“How did you get to be here?” It’s the question Jonathan Groff asks himself eight times a week in the Broadway revival of Merrily We Roll Along. Before the musical’s most recent production, Merrily was infamous in certain circles as one of theater icon Stephen Sondheim’s rare missteps—a structurally complicated show whose original 1981 Broadway production closed after just 16 performances. Now, more than four decades later, Groff and his close-knit main costars, Lindsay Mendez and Daniel Radcliffe, have made Merrily We Roll Along into a bona fide hit, with all three earning Tony nominations in the process.

“It’s been almost two years now with the same group of actors all working together on Merrily,” says Groff on Little Gold Men this week (listen below). “We’ve all just completely fallen in love with each other. There’s a deep bond with the company.”

In conversation with VF’s Richard Lawson, Groff talks Merrily as well as his childhood in rural Pennsylvania and his Tony-nominated performance as Melchior Gabor in Spring Awakening. Rather than joining Lea Michele, his Spring Awakening costar and bestie, on Ryan Murphy’s Glee, Groff opted to stay in the theater world. “I really felt like I didn’t want to sign on to be a singing teenager again for another seven years, which I had just done for two years in Spring Awakening,” he tells Lawson.

Of course, Groff would eventually make his way to Glee in a recurring role as heartthrob Jesse St. James, and go on to make a bigger splash as Patrick, the lovelorn protagonist in Looking, Andrew Haigh’s groundbreaking queer series. He’s taken on a diverse array of film and television roles in the years since, from top-billing David Fincher’s period crime drama, Mindhunter, to voicing Kristoff in Disney’s Frozen, to starring in M. Night Shyamalan’s horror film Knock at the Cabin. Still, Groff has always managed to return to his theater roots. In 2016, he earned a second Tony nod for originating the role of King George III in the Broadway production of a little show called Hamilton; now, he’s nominated for his third Tony for Merrily. Below, Groff opens up about his “childhood obsession” with Sondheim, moving to New York to be an actor, and choosing the art over money.

Vanity Fair: I saw you on one of the late-night shows, and you said that when the nominations were announced, you were very emotional about it. Is there anything about Merrily We Roll Along or this role that feels important in a particular way?

Jonathan Groff: Oh, God. I think it’s a laundry list of things. I don’t know if it’s one particular thing. It’s probably a combination of listening to the original cast of Company while I shoveled horse shit out of my dad’s horse stalls when I was a teenager; he’s a horse trainer. Growing up in Pennsylvania and being obsessed with Sondheim musicals and reading a Sondheim biography during this high school science fair—I’ve got this childhood obsession with his work.

On top of all that, it’s been almost two years now with the same group of actors all working together on Merrily. We’ve all just completely fallen in love with each other. So there’s a deep bond with the company.

And then this show was a flop 40-plus years ago. Honestly, I can never tire of talking about it, because it just feels like a miracle that this show has come back after decades away from its original Broadway premiere. Now here it is, and it’s got seven Tony nominations. At this point, monetarily, the show has become a hit, which is difficult historically for Sondheim shows in general—even the shows that have been, like, artistic and critical hits of his. That monetary hit, it’s why he’s writing about it so much so deep into his career in Merrily. That was always really important to him and meant something to him. In some ways, it was the thing that often eluded him. To be inside of this production of Merrily as a hit is just, like, so surreal and so cool and so emotional.

The line I always heard was that Sondheim wanted Andrew Lloyd Webber’s box office, and Andrew Lloyd Webber wanted Sondheim’s reviews. The two coming together is very rare.

[Laughs] Wow, that’s so funny.

There’s a great documentary about the original production—people who were involved in it reflecting on this beautiful dream that didn’t quite work out. All these years later, there have been other productions here and there, but nothing on the scale of your show. How heavy was the responsibility to get it right and honor, or change, the legacy of this beloved but also kind of fraught production history?

Maria Friedman, our director—she directed this production 12 years ago at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London, which is a tiny, little theater. It was a huge success and it transferred to the West End, where it ran in 2013, I think, to 2014. It won the Olivier for best revival, and they recorded it. When I was approached about doing the show, I watched this recording—which you can still see on YouTube—of her production, and I was blown away by it. I thought it was brilliant and incredible and was excited to live inside of that material. I would listen to “Our Time” and just weep. I felt so connected to this story about friends over the course of decades. I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into the material.

I’m wondering where you see the relevance in what it says about creativity clashing against commerce. You’ve had a flourishing career in television, in movies, and also in theater, obviously. Did anything about Merrily really ring true with your experience in showbiz?

Everything. Everything about it feels relatable. I think [Sondheim] and [playwright] George Furth and director Hal Prince, who, funnily enough, directed Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals Evita and Phantom of the Opera…I think after spending now two years researching, being inside of the show, watching lots of interviews, reading the Mary Rodgers memoir, learning that there was a lot of autobiographical energy put into this show. Our producer Sonia Friedman, who happens to also be the sister of Maria Friedman—when she was speaking about the show with me early on, she said, “Merrily is one of those special theatrical pieces that’s beyond theater.” We want the audience, of course, to track the character’s journey because of the way it’s written. And we’re constantly singing to the audience, “How did you get to be here?”

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In the story of the show, we’re in Frank’s memory, going back, reflecting. But even more than that, we want the audience to reflect on their own personal journeys. Even then, being inside of that as an actor, I feel that self-reflection all the time.

I have friends come and see the show. My friend Lindy was there last week. This is the woman that I moved to New York with when I was 19 years old. We were essentially on the rooftop with each other. This is the end of the show when the characters have just moved to New York and they’re singing the song “Our Time” and everything seems possible. This I lived, with my friend Lindy. I’ve been to a million parties that are like the Blob that Sondheim has written about.

It’s a story about a group of friends, and the role that I’m playing, Frank, is a straight man. But this is a straight man written by two gay men, George Furth and Stephen Sondheim. There’s a lot in the show that feels gay to me in the repression—in the relationship between Mary and Frank, which is a relationship of male and female intimacy where it’s never going to blossom into a relationship. But there’s all of the love and all of the tension that goes along with a male-female relationship that isn’t sexual, which I feel a lot with my straight female friends. There’s this line in the show: “I’ve made only one mistake in my life, but I’ve made it over and over and over. That was saying yes when I meant no.” And boy, that line…when I heard that when I was watching the video of that production, I was like, Oh boy. This—I’ve done this a lot in my life.

As you’ve navigated a very dynamic career, how have you found managing the art and the commerce?

I’ve been really lucky in that when I moved to New York, I just wanted to act. I was not looking for money. I mean, I waited tables and I kept cash under my bed and all of that when I first moved to New York. But as time went on, I was lucky enough to get those few jobs that allowed me to live and allowed me to listen to my artistic appetite over a monetary need. Even the jobs that have blessedly made me money in my life, I never took for that primary purpose. Every job that I’ve taken has been an artistic curiosity primarily. So I’ve been really lucky in that regard.

Are you saying that you didn’t do the off-Broadway Little Shop of Horrors for the money?

[Laughs] It’s funny that you bring up off Broadway, because there was this moment after Spring Awakening where I had left—I had left the show after doing it for two years. I was 23, and Ryan Murphy had told Lea Michele and I that he had written this show Glee for the two of us, and would we be interested in doing that? I really felt like I didn’t want to sign on to be a singing teenager again for another seven years, which I had just done for two years in Spring Awakening. I was 23, and I really wanted to act. I love singing, but doing that felt like more of the same as opposed to something that would be an opportunity for artistic growth. And that next year, I did three off-Broadway plays.

When I came out the other end of that experience, I understood the truly life-changing power of doing great material. Spring Awakening changed me from the inside out as a person. I came out of that experience feeling like, Ooh, I want to keep doing this. I want to keep stretching and growing and challenging myself as an actor. So, Hair and Glee came up as opportunities, but I went to Playwrights Horizons and the Public Theater and did plays there for the next year.

This interview has been edited and condensed.