september 16–29, 2019 | new york 75Groff in Mindhunter.amassing such emptiness between his
angular jaw and his eyebrows that you won-
der if he’ll slip into deviancy himself. It’s a
performance of square, even sinister
straightness that feels close to the best-
little-boy performances of closeted queer
men, though what seems to thrill Holden
most in the show are his interviews with
killers. “Sexuality is so complicated, and the
people I’ve ended up working with who
have cast me in straight parts are interested
in looking at things in a complicated way,”
Groff says, noting that he feels the argu-
ment about whether gay actors can play
straight, or vice versa, has gotten “sillier” as
time goes on. “Being out and gay and being
myself, it allowed me to find people that
weren’t closed-minded.”
Groff came out when he was 23, without
directly consulting his agent, after he’d
become an idol to the nation’s theater teens
of Facebook by starring as the sexy, rebel-
lious, tousle-haired Melchior in Spring
Awakening. “I was so compartmentalized,”
hesays,“singingaboutsexbutthennottalk-
ingaboutit.”Heremainsthankfulforthe
wayMayer,whoalsodirectedthatshow,
choreographedtheexplicitsexbetween
himselfandLeaMichele’sWendlaclinically,
withoutaskingthemabouttheirownexpe-
riences.Hehadn’tspenttoomuchtimewor-
ryingabouttheaftereffectsofcomingouton
hiscareer,whichweremorelimitingin
2009 thantheyarenow.“IdidthinkImight
notbeseenasaromanticlead,butulti-
mately Iwas okaywith that,”hesays,
explainingthathewasinloveatthetime
anddidn’twanttohideit.“At23,I’drather
justhavearealromanticrelationshipthan
pretendtohaveonewithagirl.”
Severalyearsaftercomingout,Groff
bookedaleadingroleinHBO’sLooking,a
comedy-dramaaboutgaymeninSanFran-
cisco,whichhecallsoneofthemostfulfill-
ingroleshe’shad.Theseriesranfortwo
seasonsandgotawrap-upmoviebutnever
quitefoundaviewership,evenamongqueer
audiences,insteadreceiving,asheputsit,“a
totalmixedbagofveryextremereactions.”
Someofthatwasbecausepeoplejustdidn’t
liketheshow—whichwasoftenslower,
moreinterior,andwhiterandfitterthan
peoplemayhavewanted—andsomeofit
wasbecauseitwas“carryingalotofweight;
therewasn’talotofspecificallygaycontent
onamajorcablenetwork.”ToGroff,making
theshowopenedhimuptothepossibilityof
usingmaterialfromhisownexperiencein
hiswork.Amongthecastandcrew,“we
wouldtalkaboutstoriesaboutPrEPand
uncutdicksandmonogamy,”herecalls,
among“somanystoriesaboutanaldouch-
ing,”andthoseanecdoteswouldmaketheir
PHOTOGRAPH: COURTESY OF NETFLIXwayintothescripts.Hewasusedtoasortof
“closeted training of the mind” to abstract
himself from his own experience. Looking
taught him he could use it.
Recently, Groff has developed an ability
to end up near the center of cultural sensa-
tions. He stepped in for Brian d’Arcy James
as Hamilton’s fey Britpop version of King
George III midway through the show’s Off
Broadway run. It was a somewhat ideal gig,
given that he was onstage for only about
nine minutes a night, performed crowd-
pleasing kiss-off songs, met Beyoncé,
earned a Tony nomination, and got a lot of
reading done backstage. This fall, he’s in
Disney’s sequel to Frozen, where he returns
to play Princess Anna’s rugged (at a Disney-
appropriate level) love interest, Kristoff. In
the first movie, while Idina Menzel’s Elsa
got the vocal-cord shattering “Let It Go,”
Groff sang only a few lines of melody
between Kristoff and his reindeer, Sven.
This time around, he’s putting his Broad-
way training to use with a full-length solo.
It’s the second one he recorded for the
movie, since the writers had one idea for a
Kristoff piece (“a jam”) but then canned that
song while promising Groff they’d write
something different, which he didn’t quite
believe. “Then they fucking wrote that other
song,” he says, characteristically effusive.
“I was like, Wow, and the animation of the
song is so brilliant.”
As personable as Groff is and as success-
ful as he has become—and as beloved,
especially among theater fans and people
like my mother—there’s a point at which
he maintains a certain distance, in what
feels like a way to stem his own impulses.He doesn’t use any social media, though he
did consider it when Looking was strug-
gling, before he realized “I’d have to be
good at it and want to do it, and I don’t.” He
has never thrown himself a birthday party,
because the impulse to make sure every-
one’s having a good time would stress him
out too much. In behavior that reminds me
of both a secret agent and Kim Kar-
dashian, he regularly goes through and
deletes all his texts after responding to
each of them. “I want to make sure I get
back to everyone,” he says, holding his
iPhone up in front of me to reveal the
remarkably few surviving messages.
Before Groff gets up to leave breakfast
and travel to rehearsal by way of the single-
speed bicycle he rides around Manhattan,
we end up talking about the larger trajec-
tory of his career. Considering that he’s
scaling down for a revival run of a musical
Off Broadway, was he ever the kind of
actor who thought of his work as building
up to something? A big film? A franchise?
“I think I gave that up when I came out of
the closet,” he says. “I gave up the idea that
there was an end goal or ideal or some kind
of dream to work toward.” An image
appears in my mind of the life Audrey
sings about in Little Shop, a place that’s
comfortable, traditional, and expected,
somewhere that’s green. “When I moved to
New York, what I wanted was to be on
Broadway. That happened and then
I came out, and it’s sort of been anybody’s
guess since then,” Groff says. “I like when
something makes me cry or I can’t stop
listening to it. Okay, I want to do that.” ■