Casual Screaming About Jonathan Groff

Jonathan Drew Groff. One of my favorite TV and stage actors of all time.

Jonathan has been nominated for two Tony Awards. One for his portrayal of Melchior in Spring Awakening and the other for his portrayal of King George III in Hamilton. I am a huge fan of his, but I disagree with the second nomination. But that's for another post.

Jonathan as King George III

The first time I saw Jonathan Groff was the first time I ever watched Glee. I never had cable growing up, I had DTV, which means I had a $25 antenna from Walmart that only got a few channels. Among those channels were PBS, ABC, and Fox. The main channels I watched. My older brother and I stumbled across Glee one night and I was happy, because I heard some kids at my school talking about it. It was the episode "Funk.

To jog the memory of any Gleeks that may read this, it was the episode in season one where Will basically gives Sue a lap dance and Vocal Adrenaline eggs Rachel. Now that we're on the same page, I fell head over heels in love with Jonathan Groff, who plays Jesse St. James on the show. And I fell in love with Glee.

Jonathan's performance of "Another One Bites the Dust" with the rest of Vocal Adrenaline (above) was amazing. His voice as well as his good looks caught me and kept me hostage to this day.

I never fell out of love with Jonathan, as I have with people I've written past blogs about. I still love him today, as the first day I "discovered" him. I watched Glee religiously and every time he would be in an episode it would make me really happy. Jesse was my favorite character until I met Blaine Anderson. Then Jesse became #2. But I will still defend Jesse to the death. Rachel didn't necessarily deserve to be egged, but I don't think Jesse was in the wrong for leaving McKinley and going back to Carmel. But I will explain that all in another post.

I followed Jonathan a lot in his career during and after Glee. Every time anything Groff related popped up on TV or Netflix, I watched it. I fell in love with a lot of shows and films because of him. One show, besides Glee, being HBO's Looking. If you have not watched it, I do really recommend it. Not to mention that Jonathan is also the reason I fell in love with the musical, Hamilton.

I had heard about Hamilton when it was off-Broadway, but all I knew about it was that it was a rap musical about American history. I've never been a huge fan of rap and at the time, I hated US history, even though I am a huge history nerd. It wasn't until I saw a photo that Andrew Chappelle posted of him and Jonathan at the White House when the cast of Hamilton performed for President Obama, that I decided to listen to the cast album and give the show a chance. If you know me, you know I was obsessed with Hamilton and my love for Lin-Manuel Miranda was rekindled.

Thanks to Jonathan, Hamilton opened a whole new world of Broadway and musicals for me and he will forever be one of my favorite actors and performers of all time and I do hope to see him perform live one day. I got into Spring Awakening and it's an amazing show, if you have not listened to the cast album do it, right now. There a few songs from the show that are constantly stuck in my head. I'll let you guess which ones. Jonathan Drew Groff is just so amazing. We must appreciate and take care of him now that we have him around.

Of course I can't write a blog post about Jonathan and not include some clips of his performances because the man is amazing.

Glee "Highway to Hell", "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Hello", "Rolling in the Deep":

"Bohemian Rhapsody" is one of my favorite Glee covers and I wish I could find a video of the performance from the show, but I cannot at this time. Please watch the show, if you can. I love this show so much.

Spring Awakening Tony Performance:

Jonathan Performs "Anything Goes":

The man is simply amazing and he's one of my heroes. His voice is amazing. I have fallen in love with most characters he's played.