Ben Platt, up for a Tony for his performance in 'Parade,' gets by with a little help from his friends
LOS ANGELES — Playing outsiders comes naturally to Ben Platt, a gay, Jewish theater geek born and raised in Los Angeles.
He won a Tony Award for his star-making performance in the musical "Dear Evan Hansen," creating an authentic stage portrait of a high school adolescent with crippling social anxiety who's thrust into the social media spotlight under false pretenses. And he may win another Tony for his performance in the musical "Parade," in which he plays Leo Frank, a true-life character whose alienation as a Jewish businessman in the Deep South contributed to a tragic miscarriage of justice.
But Platt is hardly a loner. Speaking in his pink cave of a dressing room at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, where "Parade" is being revived in a brilliant production directed by Michael Arden, he may not immediately come across as a people person. But all it takes is a few minutes of conversation to understand that this is an artist who gets by — and inspired — with a little help from his friends.
Platt's BFF, as every sentient theater buff knows by now, is Beanie Feldstein, his former classmate and fellow musical theater obsessive at . Disciples of the school's late, great drama teacher Ted Walch, realized their adolescent dreams of becoming Broadway stars while maintaining a bond that continues to creatively fuel them.
