Ben Platt details the ‘scary’ show that made him shake ‘Dear Evan Hansen’: ‘Really bad stage fright’
After countless nights owning the Broadway stage in “Dear Evan Hansen” — in his Tony-winning role as the title character — Ben Platt was hit with a serious case of Evan-esque anxiety before his first time singing his own material in public.
The meltdown went down in January 2019 at the Bowery Hotel in Manhattan at a showcase previewing his debut studio album, “Sing to Me Instead,” which was released later that year.
“I’m not necessarily someone who gets nervous or afraid to perform,” Platt, 30, told The Post. “I’ve been doing theater my whole life. I love singing, and I don’t necessarily get jitters. But I got incredibly scared.”
He added: “I just got, like, really bad stage fright in the couple of hours leading up to the show. And I think I took for granted how different it was going to feel performing.”
Indeed, singing his own songs — instead of the Tony-winning tunes of “Hansen” honchos Benj Pasek and Justin Paul — was a different kind of stage dive for Platt, who released his third studio album, “Honeymind,” on Friday.
“In theater, you can get nervous that something is going to go awry, but at least you know exactly what’s supposed to happen,” he explained. “And when you’re doing your own show, it’s entirely your call. Like, there’s so much freedom, and it’s very shapeless. And so I just felt so much more control than I’d ever felt before, which is just a scary thing for the first time.”
Especially when you’re opening yourself up to the bullies of the music industry and social media like Platt has always done in his recording career.
“I write almost only about very vulnerable things … my relationships or my mental health or whatever I’m experiencing that feels, you know, emotionally volatile enough to want to write a song about,” he said. “So I didn’t necessarily think, leading up to it, how exposing that would feel to sing at first.”
Still, Platt — whose 18-show residency at Broadway’s historic and newly renovated Palace Theatre runs through June 15 — had his squad up in the house.
“I had my group of best friends who remain my best friends to this day … most of whom I met in high school,” he said. “A lot of them are from my theater program in high school, and they’re sort of my chosen family.”
Since then, Platt has worked hard to navigate the tricky transition from Broadway belter to pop divo.
“It’s gotten better and better, and the myth is sort of being busted that there’s this huge difference,” he explained to The Post.
“But yeah, particularly coming out of ‘Evan Hansen,’ I think people expected a very particular musical-theater sound and type of thing. And I think that there is an earnestness and a seriousness that comes with being from the theater that sometimes pop music in particular is very against. I think pop music loves apathy and edginess and a lot of things that are not, like, you know, doing eight shows a week and telling a story and crying and all that stuff.”
But “Honeymind” — which puts a ’70s singer-songwriter spin on the queer experience — is a sweet detour from the Great White Way.
“I think that this album really feels like sort of an exhale in terms of just allowing things to come out as organically and authentically as they can.”
For more, watch Platt give The Post an exclusive tour around the NYC spots that shaped him — including the Bowery Hotel, Joseph Leonard and the Palace Theatre.
