Henry Ayrault
The Tower
Grosse Pointe South HS
1st Place
Division 2, News Writing
Personality Profile
He’s acted in Hollywood flicks such as “13 Hours”, starred in TV shows such as DC’s “Legends of Tomorrow”, and has even written a couple of stage plays. Although, going into college, he was undecided on what he was going to pursue for his career, Matt Letscher ’88 has found a lot of success as a versatile actor.
“I became an actor professionally. I decided to, anyways, because I thought I was good at it,” Letscher said. “It’s nice to try and do something you’re good at. And it felt like a place where I could contribute something positive to the world. It felt like the right place for me to be.”
Even though he’s had roles in other popular television series, such as “Scandal”, today, you may know Letscher for his role as Eobard Thawne or the Reverse Flash as a season two villain on DC’s “Legends of Tomorrow”.
“To me, Letscher plays the character perfectly,” Joe Cornell ’19 said. “He makes it so easy to hate the character and as someone playing the villain, that’s what you want.”
Letscher began to act in his sophomore year of high school, but he said he didn’t get active until his junior year.
“I started acting in high school because it gave me a place to belong,” Letscher said. “I didn’t have a lot of extracurricular activities going on, and I found Pointe Players, the theatre company there. It gave me something to do that I really enjoyed. My junior and senior year I was very active. I did the musical and the play both of those years. At that time we had the One-Act Festival, where the students directed one-acts in the winter. It was really my main extracurricular activity my last couple of years at South.”
It would be two special South teachers who would be paramount in helping Letscher grow fond of the acting craft.
“I found my first great teachers in Grosse Pointe, with Mary Martin and Ellen Bowen, and they had a big influence on me,” Letscher said. “We did Music Man my junior year and my Senior year, we did Hello Dolly. That’s right when Ellen Bowen came to South. She was really instrumental in the musical direction too. Mary Martin and Ellen Bowen, were pretty much in charge of the performing arts program.”
Letscher’s talent was honed on stage and in the classroom at South where he was known as a hard worker and a good student with special talent. Talent that would, obviously, take him places.
“Matt was an excellent student,” Ellen Bowen said. “He was a natural. Very handsome and so intelligent, as well as a very hard worker. He was a perfectionist.”
According to Letscher, these two women were instrumental in the development of the performing arts program at South when he was a student here. Mary Martin recommended that he take a workshop with the legendary acting teacher, Uta Hagen, an American Theatre Hall of Fame actress. He references that particular experience (working with Hagen) as one that changed the way he looked at acting. It also helped him decide to pursue it in college.
“I had a great time,” Letscher said. “My last two years at Michigan, in particular, were almost spent entirely on theatre and some of my best memories were from that time. It was at a time when the music-theatre program was really coming into its own, under a teacher named Brent Wagner. He turned Michigan’s music-theatre program into one of the premier programs in the country.”
Shortly after graduating from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Theatre Arts in 1992, Letscher appeared in one of his first roles on Saved By The Bell– The College Years on NBC. With his real college years behind him, his career was about to begin.
“There’s something about a good TV show that weaves its way into the emotional fabric of people’s lives. And when it’s gone, they mourn the loss of it. Being part of something like that is pretty special. You feel like you’ve become part of a much larger community. And maybe you’ve given people something to look forward to in their life.”
His success in television is obvious on a resume that includes roles on “The West Wing”, “Brothers and Sisters”, “The New Adventures of Old Christine”, “Entourage”, “Scandal”, “CSI”, “Scandal” and many other popular shows that have graced the screen over the last 24 years and counting.
“Probably the thing I consider my best work as an actor was a series I was on that only lasted two seasons,” Letscher said. “It was called Eli Stone. It was on ABC and the lead was Jonny Lee Miller. There were a host of excellent actors on that show. It was a very unusual premise, but the characters were finely drawn and the cast was very tight.”
Letscher’s run on TV is likely a result of his versatility as an actor.
“The thing about Matt is he is constantly working,” Bowen said. “He can play just about any role a director gives him.”
While his success has been obvious on television, Letscher has also excelled on the theatre stage and on the big screen with roles on Broadway and in movies such as “The Mask of Zorro” in 1998, “Her” in 2013 and “13 Hours” in 2016, to name a few. But it has been his more recent work on “The Flash” and “Legends of Tomorrow” that have taken up a lot of space on his IMDb page most recently.
His character on these two shows is Eobard Thawne, aka the Reverse Flash.
“He’s the Flash’s archenemy, the only one (the Flash) can never beat because they have virtually the same powers,” Letscher explained. “(He) has a long history in the comic books. It has been fun to play him in different scenarios and in two series.”
The Reverse Flash is also a character in the long list of Letscher’s roles that is villainous in nature. A common trait found in many of the roles he’s taken on.
“I’d say that some of the most memorable characters I’ve played have been sinister,” Letscher said. “I’ve played many more ‘good guys’ as opposed to ‘bad guys’, but the bad guys are the ones that people always remember, because their behavior is always the most outlandish. I happen to be able to carry that kind of character. I can play both sides of that coin. I feel like what I did in “Zorro” or what I’ve been doing lately on “The Flash” and “Legends of Tomorrow”, those characters are so larger-than-life, so evil. Those characters tend to stick out in TV or movies and I feel like that is what people may remember most.”
Good role or bad guy, the actor continues to build a multi-faceted career on tv, in the movies and on stage.
“I predict he will work as a professional actor and director for as long as he wants to work,” Bowen said. “I know we that had the privilege of teaching and directing him and the many other talented students at south that passed through our classes, we couldn’t be prouder and excited to see the successes.”