This blog is dedicated to the amazing Tony Award-winning and Emmy-nominated actor and Grammy Award-winning singer Jonathan Groff. He is best known for originating the role of Melchior Gabor in Spring Awakening, playing King George III in Hamilton, voicing Kristoff in Disney's Oscar-winning animated films Frozen and Frozen 2, Jesse St James in Glee, and starring in the HBO series Looking and Netflix series Mindhunter. He most recently appeared in The Matrix Resurrections, And Just Like That, Life & Beth, Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known, Lost Ollie, Knock at the Cabin and Doctor Who. He starred as Franklin Shepard in Merrily We Roll Along on Broadway, and was Bobby Darin in Just in Time on Broadway until 29 March 2026. Groff will start filming Lin-Manuel’s film Octet shortly. Groff will be Rosalind in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of As You Like It in Stratford-Upon-Avon for 12 weeks from 26 September 2026.
June - August (TBD) - Filming Trust the Man with Daniel Radcliffe
August 2026 - Rehearsals begin for As You Like It
26 September to 7 November 2026 - Playing Rosalind in As You Like It at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon, United Kingdom (press night 6 October)
October 2026 - New Frozen short to be released
24 November 2027 - Frozen 3 released
Date TBA - Frozen 4
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Jonathan Groff has inked a deal to star in 'Trust the Man,' joining the previously announced Daniel Radcliffe in the Vietnam thriller.
EXCLUSIVE: Tony and Grammy-winning actor Jonathan Groff has inked a deal to join Daniel Radcliffe in Trust the Man, a Vietnam War thriller that was announced last February ahead of EFM.
The project, written and to be directed by Will Graham, reunites the duo following their work together in the multiple Tony Award-winning revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, which broke house records at The Hudson Theatre several different times throughout its run.
Shooting in New Jersey this summer, Trust the Man follows an ambitious Army Intelligence officer who’s assigned to investigate a decorated soldier with a mysterious past during the Vietnam War. As surveillance and interrogation deepen, the line between loyalty and obsession blurs, leading both men into a dangerous and uncontrollable connection.
No word yet on the role to be played by Groff. Lucas Hedges had previously been set to star opposite Radcliffe but fell off due to scheduling issues.
Producers on Trust the Man include Graham, Tonia Davis and Max Linsky for Invitation Media; Luke Rodgers; and Alex Scott. Jeffrey Soros and Hailey Wierengo are exec producing, with Jess Hackel co-producing. UTA is repping domestic rights, with Neon International handling international.
Both Groff and Radcliffe are coming off of individual recent successes on Broadway. Earlier this spring, Groff completed his Tony-nominated run as Bobby Darin in the jukebox musical Just in Time, which he also produced. Meanwhile, Radcliffe just completed his Tony-nominated run in the one-man show Every Brilliant Thing. Both shows have fully recouped, with Just in Time becoming the first new musical out of the 2024-2025 season to do so.
Currently in production on Lin Manuel Miranda’s film adaptation of the musical Octet, Groff will soon make his Royal Shakespeare Company debut as Rosalind in an all-male production of As You Like It, directed by Daniel Evans. He is represented by
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Jonathan’s involvement in the project was first mentioned at WWD last week following an interview with Kata Mara. The article stated:
Mara and her family recently moved back to New York, in time for her to start shooting her next film, “Trust the Man.” The film, which will shoot locally in New Jersey, co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Jonathan Groff. She also stars in Werner Herzog’s next film alongside sister Rooney Mara. “ It’s been quite a crazy year of press and things coming out, and it’s nice to just sort of take a breath with the family and the kids,” she added.
Jeremy Scott and Longchamp celebrated their 20 years of Le Pliage collaborations in SoHo with Emma Roberts, Zoey Deutch, Kate Mara, & Joan S
Jonathan is rumoured to be in a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Passion’, which would star Cynthia Erivo. The rumoured director is either Jamie Lloyd or Maria Friedman.
Update from Ed Fernandez, EPAC’s Artistic Director:
Jonathan at the ‘Every Brilliant Thing’ matinee on Saturday, posted by @ibonnieo on Instagram. Daniel Radcliffe’s last performance in the role is on Sunday. Jonathan was apparently at the show with Lea Michele and a few others.
Bobby Darin Musical Reaches a Rare Broadway Milestone: Profit
“Just in Time,” which for a year starred Jonathan Groff, is the first new musical from last season to make money for investors.
By Michael Paulson
“Just in Time,” an exuberant biomusical about the short-lived midcentury pop star Bobby Darin, has accomplished an increasingly rare feat on Broadway: profitability.
The show’s producers said in an interview that they have recouped their $12.5 million capitalization costs — the amount of money that it took to develop the show and open it on Broadway. That means the production can repay the investors and begin sharing profits with them.
The musical, featuring Darin hits including “Mack the Knife,” “Beyond the Sea,” “Splish Splash” and “Dream Lover,” starred Jonathan Groff for its first year, and his talent, likability, and popularity made it a very hot ticket. During Groff’s final week, in late March, the show grossed more than $2 million; the best seats were selling for $1,477 each and the average ticket price was $362, which vastly exceeded the industry average for that week, which was $131.
The grosses have come back down to earth since Groff’s departure — he was succeeded by Matthew Morrison (“Glee”) and then Jeremy Jordan (“The Great Gatsby”). But it is still earning more than it costs to run most weeks; it was sold out last week, and the show’s producers say they hope it will continue to run indefinitely. The show, produced by Tom Kirdahy, Robert Ahrens and John Frost, is also planning a North American tour, starting next summer.
The success of “Just in Time” was not a foregone conclusion. The show opened in April 2025 to low expectations from an industry that thought Darin, who died in 1973 at the age of 37, was no longer a famous enough subject to sell tickets. Reviews were mostly positive, but The New York Times was lukewarm, praising Groff but calling the show “a quasi-concert” with “narrative arthritis.” The show was not nominated for the best musical Tony Award; it was nominated in six other categories, and won zero.
“The industry missed the boat on this one,” Kirdahy said, “but the audience didn’t.”
The show is running at one of Broadway’s smallest houses, the Circle in the Square Theater, which has 690 seats wrapping around the show’s nightclub-like set. The theater size limits its box office potential, but the production’s capitalization costs, as well as its weekly running costs, are substantially lower than most, in part because it has just 11 onstage actors and 11 musicians, which is fewer than at many Broadway musicals.
“We exercised a lot of fiscal discipline along the way, to be really candid,” Kirdahy said. “The fact that we were in a small theater and have been able to make it work and keep it running tells us that we’re doing something right, and we fully intend on continuing to do so.”
“Just in Time,” which has been running for 14 months, is the first new musical from Broadway’s 2024-2025 season to become profitable; none of the current season’s new musicals have achieved that milestone.
Broadway musicals have always been enormously risky investments, but that has become even more true since the pandemic. The only other new musicals to open since the pandemic and become profitable are “MJ,” “Six,” “& Juliet,” “The Outsiders,” and “Kimberly Akimbo,” which announced recently that, although it did not make back its money on Broadway, it was able to pay back its capitalization costs and return a small profit thanks to a successful tour.
“Just in Time” has an unusual history: It started in 2018 as part of the long-running Lyrics and Lyricists series at the 92nd Street Y in New York. Ted Chapin, then running the series, had seen an earlier Darin musical, “Dream Lover,” produced by Frost in Australia; he thought a different approach might work better, and brought the idea to Groff, who signed on after watching Darin clips on YouTube.
Groff enlisted the director Alex Timbers, who worked on the show at 92Y and went on to direct the Broadway version, which features a book by Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver.
Julian Shapiro-Barnum has hosted some massive talent on his viral web series, but two guests stand out from the rest — at least according to his troupe of kid collaborators.
The content creator, 26, made his name by moderating adorably candid conversations between stars and children on Recess Therapy, and he invites A-listers to lead a classroom of young students on Celebrity Substitute. He looked back on the best of his digital footprint while speaking with PEOPLE at the 2026 YouTube Brandcast Upfront on Wednesday, May 13.
He nods to Jonathan Groff, 41, who has been on both Recess Therapy and Celebrity Substitute. "The kids are obsessed with that man, as am I, and he has been on my show more than anybody else," says Shapiro-Barnum.
UCSB Arts & Lectures fundraiser is a charming evening for a great cause.
Bantering for Arts Education with Jonathan Groff and Jane Lynch
UCSB Arts & Lectures Fundraiser is a Charming Evening for a Great Cause
By Leslie Dinaberg
It’s great to be in the room where it happens — not just for Hamilton, but when its Tony Award–winning star Jonathan Groff comes to town.
Jonathan Groff and Jane Lynch | Photo: Isaac Hernandez
It’s not often you see a high-end fundraiser so directly connected to the cause it supports, but last week’s benefit for UCSB Arts & Lectures’ Arts Education — held at the Rosewood Miramar Beach and formally titled “An Evening of Song and Conversation with Jonathan Groff” moderated by Jane Lynch — was a special one for not just the paying customers and the lucky working media, but for the San Marcos High School Madrigal singers, who not only got to perform at the beginning of the event, but the teens got to spend a few hours beforehand with the man who was recently included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world in 2026.
In addition to the main stage performances it presents, as A&L Executive Director Meghan Bush explained in her introduction, “Arts and Lectures also presents more than 150 education events every year for more than 30,000 students and community members across Santa Barbara County, all the way from Carpinteria up to Guadalupe, with the very same artists and speakers that you see on the main stage. And we invest significant resources, both financial and human, to ensure that this access is possible, that the goal of truly making the arts accessible for all is not just something we say. We walk the walk.”
Following a filet mignon dinner, Jim Nye the Auction Guy led the crowd through a short live auction and a lively paddle raise before the eagerly awaited Groff and Lynch took the stage together.
Jonathan Groff and San Marcos High School students | Photo: David Bazemore
Lynch is always an affable interviewer and seemingly willing to use her comedic powers for good in Santa Barbara (see CommUnify Fundraiser here, and Pacific Pride Foundation here, as just a few examples), but she was particularly on fire that night as she interviewed her former Glee costar.
As Groff explained, his mom was a gym teacher in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, so he immediately connected with Lynch in her trademark track suits on the show.
“I remember sitting with you on the set, because you were so intimidating because of your talent, and then disarming because of your personality, because you were so volcanically gifted, and on that show so specific as Sue Sylvester, and then you could not be more warm, engaging, [and] kind in person,” shared Groff. “And I remember everyone — even though you were so warm and engaging — everyone still felt at all times a little nervous around you, because of your artistic excellence. I know we didn’t even plan to talk about this, but I’m feeling inspired, because it was like, everybody, a lot of young people on that show, and a lot of people finding their way, when you were doing a scene with Jane, you had to, like, pull your shit together, because Jane was gonna bring the A game and be amazing. You raise the bar for everybody, both personally and professionally on that show. … You have to get to a certain level to play with you.”
Jonathan Groff and accompanist Bobby Brader | Photo: Isaac Hernandez
“Well, you’re at that level,” quipped Lynch.
Groff spoke about doing theater in high school and described himself as not being particularly gifted, but highly motivated. “[The other kids] were more doing it for fun and I was doing it for my life. There were kids that were way more talented than me in high school, better singers, better actors, better performers. But I would say that the thing that made me different from them was that I used to watch musicals before I would go to bed. I was eating, sleeping, drinking, breathing theater. And so, I wasn’t more talented than them. Genuinely, there were people that were so gifted, but I was driven. I was so driven, and I was obsessed.”
Recalling his time that day with the students, he said one of the bits of advice he shared with them was, “We’re all just on our own journey. There’s no one set path to being a performer. One of the great things about the entertainment industry is that you make your own way. And so there isn’t any advice that you can get to become an actor. You just sort of listen and follow your instinct and your gut.”
He continued, “It’s not necessarily like the drive comes from a place that’s super loud. It’s like a quiet, purposeful passion.”
In addition to a far reaching and very entertaining conversation with Lynch, the night was also interspersed with several songs from Groff, including “Mama Who Bore Me” from Spring Awakening, “You’ll Be Back” from Hamilton, with a slight Beyoncé mashup, and “The Curtain Falls” from Just in Time (the Bobby Darin musical).
Groff also revealed that he’s working with Hamilton director Lin-Manuel Miranda again, this time on a film called Octet, an a capella musical about screen addiction and a support group for Internet addicts. His costars sadly don’t include Lynch, but they do include Amanda Seyfried, Rachel Zegler, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Phillipa Soo, Gaten Matarazzo, Tramell Tillman, and Paul-Jordan Jansen.
@time If Hilary Duff, Jonathan Groff, and Maria Sharapova could go back in time, this is what they would tell their younger selves.
We asked guests and honorees at the TIME100 Summit in New York City this month to share the advice they wish they'd heard before the fame — and long before they knew they'd be taking the stage at the event.
