When Joshua Malina learned that Tom Stoppard’s widely celebrated play about Jewish life in pre-Holocaust Vienna, “Leopoldstadt,” would be making its Broadway debut last fall, the veteran TV actor was determined to nab an audition. “I tried to get in,” he recalled in a recent interview with Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel, adding that, for whatever reason, his initial effort proved unsuccessful. “You never know what happens, but I just remember hearing that, ‘no, there’s nothing really in it for you.’”

Turnaround: The rejection, however, was far from decisive, he would find. Later, thanks to a tip from his agent, Malina expressed renewed interest in signing on amid rumors that a leading actor in “Leopoldstadt,” David Krumholtz, was planning to bow out before the play’s conclusion this summer. “To my delight and amazement,” he marveled, “they offered me the role.” Malina, who began rehearsals last month, will take the stage today at Manhattan’s Longacre Theater, joining a limited run that is scheduled to end on July 2. He is stepping into a major role as the assimilated Jewish patriarch Hermann Merz, a wealthy textile manufacturer who learns, as the Nazis rise to power, that even his conversion to Catholicism offers no protection from the horrors of antisemitism.

Comeback: For Malina, 57, the coveted gig marks something of a triumphant return to his roots in theater. More than…