Not like, ‘What’s it like to have sex with Jonathan Groff every night?’
So I just felt really comfortable with them.
That’s only one of them.
Jonathan Groff and Lea Michele in ‘Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known’.HBO
There’s a lot of other things."
“That was like a Thursday,” Michele said with a laugh.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When you were first approached about doing the concert and documentary, was it immediate yes?
‘Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known’.HBO
Or was there some apprehension?
LEA MICHELE:This was all because of Lauren Pritchard, who is inSpring Awakeningand she plays Ilsa.
We need to all get together."
‘Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known’.HBO
So they had this idea and this dream of getting the whole cast together.
Of course my immediate answer was like, “Absolutely yes!”
but I really didn’t know if it would be possible.
We were still deep in the pandemic.
The cast is spread out all across the country.
You tell the story.
JONATHAN GROFF:Immediately.
It was like not even a hesitation.
It still boggles my mind that we had the entire original cast and the entire original band.
Our director, Michael Mayer, came back to direct the night.
Brian Ronan, our sound designer, was there.
We had Christine Jones, our set designer; we had Susan Hilferty, who did costumes.
Kevin Adams did the lighting, who [originally] lit the show.
The entire team came back.
It was a really beautiful thing because everyone was feeling very reflective during the lockdown.
Everybody’s schedules were free because of the lockdown.
It was beautiful timing, and the scenario never would have happened without the pause of COVID.
Look what happened here.
Let’s revisit this.
Let’s revisit each other."
And I was like, “We have to film it!”
Radical Media came and filmed the entire experience.
It’s now bringing this incredible musical to this generation.
Had you sang any of these songs together since you left the show?
MICHELE:What?!
MICHELE:Oh, for Michael Mayer?
GROFF:For [producer] Tom Hulce.
MICHELE:Right, But Michael asked us to do it.
It was a benefit for Tom Hulce, who is our producer ofSpring Awakening.
I was pregnant but we didn’t know.
GROFF:And we started singing it and I was like… [vocalizes a sob].
This was our experience during the reunion concert as well.
It was hard as an actor to have to go to the depths of that every night emotionally.
I’m ready to move on.
I just want to do something happy.
Sure enough, we ended up doingGleetogether a month later.
You share some very frank, even explicit stuff here.
GROFF:It all came together so fast.
That was perhaps part of it.
And it was so emotional to come back.
There was something about having cameras on us as adults looking back.
When we were kids, people felt uncomfortable to ask us certain questions about the show.
We felt really lucky to be able to reflect on it in that way.
I was so thrilled when I watched it for the first time.
He really got everybody’s essence and personality.
Did people know about that before or right away, or was it a revelation here?
MICHELE:No, no one knew.
I saw the documentary for the first time last night.
We were reuniting, and it was really wonderful and such a joyous healing experience.
Melchior, as the one left standing, has the biggest growth and character arc.
Jonathan, did you feel you understood him better now with 15 years of perspective and maturity?
GROFF:The character of Melchior felt, when I was 21, like everything I wished I was.
He gave me a personal inner strength and confidence that I didn’t have in my real life.
Coming back to do it again, I felt it again.
It was like touching a power source or touching on truth.
He doesn’t let the world define him.
He’s so strong, he’s so outspoken.
I could use a reminder of him in my life every day.
Singing, “Oh, you’re going to be wounded.
But there was a familiarity and almost an empowerment.
These characters are so complex and so grown up.
That we got to play these characters at such a young age, they’re still challenging as adults.
Emotionally, the last 10 minutes of the show is insane.
Because it looks magical.
I was dying to be in that street.
GROFF:It was so cooooool.
The audience was a huge part of that night.
And to go out the stage door.
Because we were the same age as the fans.
That was like a whiff of that memory.
You both have had incredible careers since the show.
You don’t always see that happen.
What was in the water with you all?
MICHELE:It really comes back to Michael Mayer and Jim Carnahan, our casting director.
They were able to look beyond all of the hair gel in Jonathan’s hair.
He had this star quality behind all of that; Michael has an eye for that.
She’s such a force.
GROFF:When you ask a lot of young people, they rise to the challenge.
There’s a level of respect that those adults on that creative team had for young people.
That brought out the best in us.
When I left that show, I thought, “That’s raising the bar for theater.
It can be this good.
It should be this challenging.
You should take risks like this.”
In our careers, that’s what we learned.
That was our training.
Now we expect risk-taking in the future.
