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[0:00] Bobby Steggert: I'm Bobby Steggert, and this is The Quiet Part Out Loud.

[0:15] Bobby Steggert: Conformity to societal norms is all about staying safe, within the bounds of external expectations or pressures, so as to be successful in the systems that dominate, and to avoid being singled out or punished for being different in any egregious way. And as societies change and progress, or in today's context, regress, it takes a significant measure of bravery to refuse those norms for a more conspicuous but also more authentic path. I grew up a conformist in most ways. Anchored against my ever-present knowledge of difference, I was determined to follow the prescribed rules, and to follow them hard. It never occurred to me to consider anything other than being a perfect student, attending a four-year university, wearing polo shirts, and at least pretending to be straight for as long as I could.

Even within a career as an actor, which some would say is the most non-conformist thing about me, I spent many of those early years fretting about how to convince the world that I was just masculine enough to play those more legitimate roles over the gay ones. It's taken me a lifetime to reject many of those norms, and still, today, there's sometimes a vestigial tug at me when I'm making a choice that could be considered abnormal to some. It was the tension between this conformity and the rage of that repression I privately carried with me for so many years that I brought to my core understanding of who Younger Brother and Ragtime was. I believed him to be a deeply frustrated outsider who, for twenty years, had been forced into a shape and a family that he found intolerable.

He was a literal powder keg searching for a match, and he certainly found more than one. As the next revival of Ragtime was being planned for a Lincoln Center run, I found myself so curious to see the show now, when our culture is changing as rapidly and chaotically today as it was at the beginning of the twentieth century. It's today more than ever that we feel the century spinning, when societal forces are beginning to crash together in ways we may have been naive enough to think would not happen in our lifetimes. I was equally fascinated to learn who Ben Levi Ross is, this revival's Younger Brother, how he came into this world, and how it has shaped his understanding of the story and character.

I've seen Ben in other shows, and he is an extraordinary artist, an undeniable one. And I sensed in him something very different from me, a spirit that has always refused to conform to the way things are supposed to go. And I'm happy to say that I was right in many ways. Ben grew up in Los Angeles in the Obama era, to a family and community of artists and creative people. He followed paths that felt right, developing his personal identity out of the strict edicts of the musical theater training world. He dropped out of Carnegie Mellon to start working early. And while he has some of the same frustrations with some of the industry's lack of imagination, he has always known exactly who he was as an actor.

We had this conversation a few months back before he had the chance to fully know who his Younger Brother will be. But we discover a fascinating contrast in our experience. Whereas I was always aware of the personal injustice that grew into a larger sense of the world's inequities, Ben grew up fairly innocent to the darker forces that have begun to threaten our society. And it is only more recently that he has awakened to much of the hate and fear that was predominantly absent in his childhood. I can't wait to see how that fundamental difference informs his performance. Ben reveals himself to be someone who didn't need the rules as much as I did. And really, I envy him that. But more so, I admire him, and I'm rooting for him.

[4:01] Bobby Steggert: What's really interesting is that we have these weird things in common. Obviously, the big one is getting to play Younger Brother on Broadway, and I'm so excited for you about that. But the other weird thing is that my first job ever as an actor, I was 13, and Carrie Preston and I played siblings in a movie.

[4:24] Ben Levi Ross: Are you serious?

[4:25] Bobby Steggert: I'm very serious. She played my older sister.

[4:28] Ben Levi Ross: What movie?

[4:29] Bobby Steggert: This really dumb movie called For Richer or Poorer, starring Tim Allen and Kirstie Alley.

[4:34] Ben Levi Ross: I'm immediately finding this and watching when we get off the phone.

[4:39] Bobby Steggert: But she was really influential to me. When I moved to New York, she was one of the first adults I came out to.

[4:45] Ben Levi Ross: Oh my god.

[4:46] Bobby Steggert: Yeah.

[4:47] Ben Levi Ross: Wow.

[4:48] Bobby Steggert: Have you had a good time playing her adult son?

[4:51] Ben Levi Ross: The best. It's my first time on TV, and I'm learning so much how to just behave when you're exhausted. I know that's a weird first thing to say about someone, but she shot, I think, 20 episodes last season. She was shooting from mid-summer 2024 to the end of March of 2025, five days a week, with almost every day, probably, 4:30, 5 a.m. pickups.

[5:17] Bobby Steggert: That's crazy.

[5:18] Ben Levi Ross: Shooting all night, because that's just the vibe of the semi-procedural world, which is what Ellsworth fits into, and is kind and memorized and never snaps at anyone. And it wants to make it such a good environment for all the guest stars every week, because that show every week has a pretty special guest star that plays the murderer. And she just creates such a warm environment that I think makes everyone want to do their best, and makes me feel really calm and in my body and relaxed on set.

[5:52] Bobby Steggert: That's the entire battle, just to be in your body and present in film work like that.

[5:58] Ben Levi Ross: Yes, I agree.

[5:59] Bobby Steggert: Tell her I say hi. I haven't spoken to her in so long.

[6:01] Ben Levi Ross: Oh, I will. All right, so this is how I would love to begin learning about you. I was thinking about my relationship to Ragtime, and I remember my way in to the character was just the frustration I felt as a queer person growing up in the 80s and 90s, and the conformity that was forced upon me. And the rage that started building in terms of feeling like you have to follow all the rules until it becomes unsustainable. That was the emotional tension that I really understood in the role. And also, this deep need to belong somewhere. And so, from afar, I don't know you, but I feel somewhat connected to you for the reasons we've discussed. And you read to me as someone who is non-conformist. And I'm wondering what that means to you, if I'm right, if I'm wrong. I would just love for you to tell me your origin story in terms of that lens.

[6:52] Ben Levi Ross: Gosh, yeah. First of all, as far as my exploration of this part and this show goes, I really feel like I'm at the beginning of it because I did it at City Center. And obviously, I've known the score and loved the show and have been listening to it for so long, but I've never done a production of it before City Center. And I haven't really, before that, spent a lot of time with the text. And so, it really was about two weeks of serious looking at it. And so, I feel like the beauty of that was that all of us got to just take our initial gut feeling and our gut intuition and run with that, which was nice because I wasn't really overthinking anything. But at the same time, of course, I'm excited to have a month-long rehearsal process and actually get to really make those connections that I feel like you're talking about with where it lives within me and those connections to my personhood. But everything that you're saying immediately, I'm like, that is very interesting. That's, I'm like, totally. Let me ask you about Parallels.

[7:56] Bobby Steggert: Yeah. Are you queer yourself and did you grow up with that knowledge?

[8:00] Ben Levi Ross: Yes.

[8:01] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah. I grew up in Santa Monica, California in the Obama era. It was all like, hope, forward, like, no on Prop 8. That was like my childhood. And I've actually been thinking about this a lot recently because with the rise of this era of Trumpism, I feel like the normal story when I was a kid and I was like hearing older queer people talk about their coming out and how their childhood really was the time of like strife. And they grew up into adulthood and they found self-acceptance and they found acceptance within their communities almost feels like the tides are changing in a very violent, different way where I grew up in a place that felt very safe and comfortable. And there was a here and there little sort of homophobic or misogynistic things that I would come across. But not until really this year have I experienced violence. And the last couple of months, I'm telling you, I have not been chill in New York for me. Like I have been spit on.

[9:08] Bobby Steggert: Oh my God.

[9:09] Ben Levi Ross: Like screamed. Yeah. Like in the last few months. And it hasn't really it's more than I'm just like, wow, that's crazy that this is happening right now on like the Upper West Side. And me and my ex-boyfriend lived in New York together for five years. And like, I didn't experience that with him.

[9:28] Bobby Steggert: And what was the scenario in which it happened? Were you just walking on the sidewalk?

[9:30] Ben Levi Ross: It was like sitting on the Upper West Side. The reason I was thinking about it was because it's happened recently, one after the other. And both times it's been young kids, teenagers. And I just think it's really interesting because that's what we saw, right? The swing right was like because like young boys were being indoctrinated by far right Internet content. And this kind of is a way and then the connection that I'm thinking about with Ragtime, which is that I think the feeling that Younger Brother has of this sort of wanting to break out of this conformity. I wonder if he was in 2025 and the Internet existed, would he just be like another victim of like far right indoctrination? Because of the really emotional provocativeness of those forces.

[10:24] Bobby Steggert: Exactly.

[10:25] Ben Levi Ross: And instead he has Emma Goldman, like instead he has someone calling to him and a movement calling to him that takes that same emotional energy, that anger, and that just pent up frustration. And it's called another direction.

[10:39] Bobby Steggert: You're right, because he could just as well have been to the world of Evelyn Nesbit. If that's right where to begin, and it could end there, too.

[10:49] Ben Levi Ross: Exactly. So yeah, so that's just been like that trajectory of my life, how I like came from an incredibly liberal seeming sort of bubble. And then I went to college for a year before I dropped out and came to New York and then was just like working in theatre. After that, ever since, I didn't really ever face specific kinds of adversity, but it never really had to do with my sexual identity or even gender identity. And now I'm like, what's really going on? You know, what's a really direct parallel is that the character awakes to an injustice, an injustice he had no idea existed. And you're not saying that homophobia never existed, but your personal experience has been somewhat of an awakening.

[11:34] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah, yeah. Not to say that I didn't ever, there are people who will make your life a living hell anywhere you grow up. That's just a given. But I think I always used to, I was really confident, actually, in high school, nothing could really phase me in high school. And actually, as I've gotten older, that's been tested. Like, as I grew up, as I worked, as I was like, in the industry, I started to really feel insecurities around kind of everything. And I was like, what? Why? Why is that? I feel like it's usually the opposite for people. People are usually like, in their youth, so insecure and then grow up and they're like, I love my flaws. And now I don't know if it has to do with age. I think it has to do with our culture.

I think it just has to do with the internet and our phones and constantly looking at ourselves and putting ourselves on self-tapes all the time and scrutinizing our faces, scrutinizing our voices, our vocal patterns, our everything is like much, it's amplified.

[12:33] Bobby Steggert: Ah, you're watching yourself in a way you weren't as a kid.

[12:36] Ben Levi Ross: Is that what you're saying?

[12:37] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think so, because growing up in LA, it was all about the like, social capital for me was like the things that you liked. It's like a really stupid example, but in the movie and the book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which is my favorite book when I was like 14, the friend group would exchange music. Like the music taste was such a big part of if you were accepted into a friend group. And I will say that that was like my experience with my friends. It was all about what you were listening to, what you were watching. We were going to a silent movie cinema and watching like documentaries about Kathleen Hannah when we were like 16. We were little bitches. It was really annoying, but it had nothing to do really with the way you looked. It had nothing to do with how you were born. It had to do with the cachet. And that, I don't know, I feel like that's sadly not the case anymore.

[13:27] Bobby Steggert: Yeah. And what you're speaking to is that this is much bigger than people in the entertainment industry. It's all young people today, except of course, you are having to do the self-tapes and the pictures and all the things that make you much more front-facing.

[13:38] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah.

[13:58] Ben Levi Ross: Definitely because of my parents. I come from a very artful household. Like, my parents met standing on line, I just think, for a Woody Allen movie in the 80s. Did either of them get it? They did not. They did not. No. Both of them, they gave up their acting dreams, I think, in the early 90s. But, and but, they are huge theater lovers, huge art lovers, love music. My house was, like, full of music. My sister, who's 60 years older than me, was, like, an opera singer. She did vocal performance and is now an elementary school music teacher. So I really feel like I learned how to sing and appreciate, honestly, anything, just because my house was constantly flooded with content, with great stuff, just, like, with great taste.

You're obviously a fantastic musician. Did you learn any instruments growing up? Or were you just singing? I played piano. I was put in piano lessons really young, thanks to my parents wanting me and my sister to do that. But I stopped lessons, and I'm really sad that I did, but I stopped lessons when I was, like, 13. And I pretty much just kept up with piano by ear by myself. So I have, like, a rudimentary understanding of sheet music and actually classical training. But I do feel like I have a music project on my own, and I write everything by ear. And that is because of my parents. And I don't know. Some of it was nature. I was probably just born confident and wanting to be on stage. But also, that feeling was, like, nurtured.

And totally, they allowed me to do that in a way that didn't make me a complete asshole, like, nightmare narcissist. And then there's, like, a lot of things, I think, in life that lead one in their 20s to become who they are. But I find that I have been nitpicking myself over the last six, seven years, in a way that I just didn't when I was a teenager.

[15:57] Bobby Steggert: That's so fascinating. It is such a river to the cliché. What are you having the most trouble nitpicking right now?

[16:02] Ben Levi Ross: Oh, God, it's literally just like my face, which is so crazy. I just am constantly complaining to people in my life. And they're like, you actually have to stop. It's a sickness. I also it's I really think that it's like, a gay guy thing to of course, gay men in my life do this. And I'm like, if we all just agree to like, stop, maybe we will stop this echo chamber. A lot of my clients, what they struggle with is that they're comparing especially their bodies actually more than their faces to AI generated content now of the perfect male body. And so it's comparison to fantasy, which is just like violence.

[16:44] Bobby Steggert: Yes, definitely. Does it feel the same in terms of how you are unfairly assessing yourself?

[16:51] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah, yeah. The thing too, is that like, I think a lot of people in my life, this is what has been reflected back to me. They're like you to a lot of is like, fulfill technically, a very like beauty standard that a lot of people strive to in terms of your white, you're like, a fucking young, when gay, you know what I mean? Like, technically, like the boxes that are checked. And so they're like, you need to talk about a term, check your privilege, shut up about that. And I recognize that. And at the same time, I'm also like, yeah, I am also comparing myself to something that is totally unachievable. There's always going to be something that we're chasing, like, there's always going to be something that's totally out of reach for us.

[17:39] Bobby Steggert: Would this be I mean, you can't know, because this is your reality. But does this feel like an actor thing? Because I certainly went through very similar insecurities. And I look back on them being so unnecessary only in retrospect, or would this just be like a Ben thing at this point in his life?

[17:53] Ben Levi Ross: Actor thing, more than anything, I think maybe some of it has to do with sexuality and like wanting to be seen in a certain way in the world. But more than anything, this is what I think it is. This is really what I think it is. I was like, unhappy with the jobs I was getting and wasn't getting a few years ago. And all I started to do was compare myself to the people that were doing the things that I wanted to be doing. And instead of just being like, maybe it's because none of those things were right for you as an artist, I was like, must be my face must be this thing that I can't change.

[18:34] Bobby Steggert: It was a concrete thing that you could attach the insecurity to.

[18:34] Ben Levi Ross: Exactly, exactly. So then it was this cycle of Okay, well, then how can I get myself to make this as much of a blank slate as possible, so that people can actually see the work that I'm doing?

[18:49] Bobby Steggert: Have you been able to obviously, you're getting really good work now? Or have you been able to offset that by being outside of whatever that box is and trusting who you are in a different way?

[18:58] Ben Levi Ross: I think I'm like getting there more and more every day. That's the non conformity that can really work for someone.

[19:02] Bobby Steggert: Yes, totally. Because truly, yeah, the conformity in this situation is the sort of like felt hate talking.

[19:09] Ben Levi Ross: Absolutely. It's the standard. And the sort of like conforming is just being like, yeah, but I'm so ugly, you know, just just saying like awful things about yourself. Because that's what you hear other people. Honestly, Ben, I didn't really think I was beautiful until I quit acting.

[19:33] Bobby Steggert: It's so dark. God, what are we doing? And it just sucks. Because I'm like, I really do like this. That's what I like doing.

[19:39] Ben Levi Ross: Okay, but here's something that's special, right? You're a theater actor, you're doing film too. But on the stage, you get to completely release, you're not getting the chance to watch yourself.

[19:48] Bobby Steggert: Yes. And isn't that freedom?

[19:48] Ben Levi Ross: 100%. It exists. But until someone takes a damn iPhone video and then posts it on TikTok, and then you're everywhere. It's like you just it's inescapable in 2025. But you are right that it is like the most ephemeral medium of this craft.

[20:01] Bobby Steggert: Do you ever doubt other aspects, intelligence, talent, or the other big pillars of who we see ourselves to be?

[20:08] Ben Levi Ross: Totally, definitely. With my therapist, early on, I was like, not a pessimist. I'm a realist. I like know the things that I bring to something. And I know the things that I don't. So I'm like really confident in the things that I think I'm really good at. And I'm not gonna go for the things that I like don't think are. She was like, do you think that's like self limiting in any way? And I was like, probably. But I don't know.

[20:36] Bobby Steggert: You know what I really regret? I guess I'm like 15-20 years ahead of you. I really regret all the energy I put into pursuing roles that were just classically masculine and feeling like that was a job I had to prove to myself and others that I could fulfill. The world's changing. And so is the industry. And I just wonder if you ever deal with that this.

[20:58] Ben Levi Ross: Oh, God, I need to prove that there's a masculinity in me that is more marketable in some way.

[21:04] Ben Levi Ross: 100% 100%. However, that's like part of this quote unquote realist that I like think of myself as this is funny. If I like get an audition for something, and I see that it's going to be a straight love interest that includes some sort of needed, classic masculine aspect. I'm like, I'm not going to get this. Unless this character is sick, anxious, depressed. Yeah, like dying on a hospital bed. I'm not even kidding. If this person is in love with a woman, but is like, frail and dying, or has an anxiety disorder, or is wildly depressed, or is like, crazy, like a psychopath, and like a murderer, you know what I mean? And I'm like, this is because people can only believe an effeminate gay man is straight, if he is one of those things, which has to do with weakness.

[21:56] Bobby Steggert: I was in Dear Evan Hansen for so many years, and it's different on stage, but he was like, a love interest of Zoe on stage, and he had a girlfriend and I feel like they ended up casting mostly gay men in that role for a couple reasons, but one of them being like, we were believable as highly anxious people, while at the same time, that sort of mental weakness allowed people to forgive a sibilant F while they were like, kissing a woman.

[22:24] Ben Levi Ross: Were these conscious thoughts when you were a young person doing that show?

[22:28] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah, they were. Because still, while I was doing the show, I was auditioning for other things, and I was noticing the pattern of like, never getting any, unless it was like a gay part, or it was one of the other things that I had listed.

[22:42] Bobby Steggert: What I think is beautiful is that if I were in that position, I would have just, talk about conformity, I would have just been beating myself up for the knowledge of that sort of dynamic you're describing. It sounds like you were able to see it, and to at least defy it in your own mind? Or was it something that also felt hurtful towards you?

[23:02] Ben Levi Ross: I mean, whether or not what I'm saying is totally true. These were just like patterns that I was recognizing. And I wrote one of the songs on my album as Boychik that I wrote was called Soft. And it was about a certain level of nonconformity, I guess, because the lyrics are, I'm not soft. I don't want to be soft. I've got jagged edges all around. I've got shaggy edges all around. And the least soft, the people with the hardest spines I'd ever met were queer, were beautiful, strong queer people. And I felt pigeonholed into these. Even in Tick Tick Boom, I was playing someone who had AIDS. And it was a small part, so they didn't really get to go into the psyche of it. But I just found myself like, damn, I'm going from someone who wanted to kill themselves to like laying in a hospital bed with like lesions all over my face. I did a short film where I was feeling like very insecure about my gender identity. I don't know, I just found that I was like playing all of these really hurt people.

[24:15] Bobby Steggert: It's so common that when we inhabit these psychologies over and over again, and these different roles that they do inform us and cosplaying these people made you feel softer, more vulnerable, more hurt.

[24:23] Ben Levi Ross: I don't know if it's made me feel more hurt. It has definitely just deepened like a well of feeling within me. But maybe like, if subsequently, like unintentionally hurt me to know that like, maybe that's how I'm seen at least by a select number of casting directors. But as I go on, here's the thing. It's not totally true, because now I've played a lot of other things.

[24:50] Bobby Steggert: Oh, he ends the show in great power.

[24:52] Ben Levi Ross: 100%. And The Connector, which was a show I did last year at MCC was like, that wasn't totally defined. But for me, Ethan was like a straight, incredibly confident to a fault sociopath who was just fucking lying left and right to get to where he needed to be climbing the ladder. So it's not the only way that I was seen, but that was feeling at the time.

[25:17] Bobby Steggert: It's certainly one of the big storylines you had about yourself.

[25:21] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah.

[25:21] Bobby Steggert: You sort of buried the lead, I guess. Who is Boychik? And what is Boychik?

[25:25] Ben Levi Ross: Oh, Boychik is a music project that is me that I started in the pandemic. In 2021, I started recording. I actually recorded the majority of it in Minneapolis with a couple of friends of mine who have a band called Hippocampus. My friend Jake Lupin and Nathan Stocker in that band. And I brought a bunch of songs that I had written on piano to Minneapolis. We spent three weeks in person recording and building out these songs. And at the time, it was like a place for me to explore. The visual aspect of it was very like gender bendy, like Klaus Nomi, like clownish, draggy, kind of. I took a lot of the money that I had made during Dear Evan Hansen and just put it into this project, which was really exciting because it felt like I was just self-generating something.

And I got to do it myself, which felt really cool. And then I ran out of money. So I put the whole first album in 2022 and I had made four music videos and it felt like it was pretty well received. And then I recorded more and I've been sitting on it for two years when I have recorded more because I just didn't have the money to release it in the way that I want to. I'm very specific about wanting to have a full visual concept with the package of work that I'm doing. And until I feel like I can do that fully, I don't really want to just put it out. So it exists and there's going to be more, but I'm still just figuring out exactly how I want to release it and what I want to do. And I think the evolution of it is that it's like that sort of very like eccentric visual that I had the first time will probably take a metamorphosis.

Like I think the music that I'm making now and the music that I want to would like lend itself to a very different visual. So it's just like a project that I feel like I want to keep with me that I can access when I need to access it.

[27:40] Bobby Steggert: Speaking of conformity, I think back in my day, it felt like you had to be all in on the actor training. It was the only choice. And so do you feel like you have just more control, whatever kind of control it might be significant to you?

[27:57] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah, you have more control and less, in some ways. Like, to me, weirdly, the acting train right now feels very, like, set. And it's like, I have an income, and I have this very, like, specific schedule, and I can do that when I do that. And I can pay my rent from it, and A to B to C. And yet, you release some creative control, because it's a collaborative art form, and you have more control.

[28:24] Ben Levi Ross: Yes, it's a collaborative art form, and you will have to bow to the needs of the show, to a degree. But then with Boy Chica, it was like, yes, I'm technically self-generating everything here, including the visuals, including production of it all. But I also currently don't have a way to sustain myself with that. So that's actually not totally freeing.

[28:46] Bobby Steggert: And yet, if you have the opportunity to write, is that a place to go and feel like you're connected to something true and something creative that is within your own power?

[28:56] Ben Levi Ross: Definitely. My favorite artist of all time, she lays outside of everything. I love a lot of music from every different genre, but Fiona Apple, for me, lays outside of everything. She was a really important artist for me when I was growing up, and has continued to be.

[29:14] Ben Levi Ross: And she once gave an interview where she was saying—because between her second to last album, Invincible Cutters, which is the album that she released most recently, was nine years. And she was like, I don't go to the piano when I'm happy. I don't go and sit down when I'm feeling good. I'm out living my life. So I only go to write something when it's absolutely necessary.

[29:37] Ben Levi Ross: When you feel the emotional need to go and pour something out.

[29:42] Ben Levi Ross: I don't know if that's such a right thing to say, but I really use it as a form of therapy. I don't only write about the depths of my despair. That first album was a lot about the beginning of falling in love, and that was also a very important thing for me to sit down and write. But I like to feel the extremes of emotion. One end or the other of the spectrum, that's when I want to be writing music.

[30:08] Ben Levi Ross: And that's not all the time. That's not all the time. So there's long stretches of time where I'm just straight up not writing.

[30:13] Bobby Steggert: We'll be right back.

[30:21] Bobby Steggert: So much of an artist's life is time off, as you're describing. What is your life like when you're not working? What is your personal life like?

[30:30] Ben Levi Ross: It is full of spending time with my friends and the people that I love. I have a very wonderful community of people here in the city who do all different kinds of work.

[30:43] Bobby Steggert: Not just musical theater actors?

[30:46] Ben Levi Ross: Hell no. And I love my friends. I love my friends that are musical theater actors. But I have to say, I don't have a ton of them. I have a select few friends that are in my inner circle that I see more than once a month that work in musical theater. I think because a lot of my best friends from LA that I grew up with ended up in New York. So I have this group of people here that I've known since middle school that I've still stayed in touch with.

[31:14] Bobby Steggert: Wow, that's so fortunate. And they do all kinds of stuff?

[31:17] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah, it's so cool. One of my best friends from preschool worked in finance for the last five years and was about to go get her MBA in business school. And my other best friend is now working at AMC, working in the TV section there. My friend who's literally sitting in the other room is a musician. She has her band, Mama, and she just got back from her tour in Barcelona.

[31:39] Ben Levi Ross: I feel like I love my life outside of working. I love the people that I get to spend my time with. I live in a place where there's constantly stuff to do, constantly stuff to see. It's hard when you don't have money because all of that costs money to do, but I'm also very lucky that there's stuff to do that people invite me to that I don't have to spend money to do.

[32:00] Ben Levi Ross: I'm actually like, I'm very happy in my life at this moment. And I feel like it was like, coming out of the pandemic, all I wanted was to like, do that again. The pandemic was so hard for all of us. And I just, I feel like I'm never going to take it for granted again, the ability to connect with people I love and go do things and be in close proximity to creation. And like, just stick around.

[32:28] Ben Levi Ross: I was right about you in the sense that one of the other conformities that I think I experienced was that the theater world felt like the whole world to me. I was just in this very insular experience. And there were great things about that, of course, but also limiting things. It sounds like your friends wouldn't let you do that. They wouldn't let you ever assume that your work or your world as an actor is the world.

[32:51] Bobby Steggert: Definitely not. I also think I just wasn't interested in that. Because I was coming at it from like, when I was in high school, it was the same way. I didn't go to a performing arts school. I just did the musical in the spring, like twice in high school.

[33:07] Ben Levi Ross: You have to tell me what they were, though.

[33:09] Bobby Steggert: Oh, my musicals in high school?

[33:10] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah, you have to.

[33:11] Ben Levi Ross: I did Into the Woods my freshman year, where I played Jack. And then I did Pippin my sophomore year, where I was Pippin. And then this is the real kicker, though. Junior year, we did Clybourne Park.

[33:23] Bobby Steggert: Oh, my God.

[33:24] Ben Levi Ross: I did the play instead of the musical that year. And to add, Clybourne Park was like the same actors in Act One played the different part in Act Two.

[33:31] Bobby Steggert: It's about a house in two different eras, right?

[33:34] Ben Levi Ross: Correct. It's like the same house in a neighborhood. But I only played the like, the director made it so that it was different actors in Act One and different actors in Act Two. And so I only played the horribly racist man, Carl Lindbergh in Act One, who's like the only character from A Raisin in the Sun that's like also in this play. So that was like, yeah, that was tough. I'm talking about being stretched to my limits as an actor.

[34:00] Bobby Steggert: Oh, does this also explain why you didn't stay at college for four years?

[34:03] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah, I went to Carnegie Mellon for freshman year. And then I was in New York. Okay, so this is actually I don't think I've ever told this story before. But somewhere between my freshman and sophomore year of college, I went to Williamstown to do their apprenticeship program. I don't know if you know what this do you know about that program?

[34:22] Bobby Steggert: I do. I have tons of friends who have done it. Do you have to be older than you were?

[34:26] Ben Levi Ross: You don't have to be older. But I did not know exactly what it entailed. Like I didn't really do my research. It's glorified crew like you don't get paid. You are like, in fact, you pay for the room and board of it all.

[34:41] Bobby Steggert: Correct. And then you are literally building the sets for 16 weeks. And I had just come off freshman year at Carnegie Mellon, which was all tech, which was like you do the bitch work so that you learn about it. So grateful to have done that. But I was like, coming on that and then going to Williamstown and was like, I'm gonna do 16 more weeks of group. I truly, I've only quit two things in my life. One of them was Carnegie Mellon University and the other was Williamstown Theatre Festival after 10 days for the same reason.

[35:07] Ben Levi Ross: For basically, I don't know, I thought, but Williamstown, I was losing my mind after 10 days. I was like, what do you mean? I can't. So in the middle of the night, I packed up all my things. And then in the morning, I told them, I was like, I simply can't do this. I'm so sorry, I'm leaving. And I got on a bus and I left and I came to New York with no plan. And I couch surfed for two months. And then I had an agent at the time. And she was like, why don't you just like audition for things for fun.

[35:34] Ben Levi Ross: And I auditioned for a play at the public that Michael Griffith is directing that I didn't get. And then he asked me to come in and audition for Darren Hansen. And then I booked it. And then I had my friend in Pittsburgh ship me all of my stuff. And I just moved to New York.

[35:49] Bobby Steggert: Wow, that is really fortunate. Was there any aspect of you that trusted that something like that could happen?

[36:08] Bobby Steggert: In terms of this exploration of conformity, was there any part of you that thought no, I have to do the four years at a university in order to get the skills to do the job to do the thing?

[36:18] Ben Levi Ross: Absolutely. 100%. Absolutely. And I had professors that were like, just so you know, this could really be the wrong choice when I booked it. And I was asking them what they thought I should do. And I just went with my gut. And I do not regret it at all. But it took a lot of self trust that I could just be like, you're being thrown into the deep end right now. I was 19.

[36:42] Ben Levi Ross: And I was at the time I joined Darren Hansen as an understudy for the three boys, which was like, I learned the whole friggin show. There's only seven people in that cast in the first place. And it was crazy. It was truly crazy. But I learned more about myself as a performer over those years than like in that sort of concentrated amount of time than I have since like it was just such a crazy crash course.

[37:08] Bobby Steggert: I have a big question. I've asked this to so many colleagues. What did you learn in terms of having to recreate something that was already stamped and decided upon? What did you learn about yourself as a performer?

[37:19] Ben Levi Ross: I think it was like using a very different part of my brain in the rehearsal process because it was like to a degree, your job is to slot in and not mess up the other actor shows. However, hopefully, your other actors opposite you are game to play with something different. And now as someone who has not been in understudy in seven years, I'm like so excited. I know that people say this all the time.

[37:49] Ben Levi Ross: But it's true. I'm so excited when an understudy goes on, because I'm like, Oh, great, the show's gonna feel new and different and fresh, and we get to live in the moment. So when I would go on as an understudy, for the most part, everyone was the same way. But every so often, you could tell that there was someone that you would be acting opposite that like, really was not down for anything to be different.

[38:11] Ben Levi Ross: And then my brain would go into overdrive and be like, Okay, go back to like, what the person that you're covering was doing every night, remember what their beats are, remember what they're doing, because you really don't want to mess up your scene partnership. So that's, it's weird. It's a weird thing, because you want to put your own stamp on it.

[38:29] Ben Levi Ross: But you also want to have it be truthful to you. You don't want to be a caricature. You don't want to be like in sort of a tin can, like an empty tin can of like, just robotically going through beats.

[38:42] Bobby Steggert: Yeah, to your point, that tension requires a great deal of skill.

[38:46] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah, it was much more technical than artful. I think that's not to say that it wasn't an art because it is. I think what I learned is that also is just that I want to be as game as I wish actors would be across for me as an understudy with an understudy.

[39:04] Bobby Steggert: You want to pay it forward?

[39:06] Ben Levi Ross: Yeah, yeah.

[39:08] Bobby Steggert: It's almost time for us to go. And I just want to say I've genuinely enjoyed this conversation. And for whatever ownership I feel over younger brother, not ownership, but just love for and care for the part. I'm so excited that your soul gets to inhabit him.

[39:24] Ben Levi Ross: Oh, that is so nice. I don't know, I feel like in a few months is when I really want to talk to you about it. And just I'm like, it means so much that you're saying that and it's so rare that we get to do something like this. Talk about this in this way. It's like really, it's really cool and very special.

[39:54] Ben Levi Ross: Okay, that's a good question. Because there's so many directions that I could go. I think a lot of what we talked about today is I think like the through line is if there were things that I thought I had to be in order to do what I was doing, whatever it may be as a musician, as an actor, thinking that I have to be in the theater community 24 seven and not know anyone else outside of it or as a musician, like constantly be an output.

[40:23] Ben Levi Ross: Be constantly putting things out. I think that like wherever you are, the sort of general vibe that I try and take with me through life, which I think is a form of nonconformity, is just doing what feels right. Like in that moment in that field. I know that's really general, but I think it really is the core of what it is.

[40:47] Bobby Steggert: Doing what feels, yeah, like in that moment for you. I think that's the only way that like, more things that feel right will be unlocked. So you may just call that sort of like a general nonconformity.

[41:03] Ben Levi Ross: Yes, yeah. It's just like following your North Star. And I think that there maybe are like many different North Stars for each sort of facet of your life. But that's what I've learned at 27. Now, if I didn't follow my North Star at a Williamstown Theater Festival, who knows where I would be today?

[41:28] Ben Levi Ross: I'll tell you where I wouldn't be. I would have graduated in 2020 into the pandemic and been broke as hell.