There are times I think this might be the greatest thing I’ve ever been given to do,” says Jonathan Groff, looking for all the world like he means it. This is no small claim, either. The 41-year-old actor has taken on some pretty exceptional parts over the years – leading roles in TV shows like the Netflix serial killer drama Mindhunter and HBO’s soulful gay dramedy Looking (plus a recurring part in Glee); in films by M Night Shyamalan (A Knock at the Cabin) and Lana Wachowski (The Matrix Resurrections); and on stage, in the original Broadway production of Hamilton and a lauded run in 2024’s hit revival of Merrily We Roll Along. But it seems that William Shakespeare may have them all beat.
Groff is sitting in a house in Stratford-upon-Avon, near the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre, where he’s currently fronting an all-male production of the Bard’s As You Like It. He’s wearing a blue baseball cap, which he lifts up as soon as he sees me to reveal a shock of dyed-blonde hair, still wet. “Oh my God, we’re twinning!” he says. (I also have a sort of bedraggled peroxide thing going on, but I fear we are only really twinning in the Schwarzenegger-DeVito sense.)
