Former ‘Jersey Boy’ Bergen grateful for his time in Las Vegas

Two years doesn’t seem like such a long time.

But for Erich Bergen, the two years he spent in Las Vegas represents a turning point in his career. And not only for the reason you might think.

Bergen spent those two years playing Bob Gaudio in “Jersey Boys.” But the times he wasn’t playing Gaudio proved ideal preparation for this weekend’s performances at The Smith Center’s Cabaret Jazz.

“It’s funny — two years doesn’t sound all that long” a time, Bergen observes during a recent telephone interview. But “I owe the city a lot.”

Bergen’s Vegas connections will be evident at Cabaret Jazz, where members of Las Vegas-based Broadway in the Hood will provide background vocals. His song selection also will reflect “how important Las Vegas has been to my career.”

These days, Bergen spends most of his time shooting the CBS series “Madam Secretary,” in which he plays the title character’s assistant, Blake Moran.

Now that he’s on his 2½-month hiatus (the show resumes production in July), Bergen has a bit of time to pursue “the thing I love the most” — performing before a live audience.

“I’ve been doing this since I was 5 years old in the living room,” he recalls. “I’m just doing it with better lighting. It’s the fantasy of the pop star I never was.”

Bergen’s the first to admit that “I didn’t pay the dues so many actors do. I didn’t do summer stock, I didn’t clean toilets. I was handed a golden ticket very early on.”

A working actor since the age of 10, Bergen received his theater training at the North Carolina School of the Arts and toured in “Jersey Boys” — his first show as an adult — at 21.

But “I still felt like a kid,” he says of staying in hotels with cast-mates and crew members.

At 22, Bergen became one of Las Vegas’ resident “Jersey Boys,” and “I was on my own … alone, away from home for the first time.”

The experience proved “incredibly exciting — and incredibly lonely,” Bergen admits, explaining that “the loneliness was why I started writing music.”

Sitting in “my apartment out in Summerlin,” Bergen had time to “focus on my songwriting,” which he started so he could participate in the monthly Las Vegas Composers’ Showcase, then held at the Liberace Museum. (It’s now a monthly fixture at Cabaret Jazz.)

“I thought, ‘I want to be included, but I had no music,” he says, crediting showcase founder Keith Thompson — the “Jersey Boys” musical director who organizes and hosts the monthly event — with helping to spark his songwriting.

Bergen describes his two-year Vegas stay — which included producing, directing and hosting the 2009 benefit “Las Vegas Celebrates the Music of Michael Jackson that raised more than $100,000 for music education — as “a crash course in show business” that took him from “the highest of highs” to “the lowest of lows.”

The highest of highs involved “Jersey Boys,” which Bergen describes as “a crash course in how to be a performer.”

The lowest of lows: being fired from “Jersey Boys” in September 2009.

Although “I wasn’t depressed, it was a very hard thing,” says Bergen, who returned to New York, following his “Jersey Boys” dismissal with a role in TV’s “Gossip Girl.” (Including the episode in which Lady Gaga made a guest-starring appearance.)

He also co-starred in the national tour of the hit Broadway revival “Anything Goes,” which played The Smith Center in 2013.

In hindsight, “I’m really glad it happened,” Bergen says of his “Jersey Boys” dismissal. “It taught me so much about professionalism and working in the realities of show business. It was that punch in the gut that I needed.”

Besides, “it wouldn’t have made being cast in the movie such a good story,” adds Bergen, who reprised his role as Bob Gaudio in the 2014 screen adaptation of “Jersey Boys,” directed by Clint Eastwood.

For Bergen, however, it’s his small-screen “Madam Secretary” role that has introduced him to new audiences.

When he hosted The Smith Center’s most recent New Year’s Eve gala, for example, “I can’t tell you how many people came up to me and said, ‘Wow, you have a really nice voice. I didn’t know you sang.’”

His “first response,” Bergen confesses, “is ‘what’s wrong with you?’ But then I would take a second” to remember that stage and movie roles are “nothing like being in someone’s living room all around the world. You’re not even aware of it. But it’s certainly opened a lot of doors.”

Although his TV role has “increased the audience at these (live) shows,” he adds, “I still have to sell people on it,” because “they don’t think of me as an actor, a live performer. They think of me as the secretary’s assistant — in front of a 10-piece band.”

And while Bergen has no plans to stop being “Madam Secretary’s” on-screen assistant, his plans extend beyond the show. He’s making his London concert debut in late June. He’s making an independent movie and working on an in-development TV show he’s written.

“When I’m not performing, I’m hunched over my laptop in a Starbucks somewhere,” he notes.

But when he’s onstage, “the show’s a party,” Bergen says. And when it’s over, “I don’t want people saying ‘Erich Bergen has the best voice, doesn’t he?’ Or ‘he’s such a great dancer.’ I want you to forget your troubles,” he comments, “and be in a different place than when you came in.”

Read more from Carol Cling at reviewjournal.com. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.