Robert Downey Jr.’s Broadway Jitters: Why Oscar Winner Is Nervous About Great White Way Debut

Robert Downey Jr. is gearing up for his star turn on the Great White Way but is nervous about spending time apart from his no-nonsense wife Susan while he’s working on Broadway, a source tells Closer exclusively.

“Fairly or not, Robert’s reputation over the last two decades is that he doesn’t make a move without intensely consulting Susan, and she’s often been on-set, right there with him, as he’s prepared for and filmed his biggest hits,” an insider reveals.

“There’s a reason they called their company Team Downey, because Robert and Susan have been equal partners in his incredible comeback, and Robert acknowledged as much in his many acceptance speeches during his awards run earlier this year,” the source explains.

Robert took home his first Oscar in March, winning Best Supporting Actor for his role in Oppenheimer. He also won trophies in the same category at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes, sweeping the season.

“But doing Broadway is a big step because it’s just going to be impossible for Susan to be there for every aspect of the process of rehearsals, previews, press reviews and actually putting on a show every night,” the insider says.

It was announced on May 7 that the Iron Man star would be playing the lead in Pulitzer Prize-winner Ayad Akhtar‘s newest play, MCNEAL. The Lincoln Center Theater described Robert’s character of Jacob McNeal as “a great writer, one of our greatest, a perpetual candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. But McNeal also has an estranged son, a new novel, old axes to grind and an unhealthy fascination with Artificial Intelligence.” Previews begin on September 5, while the production opens on September 30.

“Robert has had many chances to do Broadway before, going back to his twenties, but he’s only found the confidence to make this leap after his Oscar triumph for Oppenheimer. The huge risk is, of course, that Robert’s limited experience with live theatre could turn this into a giant embarrassment, and he won’t have Susan around all day acting as his buffer and safety net,” the source adds.

Susan was already a successful film producer and executive when she and Robert married on August 27, 2005. The couple has a two-week rule of not going more than 14 days without seeing each other and reuniting their family, which includes son Exton, 12, and daughter Avri, 9.

After a struggle with addiction in the 1990s that led to a prison stint in 1999, the Chaplin star staged a comeback after getting sober, landing a role on Fox’s legal dramedy Ally McBeal from 2000 through 2002.

Robert steadily continued to build back up his acting resume but became a true superstar with the success of 2007’s Iron Man, playing lead Tony Stark. The film had two blockbuster sequels and launched The Avengers film franchise.