Tony Award-winning actor Jonathan Groff has gone from success to success over the last 15 years, from his roles on stage (Spring Awakening, Hamilton, Merrily We Roll Along), television (Glee, Mindhunter) and film (Frozen), but like all actors he had to start somewhere. In an interview with The New Yorker, Groff spoke about his early career as an actor and landing his breakthrough role in Broadway’s Spring Awakening.
Groff shares his journey to becoming an actor, which began with parents who didn’t quite understand his interest in acting but certainly understood his passion. He explains:
“My mom was a gym teacher and my dad is a horse trainer, and they didn’t really understand anything about the performing world. But my dad grew up on a dairy farm, and he was supposed to take over and become a Mennonite preacher, which is what my grandfather was. My dad didn’t like cows—he liked horse racing, so he sort of rebelled and did his own thing. My mom always says that nurse, secretary, or teacher were the options for women in a small town at that time, but her passion was sports, so she ended up being a coach.
“So they understood the power of fanning the flame of passion. When I was a kid and into acting, they drove me to play practice. They drove me to community theatre. My senior year of high school, my mom drove me to New York to audition for this bus-and-truck tour of The Sound of Music. I got that tour, and deferred my admission to Carnegie Mellon. I made ten thousand dollars after a year on the road, and I learned so much from getting to act every day. I wanted to take my ten thousand and move to New York, and my parents were super supportive: ‘If you feel like you need to go to college, you can always go to college. But take a gamble and move to the city.'”
Jonathan Groff’s Audition Story: From Open Call to Broadway Breakthrough
Groff made his first splash on Broadway in his Tony Award-winning role in Spring Awakening, which was directed by acclaimed stage director Michael Mayer. On how he landed the role, Groff recalls, “I went to the open call and knew who Michael Mayer was, because he had directed Thoroughly Modern Millie. […] They called me in for Melchior, then had me sing ‘Hey Jude’ in a falsetto, and Michael was, like, ‘That was your falsetto?’ And I laughed at him sort of making fun of me. Tom Hulce, who was our producer, told me years later that he moved my headshot from the ‘No’ pile into the ‘Yes’ pile because I had laughed at Michael in the audition, and he thought, This kid has the ability to let Michael roll off his back. We should bring him back in the next month or two. It was, like, ten people up for Melchior. They brought me in first, because they thought they would just see me and cut me. But I had worked so hard on the audition material. I remember calling my dad the night before the final callback and saying to him, ‘I know I can’t be this character all the way yet.'”
Later, Groff adds, “I knew that I had it inside, if they would just give me the chance,” demonstrating that even if he didn’t feel like he had the character completely yet, he did feel like he could get there.
