(Video) Jonathan Groff Does Recess Therapy
We talk friends, growing up, broken bones, and bootks!
Jonathan Groff Says Ryan Murphy Originally Created ‘Glee’ for Him, But He Turned It Down
The ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ star says he “didn’t want to sign on to be a singing teenager again” but did end up guest starring on the show a few years later.
Ryan Murphy first offered Glee to Jonathan Groff and Lea Michele, but Groff turned it down.
“I really felt like I didn’t want to sign on to be a singing teenager again for another seven years,” Groff told Vanity Fair this week. At the time, he was 23 and had just finished a two-year run of playing a teenager in Broadway’s Spring Awakening with Michele.
“Ryan Murphy had told Lea Michele and I that he had written this show Glee for the two of us, and would we be interested in doing that?” Groff recalled, saying he ultimately said no.
“I really wanted to act. I love singing but doing that felt like more of the same as opposed to something that would be an opportunity for artistic growth,” he said. “And that next year, I did three off-Broadway plays.”
Groff said he has no regrets about the choice he made. “When I came out the other end of that experience, I understood the truly life-changing power of doing great material. Spring Awakening changed me from the inside out as a person. I came out of that experience feeling like, ‘Ooh, I want to keep doing this. I want to keep stretching and growing and challenging myself as an actor.’”
In addition to Glee, Groff said he was also offered a role in the Broadway revival of Hair, but instead he “went to Playwrights Horizons and the Public Theater and did plays there for the next year.”
Groff actually did take a role on Glee but only as a recurring guest star. He played Jesse St. James, the antagonist-turned-boyfriend-turned-friend of Michele’s Rachel Berry who appeared in seasons one, two, three and six.
Glee ran from 2009 to 2015. Michele co-starred with Cory Monteith, ostensibly the role Murphy offered Groff, until the late actor’s death in 2013.
Read the full interview at The Hollywood Reporter
For Jonathan Groff, Merrily We Roll Along Feels Like an Exorcism
When Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince’s Merrily We Roll Along premiered at the Alvin Theater in 1981, it was, by most accounts, a flop, as we say nowadays. For its structural ambitions—the story is told in reverse-chronological order—and its rather bleak prognosis on the corrosive effects of fame and money, the story of three best friends, including the composer-lyricist duo Franklin Shephard and Charley Kringas, and the gradual dissolution of their relationships failed to resonate with audiences and critics like the hot-streak of Sondheim-Prince hits that preceded it, including Company and Sweeney Todd. “What’s really being wasted here is Mr. Sondheim’s talent,” wrote Frank Rich in The New York Times. “And that’s why we watch Merrily We Roll Along with an ever-mounting, and finally upsetting, sense of regret.”
Rich, for his part, was right to point out the show’s elemental sadness. When I left the Hudson Theater last month, where director Maria Friedman has mounted a poignant and utterly contemporary revival starring Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez, the show’s exhortation to “tend your dreams” was blunted, in part, by its harsh understanding of how people change and money corrupts and friendships splinter. For Groff in particular, who’s earned a Tony Award nomination for his swaggering turn as the prodigious composer Franklin Shepard, the experience of starring in Merrily We Roll Along is provoking a tender sort of reappraisal of the wide-eyed, closeted 20-something who arrived on Broadway two decades ago in Spring Awakening, tending his own dreams. “There’s so many powerful parallels and I’m feeling the opportunity to release a lot of the tension I was holding at that time,” he told me earlier this month over coffee in Greenwich Village (just before showing face at a Tony’s luncheon). “This character feels like an exorcism of the lightest and darkest parts of myself.” With easy candor—and a charm not dissimilar to the kind he demonstrates in the role—Groff opened up about learning to live without shame and what Looking, the polarizing HBO series he starred in from 2014 to 2016, taught him about show business.
Read the full interview at Interview Magazine
Jonathan Groff and Karan Soni Make Rom-Com History with ‘A Nice Indian Boy’
Stars Jonathan Groff and Karan Soni and director Roshan Selthi on the joy of making “A Nice Indian Boy,” joking: “An independent film needs a famous white person to get made.”
When Jonathan Groff met with director Roshan Sethi about a role in the romantic comedy A Nice Indian Boy, he asked Sethi to cast Karan Soni as his love interest. Groff assumed Soni was straight, but he’d seen the Deadpool actor in Sethi’s first movie, 7 Days, and liked his vibe. As it turns out, Groff’s request had already been granted: Not only is Soni gay, but he’s been dating Sethi since 2018. Sethi thought he’d have to work to court Groff—“An independent film needs a famous white person to get made,” he half-jokes—when in actuality Groff was already envisioning the exact film that now exists.
To hear the trio talk about A Nice Indian Boy is to hear tales of kismet and glee (Groff pun intended). “It felt like an emotional throuple,” Soni tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed, also half-joking. The movie unleashed its charm at the SXSW Film and TV Festival on Tuesday, capping off an intensely personal experience for Sethi and his cast.
A Nice Indian Boy, initially a play by Madhuri Shekar, is built on a meet-cute at a local temple. During prayer, down-on-his-luck doctor Naveen (Soni) catches the eye of a dreamy photographer named Jay (Groff), and soon his wish for romance has been fulfilled. Jay was adopted by an Indian family and immersed himself in their culture, but he’s far more comfortable in his sexuality than Naveen, who avoids introducing Jay to his folks (Zarna Garg and Harish Patel) until they’re engaged. It’s Meet the Parents: Hindu Edition. But not only is he bringing a boy home—he’s bringing a white boy home. With that, A Nice Indian Boy goes from a romantic comedy to a comedy of manners to a spectacular wedding comedy.
Read the full at The Daily Beast