The Real-Life Diet of The Inheritance Star Andrew Burnap, Who’s Obsessed with Overnight Oats

The Ethel Barrymore Theatre is average-sized for Broadway: 1,058 seats in total. But on most nights, that’s still 1,058 onlookers, all simultaneously tallying up Andrew Burnap’s 14 abs.

Burnap and his abdominals star in The Inheritance, which premiered on Broadway on November 17 after sold-out runs, rapturous reviews, and armloads of awards on the West End in London. An epic two-part play that clocks in at nearly seven hours, The Inheritance is a modern retelling of E. M. Forster’s Howards End, following the love lives of thirtysomething gay men in New York City. The focus is on two men in particular: the activist mensch Eric Glass (played by Kyle Soller) and a beautiful but tempestuous playwright with a troubled past, Toby Darling (played by Burnap). As Eric befriends an elderly gay neighbor who shows him how life and sex were very different for gay men under the shadow of the AIDs epidemic, a fame-hungry Toby casts a wandering eye on the young lead in his new play and chases his addictions to increasingly corrosive ends.

Toby is described as appearing "like a typhoon" in the lives of the people he meets, and on multiple occasions he shows up onstage nearly naked, like when he's tripping on party drugs in a Speedo on Fire Island. But it's through discipline, not the spontaneous delight of random weather patterns, that Burnap is able to keep up the character's limitless energy—and his eight-show-a-week schedule—without collapsing. And while Toby’s wide smile and springy pompadour do belong to Burnap, in person, the 28-year-old actor’s charm has more settled Zen vibes. Imagine if KJ Apa and Casey Cott had a baby who decided to open up a friendly neighborhood coffee shop.

Burnap grew up in South Kingston, a small town in Rhode Island where, as he describes it, “everybody desperately clings to summer, wears shorts, and drinks iced coffee all year round.” After studying at the University of Rhode Island, he attended Yale School of Drama and later worked with The Inheritance playwright Matthew Lopez on a madcap comedy called The Legend of Georgia McBride, in which Burnap played an Elvis impersonator who revives his career as a drag performer. When Lopez needed a Toby for a reading of his new (then ten-hour) play, he called Burnap. Burnap says he expected to help workshop the script, not land a role. The rest is history.

Since moving back to New York for his Broadway debut (he’s been here before, doing Shakespeare in the Park), Burnap has found new neighborhood haunts, become obsessed with overnight oats, and learned how to go through an emotional car crash every night without taking on residual damage. He talked to GQ about his skin-care routine, performing in front of Mark Rylance, and keeping up a healthy body image while standing nearly naked in front of a capacity audience every night.

GQ: Moving 3,000 miles and opening a Broadway show at the same time sounds like a dream and a nightmare.

Andrew Burnap: It gets messy. Everyone is running on all cylinders, and after a couple weeks, everyone's running on fumes. It’s exhausting. You have to meditate, you have to sleep, you have to take care of yourself when you're not onstage. The show is all-consuming. It requires all of you.

Your character’s arc in the show is a really intense one. I'm sure it’s taxing physically, but it must also be tough emotionally to turn that character on and off.

They are their own thing, but they're also all maddeningly connected. So when one starts to deteriorate, the others follow suit. My body is the first thing that I can feel getting tired, then other things start to follow suit. By Sunday night, my body is giving me a lot of, “Fuck you, man, for doing this.”

Do you get any days off?

Now that we're in this show schedule, we get Mondays and Tuesdays off, which is slightly unheard of in theater. The trade-off is doing five show weekends, with two days off. On those days, it is imperative that I take care of myself, even in the smallest of ways. Making sure that I don’t have anything scheduled before noon, or that I can wake up and stay in my pajamas and have a cup of coffee, or read the news for a while. I want to feel human.

Do you have to be militant about protecting your sleep?

It is the one thing that I protect at all costs. I will ruin friendships in order to get sleep. If I don't, I rob an entire group of people who have paid to see a story with the full experience. Sleep and yoga and meditation are three things that keep me sane. When I'm not working, I have a much more relaxed vibe, but when I'm doing this play, there are things that I can no longer do. I really enjoy weight-lifting and throwing a barbell around, but if I try to do that now, my body won't be able to recuperate.

What is it that you're focused on, if not weights? Is it flexibility, endurance, injury prevention?

Yes, that's exactly it. It's also thinking about fitness in more of a spiritual way. I'm not as results-oriented now. Yoga is a daily routine that makes my body feel full and strong and limber and helps me move around without damage.

Do you have a trainer?

I do not. I go to yoga classes, and I also really enjoy climbing and bouldering. It's a fun way to stay fit while also engaging my mind and my heart, rather than just mindlessly going to the gym and trying to pump up my biceps. It's like figuring out a puzzle with your body: How do you get to that point as quickly and efficiently as possible?

As a performer, are you also thinking about your voice, and your skin? I assume you're packing an inch of makeup on every night.

I am obsessed with skincare. Obsessed. My mom is a dermatologist and I had cystic acne as a kid. I have very sensitive skin. I've tried so many different products and companies. The number one thing that I use is a lot of Malin+ Goetz. And some Tata Harper, some Aesop. I'm also obsessed with Biologique P50. I love a good face mask.

It's crazy how many people still think there's shame attached to skincare. I think it's changing. You're allowed to take care of yourself. My rather conservative, manly-man father would spend $10 on a pair of jeans and think that's expensive. God love him. But I'm wildly different.

And self-care is multifaceted, right? It obviously goes far beyond face masks. It's also about understanding yourself in stressful situations and how to change your reactions to your reactions. You know what I mean? Years of therapy have taught me that your way through the world is not based on the things that happened to you. It's how you react to the things that happen to you.

How do you think about food? Are there specific things that you gravitate towards?

I fast in the morning, so I don't usually eat until about 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. I'll try and work out in the morning just as a way to wake myself up. I will have a cup of black coffee. I always start with overnight oats. Overnight oats is one of the greatest inventions of all time because it keeps you full for so long, but not heavy full. If I have to be on the go, I have to have something that I can take with me, and overnight oats fit the bill there. I usually do blueberries and banana, almond butter, oats, cacao nibs, a little bit of cinnamon. Throw it in, mix it up, add a little bit of protein powder, and then it's done. I swear by that. And it's also about eating as many vegetables as possible. I try to stay away from red meat before a show and steer toward things that are easily digestible. If I'm thinking about what I just ate on stage, I'm pretty much fucked.

What about after the show?

I have to eat afterwards because I'm just so drained. It's only on the nights before two-show days that I try and not eat something that's going to stay with me for a while. But after a show it's like, what the fuck ever, I'll eat anything. I'll have a burger, I'll have two slices of pizza. I'm ravenous after a show, so a salad just won't do the trick. But I do try to eat as healthy as possible. I don’t obsess over it. I have a horrible sweet tooth, so I will eat Reese’s Cups as a reward if I've had a bad show. Every once in a while, I'll get one of those healthier Hu Kitchen chocolate bars.

Do you do anything specific right before you go onstage?

I do a warm-up routine that's sort of Kristin Linklater mixed with the Fitzmaurice method, which is what we learned in grad school. It’s a mix of yoga moves and stretching and making sure that your body is getting the fullest breath possible, because breath is the end-all, be-all in terms of trying to tell a story. And then I'll take some CBD oil to relax my nerves because I still get nervous. And then I will drink water and do all of the quintessential articulation warm-ups and all of the stuff that you see in those horrible drama school movies. I actually do all of that shit. And then I'll meditate for about 10 minutes. Just tell myself to be okay with the fact that I'm going to do this, that this is actually going to happen.

Does that pressure get better or worse over the course of the show?

Only when there’s someone you care about watching. Some people have a rule that they don't want to know who's at the show, and some want to know, but I fall in-between. There are times where if you told me that a certain actor was there who I loved and adored and respected, I would take double the amount of CBD. But there are times when I know someone is in the audience and I do it for them and it gives me great joy.

Okay, now you have to name names.

When I knew that Mark Rylance was watching, I was almost debilitatingly nervous. Same thing with Ian McKellen. I got to see them after the show and spend time with them, and both are conversations and memories that I’ll never forget. But then someone told me that Glenn Close was in the audience, and I remember thinking, how fucking cool is it that Glenn Close is watching me on stage? It sparked this life into me and it felt so fun to do it for her, because she's such a legend and an icon and I have so much respect for her.

How do you keep up a healthy body image?

There’s pressure to look “good” because of scenes where we’re wearing next to nothing—and some people are wearing actually nothing. Even in grad school there was pressure to have a Greek God-esque body. How could there not be pressure? Recently I've felt like, well, why? I’ve let the need to be adored for my physical body go to the wayside as I'm trying to invest more in my spirit and my heart. There are days where I feel I'm too skinny or I'm not ripped or masculine enough because of Instagram and all these people who work hard on their bodies. But that should not be the norm. That should not be the thing that gives value to a human being other than the fact that you can respect their hard work.

Is there anything you're looking forward to being able to do again once this show is over?

There are so many things. I can't wait to travel again. I'm looking forward to hanging out with friends on a Saturday night. Haven't done that in a really long time. I'm also looking forward to waking up one day and being like, well, what do I do today? But for now, getting to do this every day is a profound gift.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Real-Life Diet is a series in which GQ talks to athletes, celebrities, and everyone in between about their diets and exercise routines: what's worked, what hasn't, and where they're still improving. Keep in mind, what works for them might not necessarily be healthy for you.

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Originally Appeared on GQ