‘Being an American feels helpless and scary’: Actor Ben Platt talks nerves, weird songs and why he can’t do it without his husband | stage

IIn performance, Ben Platt is a suave singer and loose-limbed dancer, with a vague background note of nervous New York. The stage — most famously, as the star of Dear Evan Hansen — is his safe place. In person, in the south London training room, he was suave, serious and nervous. He crosses his legs and arms around him. Chat wanders widely, body language tense.

Platt speaks frankly about anxiety, as if it were his constant companion. So, how are things going? “My relationship with my husband is a big factor in my ability to manage anxiety. There are still highs and lows, but it’s all in my head, because I’m grateful for him. Also, having something creative to focus on is a huge help.”

Fortunately, Platt comes to London with her husband (actor Noah Galvin, starring in Hit Machine at the Soho Theatre) and a creative project – the musical Midnight at the Never Get. It takes us to a gay bar in Greenwich Village in the 1960s (although, as Platt hints, the piece “unfolds into something deeper and stranger”). Platt plays cabaret singer Trevor. “I don’t really like the word flamboyant, because it’s overrated, but he’s effervescent. He very much wears his heart on his sleeve.” New Yorker David Cromer directs, and praises Platt’s “very precise hand. He watches what people bring in, and then he goes in and sculpts.”

The “extraordinary” vocals of Mark Sonnenblick (KPop Demon Hunters) allow Platt to sing lyrics of love for another man. Does that make a difference to him? “One hundred percent. I grew up doing musicals—years and years, many shows—but I’ve never been able to play a queer character on stage. To play a three-dimensional character who sings vividly queer songs with queer romantic details feels very liberating.”

Midnight at the Never Get is not an overtly political film, but it is set at a moment when progress on gay rights seems to have stalled, even reversed, in Platt’s home country. “Being American feels completely helpless and scary,” he admits. “But being in New York I find optimism and hope.” The new mayor, Zahran Mamdani, represents “a different layer of politics, versus painful, offensive noise for the sake of painful, offensive noise.”

Platt, 32, has a quarter-century of theater experience. His first school performance, at the age of six, saw him wearing a sparkling jacket like the prince in Cinderella. “I mostly remember the boil of energy of preparation, and the excitement I feel in that fluctuation.” Professional gigs soon followed – and the restless young Ben was also focusing and directing himself. “I wanted to grow up fast,” he says. “I was so hungry to be like the adults I was working with, to be one of them.”

The show that established Platt — as an actor and as a person — was Dear Evan Hansen, who played the troublemaking high school hero from early readings all the way to Broadway. “I’ve never been asked to go to that emotional extreme before. The material was so powerful, it forced me to rise to the occasion.” He muses that committing to the show meant “putting my entire life on mute. I put my own development on the back burner, and I lived in this character’s space for many years.”

Platt appeared with the Tony and in 2021 was tapped to lead the next film. This was less cheerful: Platt was ridiculed as old at 27, much the son of a producer. “It’s been tough, but it’s a lesson you have to learn in this business, which is that sometimes things don’t go well and you have to let the roller coaster go down so you can get back up. And the fact that this character made it a little bit more painful — but we move forward.” So the uproar didn’t tarnish his relationship with Evan Hansen? “No, no. It was absolutely life-changing in every way. I’m glad the movie exists, and I hope history will be kind to it.”

Earlier this year, Platt worked on the artistic theme for the Met Gala, where his jacket references the Seurat painting that inspired Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George. This is the role Platt covets above all others. “George, George, George,” he sighed. “It’s everything that’s meaningful to me about the musical. It’s about the sacrifice of being an artist — how you have to kind of live in your head, and that’s a beautiful thing, but it’s also a harsh reality.”

Platt may consider the composer “my rabbi, my imam, and I live my life by his words” — but he has yet to stage a professional Sondheim play. However, in the film he is deep into the making of Merrily We Roll Along. Sondheim’s 1981 musical follows the central trio in reverse, from jaded middle age to youthful optimism—and director Richard Linklater was shooting it forward, in real time. “The musical takes place over the course of 19 or 20 years,” Platt explains. If there are three years between scenes, “we wait exactly three years, for our characters to grow as much.” Platt and co-stars Paul Mescal and Beanie Feldstein are now about a third of the way through. “We’re supposed to finish in 2038. I’ll be 45 years old. It’s absolutely crazy, and it’s also like a family reunion that happens every two years.”

Are there other ambitions? “Like every gay person in the world, I wish I could do Angels [in America, by Tony Kushner] At some point. But the ideal scenario is always something new happening.