Darren Criss on counting his lucky stars

Thirty-seven-year-old Darren Chris is a star on Broadway, and a regular at piano bars. “Keep the music going, you know?” he said. “I think the expression is, ‘Life is a cabaret!'”

When he’s in Los Angeles, it’s at Grandma’s Tramp Stamp, which he and his wife, Mia, own. He said that this is a beautiful story of Hollywood. “He throws the drinks, and I throw the tunes.”

A rule in the piano bar? Play Hits. Chris had his first hit at the University of Michigan. He played Harry Potter in an unauthorized student show based on the books that became a YouTube sensation in 2009.

“It was a very interesting moment in time,” he said of “A Very Potter Musical.” “It really changed my life in a way. It set me on the path to where I am now.”

From 2009: The Unofficial Parody 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 let YouTube historians decide the validity of that,” Chris said.

But Chris took a detour by becoming a TV star and going to Broadway. He said that there was ‘joy’ at that time. “And I went out for it, like millions of other people in my situation at the time. And I booked it.”

He played Blaine Anderson, and quickly became a fan favorite. “I owe my tenure on the show to the subcultural fanbase army we assembled from the Potter stuff,” he said.

Watch Blaine Anderson (Darren Criss) perform Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” on “Glee”:

Criss won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of serial killer Andrew Cunanan in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.”

Now he’s playing an abandoned robot named Oliver in a new musical, “Maybe a Happy Ending,” one of the hottest shows on Broadway right now. The New York Times calls it “Happiness,” “heartwarming,” and “super smart.”

Chris said, “The show opens with a song that questions the show: Why love? Why do we do this? If we know something that gets you into a contract that’s The latter is unbearable – the loss is something – why do we do it, if we know it’s going to happen?”

According to Chris, the show came at the perfect time. He and his wife, Mia, have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and welcomed a son earlier this year.

I asked, “Does this sound like the best year of your life?”

“Well, that’s definitely a blessing,” Chris laughed. “I’ve had some extraordinary years of my life, and I think it’s definitely been an interesting time.”

He too has had some tough years. In 2020, his father, Bill, died of heart disease at the age of 78. In 2022, his brother, Chuck, died by suicide at the age of 36.

“I don’t necessarily think about my experience with people, especially in my life that I’ve lost. But I do think about the feeling of loss, the sadness and the emptiness and the loneliness,” Kreis said. Am, because we all feel but the things that move me in life. [“Maybe Happy Ending”]is not the darkness of loss, but the Herculean grace required to be resilient in its inevitable truth.”

When he thinks about it, Darren Chris can’t help but sing.

“I count my lucky stars every day,” he laughed. “I’m running out – there are too many! They’re still showing up. I’m doing ‘CBS Sunday Morning’!”

You can stream the holiday album “A Very Dear Christmas” by clicking the embed below (free Spotify registration required to listen to the track in full):

For more information:

Story prepared by Mary Rafali. Editor: Lauren Barnello.

See also:

Check out this special performance of Darren Criss’ holiday music for “Sunday Morning”: