If you’re playing a character that somebody else originated, Anthony Rapp was saying, you respect the original but ..redecorate. “He built the house that I walk around in. But I find a wall to put my painting on.”

Rapp was one of the three actors who participated in the BroadwayCon panel entitle Creating A Character For The Stage. All three have originated Broadway roles — Rapp (most famously for Rent), Donna Murphy (Passion, for which she won a Tony), Melissa Errico (e.g. Amour.)  But either way, they’ve all developed a method. It involves research. “Research saved me,” Melissa Errico says, when at 18 she was cast in Les Miserables. Watch excerpts from their discussion