Public Apology: Dear Robert Sean Leonard

Our friend Dave Bry has many regrets. This week, an easy mistake, carelessly made years ago, still brings that flushed-face feeling of shame—and demands an apology.

Dear Robert Sean Leonard,

I'm sorry if I freaked you out that morning you were walking your dog in front of the building where we lived in the West Village.

Our relationship had been fraught from the outset, I realize. When I first met you in the stairwell, the day I was moving in, and you were so friendly and welcoming, and I asked if we knew each other, because you looked so familiar, and you said you didn't think so, I persisted, wondering if we'd perhaps gone to the same summer camp when we were kids, which forced you into the uncomfortable disclosure of the fact that you were a professional actor and "in some movies and on TV sometimes." A few days later, I saw you by the deli outside and greeted you by announcing that I'd remembered where I'd recognized you from: "Dead Poets Society, right?" You smiled graciously before I added the lame, "You were good."

Still, you were always nice whenever we bumped into each other. So I feel even worse about the time I was coming home—it must have been around six o'clock in the morning, and I was full of all the things I'd been out all night doing—and I saw you coming out of the building with your chihuahua tugging at its leash.

It was the spring of 2001, "The Producers" had opened on Broadway that week, to the universal raves it received, and in my enthusiasm, and the difficulty I was having thinking straight, I congratulated you on the achievement.

"Hey, way to go," I said. "Those were some reviews!"

You looked confused. And a little frightened. But you were as nice as ever in telling me you didn't know what I was talking about.

"I guess I missed that one," you said, leaving open the possibility that, despite appearances, I was not in fact completely out of my mind. "I don't usually read the reviews."

I thought you were just being modest. "Oh, but these weren't just any old reviews," I said. "You're in the hit of the city! Everybody's talking about it! You must be totally psyched!"

Of course—as I'd figure out later that day, after I'd gone inside and gone to bed and then woken up and remembered the exchange and your nervous laughter and how you seemed to really not want to hurt my feelings as you moved gingerly away from me—you were not in "The Producers." That was Matthew Broderick.

Surely you'd done nothing to deserve me as a neighbor.

Dave

Dave Bry is an editor at a music magazine. He lives in New York City with his wife and his kid. Here is a picture of Robert Sean Leonard as compared to Matthew Broderick, in which it is fairly clear they do not look anything alike.