Interview with Jonathan Groff
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Jonathan Groff
American actor and singer known for Spring Awakening, King George in Hamilton, the voice of Kristoff in Frozen, and his Tony-winning role in Merrily We Roll Along.
Source: Playbill on YouTube
These answers are taken from Playbill's 'My Life in the Theatre' featuring Jonathan Groff on Playbill's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with singing?
I had done Pirates of Penzance in community theater. I took tap lessons my junior year of high school so that I could be in the second act as a policeman. I would sit in the balcony of the Fulton Opera House and watch the first act every day, and then I would put on my tap shoes and be in the second act. I love The Pirates of Penzance.
When I was in middle school, I used to come home and put in the VHS of Little Shop and sing, 'Someone show me a way to get out of here.' And in high school I used to sit in my bedroom and listen to the recording of A New Brain. It was very life-affirming to a closeted kid in high school.
Playbill.com was my source of everything. It was where I would get all my theater news, where I would find out about auditions, and I'd read it, dreaming of being in the shows I was reading about.
What do you enjoy most about singing?
When I felt the effects of Spring Awakening changing me from the inside out, I understood: oh wow, theater has the ability to change us. Really great, well-written theater. That was a big revelation I had. Being inside of a work of art like that show cultivated a sense of taste and artistic appetite that totally changed the trajectory of my career, from just wanting any job that anyone would give me.
Bobby Darin loved the audience. I say in the show, 'This is the only relationship he was any good at.' Honestly, same for myself. After eight years of developing Just in Time, to feel that connection to the crowd and to feel them enjoying it is such a spiritual experience. Theater is life-changing. I think that's why we go see it. I think that's why we do it.
What was a great moment for you as a singer?
One of the most magical moments I've ever had in the theater was opening night of Hair at the Delacorte: the sky opening up during Let the Sunshine In, and it pouring down rain only for that number, and then it stopping, and us having the opening night party at Belvedere Castle.
I had come out of the closet to my friends and family and moved into a studio apartment on the Upper West Side, and I would walk to the Delacorte. After Spring Awakening, where we were playing repressed German teenagers and I was in the closet, to come out and then go every day and perform in Hair was like breathing oxygen. I remember the first day of rehearsal, singing Where Do I Go, I could barely sing it because I was crying so much. There was so much personal exorcism happening with this show.
How did your career as a singer unfold?
Rachel Hoffman, a casting director for Bernie Telsey, cast me in a non-union bus and truck tour of The Sound of Music when I was a senior in high school. I did that show for a year and decided not to go to college. I deferred my admission from Carnegie Mellon, took the money I made on the tour and moved to New York on October 21st, 2004. She remembered me and brought me in to audition to be an understudy swing for In My Life, and I got it. It opened on October 21st, 2005, a year to the day after I moved to New York. It was a huge flop, but it was a great Broadway debut.
Later, Ryan Murphy asked Lea Michele and me to play Finn and Rachel in Glee. I loved the script, but after Spring Awakening and Hair, I didn't feel artistically like I wanted to sign on for seven years. I wanted to prove to myself that I was an actor, not just a singing actor. So instead of doing Glee, I did three off-Broadway plays. When I look back at my 23-year-old self, I can't believe I made that choice. But that was what my artistic soul was asking me to do.
What has been your greatest accomplishment as a singer?
They had asked me to do Merrily We Roll Along, and there were some date conflicts, but I was listening to the music so much and feeling that primal pull of, I've got to make this work. So I asked Sonia Friedman, our producer, to drinks, so she could see face to face that I was trying to make it work. It ended up being a four-hour dinner. We both were crying during it. She said there's a handful of experiences that are beyond theater, and Merrily is beyond theater. There's some other spiritual thing with this material. And I said, that's the vibe I'm getting.
We got the dates worked out, and I got to be a part of this experience, which was such a profound, such a spiritual experience. The gift of getting to do that show was the gift of a lifetime. Anyone that gets the opportunity to do that material gets that therapy, that opportunity for excavation. Boy, was it a life-changing experience.
Of all the roles, songs and shows you have done, which is your favorite?
Spring Awakening was the college experience I never had. We as a company all totally fell in love with each other. We were all around the same age. I was 20 years old when I got cast. It was more than any dream I'd ever had come true, because the show was just so special and extraordinary.
I was in the closet when I moved to New York. I had a boyfriend who was my roommate, and we were together through this entire show, but I was closeted even with the company. So this show was almost like therapy for me, young people expressing their desire, singing Touch Me on a Broadway stage. The character I played, Melchior, was a person who never let the world define him, a rebel. I, as a person, was very repressed and in people-pleasing mode. But getting to do this show on Broadway for a year and a half cultivated a side of my personality that was dormant, and a month after the show, I came out of the closet and started my adulthood.
Describe your style.
I've never formally trained as an actor or singer, and I learn a lot from watching other people work. Being an off-stage understudy and a swing in In My Life, I got to observe everything, and that was the gift of a lifetime. Especially getting to watch a Broadway flop. There were audiences coming to laugh at the show, and the way the actors formed a bond and performed without letting the negative energy into the theater was an important life lesson.
With Hamilton it was the same thing of watching. This cast was incredible, this material incredible. Every day off-Broadway I would watch the show from the vom, and on Broadway I would sneak and watch from the box, dressed as the King, still in my costume, peeking through the curtains.
In rehearsal for The Singing Forest, on breaks I would reach for my cell phone, and I'd say, 'Jonathan, you're in the room with a legend. Put your phone down and go have a conversation with Olympia Dukakis.' And so I would.
Tell me about a song or a role that was hard to get right. What was it and why was it challenging?
The Bacchae was the first show where I got ripped to shreds in the reviews. Terrible. I got personally called out for being horrible in this play. I was playing Dionysus, a Greek god, and I had a five-page monologue at the top of the play at the Delacorte. I read all the reviews, and I got to the theater that night after we opened, came out on that beautiful stage and thought, 'Wow, everyone thinks I'm terrible in this play, and now I'm about to do this five-page monologue.'
About a page and a half into it, I was like, I'm a Greek god and they all have to sit here and watch me do this, so I'm just going to lean into it. I just decided to be confident and to own whatever it was I was doing on stage. So it was ultimately an empowering moment, to overcome that. I also went to Greece before performing the play with my mom and performed the monologues on stages in Athens to get in touch with it. I was really into it.
Tell me something I may not know from reading your credits.
I had seen Red on Broadway with Eddie Redmayne and Alfred Molina and died for it. I remember seeing them hunched over eating sushi together at Kodama and feeling like, I want to be in that sandwich. A year or two later they were doing it in Los Angeles with the original creative team and Fred Molina, and Eddie was unavailable. So I threw my hat in the ring and got slotted into that incredible work of art. I told Fred, 'I watched you eating with Eddie at Kodama, and I can't believe I get to live a different version of that.' We became really close during this play.
I was recording Frozen while I was doing the run of this play in Los Angeles. Ultimately, I think the real reason I was meant to do this play was that I introduced Fred to his now wife, Jennifer Lee, who is the writer and director of Frozen. And I officiated their wedding a couple of years back. I really think that's the reason the universe called me in to do that play.
Jonathan Groff's Full Biography
Jonathan Drew Groff is an American actor and singer. Known for his performances on screen, stage and television, Groff is the recipient of such accolades as a Grammy Award and a Tony Award and has been nominated for three Tony Awards, two Drama League Awards, three Grammy Awards, a Drama Desk Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.