvey’s even an actor he cares about that much,” continues Leah. “He just cares that much about every great actor and every great filmmaker and every DP.”

Leah Hennessey at the NYC premiere of Personality Crisis: One Night Only (Andrew H. Walker/Shutterstock)

She likens meeting Scorsese to “that experience of being a little kid and being obsessed with something and then meeting an adult who’s an expert on it and just being in the rapture of talking about dinosaurs. It’s like being a little kid obsessed with dinosaurs and getting to meet a paleontologist. It was just really exciting and ecstatic.”

“I didn’t even realize that he registered that I was any kind of filmmaker,” Leah adds. “We really just talked about movies we loved. And then when this project was going, I was staying out of it, and I was just letting my parents do their thing, and my mother executive produced it. And she was really the force behind making it happen.”

When the COVID-19 lockdowns happened, Scorsese’s people reached out to Leah to conduct the interviews for the film. She was already quarantining and going to see her parents, so it worked out. “They said, ‘You’re kind of the only person who has the clearance to go over there, and you’re a filmmaker.’ And I was kind of floored that Scorsese would give me that label. But that’s his genius, is that he sees filmmakers at every level as legitimate filmmakers.”

Personality Crisis: One Night Only debuted on SHOWTIME on Apr. 14. It’s currently available On Demand. Check local listings for airtimes.

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