You don’t hear a lot of stories involving both Nicolas Cage and Lenny Kravitz. Why would you? One’s an Oscar-winning thespian who hates that he’s been memed while the other is Grammy-winning genre-blending musician (who, to be fair, was in a couple Hunger Gameses). Thing is, they actually go way back. They went to Beverly Hills High School. That may not sound too mind-blowing. But this is: They did a high school musical together.
As caught by People, Kravitz sat down for a video chat with Esquire, in which he recalled knowing the young “Nic Coppola,” as Cage went then. (He changed his name for his second movie, 1983’s Valley Girl.) He also remembered doing a production of that old high school musical stalwart Oklahoma! Alas, they weren’t acting together.
“I was in the orchestra and Nic was on stage,” Kravitz recalled. “He was singing and dancing and acting and I was playing drums. It was a good time.”
Who did Cage play in Oklahoma!? Was he strapping lead Curly? Show-off dingbat Will Parker? He would have made a terrifying Jud Fry.
Cage wasn’t the only future famous person Kravitz knew at Beverly Hills High School. “I just saw Slash, who I went to high school with,” Kravitz recalled, though he may have known him under his real name, Saul Hudson. “And Gina Gershon.”
Though Cage and Kravitz have never done a movie together, Cage has worked with his daughter, Zoë, sort of: They both did voices in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. That means they probably never recorded in the same booth, though he might have told her some fun stories about her dad at the premiere.
You can watch Kravitz’s full Esquire sit-down below.
(Via People)
