Don’t Ask Ben Platt This One Question

In many ways, Ben Platt is one of the most successful theater kids of our time, third only to Lin-Manuel Miranda and Taylor Swift (proof of this ignominious past can be found here and here). The prodigiously talented tenor grew up with fellow L.A.-based theater kid Molly Gordon and BFF Beanie Feldstein, attending a performing arts school and appearing in the ultimate theater kid role as Winthrop in a Hollywood Bowl production of The Music Man starring Kristin Chenoweth.

Platt was cast as the intensely troubled Evan Hansen in the hit musical Dear Evan Hansen, winning a Tony at the age of 23 for his performance. He parlayed that early success into a recording contract and a starring role as a smarmy sociopathic high schooler in Ryan Murphy’s The Politician, a show that was met with lukewarm reviews but launched Platt into the mainstream consciousness. Then came the backlash: in 2021, a trailer for the film adaptation for Dear Evan Hansen was met with widespread opprobrium, with many TikTok teens brutally lambasting the then-27-year-old Platt for being too old for the role.

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Adding insult to injury, the release of Dear Evan Hansen coincided with the advent of the nepo baby conversation, with many on social media pointing out that the film had been produced by Marc Platt, Ben’s father and the producer of films like Legally Blonde. The discourse reached its apex with a 2022 New York Magazine cover, “The Year of the Nepo Baby,” in which a photo of Platt was photoshopped onto a baby’s body.

At the time, Platt appeared wounded by the criticism of the film, telling Rolling Stone, “People having opinions about me that don’t know me makes me so anxious. You can say, ‘That’s not what matters, the in-person things are what matters.’ Of course that’s true, but it’s hard to not take in stuff.” In recent months, he’s re-emerged with a starring role in the revival of Jason Robert Brown’s Parade as Leo Frank, a Jewish man falsely accused of raping and murdering a 12-year-old factory employee, as well as a sharp turn in the indie Theater Camp (which he co-wrote) as Amos Klobuchar, a frustrated kiddie theater director at a performing arts camp called Adirond-Acts in a codependent relationship with best friend Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon, who co-directed the film).

Theater Camp, which costars Ayo Edebiri, Patti Harrison, and Jimmy Tatro as a fish-out-of-water crypto bro, functions as both a love letter to the world of child performing arts and to Platt and Gordon’s decades-long relationship (the two grew up performing together, and footage of them in amateur children’s theater productions adorably features in Theater Camp.)

As a fan of Platt’s and a former theater kid, I was eager to talk to him not just about Theater Camp — which is full of Easter eggs for Broadway nerds, such as a riff-heavy “Defying Gravity” audition and a bit about overly aggressive Fosse kids who snap to communicate displeasure — but about his turn in Parade, his recent engagement (to Theater Camp costar and co-writer Noah Galvin), and his emergence from a difficult year.

This interview has been lightly condensed. It was conducted prior to the SAG strike.

I loved the movie so much, and part of the reason why is because I went to [performing arts camp] Stagedoor Manor for five years. So my first question for you is, how much of this movie was based on Stagedoor?
You know, a lot of the inspiration came from the documentary about Stagedoor [the aptly titled Stagedoor, directed by Alexandra Shiva, which came out in 2006], just in terms of the tone of it, and how well it depicted the world of a youth arts program, some of the rituals, and how seriously that the documentary really took its subjects and all the kids, and also how clear it was about what an important haven it was for them. Molly and Nick, our directors, did go to Stagedoor a couple of times as kids, but I think it’s much more of an amalgam of all of our collective youth theater and camping experiences kind of rolled into one. But in terms of film inspiration, that doc definitely was a big, big reference.

Did Beanie [Feldstein, who attended Stagedoor Manor and is best friends with Platt] ever talk to you about her Stagedoor experience?
No, not really. It was mostly about the four of us and our our own pasts, and I went to Jewish summer camp, so there’s a lot taken from that as well. There was no theater sadly, but there’s this whole conceit of nighttime performances in the film, which is the thing where each bunk gets sort of like a bedtime presentation from a member of the staff and that was ripped directly from my Jewish summer camp experience. Obviously, they weren’t as bizarre as some of the presentations in our film, but we had someone who would come in and do a Mad Libs or a Q&A or tell a story. Little textures like that, I think, helped it feel like a real place.

Were they Jewish-themed, these storytimes? Would it be like, Sodom and Gomorrah night?
No, they didn’t have to be. Sometimes there would be like little Jewish-related things, but it was mostly fun camp lore, like there was a story about a guy who lived nearby the camp in a cave who would come out at night, and you could hear him crunching in the leaves. I just remember being terrified by that as a 10-year-old. A girl would come into the boys’ bunk and do a Q&A and after like three questions, it would get immediately too inappropriate and it would end. We would pass a Mad Libs around to each bunk and everybody gets to fill in a word and then the counselor reads it to everyone and every other word is “poop.” And then when I was a counselor, I was definitely a popular traveling guest to different bunks singing various James Taylor songs and other quiet types of music.

What was it about theater camp that you guys found so compelling as a setting?
The four of us who wrote it together, the cross-section that bonded us is this love of theater and musical theater and youth programs and growing up doing theater in high school, which is where I met Nick, and doing theater as children in elementary school, which is where I met Molly, and we met Noah doing workshops of a musical in New York. We are very much musical theater nerds and we crossed that with our other joint passion that brought us together, which is a love of comedy and improv and comedy collectives, like Christopher Guest and certain eras of SNL. The very clear midpoint in terms of us realizing we really wanted to make something together was to set it in the world that we felt like we knew best and in the tone that we knew best, which was this irreverent mockumentary space, mixed with sending up the community that we are literally a part of.

Approximately how much of it would you say was improvised?
It’s hard to say. There’s a ton of improv throughout, it was certainly very heavily outlined. And every scene, if not written was at least, like, the directives were very clear. And there was a list of all jokes, from larger bibles and lists, and it’s just the ones that hit. But particularly the classes and some of the more free-form sections in the movie are fully improvised. I think I’m particularly proud of of the fight between my character and Molly’s — spoiler alert — at the end of the film. Our kind of friendship is the central relationship of the film, and it comes to a head toward the end. Most of that fight is improvised. There’s a whole section where we’re interrupting each other and I think that the way that that came out, that sort of naturalism in that scene, is what our hope and goal was in trying to improvise as much and as long as we could, which is to make it feel really happenstance and like we’re really observing and catching something we’re not supposed to see, in the way that a great documentary does. And so I’m particularly proud of that. I also did improvise my Peter Piper monologues that I do for my nighttime performance for the kids. There’s a lot that didn’t make it, but I’m hoping someday will find its way to TikTok or something.

Did you watch Camp [the 2003 film shot at Stagedoor Manor] at all? Was that an influence on the project?
Totally. When I was younger and it came out, it was super formative. Because I felt like it was representing people like me. And I so wanted to be part of that world. Obviously, it’s a really different movie that is much more of a scripted dramedy, but I think, certainly seeing that kind of a camp depicted was definitely an inspiration for us, in terms of knowing that there is a space for a movie like this at all.

This movie seems to me like sort of a love letter to you and Molly and your relationship. How did you both develop your characters, and is there anyone in particular they are based on?
It’s definitely rooted in our long-term friendship and we really appreciated the opportunity to depict the true love between a gay boy and his girl best friend. I think that that’s a relationship we’ve seen a couple times, but usually is surrounded by an intense bitchiness or fighting over a guy. I don’t know that I’ve seen it treated as the center of a romcom in the way that hopefully it feels in this film. And we just really wanted to honor how special those relationships are, particularly Molly and I’s, with that as the centerpiece of how they relate to each other. Character-wise, they’re based on an amalgam of teachers that we’ve had. We both went to The Adderley School [a performing arts school in Los Angeles], which is the theater program we met doing, and some of the intensity of those teachers is definitely present in Amos and a lot of our collective musical directors and conductors and voice teachers who live more in this airy kind of energy, Reiki kind of world. It’s sort of a parallel universe of where the two of us might have ended up, where we choose the path of teaching, rooted in our long, long history together. All of that footage of us doing theater together, that’s all real footage. Unfortunately, we did not have millions of dollars to create fake footage of us as children.

Is there a part of Amos and Rebecca-Diane that would have been you guys in another life, had you not become actors?
Yeah, I think so. The intensity of their artistic connection, particularly when they were writing the musical together, and the way that they kind of blindly one-up each other and gas each other up, and really enable each other. I think that were Molly and I to collaborate and teach in that way, we certainly would become those people. I do tend toward maybe a more natural intensity and Type A kind of personality than Molly. Molly tends to go with the flow a little bit better than I do. So I do think we might run into some of the same collaborating issues that Amos and Rebecca-Diane run into where he really is quite forceful, shall we say.

I think it’s referenced very briefly in the movie that Rebecca-Diane was briefly in love with Amos. Is that true to your and Molly’s story as well?
Totally, yeah, she definitely had a crush on me, she will admit. And I thought I did too. Because when you’re a young gay kid, and you’re obsessed with your girl best friend, you’re like, “This must be what it means when you like someone.” But ultimately, I was very gay, unfortunately. And also fortunately. And Molly had to have an adjustment period of getting over that, which began with her telling everybody that I was gay. And then we moved forward as friends. But yes, I think the love began as sort of like a puppy love and then transformed into a friendship.

Did you come out to her? Or did she sort of figure it out?
We were doing How to Succeed [in Business Without Really Trying], and we were like, 12 or 13. And she was like, “Who do you like? You have to like someone in the show.” And I’m like, “I’m gay.” And she was like, “oh,” and then just kind of ran to everybody in our show, who most of them probably already assumed or knew. And then from that point forward, we just moved on, as friends. But she kind of coaxed it out of me.

It’s such a common relationship in the theater world, especially when you’re 12 or 13, and I feel like I’ve never really seen it portrayed to this extent, that dynamic of the gay best friend and the young woman growing up in the theater.
There’s so much growth and those are some of the most meaningful confidants and companions that exist. So I’m very proud of the way that the movie, as eccentric and irreverent as the movie is, it really does take the relationship seriously, the values and the history and the complications of it. So I appreciate you saying that.

You both grew up with parents in the industry. How did that play into your trajectory and your career ambitions growing up?
I would say, in this film, it’s more about that my siblings all did musical theater at The Adderley School. And so when I was old enough to go, I just really wanted to be like them, and I looked up to all of them. And because my parents gave us the opportunity to pursue whatever we wanted to pursue and didn’t necessarily put us in gender-specific boxes or force anyone to do sports that wasn’t feeling sports, I think I had the opportunity that a lot of people don’t have, which is that I was allowed to get bitten by a theater bug. They let me try what I wanted to try. And that’s the only reason that I got to meet Molly. The fact that I was in a family where we were listening to show tunes in the car, and all my siblings also love musical theater and we got to bond over it together, it was a cool thing and not like something to be ashamed of. I think I owe a lot to that upbringing, and obviously musical theater brought me to my potential husband. So I certainly owe a lot to the openness and the artistic kind of freedom that was in my household.

You were on the cover of New York Magazine‘s Nepo Baby issue. I’m curious, what was your response to that? And what do you make of that whole discourse?
We’re going to skip right over that if we can.

No comment?

[Publicist intervenes: “If we could just focus on Theater Camp, that would be great. Thank you.”]

I wanted to ask you about Parade, which I haven’t seen yet. But I hear it’s incredible. I was wondering, how does that role and that performance compare, in terms of the emotional demands of it to, to playing Evan Hansen?
Very different experience. I think Parade is more of an ensemble piece, which has been a really beautiful experience, and everybody kind of carries the ball at different times. And I had wonderful co-stars in Dear Evan Hansen, but by virtue of the character, it was a very isolating experience. So to be able to go through this with a partner like Micaela [Diamond] was very special and to carry the weight of some of the more difficult elements of the show with her, and kind of go through the journey together, has made it very special. And I would say, with the role itself, there’s a lot more room for recovery and rest. But I think because it is about anti-Semitism, and Judaism is part of my life, there’s a different type of difficulty, in the sense that it’s a little more intense, the things we’re seeing and dealing with now. I felt like I sort of had a healthier remove from Evan Hansen because I am an anxious person, but certainly not to the degree that he was. And I did feel that I have a family and a chosen family as well, that he was not afforded. So I was able to remove myself from some of the more traumatic stuff that he was going through. But as a Jew, it’s hard to ignore some of the scarier things going on. So it feels like very different animals.

I don’t know if you grew up particularly observant, although I guess you did to a certain degree if you went to Jewish summer camp. But I was curious if playing this guy who was killed, essentially, for being Jewish has changed your relationship to Judaism at all, or made you think about your spirituality in a different way.
Totally. I think I was raised pretty conservative Jewish in the sense that we were kosher, and I went to High Holidays, and I went to Jewish summer camp. And then as you grew up, you know, as many Jews do, certain things resonated and certain things didn’t. Now as an adult, I’m certainly not very observant, in kind of a traditional sense, but I think playing the role has helped me to embrace the undeniability of being Jewish, and the validity of whatever form and meaning it takes for you. When you’re being oppressed for being a Jew, it’s not because you celebrate Shabbat — it’s because part of your blood makeup is Ashkenazi Jew or whatever. It is innately in your makeup, and so I think it has allowed me to sort of reinvestigate some of the pride that I feel about my cultural Judaism and familial Judaism and the curiosity and some of the values and really embrace that as as valid a form of Judaism as putting on the tefillin.

Is that something you’ve experienced in your life at all? Anti-Jewish discrimination?
When I was shooting Pitch Perfect down in Baton Rouge, I certainly had some people in a Walmart or Raising Cane’s or whatever ask some interesting questions or be a little bit stunned to hear Skylar [Astin, his Pitch Perfect costar] and I were both Jewish — Skylar’s real last name is Lipstein. We were talking about where we were gonna go find a place to do Yom Kippur or Hanukkah or whatever it might be. We definitely felt just a little bit of, like, standoffishness or confusion or people who weren’t used to hearing terms like that. I grew up in a pretty privileged bubble in the sense that I was in Los Angeles and I did go to a Jewish school so I have been protected in a certain sense, and surrounded by Jews at least somewhat my whole life and also now in New York City, which is a nice Jewish place, on the Upper West Side. But I think all of us feel the undercurrents. And then of course, we’ve seen some more disturbing stuff like the billboard or that poster that was on the freeway in L.A., and some of the acts happening like in the Pico-Robertson area and the Kanye situation, so it’s kind of hard to ignore, even if you’re not feeling it directly. And obviously, we had those neo-Nazi protesters in our first preview, so it’s sort of always lurking.

How were you feeling during those protests? Were you scared at all?
I think not necessarily scared, more so just disturbed, that even telling this story was still affecting to people, that the story is very much rooted in truth. And the immediacy of it — I think when you’re doing a period piece like this, you might expect as an actor that you’re going to feel a healthy remove. And as I was saying, I have felt it bleed more emotionally into my life than I may have expected. And I think that was sort of like just a real pinnacle of that in the sense that it made it feel very eerily present. There’s very little developments in the last 100 years. It was really discouraging. But then when we got a little removal from it, I think it ended up being a good reminder and a galvanizing thing of, let’s take pride in what we’re doing. Because when you’re doing it eight or nine times a week, it’s very easy to take it for granted. We just wanted to take whatever positive motion we can from it.

I wanted to ask you about the cameo that you made on the last season of The Other Two. How did did that come about?
I’ve known [co-creator] Chris Kelly for a little while. And I’m a huge fan of the show. My fiancé was really hilarious on the show. And he just reached out and was like, “I have this episode,” and explained to me the concept of this mental health telethon and he was like, “I think it’d be really funny if you came on as yourself. It’ll take one day,” and I didn’t really need to hear anything other than that he wanted me to come spend a day playing on The Other Two, because I just think it’s such a brilliant, hilarious show and really savage, and I’m sad it’s over. But I felt very lucky that he brought me into the moment.

With this movie, and with that cameo, are you trying to more directly pivot into comedy now?

What I’ve really appreciated and felt really grateful for is the sort of variety that I’ve been able to explore career-wise. I think I would love to keep that going. [I] would love to be able to keep putting my toes in different bodies of water, but I think comedy has always been really like a home base to me, almost in the way that theater has in the sense that is where I made most of my friends, in that cross-section. In terms of Pitch Perfect and Book of Mormon, it’s very much where I began, and it’s also obviously the most joyful and kind of least soul-taxing place to be. So I would totally love to do more comedy and also get to write and I really loved the experience of writing the film, not just because I got to do it with my partner and my friend, but also just to flex that muscle and to try and make yourself and make the people that you respect laugh, [that] I really loved.

[Publicist intervenes again to say we only have one more question — at the halfway mark of what was supposed to be a 45-minute interview.]

You recently got engaged — congratulations. Are you doing wedding planning currently? Do you have a date picked out?
Thank you. We’re zeroing in on the big things and then trying to plant the flag far enough out that we can kind of take a little breather. I think we are loving the being able to call each other fiancé, and obviously you only get that one time. So I don’t think there’s any rush. But we’re zeroing in on a time and a place and having all the Jewish mother discussions that go along with having a giant Jewish family and figuring out what our version of that is gonna look like.

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