The Frozen and Mindhunter star takes on a key role in this week’s episode, Rogue.
American stage and screen actor Jonathan Groff made his name as the star of Hamilton, Frozen, Mindhunter and Glee — but now he’s about to enter a different universe (or Whoniverse) as a mysterious character called Rogue in Doctor Who.
In a break from the Regency dancefloor, Radio Times and other press caught up with Groff during filming of the new episode to find out why he chose Who as his first foray into British TV.
Jonathan, what made you switch from Broadway to south Wales?
“I was familiar with Russell T Davies’s work from Queer as Folk and It’s a Sin. I’m still crying about It’s a Sin years after watching it. Russell has meant a lot to me as a gay actor through the years. So, when he wrote me a letter to invite me on the show, that drew me into it.
“When I read the script, I hadn’t yet seen an episode of Doctor Who and I had never shot anything in the UK. But the script really grabbed me. I was quite breathless reading it. I’ve been getting an education on Doctor Who ever since.”
Were you aware of what a big deal Doctor Who was before you got the part?
“When they announced the casting of this episode, my phone was blowing up with people reaching out to me from all over the world, telling me, ‘Oh my God, you’re in Doctor Who. I’m freaking out’ – almost more than anything. So I am now starting to comprehend the epic-ness of the show.”
The latest addition to the Whoniverse talks about his Doctor Who homework and seeing Beyoncé with Ncuti Gatwa…
Doctor Who is preparing for the event of the season, as the Doctor and Ruby head for Regency era England in upcoming episode ROGUE. Fans can expect a ballroom full of BRIDGERTON references, exciting and terrifying new villains – and a curious new face in the Whoniverse, played by star of stage and screen, Jonathan Groff.
We spoke to Jonathan Groff, playing the eponymous Rogue, about joining the Whoniverse and what else he got up to while filming in Cardiff…
HOW DID THE ROLE COME ABOUT?
Oh my god! I got a very exciting text message from Russell T Davies, and I’m a huge fan of his work, especially ‘It’s a Sin’ – I still haven’t recovered from it! So I was very excited to hear from him. He just wrote to me and told me that there was this role that was available on the show and asked me to play it.
CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR CHARACTER ROGUE?
Rogue is an alien bounty hunter and a man of mystery. When we meet Rogue, and he first meets the Doctor, we’re in a Regency Era. Rogue is not necessarily who he appears to be when you meet him.
HAVE YOU ALWAYS KNOWN OF DOCTOR WHO OR BEEN A FAN OF IT? OR WAS THIS YOUR FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH THE SHOW?
I had known of Doctor Who and how much of a big deal it was in the UK, but I had never seen an episode of it. But Russell sent me about five episodes of Doctor Who from throughout the years, including the first episode that ever aired in black and white. So, I had a very quick crash course before I started.
WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING OR UNEXPECTED THING ABOUT PLAYING ROGUE AND STEPPING INTO THE WHONIVERSE?
I would say the biggest challenge would be trying to understand and fit into the tone of the show – when you’re coming in as a guest star, jumping into a world, and Doctor Who is such a specific thing! In the episodes that Russell showed me, and in the experience of playing a role in it, Doctor Who has such a fascinating tone. It’s big, and it’s larger than life, but it’s also quite real and even though it’s fantasy, there is depth to the storytelling and to the relationships. I’d say the biggest challenge was coming in and trying to digest the tone as fast as possible, and to really articulate the character in the proper way in the world of the show.
WHAT WAS IT LIKE ACTING ALONGSIDE NCUTI AND MILLIE?
Ncuti and Millie were both so warm and welcoming! Big smiles and full of laughs and embraces, they could not have been more warm. As an outsider, coming into the Whoniverse for the first time, they were the greatest hosts! They took such good care of me and everybody, truly everybody on the set, the crew, everyone! I spent most of my time with Ncuti and I am obsessed with him. I think he is such a star. He’s so unpredictable and thrilling to act with because you never see the same thing twice. He’s so spontaneous, and yet so deeply connected to what he’s doing. He really cares. He’s really in it fully, and he’s got this force and positivity that is completely unique to him. It’s just phenomenal. I just adore him. I think he is one of the most exciting actors working today.
DID YOU HAVE ANY UNIQUE EXPERIENCES OR MEMORIES FROM FILMING?
Well, one happened off set, it actually happened to be when Beyoncé was on her Renaissance Tour. I looked up her tour dates because I’m an obsessive Beyoncé fan. And I found that she was playing Cardiff. I asked that I was off by 4pm so I could make it to the stadium. And I brought Ncuti with me. So we got to see the Renaissance Tour together and it was so much fun. Amazing.
IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ANYWHERE IN TIME AND SPACE, WHERE WOULD YOU?
This is less of a fantasy one. But my grandfather died on my 10th birthday. March 26, 1995. And I was really into ‘I Love Lucy’ at the time. And one of my gifts for my birthday was this VHS with an episode of ‘I Love Lucy’. I went into the living room and I watched my VHS instead of hanging out with my family in the kitchen where my grandfather was. So if I had to go back in time, I would go back in time and I would hang out with him so I could ask him questions before he died.
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.
The wait is almost over… Jonathan will star as Rogue in the next episode of ‘Doctor Who’.
The Doctor and Ruby land in 1813, where guests at a duchess’s party are being murdered and a mysterious bounty hunter called Rogue is about to change the Doctor’s life forever.
#DoctorWho: ROGUE premieres on BBC iPlayer 8th June and Disney+ 7th June where available.
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.