This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Jeryl Brunner: From Shakespeare to Schwartz, from Fossey to Alvin Ailey, from San Tom to Burelis, from McNally to Faye.

[0:07] Jeryl Brunner: It happened to the greats, it still happens every day.

[0:10] Jeryl Brunner: When lightning strikes is the moment you know.

[0:14] Jeryl Brunner: When lightning strikes, where your mentor goes, you can stand in Chalureka, do whatever you'd like.

[0:21] Jeryl Brunner: You'll never forget the moment when lightning strikes.

[0:25] Jeryl Brunner: Hi, this is Jeryl Brunner, and you are listening to When Lightning Strikes, where we talk about the moment when your proverbial light bulb goes off, the heavens open, the seas part, that wondrous, heart thumping, tingly, glorious mic drop moment when you discovered you had to be an artist. And today I'm so thrilled to have Jonah Platt, who is a prolific actor, writer, director, creator, arranger. He is an actor who has performed on stages around the country. He played Fiyero in the Broadway blockbuster Wicked. He wasn't Hair at the Hollywood Bowl, he wasn't Floyd Collins, BARE, A Walk on the Moon, and Found. He even wrote a musical called The Giver. And if you go to his Instagram, you can watch him sing a beautiful song, "Wish" from his musical The Giver.

And he recently sang this beautiful song as part of Lincoln Center's Humanity in Concert series. And on television, if that's not enough, some of his TV credits include Jesus Christ Superstar Live, the Netflix animated series Trolls: The Beat Goes On, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Parenthood, The Office, and he did a beautiful special virtual reading of Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things. He joined his brothers Henry and Ben to perform in Graduate Together 2020, celebrating the seniors across the world who did not get a graduation this year. So welcome, Jonah. How are you?

[2:10] Jonah Platt: I'm great after that wonderful introduction. Thank you so much.

[2:14] Jeryl Brunner: That's a mouthful, I know. But it's really quite extraordinary when I think of the breadth and depth of your passion and your experiences that you've had. How are you doing?

[2:29] Jonah Platt: Thank you.

[2:30] Jeryl Brunner: You're welcome. First of all, how are you dealing in the midst of what we're going through right now? I see that you're incredibly creative right now, but how are you staying nourished? How are you staying fulfilled?

[2:43] Jonah Platt: Those are great words, nourished and fulfilled. One is I'm a dad, I'm a relatively new dad. My son is 14 months old. So I'm getting a lot of nourishment from just getting to spend all this guilt-free time with him. Usually, when the world is operating at its usual speed, I can always think of something I should be working on. And because of the way things are now, I don't have to do that, which has been a little bit of a silver lining in this situation. So I'm having a great time spending time with him and my wife and just sort of being at home and not always having the voice in my head saying, get back to the computer. And then on the artistic side, I've been lucky to have a couple random things just sort of pop up.

Like you mentioned, the Neil LaBute reading, and I got to do the Graduate Together special. I also arranged that piece that we sang and sort of helped produce the sound of it. So I got to that took up like two weeks of my time, which is really fun. And I have, you know, an animation project and a stage musical project that you mentioned, The Giver, which is not done, but is approaching the end of what I'll call its working draft after having gone through a couple of iterations and a couple of readings. So there's demos that we're recording now of the new songs that we've rewritten for this draft. So I'm lucky to have stuff that I can keep working on that just happen to be in good stages of their development where there's good quality work to be put in now and they can continue to be moving forward in this time. And just trying to, you know, not put too much pressure on myself to accomplish too much or put myself out there too much and just try to enjoy what I can.

[4:39] Jeryl Brunner: That's wonderful that you're able to take that time for your family and also be so productive creatively in that way. I mean, I think having a family is also an extension of creativity, but that's so fantastic. And so can we talk about your lightning strikes moment when you knew you had to be an artist? Or maybe it's a few moments.

[5:05] Jonah Platt: Yeah, so I'm gonna talk, I'm actually gonna answer your question if I may, and it's from a different angle a little bit, because I don't ever remember a time when I didn't love the performing arts and that like that wasn't what I was doing. Literally, there are videos of me at two years old singing My Fair Lady. There's actually a clip of me online having I did a thing for 54 Below in New York where they do like a throwback thing, and I threw it back all the way to that My Fair Lady song at two years old. So I've always, it's just always been kind of clear to me I was gonna do something in the arts. I just didn't know anything else. But the two moments that, you know, when I heard your prompt, the ones that sort of clicked for me, one was a very small moment.

I did all of my early musical theater training and experience was all at this place called the Adderley School for the Performing Arts, which is no longer in LA. I think now they're based in Santa Barbara. But it was this woman, Janet Adderley, who was a Broadway performer who opened the school. And I joined, my sister joined my older sister Samantha when she was like 10 or 11. So I joined right after her when I was about seven or eight. And my very first class, we were our show was gonna be a musical review for that age kid. They just did a review. And the first song we learned was "Corner of the Sky." And I already knew that song very well because my dad had been playing it for me in his car for years.

So the first time we sang it all as a group, I kind of riffed a little on this one line and added a little thing that I had learned from listening to the recording that is a way we had always sung it. And I'll never forget the teacher Janet turned to me and having heard it and saying, do that. Like, I saw that, I heard it, it was good, you should do that. And like being seen in that way and recognized by her, and feeling like getting that positive reinforcement in that moment gave me so much confidence and joy. And I was like, I just from that moment, my confidence continued to build. And she continued to really build my confidence over the years, letting me direct shows of other students and always empowering me to do this and that and write original stuff. But it all started from that one moment, and I'll never forget it, because it's sort of like the first brick in the foundation of my confidence as a performer was in that one little moment.

[7:47] Jeryl Brunner: That's so wonderful. Oh, do you remember the riff? What the riff was?

[7:52] Jonah Platt: Yes. I think all it was was, you know, it's rivers belong where they can ramble, eagles belong where they can fly. Just that little extra thing that you know, John Rubenstein does on the recording, but you know, the other seven-year-olds in the class weren't doing it. I think that was it. Um yeah, I'll never forget it.

[8:19] Jeryl Brunner: I love that you were directing, that you it sounds like you've never been one thing, that you're a creator, you're a storyteller, yet I like how you're a vocal arranger, you know, and you're a and did you so did you always have the sense that that was going to be part of your pie that I mean, you have incredible writing credits that you were then the Family Guy and right, Parks and Recreation, Billy on the Street.

[8:49] Jonah Platt: Um, yeah, I didn't really decide that I was gonna go down the TV writing road until my senior year of college. When actually, funny enough, I wasn't confident enough at that point in my life that I was gonna be able to make it as an actor. I wasn't even really thinking about trying it. You know, that's a bit of a longer story. But at that time where I was confident in was in my writing, and I said, okay, this seems a little more attainable, so I'm gonna try to be a TV writer. And I went down that road, and that was sort of where I thought I was going to go for six years out of college was sort of my main focus was going to be TV writing. But the way the universe worked, sort of my path kind of organically led me back into performing to the point where performing took on the biggest focus in my life.

And I realized that what I really wanted to do as a writer was just focus on my own projects and not be a staffed writer going sort of through that TV rat race. So I keep sort of the performing in the forefront. And then when I'm not performing, I'm able to focus in on the writing stuff. So they work in harmony together now.

[10:03] Jeryl Brunner: So when did you sort of decide, okay, I have to be a performer? Do you mind, or if it's too long?

[10:11] Jonah Platt: Yeah, no, this was sort of the second moment I wanted to mention to you. When I did Hair at the Hollywood Bowl, this was summer of 2014. Up until that point, between 2008 and 2014, I wasn't acting a ton. I had gotten the opportunity to jump into a staged reading of the musical BARE that you mentioned in the intro, because the guy who was playing Jason for that stage reading had dropped out. And a friend of mine from the Adderley School days, who I hadn't seen in a long time, but they needed somebody and he was already involved and he said you should call up this guy. I remember Jonah. He's like the perfect guy for this role. So they called me up. I did a little audition for the kid who was directing it.

And I say kid because he's even younger than me. It was that we were all in our early 20s putting this thing on together. And I got that part. And then that show ended up growing into the full, you know, fast forward four or five years later, we did a full-on like official LA revival of BARE that is really beloved and there's a lot of clips on the internet that have a ton of views. People really keep finding and loving that show. But it was sort of like with that we had our own little rep company, this group of 20-somethings and we did Spring Awakening together, we did American Idiot together, we did a couple iterations of BARE together and as those were starting to go every, you know, nine months or whatever it was, my confidence was starting to build until the point where I did Floyd Collins and that was another big kind of boost and I got to, that was a dream show for me to be in.

And then Hair came around and I saw online that they were doing big ensemble auditions. I knew it was a big ensemble. A lot of my friends were going in and I went in and auditioned for the ensemble and came out with a principal role. And I was the only non-celebrity to have a principal role. And throughout that process in rehearsals and doing the shows, that was a really big moment for me where I looked around and was like, oh, I belong here. And I should be doing this. And I should be confident in myself because I've got what it takes. I'm seeing these celebrity actors and actresses, and I'm just as good as they are. And in some cases, I felt like I had a leg up on them in some ways because I worked a little bit harder because I kind of had to.

And I felt like I really wanted to prove myself in that situation. So doing that show was really a big, big moment for me where I sort of shifted my focus to I can really do this as a career. And I really will be kicking myself if I stop at this point because I know I can hack it with these guys.

[13:05] Jeryl Brunner: Isn't that wonderful how you can shift, you know, and how you can be in this situation that can inspire you like that? And how much, how long after did your Broadway debut come? And can you talk about when you got the news that you were cast?

[13:20] Jonah Platt: Yes. It was not long after. So this was, you know, July of 2014, I did Hair, and by August of 2015, I was doing Fiyero. So I think Hair had a lot to do with it. I remember I was driving to meet my then-girlfriend, now-wife for lunch in Beverly Hills at a restaurant that has sadly been closed down, but was my, it was called Cabbage Patch, and we used to go there all the time. It was my favorite spot. And I was almost there, and I got the call from my agent in New York, David Kalodner, to tell me that I had the offer for Fiyero and I had to like pull over and I was so excited. I was freaking out, and it was great that I got to walk, you know, one minute later into the restaurant and celebrate, basically with Courtney. And it was just, that was definitely the most thrilling piece of news I've ever received, certainly in my career. And it was a wonderful moment that I'll never forget.

[14:20] Jeryl Brunner: Isn't it wonderful? For people who might not know, your wife is also a performer, right?

[14:32] Jonah Platt: That's right. She was on one of the finalists of So You Think You Can Dance.

[14:39] Jonah Platt: And then she came back twice as an all-star. Uh, so she's and we met doing Hair together, um, which was an extra reason if it wasn't already a very special thing for me that made it enormously special.

[14:52] Jeryl Brunner: That's how you met. So what a gift.

[14:54] Jonah Platt: Yeah. Oh my God. It was the best two weeks of my whole life.

[14:57] Jeryl Brunner: That's so wonderful. And is it hard to put into words how playing Fiyero changed you?

[15:03] Jonah Platt: That show is so beloved. Um, it did, I wouldn't say it didn't change a ton for me. Um, I really felt like I was ready for it. I would say what it changed for me is it obviously, you know, once you have that Broadway credit, it kind of changes the level that you're at in the public eye and in the eye of the people in the industry. You sort of get to have that little check mark next to your name. Um, that to me is the biggest change. Just sort of getting entree into that level of the industry has by far been the biggest and hugest change. Um, I've always loved interacting with fans. Um, whether it was, you know, a friend's little sister after a show in middle school or the fans at the stage door of Wicked.

I've always gotten a lot of pleasure out of connecting with people in that way. So I loved that aspect of Wicked. You know, Broadway.com asked me to do these video blogs backstage, and I was super happy to get to do that. That was so fun. And I love doing the stage door and hearing from all the fans on the internet. Because as you say, Wicked is so beloved. It was such a great first Broadway show to walk into because it's just got this whole ecosystem behind it of people who love it and keep going to see it, and it's got all this mystique and prestige and it's running so well. So you just get to sort of come in and do your thing. And the people who are in it on stage and off are so terrific. So it was really such a warm welcome to the Broadway community.

[16:47] Jeryl Brunner: I know you said you grew up in Los Angeles, but did you come to New York to see? Do you remember one of the first Broadway shows you ever saw?

[16:56] Jonah Platt: Yes. Yes. So I was very lucky. Uh, my parents took us to see everything. So here in LA, I mean, everything that came through to the Pantages, which is the big house for all the national tours, we got to see so much stuff. And they took us to, you know, small things, big things, opera, whatever. But in New York, yes, we went to New York a lot. I have family in New York who we would often visit. My parents had used to live in New York. They love New York. Um, they actually moved to LA when my mom was pregnant with me. Um, yeah. So my older sister was born in New York, and my dad went to law school in New York, and we spent now we spent a ton of time in New York, right? My whole family spends a ton of time there.

Um, but uh one of the first shows that I remember seeing, I don't know if it was the first on Broadway, but one of the very early ones when I was a young kid for sure, was Fiddler on the Roof. I don't know which revival it was, but I remember I was so bored that I was crawling around on the floor, like playing with the feet of my great uncle and my parents and my sister who were there with me because I was antsy and bored.

[17:59] Jeryl Brunner: I love seeing um both online and the graduate concert, the concert that just occurred. You sing with your brothers. I saw you um singing uh uh beautiful song, um, a Hebrew Sa'avat Olam. Am I saying?

[18:18] Jonah Platt: Sahavat Olam, yeah. I'm of the tribe, so I should know how to pronounce this. I love it. You were very close. That was good enough.

[18:26] Jeryl Brunner: I love seeing that. Um, did you grow up performing together as a family?

[18:32] Jonah Platt: Oh, yeah. So we're known in our circle as the Von Platt. And uh we would sing together. I mean, we still do, we sing at every family big family event. So every bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah, wedding. And that's not just my nuclear family, but like the whole extended family. The thing is like you do songs for the person whose special event it is. So we grew up always doing that kind of stuff together. And then like our biggest pastime at home was putting on shows. So there's just, you know, so many memories and so many home movies of me and my siblings and my cousins if they were visiting or we were hanging out, putting on shows. And a lot of them we were original, which is where I got a lot of my early writing and directing work.

Um, and uh some of them, you know, were musical reviews or our versions of musicals that existed, but constantly putting on backyard musicals and living room musicals and singing together all the time. All four of my siblings are wonderful singers.

[19:38] Jeryl Brunner: That's fantastic. Do you mind sharing one that stands out, whether it's an original or one you did?

[19:45] Jonah Platt: Well, the first thing that pops into my head is actually not something I did with my siblings, but something I did for school. Every time I had a school project, I would obviously I would write a show. You know, if you had to do some sort of if they give you any leeway, you know, make a diorama or do whatever it was, I would always like, can I just write a show? Um, so I remember I did one, I don't remember the context or why, but it was in fourth or fifth grade and it was called Leo on the Reels. And it was about it had it was like my play on like Titanic, but somehow like tying it in to some biblical thing. I went to a Jewish day school and I did some like Leonardo DiCaprio play on a biblical story and it was called Leo on the Reels. And I remember like I can picture in my head the program that I printed that had like Leo's face on top of like a clip art background or something.

[20:41] Jeryl Brunner: That's okay. Because I was thinking about with graduate together how the mix of songs you did were so seamless and very welcome and you put that together right how did you choose the songs because they really felt so relevant.

[21:00] Jonah Platt: Thank you. So I've done a lot of medleys over the last couple years. Excuse me. Uh, I've done a lot of medleys over the last couple of years and have sort of developed what is my process. So I, I once we got this opportunity, it was great. I was able to just sort of do what I always do, which is start by, you know, they asked us, will you do a graduation mashup thingy? Great. So we started by making a list of like the most obvious graduation hits, which sort of right off the bat, you know, the Green Day song, Good Riddance, uh, In My Life by the Beatles, Pomp and Circumstance. Those kind of jumped out right away on the vitamin C song um graduation. Uh, those three was like bam, bam, bam, easy.

Then we sort of started racking our brain a little bit more. We did some Googling. We looked at um like some billboard charts to like remember what okay, what song, because we wanted it to be relevant to uh this particular senior class. So we wanted to make sure there was something, some stuff representative of the last couple years, stuff that would really speak to them, as well as to a wider audience. We felt like we had the adults already. Um, that's where you know the Maroon 5 song came in and um the congratulations post-Malone song. And then forever I think that's almost everything. Forever Young uh also just came, I guess as we were talking, and you make that list, and the list was actually much longer to start with.

And then as I start piecing it together, it starts to become clear like what isn't gonna fit, what's gonna be too much, what's not gonna work as well as we had maybe thought initially. And then there was also like a clearance thing. They didn't want too many songs, which ended up working great, because always, you know, in some ways less is more. So I think we ended up with just the right amount. Yeah, and it worked out perfectly that we sort of it it wasn't what we set out to do, but it organically sort of fell into three big chunks, which allowed each of us to take the lead in a certain area and then just flesh it out from there.

[23:03] Jeryl Brunner: Did you want to talk about The Giver?

[23:06] Jonah Platt: I would love to talk about The Giver. I love talking about The Giver.

[23:09] Jeryl Brunner: Yeah.

[23:10] Jonah Platt: Yeah, let's talk about The Giver. Um, you're writing.

[23:15] Jonah Platt: Yes, we've been, I uh am working with a collaborator named Andrew Resnick, who uh I've known, we've known each other since we were toddlers. Our parents met in college. And he he and I have collaborated musically in many different ways over the years. We played in bands together in high school. First a band in ninth grade that I was kicked out of, and then a band in like 11th and 12th grade that was actually very good. And we played all the clubs around LA. And if we didn't go to stupid college, maybe my life would look very different. Um, but we've done that, and then we did um I formed a group called One Night Stand, where we performed hour-long improvised musicals. And we did that. That was a blah, that's the most fun thing I've ever done.

And we did that at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for a couple of years. We did it in the New York Musical Theater Festival in LA. We did all over it. He was the pianist for that, was like the most he was like our MVP, because his ability to improvise beautiful, real show-sounding music was is like nothing I've ever seen. I could never find someone who could do it as well as him, which is why once that group kind of ended and college ended and he was in New York and I was in LA, the group kind of stopped because I wasn't gonna do it without Andrew. So, anyways, flash forward to now, uh, after having done, you know, basically we improvised a hundred musicals together, and we one day were like, let's write one down.

Um, and we were looking for one to do, and Andrew was the one who came up with the idea to do The Giver. I don't know where it came from for him, honestly. I should probably ask him. But I remember when he brought it to me, with good reason, he was like, This is going to be a good musical, I think. It's, you know, there's a great story, great themes. And I thought that was cool, and I loved that. But then there was something else that really appealed to me, and this is sort of my blessing and my curse in all of my original projects. I'm always looking for the what about this is something you haven't seen before, which at times makes my projects harder to sell because they're different. Um, but I think is what makes them appealing.

Um, but what I loved about The Giver is that we were going to be able to use music as part of the storytelling in a way that is different than every other musical. In every other musical you take for granted that there's going to be music and there's going to be singing and people are going to break into song because it's a musical. Just how because you suspend your disbelief. In our show, uh, The Giver takes place in a world with uh basically no variance at all. Uh, there's no weather, there are no animals, there's no color, there are no differences, there's like no choice, there's no uh heavy emotion. And so when people sing in our show, they're only able to sing if they have unlocked a deeper level of emotion not available to the other people in their world.

So there are characters in our show who never sing at all. There are some who sing a lot. There are some who sort of quote unquote gain the ability to sing as the show goes on, um, and others who you only hear in a dream or a fantasy singing. So I loved that conceit that when he pitched me the idea of The Giver, that's where my brain went. And uh I will, I hope when you're watching it, and I think this has been the experience, you're not really gonna realize that's what's going on. You're not gonna see, you know, the matrix code. Um, but if you went home and thought about it later, you would realize, oh my gosh, you're right. Like only that guy was singing for a while, and then the mom never really sang until the end.

Um, so I hope it'll be all organic and woven. I think we've accomplished that. But I just that that idea of not even taking for granted that there's gonna be music and singing and making it for a real narrative purpose. That just really excited me. Um, and that's it's been a couple of years now in development. We've done, like I said, uh a couple of rounds, big drafts, uh, a couple of readings. We have a third collaborator named Martin Zimmerman, who is a TV writer and a playwright. And um, together the three of us have done like three or four drafts now. And this latest draft is uh I think we've really kind of locked in the story now. We took, we went down a bunch of different roads. It was actually a very tricky adaptation because the book, The Giver's based on a book, Lois Lowry's best-selling novel, over 10 million copies sold all around the world. Um, yeah.

[27:50] Jonah Platt: I'm sorry.

[27:51] Jeryl Brunner: Yeah, no, go ahead.

[27:52] Jonah Platt: Um, it's you know, it's read, it's read a lot in schools, fourth, fifth, sixth grade kind of kids. So a lot of people know it, but it was a tricky adaptation because the book is very heavy on theme and atmosphere and world building, uh, but not very heavy on plot. There's actually not a ton that happens. And like the first, it's it's a short book. It's young adults, maybe I don't know, uh 180 pages, let's say. And like the first 60 are kind of set up. It's a lot of setting up the world and the situation of who this main character is and how things work there. So we had to manufacture a lot. Uh, and you know, draft one took us down one road that, you know, A, B, and C worked, but D through Z didn't work.

Then the next draft, we got A through L, but the rest didn't work. And so I think we finally now on this draft we're in, we we've got almost the whole alphabet, which is certainly enough at this point in a musical's life to move it to the next stage once we've locked in these demos. So I'm really excited to finally be able to push this to the next level. And once, you know, the world gets back to normal, hopefully you'll see this on a regional stage sooner than later.

[29:02] Jeryl Brunner: That's so wonderful. I love that you do musical improv. I'm a big um, I studied at UCB and I know Rumpel Teaser. I don't know if you know.

[29:12] Jonah Platt: Um, and I love it's it's astounding to me how they create these full-fledged musicals in you know on the spot.

[29:22] Jeryl Brunner: So that's what you're doing.

[29:23] Jonah Platt: Yeah.

[29:24] Jonah Platt: I loved it. It's of everything I've ever done, it's the thing that that was able to encapsulate all the things I love to do all at once in one moment. Because I'm writing, I'm songwriting, I'm acting, I'm doing comedy, I'm doing drama, I'm directing, uh, I'm producing. It literally was all happening uh in the moment in front of an audience every night. And because it's a different show every night, like when we would do it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, we had fans coming back five, six times. People were recognizing us around town, which is great, not for the notoriety, but just that like so many people were enjoying what we were doing and loving us and wanting to come enjoy it again and again.

That was such an awesome feeling. And the energy in the audience is just there's nothing like it because at first everybody's kind of nervous for you, and then once they see you've got it and it's gonna be amazing, they just have the ride of their lives because you're just even though as funny and engaging and wonderful as the show is, the fact that you're doing essentially a magic trick the entire time in front of them just blows people's minds. So it's and it's just so fun to do. There's just nothing more fun than making up a musical. It's like you know what I was doing as a kid, just putting on shows.

[30:44] Jeryl Brunner: There you go. And I love that um, and for like I said, people can hear you sing one of the songs, The Wish on your Instagram, right?

[30:59] Jonah Platt: Yes, I'm that song, sadly, right now is not in the show anymore. I love that little piece. It's one of my favorite little things. It used to be a section of a song that's definitely still in the show and has sort of been in it for a while, but this section didn't quite fit anymore. Uh, so we had to pull it out. I don't know if it's gonna end up going back in, which is why I felt comfortable posting it online. I generally haven't really posted anything from the show online because I'm letting it have its development course before I introduce anything. But um, it's one of my favorite lyrics that I've written, and I love and and Andrew. So the way Andrew and I work is I write all the lyrics, and then Andrew does sort of like the foundational music and composing, and then we, as we say, juge the music together, and I do a lot of the vocal arranging.

But this was one there's a couple of times where it was like really Andrew sort of came with a fully formed musical idea for this one, and my lyric I thought was really strong. So that it was just a really a special one. And I got asked by uh my friend Anna, who is working with Lincoln Center, to perform something for this humanity in concert series and to dedicate it to somebody, and the this song just popped into my mind um because I knew personally, you know, my sister. This is actually today, it's my sister's 30th birthday, and and was supposed to be her wedding.

[32:29] Jeryl Brunner: Oh which was sadly not happening.

[32:32] Jonah Platt: So I, you know, I know, thank you. So it's a bummer, and I just know that there are so many other people who I've been seeing, you know, dealing with these disappointments of the things that they thought they were gonna get to be doing and not doing, and a lot of people having to celebrate birthdays in these crazy new ways to feel special. That's not what you want to be doing. And and I thought this song, there's just a little something magical about it and the magic of a wish uh not just a birthday wish, but a wish for whatever you desire you have right now. And I felt like it could tap into the feelings of the world at the moment. So it seemed just like a nice fit. And I was glad to get to share something that I love so much with the world.

[33:15] Jeryl Brunner: That's so beautiful. Have you been um connecting at all with um Lois Lowry?

[33:22] Jonah Platt: You know what? I've actually never met or spoken to her. Um, yeah, my my dad, Mark, who is producing our show, was his now biggest job of this process was going to meet with Lois and convince her to give us the rights. We actually, Andrew and I had the idea for the show a long time ago. I want to say eight years ago, but we could not get the rights. We asked my dad, we look into the rights, see if they're available, and she would not budge and was not interested in making the the first-class theatrical rights available. And uh, we believe it was because there was a movie coming out. And once the movie came out, she was more open again to discussing the rights. And so my dad got on a plane and went to Maine and uh met with Lois in her cabin and convinced her that he would protect her beloved property as he had for Gregory McGuire's beloved property, Wicked. And um now we've got what I think is gonna be a really special show.

[34:25] Jeryl Brunner: Do you want to talk about working with Leo LeBut?

[34:28] Jonah Platt: I didn't get to really work with Neil. He appeared live with us for the reading and was sort of answering viewers' questions and comments throughout the performance. And then we all did a QA panel together at the end, Neil and the performers. Uh it was a very unique experience. It's the only thing I've done so far. I'm actually going to be doing another live stream performance in July of a new musical called uh Walt and Roy about the Disney brothers that I was just asked to do with my old buddy Payson Lewis, who played opposite me in Bear all those years ago. Uh now we're gonna be back in action, not as lovers, but as brothers. Um so I'm looking forward to doing that, but because it's it's unique to do to do the live stream.

It's you know, cracking jokes without laughter and landing finishing scenes without applause, and you know, uh not really even getting to look so much at your scene partner because you're reading words off a screen or looking into your camera. It's uh it's a definitely a different way of performing, but it was great. I mean, I loved getting just to do something.

[35:39] Jonah Platt: Um, and my role in that show, I played Philip. If you know the show, he's sort of the do the douchey friend of the main character. It's a small show, it's only four characters, and it's really focuses on Adam and Evelyn. Then there's this other couple who gets mixed up with them. Uh with uh that's Jenny and Philip. And I love getting to play a douche because I try very hard not to be a douche in my normal life. So when I'm allowed to be one and be funny with it, uh it's it's a pleasure. So that was a lot of fun to do. It was a great group of people to get to work with. Um I was really excited to get to work with Katie Rose Clark and uh Lena Hall.

[36:21] Jonah Platt: Um, so it was uh a really uh rewarding experience. And getting to meet Neil and have him be there for the reading, that's was very special. So I was really glad for the opportunity.

[36:32] Jeryl Brunner: I love the talk back at the end that because you get all that kind of insight because this play is so oh, it's like it gets under your skin because it's and it it takes this turn. I'm not gonna give it away because you can still see it.

[36:46] Jonah Platt: That's really fascinating, and how people transform. Is there a role you're aching to play?

[36:50] Jonah Platt: You've done I love that you were in Floyd Collins and your Fiyero and you're seeing sodomy and the hair, right?

[37:01] Jeryl Brunner: You say something really the bird the the kind of how wide-ranging you know your roles are. But is there a part you're you're won? Is there a part you're just dying to play?

[37:12] Jonah Platt: Like bring it on. So I have two answers to that question. The first is, and this is my answer lately, is the roles I'm dying to play are the two roles I currently have in new musicals that are I'm hoping are gonna break through and make it to the big time. Um, and are roles that I'm originating because that's to me is sort of the the next mountain that I really want to climb is originating a role in a Broadway show. And I've got this role of Davey in a musical called Found that I was doing here in LA that got shut down a little early once COVID happened, that I'm hoping it seems will continue to have a life in the future, God willing, if you know theater exists. Um the show is really something special, and everybody believes in it, and the producers love it, and I feel like that will go on.

And then the other is a show called A Walk on the Moon that I was I was supposed to have just finished, like uh a week ago, um, in new New Jersey, and we already have our tentative dates set for next spring. So that should happen, God willing. So that's a long way of saying my answer, my first answer to your question is I really just want the opportunity to play Marty and Davey uh and introduce the world to those characters and my version of them.

[38:33] Jonah Platt: Um, in the revival world, if I was gonna do a revival, some roles I really would love to do would be um George Surratt and Sunday in the Park is a is a big one. I would love to play. And it'd be fun to play the older brother. And I've always wanted to play, well, not always, but for a long time, I've wanted to play Fabrizio in Light in the Piazza. It's a role I love. And then I'll say my number one is probably Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

[39:11] Jeryl Brunner: Oh, why I love those.

[39:13] Jonah Platt: I love the George, all of it.

[39:15] Jeryl Brunner: Why Hedwig?

[39:16] Jonah Platt: What a great.

[39:17] Jonah Platt: Oh man, I love that show. I uh there's a couple of reasons. One, I mean, I like I said, my dad took us to see everything. So I saw Hedwig in LA when it was sort of first making the rounds years ago when I was probably, I don't know, 12. Um, and I fell in love with it. I'm I'm like a rock rock and roller kid. That's what I cut my teeth on. That's what I listened to. I was playing in bands starting when I was like 10 or 11 years old, playing guitar and singing in rock bands. And like I said, we played all I by the time I was in high school, I was playing every club in LA, um, rocking out. So that's like my vocal development. My rock side of my voice was sort of the first thing to really, as an adult, that that got more development even than the sort of the musical theater side when I was a teenager.

Um so I love that aspect of it that with Hedwig you get to rock out. I love the story, it's very I'm always moved by it, no matter how many times I see it. I'm emotionally engaged and moved and makes you feel things and think things. And then I just love the the way that Hedwig gets to talk to the audience, and there's a little bit of improv and there's a real connection, and just you know, you're there the whole time just connecting with the audience, which as I've mentioned, I I absolutely love to do.

[40:39] Jeryl Brunner: I just I and yeah, I love that you mentioned found as well, because I saw found early.

[40:45] Jonah Platt: It was at the Atlantic at one point.

[40:47] Jeryl Brunner: That's right.

[40:48] Jonah Platt: That's where it got its start.

[40:49] Jeryl Brunner: And I let Hunter Bells, yeah.

[40:51] Jonah Platt: I love musical. And I always thought, why, how can you know what happened to that? So I was so glad that it's in the the ether.

[41:00] Jeryl Brunner: Why were you kicked out of the band?

[41:03] Jonah Platt: Oh, I don't you know what? I couldn't tell you. They screwed up. Uh and Andrew really apologized to me after. There was like a there was kind of like a coup. They they just uh there was this one guy in the band who sort of planted the seed that like we gotta get rid of Jonah, and um they kicked me out. It was very mean. I was very sad about it.

[41:26] Jeryl Brunner: I only asked because you put it out there, and I thought, oh, I I'm very curious now by that.

[41:31] Jonah Platt: Oh, yeah. I I know I came up with the name of the band. I was the lead singer, and then I think really this this bassist just wanted to be more of the front man.

[41:40] Jeryl Brunner: Yeah.

[41:40] Jonah Platt: And he had been there first. And so they sort of he sort of got everybody else to agree to give me the boot. Uh and that, but then Andrew realized the errors of his ways, and we started our our own band, which was much better as uh as juniors.

[41:56] Jeryl Brunner: Yeah, well, and and you did okay.

[41:58] Jonah Platt: Oh, I just went why George Surratt?

[42:00] Jeryl Brunner: What a phenomenal where you see the the the part the part is fantastic.

[42:07] Jonah Platt: It it's I love the songs that he gets to do. Um there's some of Sondheim's best. That's my favorite Sondheim show. That show, it just moves me so much. The how it's all about, you know, creativity and want I I really relate to that feeling of I want to leave something behind, I want to do something that counts, and that struggle to balance everything to balance you know the person you are when you're not being an artist with the need to be an artist, with that desire to create something that counts. And then you know, I I think of that line that uh Marie sings um let it come from you, then it will be new. I think about that a lot. Um, and again, that's just sort of believing in yourself and knowing that you and everything you are, you yourself are enough if you can just be confident in that, which is easier said than done. And it's taken me a lot of years to have that confidence, but um, I think it's very true.

[43:11] Jeryl Brunner: It is true, and I celebrate your many hats.

[43:15] Jonah Platt: Thank you. I appreciate that.

[43:17] Jeryl Brunner: You're welcome. It's been such a joy talking to you.

[43:21] Jonah Platt: Thank you so much for taking it.

[43:23] Jeryl Brunner: My pleasure.

[43:24] Jonah Platt: Yeah, have a wonderful day.

[43:26] Jeryl Brunner: Thank you, you too, and thank you for having me, Gerald.

[43:29] Jonah Platt: It still happens every day. When lightning strikes is the moment you know.

[43:34] Jeryl Brunner: The theme song was written by Todd McGovern.

[43:38] Jeryl Brunner: This episode was edited by Kyle Moore, and the talent was booked by Anna Strauss.

[43:44] Jonah Platt: Lightning strikes.