Ben Platt reflects on Dear Evan Hansen film backlash: 'It was definitely a disappointing experience'
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Today's going to be a good day and here's why: Ben Platt is ready to let go of all the drama surrounding the film adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen.
The actor, who originated the title role on Broadway back in 2016, admitted that while he was "grateful" for his time in the hit musical, he was wholly unprepared for the "difficult" backlash that both he and the movie received when it was released last year.
"It was definitely a disappointing experience, and difficult, and it definitely opened my eyes to the internet and how horrific it can be," he told The New York Times. "You'd think, after doing Dear Evan Hansen onstage for four years, I would have already known that. I try my best to focus on people who tell me it was moving to them and they really felt seen by it. It is very easy for the good to get drowned out by the bad."
Erika Doss/Universal Pictures Ben Platt and Kaitlyn Dever in 'Dear Evan Hansen'
The Stephen Chbosky-directed film didn't exactly strike the right chord with its audience out of the gate. Its first trailer, which was released in May 2021, was immediately and brutally skewered by the internet, which mocked Platt's casting and universally deemed him too old to star as the film's titular high school student. The Pitch Perfect star later rebuked the criticism by lashing out against the "randos being jerks about age" online in a since-deleted tweet.
In fact, Platt has since shuttered his entire Twitter account in the aftermath of the incident. "I find that Twitter is almost exclusively for tearing people down," he said. "I wasn't getting anything positive, and it's been really nice to be away."
Still, he maintained that originating the role of Evan Hansen will always be his "ultimate dream come true" in life, even if he's ready to move forward.
"It will always be a piece of me. I feel a simultaneous constant pride and desire to keep it in my heart at all times, but also a real readiness and excitement at having moved forward and embracing my adulthood and playing characters that live in different worlds than that," he shared. "I got to live in that world for a very long time, and it was not the easiest world to live in. So I look at it fondly but I'm also happy to be moving ahead."
Despite its star-studded cast — which included Kaitlyn Dever, Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, and Amandla Stenberg — Dear Evan Hansen holds a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes. In a September 2021 review, EW critic Mary Sollosi gave the film a D rating and noted that "the internet was right" about Platt being too old for the role, albeit "needlessly cruel (as usual) in its expression."
She added, "The most distracting thing about Platt's miscasting isn't that he looks like he's in his 20s — most of us can sit through Grease without the experience being ruined by the fact that half the cast is twice the age of their characters — but that he's actively overcompensating for it, which has the opposite of its intended effect."
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