Tony Nominee Darren Criss on the 'Miracle' That Is 'Maybe Happy Ending'

Newsweek

3 days ago

Darren Criss
Darren Criss
Laurel Hinton
"I always like to say that the victory is in the conversation."
Darren Criss is an Emmy-winning actor, but deep down he's a musical theater nerd. Which is why he's so proud to be part of this year's Tony-nominated musical Maybe Happy Ending. "Everybody involved in [Broadway], we all work within a 10-some-odd block radius, and it is really like a campus celebration." For Criss, who plays Oliver, a robot in futuristic Seoul in love with another robot, Claire (played by Helen J. Shen), it's "nothing short of a miracle." "You kind of hope for this your whole life." After picking up 10 Tony nominations, including Criss' for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical, it's clear countless others did too. "I hope it runs for many moons in other countries and in other dimensions." Part of what makes the show unique is its path to Broadway. "Every step along the way, it has been an exponential groundswell of positive response, because everything is just earnest ideas believed in by earnest people." And it's been a benchmark for diversity and Asian stories on Broadway. "I always like to say that the victory is in the conversation."
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Editor's Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.
How does it feel to be a Tony nominee?
I don't know what to say that can be concise and all-encapsulating without me shortchanging a lot of ideas swirling in my head. Especially if I'm talking to folks like yourself in situations like this, when people ask about these things, something that is a big concept suddenly becomes like a press conference answer. Let's make it easy and good old-fashioned—It's great. Feels great. Cliches exist for a reason. It's an honor, because it is, and it feels great because it is great. And hopefully that doesn't shortchange any of the ideas I mentioned in my head.
Criss in "Maybe Happy Ending."
Criss in "Maybe Happy Ending."
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
Not at all. A lot of millennials, and some Gen Zs too, I suppose, have been with you since the start of your career when it blew up because of Glee. And the fact that you're in a category with a person who was also on Glee, Jonathan Groff...
There's a lot of things. I'll be honest—I haven't gotten to unpack this at all. This is the first time anybody has asked me this question, or that I've had to speak about it since I found out. Literally right now. So, you have a very interesting position of watching me process this in real time. You're bringing up something that I haven't even really gotten to get to my head, which is—It is so exciting to be in a category where I know every single person. That's awesome, and not in a sort of superficial way. These are all men whose work I have gladly paid money for to watch them perform time and time again, and I love their stuff. And this isn't some kind of cute, charming way to pose the nomination pool as this brotherhood of men. We all work on Broadway, and we all work just as hard as the other guy, because we all have eight shows a week. It's a nice thing. I've been in situations where I've been nominated with people, and there's people that I've been nominated with that I've never met. I love them. I love their work. And I was so excited.
I figured that's a Hollywood thing, where you're only friends at award shows.
Hollywood—and I don't mean this in a trivializing or mean way—but it's a very partitioned thing, for better or for worse. It's very impersonal. It's just separated. Again, that's not to pooh-pooh it, but it's just how it is. Whereas working the theater and Broadway, as any stage performer can tell you, is infamously familial, personal. We're all roommates. We all live with each other.
Helen J. Shen and Criss in the Broadway show.
Helen J. Shen and Criss in the Broadway show.
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
Things happen, the backstage is small...
Yeah. We're all living in closets, and we all show up, and no matter what happens that day, we got to do the damn thing the next day, if we're lucky, right? All these men and women, everybody involved in this sort of thing, we all work within a 10-some-odd-block radius, and it is really like a campus celebration. And that's why I love the Tonys. I think it's a wonder and a miracle that it's still nationally televised. I think that in this day and age, it's an amazing thing. When things are honored at this level, it's so beyond the self. It's about connecting with kids like me growing up wishing that [the] thing I saw on the Tonys would come to my hometown and be on the cast album that I clung to. And...with any luck, this show that I'm in, I hope it runs from many moons in other countries and in other dimensions. If I'm lucky, I get to see a mishandled version of this show, because it will have survived long enough to be part of the cultural fabric that I can go to a maybe not-so-hot version of a production of this show. When I get to do that, I'll sit there going, "We made it."
There's nothing I enjoy more than watching YouTube videos of local theater fails—someone falling, or some set piece falling—like that's all I want to see.
I have that s*** for breakfast. It's so enjoyable. I mean, you are watching a little bit for the schadenfreude of it, but there's something so endearing about the Mickey and Judy paradigm of like, "Hey kids, let's put on a show. Let's just do it. Let's make something." And I am so endlessly endeared to that concept. But that's the dream for this show. So again, the breadcrumbs go far. It goes all the way back to things like these accolades. To be with all these people and to celebrate this community and the people that it represents, and just how hard everybody works. I love this community so f****** much, and I love getting to watch the Tonys because I know everybody in there, and I know how hard they work. No one's in here for the glitz and glamor. Everybody's here for the real love of the game. It's an honor to be rubbing shoulders with those people.
Criss and Shen in the show.
Criss and Shen in the show.
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
Maybe Happy Ending feels so unique, not just for you but for a Broadway show in general. Do you see that? And how did it come about for you?
Oh my God, it's a big question. I kind of white-lied a little bit about...me being able to process this. I generally stay away from Instagram, but I wrote a small piece this morning to acknowledge what happened yesterday. And the word that I keep coming back to is—this show has just been nothing short of a miracle on so many levels. It's an exponential miracle across so many facets. Making s*** at this level is obscenely expensive. I think what's interesting about this show is that the guys who made it—Will Aronson, Hue Park—they had no intention of this being a Broadway musical. I think that's a really important thing to mention. And every step along the way, nobody was like, "Let's make some money!"—said nobody ever making a Broadway show. That's kind of a way to just paint a target on your back. It's just not a really healthy way to make any piece of art. We know this is not the way to make stuff. Every step along the way, it has been an exponential groundswell of positive response, because everything is just earnest ideas believed in by earnest people. And just incrementally over a long period of time, that sort of lightning-in-a-bottle cream rising to the top over time.
This did start in the States, but was originally produced in Korea. You have two writers in New York that have an idea to make something, but because one of them is Korean, he was like, "Well, we can get this made in Korea." Which is a very novel concept, because most things are incubated in the States or maybe overseas in the U.K. So, they kind of moonshot in and got the gravitational pull of what was going on in Korea, because they could get it made instantly over there, and it did very well. And it was with support there—it did so well over there, it kind of got moved. It was in China and in Japan—those ain't the same three places. Those don't have the same culture or language. Yes, it's Asia, but by no means are those the same audiences. So, if that doesn't speak to its universality, I don't know what does. Finally, after however many years, because of the pandemic and [actors'] strike and everything, it finally came back here, like, turnkey. Because it essentially had an out-of-town tryout for years.... It's been just such a gift. You kind of hope for this your whole life.
In the way that I gravitated towards Hedwig [and the Angry Inch] when I was a teenager, I loved it because it was just so f****** original. It checked all the boxes for me. It was subversive. It was rock and roll. It was queer, and all the things that means, just like, culturally, or sex. It just had all these things that were just so, like, "F*** you," but like, moving. There's real pathos in Hedwig, which is, I think, why it has stood the test of time, and why it's connected with some people. Like, yeah, it's cool. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, the music kicks ass. But like, those have a ceiling, you know? It really is about the beating heart and the pathos and of storytelling that has made it move on and translate. And that's exactly what's happening with Maybe Happy Ending. The songs are beautiful, the story and the concept is cool, but it's really the beating heart of the storytelling and how strong the dramaturgy is that has made this so interesting to me. And it's something that you kind of pray for as an actor, but you can't just summon that lightning to fall into the bottle.
And we got nominated for 10 Tonys yesterday. This was not part of my itinerary. I did this because I was available and because I thought it was beautiful, that's why. And I got to work with my friends. It's why you do things. It's a polite reminder of the zero-loss game that it is to follow your heart. I am not patting myself on the back. Everybody in this piece loved it and was passionate about it before other people told us we should feel that way. And that's what's been so validating and encouraging about the response that we've had, because it's just something that we have cared about, and to have other people respond in the same exact way that we did when we read it or watched it is like, OK, good. There are other human beings that we can connect with on this feeling.
With a show like this, this is not a Tony-nominated show, historically. A show like this—and I want to compare it to Oh, Mary! in that respect—they're just so far outside the box that you just think it's almost too not in that lane to get a Tony nomination, even though it is great, you know what I mean?
I think folks like us that tend to subscribe to the left of centerness are used to those things not being part of the cultural zeitgeist, which is kind of why we like them. It's this weird catch-22. It's like when you're in high school and you like this band that no one's heard of, and as soon as somebody else hears about it you're like, "I don't know if I like them anymore." Which is really silly, and I'm not saying that's how we are now. But I told Cole [Escola, from Oh, Mary!] this. I got to do an Actors on Actors interview with them, and it was so awesome because I said this; I was like, I saw that off-Broadway, and I felt like it was built in a lab for people like me who just think, I just eat that s*** all day. It's so funny. It's just, again, subversive and clever and original. And I think the key here is being singular and authentic to yourself. This is no new concept. Artists have said this forever and ever. Oscar Wilde said, "Be yourself, darling. Everybody else is taken." It's true. I'd rather see something that is so undeniably of that one person and thing and have it not be very well put together, but authentic, than I would something disingenuous, but, like, glued together really well. Because again, there's only so far that can go. Audiences are smart. They can smell a rat pretty quickly. So yeah, I appreciate the comparison to Oh Mary! because, even though we're different stories, there is something that can cut through if you double down on your own singularity. And I think that's what happened with Maybe Happy Ending as well.
Criss as robot Oliver.
Criss as robot Oliver.
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
With this show, one of the things that I found so surprising in watching it is with this character, it does feel like you almost have to change how you sing in order to do the character. Because there's a cadence to the way the songs even go that I find so fascinating.
I just thought about this recently, because I will sing the songs outside of the show. And this happened with Hedwig. I've actually never sung on Broadway with my own voice, ever. Content dictates form. I'm not gonna sing with my usual flair—another Sondheim line, God, I'm such a musical theater nerd. Hedwig had a voice and an accent and a panache, but it was still my voice at the end of the day. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that I'm like some chameleonic Daniel Day f****** Lewis. It's me. It's me up there. However, there are margins of difference that have to be applied for the character and the type of show. So Hedwig sounded like Hedwig, because there's an East German accent that's been in the States for a long time. So I'm singing with that accent, and then in this, because it's a robot that's sort of overproving consonants and vowels in the way that a lot of our artificial intelligence [does] now—now, it's becoming a little more colloquial—but like 10 years ago, when you would like put something into a dictation software, it would be very articulate. And to sort of denote that this is not actually a human. Now, it's so humanlike, it's crazy. It'll only get more humanlike. But for me, it was very important to use the body. This is drama school s***, but, like, the body, voice and mask [need] to telegraph as much as possible that this is not a human being. So, I am singing with a certain over-precision, which is a really great gift, because it's the kind of thing that helps you actually lock into notes and lock into character.
Maybe Happy Ending is certainly part of the unique amount of diversity currently on Broadway. How do you feel about being part of that?
I always like to say that the victory is in the conversation. No matter what the conversation is about, there's no conclusion to any of these conversations. I think there's, like, predominant belief systems that will be popular for a long period of time, but culture is a constant conversation. It's always moving around. And there's going to be some sort of ironclad truths that will hold evident forever, but for the most part, we're always learning. We're our own language model. We're always learning new language and how to identify itself. That prism is constantly shifting in all kinds of directions, and we're always trying to learn and become more aware of what the next paradigm is. And that's a beautiful conversation. And as tricky and as scary as it can get, I treat it like it is an open dialog, and that if, as long as we're treating everybody's input as there's no right or wrong, but we're always just trying to have a conversation so that we can get closer to some sort of, like, agreement, that's what culture is. Culture is not a singular target. It's a moving one, and that's what makes it interesting and beautiful. So that's my sort of macro comment on that.
But this is part of that conversation. And what makes it stand out to me is how I think the show means a lot to Asian folks, but it is not exclusive to Asian folks. In the Asian community, especially in Broadway, there's, like, the menu of the Asian shows. For better or for worse. And as a white-presenting Asian, this is not something that is, like, on my menu. But for many of my peers that are very clearly Asian American presenting, or Asian in general, there's the "menu," right? It's like, Miss Saigon, The King and I, Flower Drum Song. These are shows that have employed many men and women in the Asian diaspora for many years. So, no matter how you look at it, there's this "menu," quote, unquote. And in somewhat in a joking way, that's the joke. Like, "Oh, which ones have you done?" And this has been something that I've noticed for a lot of my friends and colleagues.
This show is about as exclusively Asian as Romeo and Juliet is exclusively Italian. It is so universal in its construct, and has so much beaming, bursting potential with where it can be contextualized and who it can be contextualized by. It's representation at its best. We'll meet folks afterwards, of any part of the Asian diaspora, that say the show means a lot to them. And yes, that's why visibility and reputation is so important, because it signals what's possible. And that's a very powerful thing to be showcasing. However, nobody is walking away from the show going, like, "Oh, do you see that Asian show?" That's so not part of what your takeaway is of the show. And that, to me, is just such an unintended victory lap for great storytelling. That it can mean something to who it's important to mean something to, but it's not only for them. I hope to do the show for many, many moons. But, you know, after this original cast is done with their time in the show, I love that we can dare to have a non-Asian cast, as opposed to the other way around.