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USA Today
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Jonathan Groff opens up about death, Bobby Darin and why he's done with birthday wishes
Jonathan Groff opens up about death, Bobby Darin and why he's done with birthday wishes Show Caption Hide Caption Jonathan Groff cried when Lea Michele's son saw 'Just in Time' Jonathan Groff explains to USA TODAY's Ralphie Aversa why he cried when Lea Michele's son came to see "Just in Time," a musical about Bobby Darin. NEW YORK — In Broadway bio-musical "Just in Time," Jonathan Groff is a-splishin' and a-splashin' eight shows a week as chameleonic crooner Bobby Darin. And frankly, you couldn't ask for a better steward of his legacy. On a recent Zoom call from his dressing room, where he keeps a picture of Darin and Liza Minnelli, the affable actor lights up as he expounds on his favorite deep cuts ("I Am") and performances ("The Judy Garland Show") from the "Beyond the Sea" heartthrob. "Wow, I'm really nerding out right now," Groff says, grinning. "He was such a special performer. I mean, Lucille Ball used to play canasta with her sister and put 'Darin at the Copa' on repeat. There's a video of him singing 'If I Were a Carpenter' with Stevie Wonder on YouTube, and they're going back and forth. He could hold his own with every great entertainer." Groff, 40, is Tony-nominated once again this season for best leading actor in a musical, after winning the award last year for Maria Friedman's heart-rending revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along." "Just in Time" is similarly emotional as it recounts the too-short career of Darin who, after a lifetime of health issues, died of heart failure in 1973 at only 37. But the musical is also an infectious showcase of Groff's megawatt charm. He conceived of the production eight years ago with director Alex Timbers and producer Ted Chapin. It's performed in the round at the intimate Circle in the Square Theatre, which has been transformed into a swank nightclub with two separate stages and table seating. Groff begins the show as himself, chatting and dancing with theatergoers as he steps back in time to tell Darin's story. "The cabaret tables, and me starting as myself, isn't just a gimmick," Groff says. "It feels like an essential way to celebrate the energy and spirit of who he was as a performer." Groff is beloved by Broadway fans from "Hamilton" and "Spring Awakening," although this is his first time developing a musical from the ground floor. "Jonathan has thought about the show in its totality – his performance, but also the writing and design and choreography," Timbers says. "He's a storyteller that cares about how every element contributes to the clarity of the narrative." We spoke with Groff about "Just in Time," his career so far and what's next: Question: Bobby Darin covered many musical theater standards and always wanted to star on Broadway. How does it feel to get to realize that dream for him? Answer: It feels so special. His son, Dodd Darin, wrote me a beautiful letter saying, 'Thank you for keeping my dad's story alive.' Bobby Darin was so prolific and so ahead of his time. Before 'Cowboy Carter" was genre-swapping, he was gaining fame and then immediately genre-swapping. Even for me, I knew 'Splish Splash,' 'Mack the Knife' and 'If I Were a Carpenter.' But I didn't know they were all sung by the same person, or that he wrote 'Dream Lover' and 'Simple Song of Freedom.' So I feel really proud to be sharing his artistry with the world again in this way. There's a quote that's widely attributed to Bobby: "You only die once. You live lots of times if you know how." Looking at your own career, how do you feel that you've managed to shape-shift and evolve? Every new project feels like a different life. I feel so lucky that last year, I was doing 'Merrily We Roll Along,' which was a huge dream. Meanwhile, we had been trying to make the Bobby Darin show for eight years, and we did this final gesture of a workshop while we were doing 'Merrily.' The gift of being able to come right back to Broadway in such extremely different projects has felt like living two lifetimes. I've always dreamt of being on Broadway ever since I was a kid, so to have as many creative experiences as I've had in my last 20 years of being an actor, I really feel deep gratitude. And what has stayed the same? When you think back to the little boy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who dressed up as Dorothy in his dad's barn, what has been the through line ever since? Isaac Oliver wrote me this line where I get to say, 'I was twirling in my mother's heels in Amish Country, Pennsylvania.' A thing that has changed is 20 years ago, it was a lot of closeted men playing straight on Broadway. But at the top of this musical, I really get to own who I am as a gay guy. I get to declare exactly who I am, and then take them on the journey of this playboy crooner, who in many ways, was the polar opposite of me. I'm just incredibly grateful to live in a time where I can own that shift live in front of the audience. The thing that's stayed the same is that every show is like the middle-school play or performing in my dad's barn. This is why I relate the most to theater and why I always go back. There's something primal about the lights going down in a space, and there's an audience and the performers on stage and the simplicity of telling a story. It's just my favorite thing in the world. Was there a moment that really put time into perspective for you, or showed you how valuable life is? My grandfather died on my 10th birthday. I remember the night before that, we had a birthday party and the whole family came over; all the grandparents and cousins were there. I got VHS tapes of 'I Love Lucy,' because I was obsessed with 'I Love Lucy.' I blew my candles out, went into the living room, and just sat in front of the TV watching these episodes on repeat. The next day, we got the call that my grandfather died, and my 10-year-old self was wracked with guilt and regret about the fact that I didn't even say goodbye to him when he left. I was so glued to 'I Love Lucy.' I then became really superstitious about saying goodbye to my dad whenever he would leave to go to work. I would stand in the window and wave as the truck went away in the distance. But that was the first time death really landed for me. I remember seeing him in his coffin and comprehending at 10 that he's not going to wake up. So what do you hope this next decade looks like for you? I turned 40 this year, and I had a revelation when I was blowing out my birthday candles: No more wishes, just thank you. Even with the marathon that is opening a Broadway show and then doing a Tony campaign, I don't feel worried like I used to. By the time you're 40, you've sort of learned who you are and what you need. I've found my tribe of people that I love, which makes the whole experience less stressful. Back in 2007, you said you were so happy doing "Spring Awakening" that you couldn't imagine leaving it. Is it rare to find projects that give you that feeling? I remember the week of doing my huge, epic fight scene with Keanu Reeves in 'The Matrix Resurrections.' I had been training for so long, and we shot it over the course of five days. But I remember standing in the shower in Berlin on a Tuesday, like, 'OK, by the time I get to Friday, I will have done it. I will have fought Neo. I can breathe and relax and go out to these clubs.' And then I remember thinking, 'No, Groff, don't wish this time away! Try and enjoy the stress and intensity of this moment. Don't just fast forward to Friday – that's not a way I want to live.' So there are jobs where the end will come and I'll feel a sense of relief. Not with "Just in Time." I love it so much. I can't even think about leaving right now; I'm dangerously into it. My friend came to see the show last night and he was like, 'Jonathan, I just have this feeling you're so happy up there, that whenever you leave this, there's going to be some postpartum.' I thought that was going to happen with 'Merrily' and it didn't, because we had a real, complete experience. So maybe when I get to the end of this, it'll feel like a complete experience and I'll be ready to let go. But right now, I'm Gollum. "Just in Time" is now playing at the Circle in the Square Theatre (235 W. 50th Street) through Jan. 11, 2026.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Josh Hartnett To Headline Netflix's Newfoundland Limited Series; Jessica Rhoades Joins As EP
Josh Hartnett (Oppenheimer) has been tapped for the lead of Netflix's untitled Newfoundland limited series from creator Jesse McKeown. Hartnett will executive produce the six-episode series, which takes place and will film in Newfoundland, Canada. Also boarding the project as executive producer is Jessica Rhoades (Black Mirror). In the series, when a mysterious sea creature terrorizes a remote Newfoundland town, a hard-bitten fisherman (Hartnett) must fight to protect his family, his community, and his vanishing way of life. More from Deadline Robert Langdon TV Series Based On 'The Secret of Secrets' Ordered By Netflix From Dan Brown & Carlton Cuse HBO Nabs 'Baby Queen' Drama For Development From Alex Metcalf, Jessica Rhoades & Media Res Comedian Steph Tolev Inks Netflix Deal For 'Filth Queen,' Her First Special For Streamer McKeown will serve as showrunner. He executive produces with Rhoades through her company Pacesetter UK, Chris Hatcher, Hartnett, Jamie Childs, Louise Sutton, and Sharon Hall. The series' writing team includes Karen Walton, Perry Chafe and Natty Zavitz; Jamie Childs, Helen Shaver and Stephen Dunn will direct. Hartnett and Rhoades previously worked together on the 'Beyond the Sea' episode of Netflix's Black Mirror, which starred Hartnett. He co-starred in Oppenheimer, sharing in the film's SAG Award for motion picture ensemble. Hartnett recently headlined Trap and Fight or Flight and next stars in Verity opposite Anne Hathaway. On TV, he recently guest starred on FX's The Bear. Hartnett is repped by Verve, Entertainment 360 and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern. Best of Deadline Every 'The Voice' Winner Since Season 1, Including 9 Team Blake Champions Everything We Know About 'Jurassic World: Rebirth' So Far 'Nine Perfect Strangers' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Come Out?
New York Times
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Just in Time' Review: Jonathan Groff Channels Bobby Darin
When Jonathan Groff says 'I'm a wet man,' he means it. The admission comes near the start of 'Just in Time,' the Bobby Darin bio-musical that opened on Saturday at Circle in the Square. It's a warning to the 22 audience members seated at cabaret tables in the middle of the action that they may want to don raincoats as he sings and dances, sweating and spitting, a-splishin' and a-splashin'. But Groff is wet in another sense too: He's a rushing pipeline, a body and voice that seem to have evolved with the specific goal of transporting feelings from the inside to the outside. A rarity among male musical theater stars, he is thrilling not just sonically but also emotionally, all in one breath. And Darin, the self-described 'nightclub animal' who bounced from bopper to crooner to quester to recluse, is a great fit for him. Not because they are alike in temperament, other than a compulsion to entertain and be embraced by an audience. Nor do they sound alike: Groff's voice is lovelier than Darin's, rounder and healthier. But the Broadway and Brill Building songs Darin sang, some of which he wrote, offer the scale, the snap and the bravura opportunities that are more often, now as then, a diva's birthright, not a divo's. In other words, Groff is sensational. 'Just in Time,' directed by Alex Timbers, with a book by Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver, at first seems like it will be too. Certainly the opening is a wonderful jolt. Making the smart choice to introduce Groff as himself, not as Darin, the show immediately breaks out of the jukebox box, liberating its songs from service as literal illustrations. My dread that oldies involving the word 'heart' would be shoehorned into the story line about Darin's rheumatic fever was temporarily tamped. Instead, 'Just in Time' begins as a straight-ahead floor show in the Las Vegas style, with Groff, in a perfectly cut suit by Catherine Zuber, buzzing between song and patter while seducing the audience. The set designer Derek McLane has converted Circle's awkward oval into a sumptuous supper club, with silver Austrian draperies covering the walls and clinking glasses of booze at the cabaret tables. A bandstand at one end of the playing space, and banquettes surrounding a mini-stage at the other, suggest a blank showbiz canvas, with flashy gold-and-indigo lighting by Justin Townsend to color it in. Darin, it seems, will be merely a pretext. True, the opening number — Steve Allen's brassy 'This Could Be the Start of Something' — is a song Darin famously sang. And so is the swingy hit 'Beyond the Sea,' which comes next. But in big-wow arrangements by Andrew Resnick for an 11-piece combo, they illustrate little more than themselves and the entertainment at hand. At most they suggest Darin subtly, in their desperation masquerading as charm. The relief of that subtlety lasts only a while. 'Beyond the Sea' soon leads us back to Darin's contentious childhood in East Harlem. There, Groff drops his own persona and enters that of the sickly boy born Walden Robert Cassotto in 1936, indulged by the maternal Polly (Michele Pawk) and fretted over by the sisterly Nina (Emily Bergl). Nina's fretting is justifiable: A doctor has decreed that Bobby will not live past 16. Trying to keep him from excitement, she treats him like an invalid. But Polly, a former vaudeville performer, wants him to make the most of whatever time and gift he has; if he's an invalid, she says, 'he's an invalid who's going to be a star.' She teaches him songs and how to perform them: Hands, she says, are 'your real backup singers.' That's a neat touch because we've already seen in Groff's performance how the adult Darin absorbed the lesson. His madly expressive hands do nearly as much dancing (choreography by Shannon Lewis) as the three women in silver-spangled minidresses who accompany his bandstand numbers. The scenes of his early professional efforts maintain some of that charm, and the songs are legitimate examples of what Darin was singing at the time. (Mostly jingles and rip-offs.) But as the emotional biography takes precedence, jukebox-itis sets in and the tone goes haywire. Darin's youthful courtship of the rising star Connie Francis (Gracie Lawrence) is played for laughs, even the part about her mafia-adjacent father threatening to kill him. Still, by hook or crook, it leads to her singing her 1958 megahit weepie 'Who's Sorry Now?' More troubling is the show's treatment of his subsequent relationship with the teenage Sandra Dee (Erika Henningsen). Introduced inaptly with Darin's self-pitying 'Not for Me,' Dee, already the bubbly star of 'Gidget,' quickly devolves into a hard-drinking virago after their marriage and the birth of their son, Dodd. But unlike Darin, Dee is given no pass. That she was repeatedly raped by her stepfather over a period of four years, starting when she was 8, is relegated to a throwaway line ('You don't know what happened when I was a kid') that no one new to the story could possibly interpret. Though 'Just in Time' does not completely whitewash Darin — it has been produced with the cooperation of Dodd Darin, whose 1994 book about his parents is very frank — the show does seek to soften and in that way excuse him. A dotted line connects his mistreatment of Dee to his chaotic upbringing. The narcissism others accuse him of — which he calls egotism, thinking that's better — is chalked up to perfectionism. The constant churn in his relationship with collaborators, managers and record executives, played by various ensemble members, is depreciated as the cost of artistic growth; he's a savant and a dreamer, not just a purveyor of novelty numbers like 'Splish Splash.' Some of these tonal problems are mitigated by having Groff play him: We like Darin more than the facts (and his scary hit 'Mack the Knife') suggest we should. That was also the case in Groff's performance as the (fictional) songwriter Franklin Shepard in 'Merrily We Roll Along,' for which he won a Tony Award last year. In some ways reversing the trajectory of that character, Darin bumps from idealism to disillusion via divorce and alienation. But Shepard is a successful antihero because 'Merrily' is carefully constructed to dramatize the path. A quasi-concert cannot do that, especially with songs written for other reasons. As the angst of the story takes over, and the tunestack dives into B-sides, 'Just in Time' succumbs to narrative arthritis, its plot points scraping against each other and baring the show's revue-like bones. (It began as a 2018 'Lyrics & Lyricists' concert at the 92nd Street Y, based on a concept by Ted Chapin.) All the symptoms are there: the collar-yanking segues, the undigested Wikipedia backfill, the unlikely news bulletins. 'There's important things going on in the world,' Darin helpfully informs Dee and us. 'Vietnam. Civil rights.' By the time of his death, at 37, in 1973, the show's final descent into lugubrious eulogy — 'He finished six years of grammar school in four years and got a scholarship medal besides,' Nina says — has swamped its early buoyancy with platitudes. Yet Groff is still swimming, right to the end. Dismayed as I was to endure so much else, I have to admit he's giving one of Broadway's best performances. So who's sorry now?
Express Tribune
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
'Black Mirror' Season 6 recap: Everything to know ahead of Season 7 Premiere on Netflix
Black Mirror Season 6, released on June 15, 2023, featured five stand-alone episodes, each delving into techno-paranoia through unique and unsettling storylines led by creator Charlie Brooker with executive production by Annabel Jones. The premiere episode, Joan Is Awful, stars Annie Murphy as a woman whose life becomes the subject of a streaming series produced by a platform resembling Netflix. The story reveals that both Joan and her portrayer, played by Salma Hayek, are AI-generated constructs within a layered simulation. In Loch Henry, a documentary filmmaking trip to a small Scottish town uncovers chilling secrets when a couple learns that the protagonist's parents were involved in a series of tourist murders. The episode concludes with a true crime documentary being released about the case. Beyond the Sea presents an alternate 1969 where astronauts transfer consciousness into Earth-based replicas. Emotional trauma and personal boundaries unravel, culminating in betrayal and tragedy when one astronaut murders the other's family while using his replica. Mazey Day follows a paparazzo tracking a troubled actress who turns out to be a werewolf. The pursuit ends in a violent confrontation as the supernatural element blends with critiques of media intrusion and celebrity culture. The season ends with Demon 79, set in late 1970s England. A shop worker is told by a demon that she must kill three people to avert the apocalypse. Despite two completed murders, her failure to kill a far-right politician results in nuclear war. Black Mirror returns to Netflix with a seventh season on April 10, 2025 at 3 a.m. ET / midnight PT.
