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What do you do after you conquer Broadway
as an ultrasensitive teenager? Play a ruthless one
on T V, of course. Ben Platt talks to Rob Haskell
about his star turn in Ryan Murphy’s
The Politician. Photographed by Tierney Gearon.Leveling UpF
ew actors, even those with a surfeit
of endowments—talent, timing,
luck, looks—find their way to
a role that might fairly be called
life-changing. For those whose lives are
changed by a such a role, the next question
is how to avoid being defined by it. Ben
Platt didn’t stumble tenderfooted into the
title character of Dear Evan Hansen, the
musical in which his superheated, sung-
through-sobs performance earned him a
Tony, an Emmy, and a Grammy before
his 25th birthday. He’d been working pro-
fessionally since age eight, and singing on
Broadway was the unwavering dream of
his boyhood. But Platt has spent two years
quietly wriggling out of the net of Evan
Hansen, and he wouldn’t mind at all if he
never had to say another word about the
anguished and lonely teenager who, he has
frequently avowed, is not so entirely differ-
ent from his adolescent self.
“That character was such an identifying
experience,” Platt says, “and because the
part dealt with anxiety, I become sort of
a spokesperson. People really fell in love
with that character, but it’s the one role I’ve
ever felt as an actor I had to consciously
turn away from—to make it clear that I am
my own person, and I’m not very specifi-
cally this strange, anxious kid.” He smiles,
doubting himself. “Not that I’m not strange
and anxious in real life, but at this point I
wouldn’t go chasing characters who have
the same issues that I do.”
Though it’s the middle of the afternoon,
and the purple blooms of the jacarandas
blanketing the north-south streets suggest
that we are in the heart of West Hollywood,
Platt, who grew up 15 minutes away, is a bit
lost. He has lived in Manhattan since he was
18 (though he’s still not sure he’s allowed to
call himself a New Yorker), and while he
SET DESIGN BY MATT SOKOLER. PRODUCED BY HANNAH PERKO-ENGEL AT PREISS CREATIVE. knows that several CONTINUED ON PAGE 567