How To Reinvent Yourself On Broadway

Tony-nominated stars share secrets of the stage: ‘I was really excited by the idea of scaring myself’.

- Scott Feinberg

After 15 years of album, tour, album, tour, I was really excited by the idea of scaring myself,” says Josh Groban of his first Broadway role. The 36-year-old multi platinum singer/songwriter stars in the War and Peace-derived musical Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, which on May 2 scored 12 Tony Award nominations, the most of any show this season. “I wanted something that was going to challenge me and make me feel like I did when I made that first record or did that first tour,” he says at a May 8 THR photo shoot with nine other Tony-nominated stars, recalling how he set up a meeting with composer Dave Malloy after seeing Comet off-Broadway in 2013. “I just threw my hat in the ring,” he says. But once he landed the part, “a lot of things were intimidating for me — not to mention the fact that this was the first time I’d done theater since Fiddler on the Roof in 11th grade.”

Groban, who will be replaced July 3 by original Hamilton cast member