Thirty-seven-year-old Darren Criss is a Broadway star and frequenter of piano bars. “Keep the music playing, you know?” He said. “I think the expression goes: ‘Life is a cabaret!’
When he’s in Los Angeles, it’s Tramp Stamp Granny’s, where he and his wife Mia own. “It’s kind of a nice little Hollywood tale,” he said. “She drinks, I play tunes.”
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One rule at the piano bar? Play strokes. Chris got his first success at the University of Michigan. He starred as Harry Potter in an unauthorized student show based on the books that became a YouTube sensation in 2009.
“This was a very interesting moment in time” for “A Very Potter Musical,” he said. “That really changed my life. That set me on the path to where I am now.”
Since 2009: the unofficial satirical show “A Very Potter Musical”:
I asked if “A Very Potter Musical” was the first musical to go viral. “I don’t know; I guess we’ll leave it to YouTube historians to decide how true that is,” Chris said.
But Chris took a detour on his way to Broadway, becoming a TV star. “Glee was happening at the time,” he said. “And I went out for it, like hundreds of thousands of other people who were in my situation at the time. And I just happened to book it.”
He played Blaine Anderson, and quickly became a fan favorite. “I owe my tenure on this show to the subcultural fan base we’ve amassed from the Potter material,” he said.
Watch Blaine Anderson (Darren Criss) perform Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” on “Glee”:
Chris won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his role as serial killer Andrew Cunanan in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.
Now he plays an anachronistic robot named Oliver in a new musical called Maybe a Happy Ending, one of the most popular shows currently on Broadway. The New York Times calls it “Joyful,” “heartbreaking,” and “brilliant.”
Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman/Maybe a Happy Ending
Chris said: “This show starts with a song that is the question the show asks: Why love? Why do we do that? If we know that loving something gets you into a contract that has an inexorable back end—losing something—why do we do it, if we know it’s going to happen?
According to Chris, this offer came at just the right time. He and his wife, Mia, have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and earlier this year they welcomed a baby boy.
“Does this look like the best year of your life?” I asked.
“Well, that’s certainly a good idea,” Chris laughed. “I’ve had some extraordinary years in my life, and I think this has certainly been an exciting time.”
He’s had some tough years, too. In 2020, his father, Bill, died at the age of 78 from heart disease. In 2022, his brother Chuck died by suicide at the age of 36.
“I don’t necessarily think about my own experience with those people that I’ve lost in my life specifically,” Chris said. “But I think about the feeling of loss, sadness, emptiness, and loneliness that comes from that, because we all feel it. But the things that move me, in life and in… (“Maybe a happy ending”), not the darkness of loss, but the powerful grace it takes to be steadfast in the inevitable reality of it.
When he thinks about it, Darren Criss can’t help but sing.
“I count my lucky stars every day,” he laughed. “I’m running out – there’s so many! They’re still showing up. I’m on CBS Sunday Morning!”
You can stream the holiday album “A Very Darren Crissmas” by clicking the embed below (free Spotify registration required to hear the full tracks):
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The story was produced by Marie Ravalli. Editor: Lauren Barnello.
See also:
Watch these holiday music specials from Darren Criss on “Sunday Morning”: