“Who wants to get naked?” Aaron Tveit enthusiastically shouts in the new season of Schmigadoon!, fulfilling an army of Broadway fans’ fantasies.
The Tony Award-winning actor plays Topher on the Apple TV+ series, a musical theater satire-homage that premiered its second season last week. This season takes place in the fictional world of “Schmicago,” a town where everyone looks, acts, and sings like characters from the Broadway musicals of the ’60s and ’70s.
Productions as varied as Chicago, A Chorus Line, Cabaret, and Sweeney Todd are all heavily referenced. Kristin Chenoweth is doing her take on Sweeney Todd, inflected with notes of Miss Hannigan from Annie. Jane Krakowski is channeling just about every character from Chicago. Tituss Burgess guides us through it all with his version of the Leading Player from Pippin.
These characters, despite being from different time periods and performing musical stylings as varied as Stephen Sondheim and Kander & Ebb, travel together through their shows’ respective universes. The result is a musical-theater mash-up that should make no sense at all but, under the guidance of showrunner and songwriter Cinco Paul, miraculously works. “[I thought,] wouldn’t it be fun if Pippin and Sally Bowles fell in love?” Paul said about the inspiration behind the appealing chaos.
Tveit’s Topher is a version of that take on Pippin. He’s also inspired by Claude from the hippie counterculture musical Hair—hence his rallying for everyone to strip off their clothes—who leads a troupe of storytellers that call to mind the ensemble of Godspell. In the season’s second episode, Topher sings a “what’s my purpose?” ballad called “Doorway to Where;” it’s clearly the show’s rendition of “Corner of the Sky” from Pippin—the go-to audition song for just about every musicals-obsessed male aspiring actor.
“‘Corner the Sky’ is one of the seminal tenor songs, but I’ve actually never sung it before,” Tveit tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed. When he was in college, everyone he knew was working on their rendition of it, so he steered clear—until now. “I’ve never done Carousel. I’ve never done Hair. I’ve never done Pippin. I’ve never done Godspell. I’ve never done Jesus Christ Superstar. I’ve gotten to do them all in this show instead.”
When you first see Tveit as Topher in Schmigadoon!, he’s in jail, the cellmate of Keegan-Michael Key’s Josh. He’s styled in full Hair costume: a massive afro, open leather vest revealing his toned arms, and shape-hugging bell bottoms. When Josh looks at him, Topher’s practically glowing.
Well, literally glowing, actually: He’s so handsome and so happy-go-lucky charming that it appears like a halo of warm light is following him around. “I asked [Cinco Paul] how much do I have to pay to get that sunlit filter on my next shot,” Jane Krakowski told Obsessed, laughing.
Krakowski has known Tveit for more than two decades, through the Broadway community. While known on screen for his work in Schmigadoon!, Tom Hooper’s Oscar-winning Les Misérables film, 2016’s Grease Live!, and three seasons as the lead on the cable drama series Graceland, he’s one of Broadway’s most famous leading men. He made his Broadway debut in 2006 as teen idol Link Larkin in Hairspray and received rave critical notices for his work in the original productions of Next to Normal and Catch Me If You Can.
In 2020, he won his first Tony Award for starring in Moulin Rouge!, after an unusual circumstance that saw him be the only nominee in his category in a season that was disrupted by COVID shutdowns. On Sunday, less than a week after Schmigadoon! Season 2 premiered, he completed his victory lap, playing his last performance in the smash show after more than five years of working on it.
“Aaron is so good. I don’t even know what to say,” Krakowski said when asked about Tveit’s performance. “Once he put on that vest, in that wig, we saw a whole new Aaron Tveit.”
As we learn while talking to him about this period in his life, that’s true in more ways than one.
The Last Curtain Call
“You know those memes that say, ‘still trying to process 2019’ but it’s actually 2023? You’re like, ‘How did this happen?’” Tveit says. “Time has just been a vacuum.”
The day we spoke, as he was getting ready for his last run of shows in Moulin Rouge! after more than five years, it was three years to the day since Broadway shut down due to COVID. “To be back in that theater now, that feels like that was both 10 years ago and 10 days ago. It's a very surreal thing to think about.”
In 2018, Tveit opened the stage adaptation of Moulin Rouge! The Musical at Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre. He played Christian, the composer originated by Ewan McGregor in Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 film.
The production, directed by Alex Timbers, is an audacious spectacle, featuring a crowded stage of dancers performing a head-spinning array of modern pop hits—“Raise Your Glass” by Pink, “Firework” by Katy Perry,” “Rolling in the Deep” by Adele—along with memorable numbers from the film, like “Elephant Love Medley,” “Come What May,” and Christian’s big showstopper, a cover of “Roxanne” by the Police. (Lizzo has commented on, and even done her own attempt at, the “option up” that Tveit does, in a video clip of his performance that went viral.)
The New York Times review hailed Christian as the role Tveit “was born to play.” When the show transferred to New York, the Times then called it his “best Broadway work to date.” The production was an immediate sold-out hit, piquing the interest of a mainstream audience outside of New York in ways that stage actors typically can only dream. But then COVID happened.
On Mar. 12, 2020, Broadway closed its doors due to the pandemic. Tveit became the first Broadway actor to publicly announce a positive COVID test result, and the virus ran rampant through the cast. It would be 18 months before Broadway received the all-clear to reopen, and Tveit returned as Christian for the emotional milestone. But even that experience was fraught with uncertainty. The Omicron variant wreaked havoc all over again. Shows were canceled. There was an uneasy feeling that another shutdown could happen.
Tveit played his final performance on May 8, 2022, leaving to film Season 2 of Schmigadoon!, among other projects. Six months later, he got offered the opportunity to return to the show one more time for a short run, which he jumped at. He had never originated a production that had run long enough to return to it. Plus, this was a chance to punctuate his five years of working on Moulin Rouge! with more certainty and more happiness than he was able to before.
“It’s really the most normal it’s felt probably since 2019,” he says. “So it’s been a joy to get to go do the show under those circumstances this time around.”
It’s been a dramatic five years of his life, to say the least. He opened a massive show on Broadway that was an immediate hit. Then there was the shutdown, the reopening, and the strange Tony Awards experience. Now, he gets to say goodbye one more time to it on his own terms. People rarely have the opportunity to take a moment and look at a period of their life and how it changed them, but that’s exactly what Tveit is getting to do.
“I’m in therapy talking about it,” he says, laughing, “trying to figure it out.”
“I feel like a totally different person now that I was when I got this job,” he continues. “I feel like now, at 39, for the first time in my life, I feel like an adult, whereas I didn’t always feel like that before. So it’s been a tremendous time of personal and professional growth. That’s the only awareness I have. I think the specific things will come with time and distance.”
Discovering What Matters
The first time Tveit and I spoke was 10 years ago, at another, though decidedly different, transitional period in his life and career. “Aaron Tveit Is TV’s Next Big Heartthrob,” the headline fawningly pronounced.
Then 29, he was about to debut his first starring TV role on the USA drama series Graceland, at a time when the network’s solving-crimes-in-the-sunshine brand was producing success stories out of procedurals like White Collar, Suits, and Burn Notice. It was a big opportunity for Tveit, who had gained notice for his appearances in Les Miz, Gossip Girl, and the Allen Ginsberg drama Howl; he was also famously this close to being cast as Finn in the pilot of Glee.
We spent a major chunk of the conversation discussing a BuzzFeed listicle that had been published titled, “The 42 Most Seductively Charming Aaron Tveit Moments of All Time.” (Other posts in the thirst genre: HelloGiggles called him the Crush of the Week. StarCrush named him its Daily Swoon. There’s even a Pinterest board called “Aaron Tveit with some slightly less attractive men.”)
The moment was about positioning Tveit as the Broadway breakout turned Hollywood Next Big Thing, who didn’t just boast screen-ready good looks, but, as he showed off in Broadway’s Next to Normal, the real dramatic chops to be taken seriously.
In between giggling about that fanfare, Tveit’s eyes bulge at the thought that a decade has passed since then.
“I think then it was more about really specifically not being pigeonholed as a Broadway or musical theater performer,” he says. “I think a lot of the choices that I made professionally at that time, and for the years prior to that, were about avoiding that. I definitely, at that time, was under the pressure in my own head to think, OK, you do this and then you have to do that and that's going to lead to this. I got close to some really, really big things at that time that I thought were the next step. Then when that thing didn’t work out, I kind of thought, what now? Or is this over? Was that my shot?
“Now I sit here and I think what I want from my career is very different. If those supermassive things never happened to me, it doesn’t matter because I have this. I get to work on things that I love. I have a very different perspective about what I want those things to look like. And I think that I didn’t really know that at that time.”
The Wildest Tony Awards Ever
Given that this is an exit interview, of sorts, about Tveit’s time with Moulin Rouge!, we have to talk about the Tonys.
The whole thing was just so strange. When I bring it up, Tveit starts to chuckle. “I’m just laughing, because it still seems very surreal,” he says.
The Pandemic Tonys (not the official name) were held in September 2021, about 15 months after they had originally been scheduled to honor the 2020 season. The nominees, announced in October 2020, spent nearly a year wondering if they’d ever find out whether or not they won. That included Tveit, who, because of the limited number of productions that were eligible in the disrupted season, was the only nominee for Best Leading Actor in a Musical.
But he wasn’t guaranteed a trophy. In order for him to win, at least 60 percent of Tony voters would have to vote “yes,” that they wanted him to take home the award. That set up what could potentially have been the most awkward award presentation in history: presenters introducing him as the category’s sole nominee, and then the news that voters actively decided that he did not deserve to win. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.
“I’ve tried to let the uniqueness of that time fall away in my recollection of it,” Tveit says. “I mean, that award is on my mantle. I still see it and I’m like, how is that there? But it was a very interesting situation. A lot of people that I really respect have said, ‘Don’t let the fact that you are the only nominee take away anything from how much you deserve this in your own mind.’ That means a lot to me.”
Thinking back to that Tonys ceremony, he remembers that, up until his name was announced, he really had no idea whether he was going to win. “I’m sitting in the theater, thinking, ‘What is going to happen if they say the nominee is me and the winner is no one? What am I going to do?’”
Actors Courteney B. Vance and Bebe Neuwirth presented his category, and Tveit had worked with both of them before. The peculiarity of the situation was the focus of the banter. It wasn’t until about halfway through their introduction, when they had been so heavily joking about it, that he relaxed. “I thought, ‘They’re not going to joke about it and then not have me win the award.’ But up until that moment, I was very stressed. Not because I was worried I was going to win or not. I was worried about what the hell am I going to do in this seat with this camera on me if I don't win.”
It was another installment of what’s been a complicated history with the Tony Awards for Tveit. Twice before, after receiving rapturous reviews for his performances for his work in Next to Normal and Catch Me If You Can, respectively, he was included on just about every award pundits’ list of predicted nominees. Many forecasted that he was a shoo-in to win. Then, on those nomination mornings in 2009 and 2011, his name wasn’t read; both times, his was considered among the year’s most egregious snubs.
“I do think back to not being nominated at those times and the overwhelming feeling was feeling unseen, if that makes sense,” he says. “So the full circleness of, just for that moment in time [winning in 2020], feeling seen by community that I’ve only ever wanted to be a part of since the first day I saw a Broadway show—that was was one of the greatest feelings you can ever feel as a as a stage actor.”
Here he is now, reflecting on all of this and, much like his character in Schmigadoon!, practically glowing. The series, which he refers to as one of the greatest working experiences of his career, is now airing to even better notices than it received in Season 1. When we speak, he’s days away from wrapping his run in Moulin Rouge!. Since then, he’s taken his final bow.
This year, he turns 40, and, because of all of this, he’s feeling very contemplative—like this a major, transformative moment in his life, after several dramatic years of high highs and low lows. “I don’t think we often are gifted the perception of those moments in our lives when they’re happening,” he says. “So to be aware of a lot of things ending and things being blank and brand new in front—yeah, it’s kind of a surreal thing.”
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