She believes the Wicked star will revive Sondheim’s Passion with Jonathan Groff.
Bernadette Peters Has a Passion for That Cynthia Erivo Rumor
Bethy Squires
Folks, you heard it here first. Or at least this is the first time you’re hearing it from Bernadette Peters. Since last week, rumors have been swirling that Cynthia Erivo and Jonathan Groff would be starring in a new Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s Passion. On the 2026 Tony Awards red carpet, Peters seemingly confirmed those rumors. “Well I heard — Did you hear? — that Cynthia Erivo is going to be coming back in Passion,” she told New York. “It was announced somewhere, that’s how I know.” She then added that Erivo’s co-star in this new production would be Groff. Vulture has reached out to reps for Erivo and Groff to see if anyone wants to announce some stuff somewhere.
Passion is based on Ettore Scola’s 1981 film Passione d’Amore, itself inspired by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti’s 1869 novel Fosca. Set during the unification of Italy, it’s about a soldier who falls in love with the titular Fosca, the epileptic cousin of his commanding officer. The show opened on Broadway in 1994, with Jere Shea as Giorgio and Donna Murphy as Fosca. Per the rumor, this new version would be done by current revival “It” boy Jamie Lloyd. But he’s got to get Evita over here first.
The Tony Award-winning actor teamed up with AD100 designer Leyden Lewis for his tailor-made Greenwich Village Apartment
Jonathan Groff Wanted a Sofa He Could Canoodle on in His Manhattan Apartment
The Tony Award–winning actor teamed up with AD100 designer Leyden Lewis for his tailor-made Greenwich Village apartment
By Ingrid Abramovitch
Photography by Kelly Marshall
June 5, 2026
Last weekend, actor Jonathan Groff was enjoying a morning at home in his newly decorated Greenwich Village apartment, offering a virtual tour of the objects he treasures most. Nearly every piece carries a personal story. “The coffee table is from Florence, where I came out when I was 23,” he says. “I love its colors.”
From the obvious joy he takes in his environment, it is hard to believe that for most of his life, Groff lived like a squatter. “My friends would joke that it was ‘serial killer living’,” says Groff, who earlier this spring ended a Tony-award-winning turn as the 1950s chart-topper Bobby Darin in Just in Time, and who was recently named to the TIME100 list of the most influential people of 2026. “All I had was a mattress on the floor and stacks of books. I could live that way and be totally content.”
But in 2022, the actor bought his current apartment and discovered that designing a home could be as creative as stepping into a role, an epiphany sparked by meeting—through an acquaintance of his best friend, actor Lea Michele—the Brooklyn-based AD100 designer Leyden Lewis. The connection was immediate. “From the minute I met Leyden, I knew he was the right person,” Groff says of the designer, who specializes in highly personal spaces for creative clients like the artist Malene Barnett. “He had a kind of openness about him—a collaborative spirit.”
Lewis remembers their initial encounter differently. “The first thing he did was grab and hug me,” he says with a laugh. “When someone pulls you in that way, you think, ‘If I get this job, I am going to give him love’.”
The designer began not with paint chips but by listening to his client. Lewis compared decorating to acting—you are creating a stage for the real-life character you want to express. Groff realized that he wanted a home that reflected both his extroverted and his more introspective sides. The living room, with its sunny wall of windows, was designed for conversation and entertaining, while the moody bedroom in the back, painted chocolate brown, was conceived as a refuge from the demands of public life.
The first piece Lewis showed Groff was a sofa—a plump 1970s Italian design by Tacchini called the Sesann. The actor asked the designer to cuddle on the sofa with him to make sure that “this thing would be good enough to canoodle on,” Lewis says. It passed the test, and they were off and running.
When he showed the actor a pair of 1950s Italian ceramic lamps for the living room, Groff said the genie-bottle shape reminded him of a favorite TV show, I Dream of Jeannie—and snapped them up. The actor’s childhood friend, artist Eric Diehl, created the David Lynchian landscape that hangs over the sofa (its eerie title: Stalker). “Every object had to have a creative connection,” Lewis says.
The apartment is not huge—it’s 910 square feet—but every inch has been considered and maximized to its full potential. In the entry, Lewis devised a mirror and leather-wrapped console across a wall that also holds hooks from which Groff, who famously cycles to every Broadway performance, can hang his single-speed Brooklyn Bicycle Co. bike. And in the center of the living area, an unusual banana-frond pendant by Pelle Designs hangs over a 1950s armchair, creating a room within a room. “It’s like a little cocoon where I read scripts, learn my lines, respond to texts,” he says.
His home is such a tailor-made haven that Groff, who is currently in production on Lin-Manuel Miranda’s film adaptation of the musical Octet, admits he has become a design-loving homebody. “That’s the gift and curse of nesting,” he says. “It makes it harder to leave.”
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More details about design items are in the article.
Jonathan had previously said on the Evan Ross Katz podcast he wasn’t sure if he wanted to do a feature on the apartment, although he was proud of the work and wanted to celebrate the designer, Leyden Lewis.
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.
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.
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