Jonathan Groff says Gavin Creel 'changed my life,' explains why Looking scared him

Looking, Hamilton, and Frozen superstar Jonathan Groff had a hilarious and emotional interview on the Good Hang with Amy Poehler podcast in which he recalled meeting (and subsequently dating) Gavin Creel, drew interesting parallels between his breakout role in Spring Awakening and his Tony Award-winning performance in Merrily We Roll Along, and had an all-out kiki with Amy Poehler — causing the two of them to laugh from start to finish.

The actor, who's still dazzling audiences every night on Broadway's Just in Time but has set his final performance date for March 29, had an in-depth conversation with Poehler about his coming-out experience, his long-standing friendships with costars from past projects, why he wasn't sure about starring on HBO's Looking, and how meeting Gavin Creel changed his life forever.

Groff's sleep schedule is a 'nightmare' to Poehler.

"Before we get into your life, I need to get in to sleep, because it's my favorite thing to talk about," Poehler says. "What time do you go to bed?"

Groff replies, "OK, so usually the show…"

"I'm not going to like this," Poehler chimes in, immediately triggered, which prompts Groff to laugh out loud. "I'm already worried. The show's over at what, 10, if you're lucky?!"

"The show's over at 10:30," Groff explains.

Poehler: "Oh, God."

"And then, oftentimes, part of the fun is having people backstage," the actor goes on.

Poehler: "Nightmare. True nightmare."

"And then I'll talk to people and hang for a bit in the dressing room," Groff keeps going, trying to hold himself from laughing the whole time. He adds, "Then I get on my bicycle."

Poehler is gagged, "You bike home?!"

"Yep," Groff replies, confidently.

Poehler wonders, "Should people know that?!"

Groff starts laughing and doesn't know what to respond.

Poehler decides, "We could cut that." She tells the listeners: "Don't follow him!"

"Suddenly I'm being followed by people on bikes," Groff considers, still giggling.

Groff recalls dressing up as Mary Poppins as a kid. Poehler thinks he inspired 'Oh, Mary!'

Poehler tells Groff that she loved his 2024 Tony Award-winning speech for Best Actor in a Musical from playing Franklin Shepard on the Broadway revival of Merrily We Roll Along. Specifically, it stood out to Poehler that Groff thanked his family for letting him be his most authentic self.

"And they really did that, right?" Poehler asks. "You were exactly that: Singing and dressing up and getting to do stuff. And everybody was like, 'That's our Jonathan.'"

Groff replies, "Yes! We have this VHS of me dressed as Mary Poppins; I was three. My mom and my dad, they… I had lipstick, and a carpet bag, and a hat, and a dress. And we're on my grandfather's Mennonite farm."

Groff recalls being in full Mary Poppins costume and being encouraged by his grandfather (Wade Groff) in the background of the VHS tapes. "You can hear him going, 'Mary…' and 'Oh, Mary…'" Groff says, "Not even really clocking the gay joke that he's making by calling me 'Mary.'"

"Which then became a very successful Broadway show," Poehler notes.

Groff bursts into laughter again. "Exactly!"

"And that's where Cole [Escola] got the idea!" Poehler adds.

Groff loses it, and even people behind the cameras are now laughing, too.

A tale of two divas who played Dorothy.

We're going to need a Feud season for this one.

After discussing Groff as Mary Poppins, Poehler addresses the elephant in the room: As little kids, she and Groff have both played Dorothy Gale in school productions of The Wizard of Oz. The gag!!!

Poehler asks, "I heard… Did you play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz?"

"Yeah," Groff replies.

"I did as well," Poehler says, approaching the topic as having the biggest importance in the world. "What age did you play Dorothy?"

Groff goes along, "At four."

"And what did you bring to the role?" Poehler inquires, barely able to hold herself from laughing, while Groff and everyone else in the room is already cracking up for the seriousness of it all. "How did you see her?"

Groff muses, "I brought a lot of… I brought a real, like… I was screaming a lot. It was a lot of me screaming like, 'AHHH!!!'"

"Because of the tornado," Poehler observes. "You were playing the tornado."

Groff agrees, "Yeah, I was very tornado-forward in my interpretation."

"Interesting," Poehler replies, deadpan. "So you were interested in the trauma before the Yellow Brick Road."

Groff confirmed, "Yes. I held that. I carried it through."

Groff then asks, "What was your on-ramp?"

"Thank you for asking," Poehler immediately replies, feigning preciousness about such an important topic. "I was in fourth grade, so a little older, and a little wiser. I knew we were going to be OK. But I was really interested in the follow-me aspect. I was very much like, 'Come on! Over here!'"

Groff laughs out loud. "Leading lady!" he adds.

"I was very into like, 'Follow the Yellow Brick Road!' Like, 'Let's go!'" Poehler explains. "The 'let's go' of Dorothy. I loved the skipping, and the running around, and just the journey part. I was really into that part."

Poehler continues, "And the tornado… I just went internal. I just played it really small."

"You were more like the phoenix rising from the ashes," Groff quips once he gets a chance to stop laughing. "You were like leading everyone somewhere."

Poehler surmises, "It was just in my eyes. The tornado was in my eyes."

"It was like a quick look," Groff entertained. "A blink-and-you-miss-it."

Poehler recalls as her reaction to the tornado: "I went, 'What was that…?'"

"Wait, is she okay?" Groff says, impersonating Poehler's take as Dorothy. "But then immediately you were leading us. Ugh, so much smarter! Fuck."

Poehler says, "Lions and tigers and bears…"

Groff continues, "Oh my!" and lets out his signature little-boy-playing-Dorothy scream, which is just hilarious.

Groff credits 'Spring Awakening' for empowering him to come out.

Groff describes his experience on Spring Awakening as "getting picked up and put somewhere else." He recalls a phone call with his father, the night before a callback for the show, feeling like he couldn't do it but would do it if given the chance. After being given the opportunity, Groff describes his run on that show as "almost religious."

"Because you're repeating," Groff explains. "And when you repeat things over and over again, it can change you from the inside out. It taught me how to act, and taught me how to sing, and I was in the closet during that whole show. And I had my 'roommate,' Cody, that was my boyfriend. And when I left that show, I came out of the closet a month later."

"This rebel that was this character — this person that didn't care, didn't let the world define him — this was what I was playing," he notes. "And coming out felt like it would create a dissonance. It was really hard for me to do that, and playing the role in that show allowed me to grow the muscle to be able to do that."

Poehler asks if Groff's family was surprised when he came out of the closet.

After Groff's incredibly earnest story about Spring Awakening and how the show helped him come out as gay, Poehler asks (also earnestly) if Groff's family was surprised. Except that, well, the question sounds a little bit funny given that they had just discussed Groff's upbringing getting dressed up as Mary Poppins, for instance, and playing/screaming like Dorothy Gale.

"Cut to me screaming as Dorothy: 'AHHHH!!!" the actor replies.

Poehler teases, "And Wade [Groff's grandfather] was like, 'Well…'"

As they manage to stop laughing, Groff says that yes, some family members were surprised, indeed. "My dad was surprised. My brother was surprised. I told my brother first."

"That's nice," Poehler notes.

According to Groff, his mother "kind of knew," adding: "It was complicated. Cut to like, two or three Christmases later, and they're handing presents to my boyfriend that's home for the holidays. So it very quickly… It took a minute for them to digest it all, and then, ultimately, it's been great."

Yeah, amazing. So, so much happening in your 20s. Like so much."

Groff and Poehler imagine attending high school together.

Poehler asks Groff if there's an age that he feels like he is, or that he relates to. "Right now I feel like about 15," the actor says, who goes on to imagine a scenario in which he and Poehler are going to high school together. "I feel like we're on high school news. Like, Good morning, everyone! It is December 16th…"

"This is very high school news," Poehler agrees, and she's the one now sweating as she cracks up with Groff. "I'm having a hot flash right now."

Groff goes on, "It's giving high school news station! We're on the morning announcements."

"Both of us would have definitely done morning announcements," Poehler agrees, adding: "I would have had a big crush on you…"

"Oh my god," Groff adds. "I would have been just following your Dorothy lead."

But Poehler circles back to having a crush on Groff, "And people would have been like, 'Jonathan does not have a crush on you, OK? You're not his type.'" Groff completely loses it, laughing. Poehler adds, "And I would have been like, 'I don't know, I think I can get him. I think I can win him over.'"

And then they're both laughing way too hard to respond.

Groff wasn't looking for 'Looking' — let's just say that!

Poehler then asks Groff about his lead role on HBO's Looking, highlighting that it's a "big jump to be coming out, and a few years later, playing a fully realized, sophisticated single man looking for love."

In response, Groff admits that his relationship to joining the show was a process of its own.

"It was like, I'm really riding the wave here, of life, and of progress. When they initially sent me that audition, I said no. I felt scared to be gay on a TV show," Groff recalls. The actor reflects that one thing was "wanting to be out publicly, and another thing to be like eating ass on TV."

Poehler can't help herself but laugh. "Only in films," she jokes, and then theorizes that maybe Groff felt self-conscious about intimate scenes on Looking. However, the actor surprises her, saying that those scenes weren't actually the problem.

"It's funny, because you didn't care," Groff says. "In Spring Awakening, I was like, let's go."

Poehler replies, "That's true. You already did that. You already ate ass in Spring Awakening… In a different way." And they laugh again.

For Groff, intimate scenes felt much safer with women because they "didn't feel like there was as much at stake, and we could really go for it." But that wasn't the case with Looking at all — an HBO series centering gay men having plenty of sex in San Francisco. "When they send me these scripts, and it's actually how I am, it then does become a little bit scary," Groff reflects.

So, what changed his mind? Andrew Haigh, of course!

Even after signing on to do 'Looking,' Groff's anxiety remains.

Groff changed his mind about Looking once Andrew Haigh was brought on to direct. "I'd seen his film Weekend at the IFC on Sixth Avenue, and I was a wreck. Like, crying in that movie theater, because I'd never seen something that felt so real. So when he became attached as the director, then I was like, 'No-brainer, yes, I want to do this. I want to work with this man.'"

Nonetheless, Groff recalls that his audition process still had him shaking and sweating from nerves. "My whole body went hot, and I was blushing," he says. "It was like Spring Awakening — another role that was almost like a ring-of-fire birth into a new version of self… like therapy."

"Like a somatic exorcism, and you knew it was right because you were feeling it so big," Poehler remarked.

Groff agrees, recalling that he was "still full of shame," and had even promised his parents that he wouldn't be going on parades and holding Pride flags. But Groff then laughs at the juxtaposition of those commitments, as he did go on to star on HBO's Looking and was seen "eating ass on television," and also appeared as Grand Marshall at a New York Pride Parade donning "a rainbow sash."

Groff recalls how Gavin Creel changed his life forever.

In a much more emotional portion of the interview, Poehler asked Groff if he could say something Gavin Creel, who she never got to meet, but always heard amazing things from the people who did know him.

(Editor's note: Gavin Creel was an actor and singer best known for his work in theater — leaving his mark on shows like Thoroughly Modern Millie, La Cage aux Folles, Hair, The Book of Mormon, 2017's Hello, Dolly!, and 2022's Into the Woods. The actor was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in July 2024 and died from the disease just a few months later, in September.)

Groff answers Poehler's question saying that Creel changed his life, and goes on to recall a special memory that he still holds of his late peer, eventual ex-partner, and friend.

"You know, I also dated Gavin, we had a whole relationship, and he's what gave me the confidence to come out of the closet. He changed my life," Groff recalls. "But the first time I ever met him was at the stage door of Thoroughly Modern Millie, which he was in, opposite Sutton [Foster]. He played the role of Jimmy. And I would wait at the stage door. I was in high school — the actors would come out, and I was, like, crazy. I just couldn't believe they were real people."

Groff says, "Gavin comes out and signs the program, and I was like, 'Whoa.' Then he goes back into the stage door, and Marc Kudisch, who played Trevor Graydon, comes out. He's signing my program, and Gavin comes back out the stage door with an apple in his mouth. He walks past Marc Kudisch, grabs his ass, and Marc goes like, 'Oh!' And looks as Gavin is walking by. And Gavin just looks at him and winks, with the apple still in his mouth."

"And I was like, 'I have got to be in the theater,'" Groff remarks, thinking back. "What is this?! What is happening here where this beautiful man, with an apple in his mouth, is like tapping the ass of this other man?! I was like, 'I've got to get into this world!' That was the first time I like met Gavin."

Watch the full interview with Jonathan Groff on the Good Hang with Amy Poehler podcast above. Audio versions are also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, and The Ringer.

Jonathan Groff is set to end his run on Broadway's Just in Time on March 29. Starting on April 21, Jeremy Jordan will take over the lead role of Bobby Darin. For tickets and more information, visit JustInTimeBroadway.com.