And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 71: Ben Platt

Episode Date: October 7, 2019

Our next guest achieved superstar status for his Tony Award-winning performance as Evan Hansen in ‘Dear Evan Hansen’, originating the lead role. He is a Grammy and Emmy Award-winning vocalist, songwriter, and actor, who is also recognized for his role as Benji Applebaum in ‘Pitch Perfect’ and ‘Pitch Perfect 2’. This year he shared another side of himself as a songwriter and solo artist with the release of his first full-length album, ‘Sing To Me Instead’, which delivers confessional lyricism by way of soulful intimacy as part of one cohesive narrative. The 12-track album chronicles the highs and lows of a transformative relationship. Showcasing his personal story, he penned several songs solo and co-wrote the remainder of material alongside the likes of Ben Abraham, Eg White, Nate Cyphert, Michael Pollack, Jenn Decilveo and more. In addition to his recent album, he is the executive producer and leading star of the new Ryan Murphy series, ‘The Politician’, currently on Netflix. He is the youngest artist to be one award away from EGOT status, And The Writer Is…Ben Platt! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Season 5 of Anne the Writer is with your host, Ross Golan. Before I get my spiel, I want to acknowledge the music army that listens to this podcast every week. Since starting this, the And The Writer is community has literally changed the history of the music business by helping pass the music modernization act, gotten songwriters added to album of the year for the Grammys, and still is advocating for positive changes for our industry. industry on a daily basis. So thank you and congrats. Now, as you know, I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning

why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs. I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, Big Deal Music Publishing, and Mega House music management. If you want to listen to the songs we discuss in this podcast, follow us on our socials, find out about special live events, or buy that merch, aka that hat I always wear, go to our website www. and the writer is.com. Today's podcast is brought to you by our friends at Banzugal.

Built for musicians by musicians, you can use Banzugel's tools to easily design a website in EPK, sell your music, merge directly to your fans, and it's commission-free. Banzugal also recently added a crowdfunding feature, which lets you crowdfund your next project, commission-free. So think about it. Your fans want to help fund your album. You don't need a record deal anymore. You can just use Banzugal.

So go to banzugal.com, try free for 30 days. Be sure to use a promo code ATWI, and you'll get 15% off your first year of any subscription. That's ATWI at Banzuel. or 15% off of any subscription. Songwriters, think about your favorite hit song and what makes it in earworm. You could be the writer behind the next song and that goes viral. Enter the 20th annual NSA song contest presented by Martin Guitar's In Strings and CMT. You could win several prizes including the one-on-one mentoring session with El King, myself,

and fellow and the writer is producer Joe London. The lyric only winner will score $2,000 cash and, mentoring session with award-winning songwriter Tom Douglas, as well as other coveted prizes. Send in your best songs now through October 31st at NSAI.cumt.com. Welcome to And The Writer is. I am your host, Ross Golan. Today's Emmy, Grammy, and Tony winning singer-actor musician is only an O away from the EGOT. After starring in Pidge Perfect 1 and 2, this human put his stamp on one of the most contemporary protagonist

Broadway has seen in years. This performer displayed his legendary vocal chops on the Grammys and has since released his own collection of records. His honesty in his vocal performances is only rivaled by his honesty in his lyrics. This Los Anhalino is not just a rising star,

but is an advocate for those less fortunate. And the writer is the OG, Evan Hansen, Ben Platt. Hello. That's the best intro I've ever had. Really? Yeah, anywhere. That can't be true. It's 100% true. It was full of verve and enthusiasm,

and I loved every moment of it. Thank you. Yeah, you know what? We're going to be friends. Yeah, I think so. So, okay, so this is like, this is kind of, this is a unique podcast for us, because you're a writer, but you're a performer in so many senses of the word that I want to kind of discuss all of your journey.

Sure. And let's start from the beginning. So you're from Los Angeles. I am. I'm from here. I'm from like 20 minutes away from you, like in Westwood. Okay, okay. I grew up around the corner from my Jewish Day School,

which was also my synagogue, where we would walk to school and to Bar Mitzvahs and weddings and holidays and what have you. So were you raised Orthodox? No, just conservative, like relatively observant. Like we did the big ones like Yom Kippur's and Hanukas and Passover and bar mitzvahs, but not like going every week or anything.

And I was allowed to wear like shorts. Right. But yeah. Do you brothers and sisters? Yeah, I'm one of five. So I'm the fourth. I have three older, one younger, and then a bunch of them are now married and I've got a bunch of nephews as well.

But everybody sings. up always singing together and my parents are both lovers of musical theater and they met doing musical theater in college and my dad's in the business as well and so the singing's always been part of the part of the game so I mean obviously you know it's easy to Wikipedia your past but so people have some idea you started singing professionally really young but do you remember the first time you were a singer like do you remember singing when you were four years old. Do you remember that? I have video of when I first started singing when I was like five

in like a kid's theater program, which is where my first theoretical performances were. What was the song? Ten minutes ago from Cinderella because I was the Prince and Cinderella. A little Roger and Hammerstein to start. And I remember loving it, but I don't remember really the act of singing until I was about eight or nine years old and I went out for my first professional gig,

which was the Hollywood Bowl does these summer musicals, and it was the first time they were going to try to do that, and they were doing Music Man. And so I went in and auditioned for Winthrop, and I remember going into the room and I'd never had that experience of singing for our table of adults in the hopes of being given a paying job

did you get the LISP down and everything for it? I went to a coach and got work with the Lisp What song did you audition with? Gary Indiana of course, his one tune that he gets in the whole show. Did you have any nerves with the idea of going from, yeah, I'm going to go and stay in front of adults

to I'm going to stand in front of you know 15,000 people I've always found it way more intimidating to sing in a room full of like intimate people like it with like 10 people in it than I do like sort of a faceless crowd of many for some reason I always have felt the most comfortable and least anxious

when I'm singing for large groups of people I mean you know we've got a few segments in this show and one of them is what would Alex Lackamore ask Ben Platt and He probably already asked me, but... Yeah, exactly.

So Alex Lackamore, who we'll get to later as the music director, virtuoso, he worked on Deervin Hanson, whatnot. He actually asked, what are the similarities and differences from performing on Broadway versus a concert series, and how do they influence each other? And that's kind of like sort of what you're saying. I mean, why do you feel more comfortable in front of a... nobody in front of, than in front of tens of thousands of people. Well, I think the performing on Broadway and performing in my own concerts are a lot more similar as far as the number of people that are actually watching. My tour that I just did was mainly like proper theaters, like the Dolby and the Chicago

theater and places that felt like houses I've done musicals in. So the main difference was more sort of performatively the main goal being how do I share like my authentic self and how do I perform how I prefer to perform and sing and move and administer an evening rather than how do I transform myself into someone else and forward someone else's plot and like get the job

done that the writers of the piece want done. So it's like a lot more of a boundary list thing I think touring with your own stuff which I've really enjoyed but it's also there's a lot less of a safety net and there's no sort of filter between you and everyone else because you're not purporting to be any other vehicle. Does it

change your perspective when you're performing in front of a camera, like it's live television. Does that change how you perform in your head, or is it sort of, well, I'm performing in front of the people here and just one of the people as a cameraman with a camera? A little, I mean, I think by virtue of the fact that I'm an actor, I always, you know, I'm conscious of the way things are coming across in the way that things are going to be portrayed and how smaller, you know, inferences and smaller performative things can read a lot bigger on camera than they can on stage.

But I think at the end of the day, it's sort of singing the song wherever the song's being sung. I don't know that I necessarily considered a different muscle when there's a camera, but I also I do think I maybe make it a note to not feel the need to project so far out as far as the story telling. Because it's, you know,

you're only telling it to someone that's right here. When did you learn that? I mean, when you're nine and you're performing at the Hollywood Bowl, you couldn't go big enough, you know? I'm sure, especially that character. Well, yeah, in musical theater in general, particularly like classics and like golden ones. It's like it's all very broad and big and funny and, yeah. I mean, going from that, how did you, how do you go from the bigness of that kind of performance to being a nine-year-old outside of performing?

I mean, how did you have a normal, did, were you the coolest kid in school at that point? No, no means. I mean, no one really had the name. I went, I was at a Jewish day school. Like I said, I wasn't at my high school yet, which was Harvard West Lake, which is the right. around here and has a great arts program. So when we were there doing work and performing and stuff, it was the really cool thing to do

because there's a great arts program and I meet all of my friends via that program. But when I was a kid doing these Hollywood bowl gigs, it was more just like a double life, kind of a Han Montana situation of like going and being a very normal kid and taking like rabbinics and like Hebrew and then

in the summer like doing this big thing that maybe some of my friend's parents came to but they didn't really know about or care about. Do you still speak Hebrew? Katsat. Kaka, kaha. Do you go, have you been to Israel? I'm sure you have.

I've been three times, but I haven't been in a decade. Last time I went was 2009, so I really need to get my ass back over there. Are you a religious person? Not, like, theologically, I would say. I think I really love the culture of Judaism and, like, the familial warmth and the importance of, like, sharing your feelings and being together and spending time together and knowing your extended family and, like, trying to be better people together. I don't really have much of a, like, quote-unquote relationship with

God, if you will, but I do like that part of it. Why do you think there are so many Jews in entertainment? That's a hard one. I mean, I think a lot of it's circumstantial, but also, I don't know, maybe something to the effect of what I was saying as far as people can, we have a real ability to spew all of our feelings and we don't keep anything bottled up. Oh, interesting. We tend to really say what's up.

It's an emotional thing. and that's the cultural part of it. Exactly. There's a predisposition to share everything and not keep everything bottled up, which is probably good for the arts in general. What kind of music did you like that wasn't musical theater growing up?

I really loved stuff that my mom loved, which was like Joni Mitchell, Carol King, James Taylor, that sort of like confessional singer-songwriter, very personal sounding stuff. And then when I was 12, I was in this show called Carol. Eleanor Change, which is a musical that's a lot more of an R&B kind of funk feel to it. And I was like one of the only white people in the whole cast.

And so I was exposed to kind of a whole different style of singing. And all of my castmates were warming up to like Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles and Donnie Hathaway. And so that kind of stuff really opened up a whole new world for me. And I started listening to a lot of that as well. So it was sort of the middle road of those two that I kind of always imagined my own music would fit in with kind of a sprinkling of the theater always. When was the first time you recorded your own music?

for this album. Really? Yeah. I grew up rewriting songs with my family for people's bar mitzvice and weddings and stuff. And like making up comedy songs with my friends in high school and things like that. And so I was always fascinated by like scan and rhyme and what makes the song work structurally and things like that. And I had witnessed a lot of songs being written as far as new musical theater being created, particularly obviously watching Benj and Justin make Evan Hansen.

But I had never sat down and earnestly tried to write for. from my own perspective until there was the impetus of this record. Yeah, I mean, in this next segment that we'll call, what would Stephen Levinson ask Ben Platt, the writer from, the writer of the book of Deervin Hansen, Stephen asks, I have a super nerdy question about process. As an actor in theater or in a film, you're used to telling one story and you get this one script,

and you can study it and immerse yourself in it, and it can obviously change, but you have the basic blueprint from the beginning. Versus on TV, week after week, you're getting brand new stories, brand new scripts written by brand new writers, directed by brand new directors. Do you find that it's the same process for you as an actor,

or do the constraints of TV change the way you approach a role? Interesting. I mean, I think my only real TV experience at this point is the politician, which was the Netflix show that I just made with Ryan Murphy. Congratulations. Thank you very much.

And then we did eight episodes of it. And it was sort of an unorthodox situation because the entirety of the season was written by only the three creators by Ryan, Murphy, Ian Brennan, and Brad Fowlchuk. So before we even began shooting, I had read four of the scripts. And by the time I'd read all of them, we still were like three episodes away from the end. So I always had the idea of what the whole thing looked like.

I mean, obviously certain things I had to wait and to find out. So I was able to approach it generally like I do a piece of theater, which was my comfort zone, in the sense that I could learn it as a whole and as a piece and as a play and then go in and do the individual parts of it. But definitely the challenge and the difference is you get the luxury when you do a play of like living the whole thing chronologically and letting yourself emotionally kind of go on the journey and just kind of submit to it. Whereas when you're doing a piece of television every day you're dropping into like a completely random spot within the puzzle and you have to really internalize like where did I just come from, where am I about to go? and what changes have happened, which ones have not. That's always a challenge for me.

How does that affect the way you perform music that you don't write even for yourself? When somebody approaches you with like, like you were saying you were used to growing up and changing lyrics of existing songs, you know, and making them funny or making them whatever, how do you internalize, you know, if somebody says, hey, I got this chorus,

you know, and you go into a co-write, which now is a big part of your career. So how do you find yourself? Is that the goal when you write a song? Is to personalize it or are you okay performing songs where the perspective might not even be you but it still would be, you know, I don't know, how do you reconcile? I think because this is sort of the first permutation of music of my own that I've ever had, I'm very averse to any songs I feel like they don't come directly from me or that they wouldn't come directly from me. I'm very much open to people bringing in ideas or hooks or choruses or things that are pre-existing, but I think if there isn't a way to find myself in it, even if it feels big and strong and like a great song, I don't know that I would ever be able to say at least at this stage. But what's been nice up to this point is that we've had really spectacular writers

come in and have pieces of something that is very particular to them. And then we've been able to sort of get to the heart of it and make it something that feels very much from my own life. And I would hope that songs that are strong enough, could really be angled to anyone. Yeah, totally. But that takes a certain artist. Sure.

You know, I mean, that's why you, you know, I always tell people, even in the very beginning of every episode, that there's, you know, thousands, or millions of singers, thousands of artists and 40 songs at a time. And the reason why there's such a vast difference between, you know, the amount of singers versus artists is just the ability to interpret someone else's material. to making it sound like yours.

Certainly. You know? Yeah. I mean, I think that was the priority in coming out of the Evan Hansen's experience into this was to really try to create a lane that felt very much my own. I think there was a lot of scenarios of I could make an album of standards or I could do a musical theater covers album

or I could sing all of Benj and Justin's leftover songs that they haven't used. But I really wanted it to feel like my own sound, my own perspective and my own experiences. Yeah, Alex had also asked, he said from a writing perspective does being around Pasca and Paul influence how you wrote for yourself? Yes and no. I mean I think it's a very different skill

to write for a piece of theater because it's so much of what the parameters that you're in are about character development and point A and point B and the character needs to go into the song in one way and come out a different way and it needs to fit within the scan of this piece and there's a lot more sort of defined boundaries but certainly just on the very bottom level of watching two great songwriters write songs.

It was a really great learning experience to watch them work for sure. In this next segment called What Would Pete Gambard? Ask Ben Platt. You got to everyone. I actually did. And surprisingly, people responded very quickly. Usually people are really slow. But also, they better have.

Yeah, exactly. I'll tell you who didn't. No. My mom never responded. Yeah, it's crazy. I was like, listen, ladies. I don't know you, but this random number hanging out with your son in a little bit.

So anyway, he has two questions that have to do with this. First thing he said is, how did you get so goddamn talented? Oh, Pete. Okay. And then the other thing he said, and this is actually in this, is like what is your ideal song to sing?

That's a tough question. I mean, I think there's a lot of different manifestations of what that would mean. I guess the only underlying criteria is that it has to feel like it's specific to me and that it sounds like me and that when you hear it, you know it's mine that I'm singing it and it can't be sung

by a number of other people. I think otherwise what's the point in sort of adding your voice to the chorus? I could write songs that I love and they don't feel like they're right for me and it would be great to have someone else sing them but I think for me the ideal song would be something where you hear it

and you're like, oh, that's a Ben song. This isn't his question. But a song that has a good, existed in the universe. I don't care if it's Whitney or Elvis or whatever, but what kind of song do you think existed where you're like, man, if I were around then, that would have been

perfect for me. Probably make you feel my love that Dylan song. Really? Yeah, I just think it's like so simple and beautiful and lyrically beautiful and vocally gives a lot of room to be who you are and it's just an irrefutably gorgeous song.

So I think that if I had heard that, it would have been like is there any way in the world I could sing that? Do you find yourself competitive? Oh yeah, of course. With whom? Mostly other actors, just because that's the world that I grew up in and that's the lane in which you're compared to each other more. In music, it's a little bit more apples and oranges.

I mean, there are certainly, you know, there's like Sam, Smith, who's wonderful and, like, Sean, and there's people that are, like, adjacent to me. But I'm so new to this kind of sphere that I don't have any room to feel any of that yet. I'm more so just happy that there's been a burrow area for me. but I think it's hard as an actor not to feel competition when there's like people that are

contemporaries that are, because it's such a small it ends up being such a small community, probably even smaller than music and people are generally picking from the same pool of guys and get in your head about it. That cannot be true. Like because I want to believe that but only because I have the exact opposite

perspective where it's like as a songwriter I mean most of the people I follow are songwriters or they're musicians and Makes sense. Thinking like, okay, well, we're going to fit in these 40 slots and some of my friends are in this slot or that slot. I can get in there, but they're busy. These songs just don't drop off all the time. I would say in a way that the Broadway world, which is that part's really small because there's only 36 theaters or something like that.

Yeah, very fine. So I guess those are really similar. But acting as a whole, there are so many movies and TV shows and so many things. going on. It seems like, and most of my friends are actors, and I hear them being competitive, I just don't understand it. Why? I mean, if I had a choice, I don't think I would

be. I just feel like it's hard to avoid that when you're, with this audition culture of like going in and putting yourself out there and interpreting a role and putting yourself in it and then seeing other people do the same thing and have it not work out. It just feels like it's going to foster

competition no matter what your intentions are. Because like, you know, the end of the day, obviously, things have been going really well, so I'm very happy that what's happened has happened and that other people that are my contemporaries have also had opportunities, but also, you know, when you get to a certain point,

particularly in film, you just keep seeing the same folks at everything, so it's hard not to feel like you're being pitted against each other. How do you feel about having, you know, you have this show that's coming out on Netflix, what's it like to have, you've finished shooting it? Yeah.

So what's it like finishing that project knowing that it's coming out, which is different than when you're, you know, you finish rehearsals for a show. You have to go and perform it every night for however long. Yeah. In this case, you're done with your work, at least for this season. Do you have expectations for something like this? Is it similar to, let's say, your album coming out, which is also something finished before it comes out? It definitely feels similar.

I think that the album coming out felt like a little scarier and more vulnerable of an event, just because I hadn't really no safety net as far as other people who were going to take responsibility for it. I mean, I had a really talented group of co-writers, but at the end of the day, it's my thoughts and words and my face and voice and all of that. And it was a very new kind of lane. So with this thing, it's been weird to sit on it

and wait for it to come out with the politician because there's a lot of different scenarios of how it might shift and alter things once it's out. I mean, there's so much content right now, particularly on Netflix, so it could be, you know, one among many or it could be this thing that changes the game or it could be it's just hard to know until it's in the world but I think because I'm playing a character in it again even though I'm leading

the show and I'm an EP on the show it still feels like there's at least one step of removal like as opposed to my own music because if you know I'm pretty sure people will dig it hopefully but worst case if people it's not their cup of tea then it's not necessarily me ben plat that's not their cup of tea it's this piece which is a lot easier to sort of fathom than it is to have someone listening music and be just like, I don't, you're, you're in our monologue sounds like shit to me. You know what I mean? We talk about that a lot. I mean, it's, you know, and I'm, I'm, we're, I'm releasing an album in a week and I, you know,

and, and, and, and. Little bit of most tough. Well, thank you. And then, but what's weird is that, you know, people say, Bellion said, John Bellion said this in his interview. It's like, you know, people don't say, I don't like this song. They say, I don't like John Bellion. Exactly.

And you're like, what? Like, yo, bro, you know, slow up. Maybe your whole, you know, your motive as an artist is not to necessarily be judged. It's just to entertain people, I would assume. Is that your motive as an entertainer? Yeah, and also to hopefully help people process experiences that they haven't processed or feel like seeing in experiences that they've had, that they feel like no one's really mirrored for them. That's an ideal goal, I think.

Do you think having, you know, Deervin Hanson as a show, it's probably the first show I'd ever seen where you'd have a couple thousand people all crying unanimously. And just at the same time, it's... The clockwork. Yeah. Do you think having played that character and having been in that environment that you then feel the need to write lyrics that have that same gravitas? Yes and no. I mean, I think I didn't want to make an album full of songs to just make people sob and like that would be the main goal.

I mean, but I did think because Evan Hansen was such a visceral, vulnerable, like, exposing experience in that way and such an emotionally raw thing night after night, it was a very desensitizing thing to go through for two years. And so I think the idea of creating original music felt like such a good next move, mostly because sort of the only piece of skin that I hadn't sort of shed was the character of everything and the only way that I felt like I could find an experience that would be anywhere near as emotionally fulfilling musically would be if it was completely my own

rather than myself through the lens of this other kid that isn't me. So hopefully there's like a similar feeling of raw authenticity, but I don't necessarily think that the whole thing should make you for clamped, hopefully. How do you do all of it? I mean, I'm a busy person and I do a lot of things, but I feel like I carve out some time as a human to be a human. Yes.

At least I keep trying to remind myself. But from an outsider's point of view, it doesn't seem like there's any time for you to do that. Do you have any social life? Do you have any personal life? I do. Definitely a social life. I try my hardest to corner the moments that I have

and really immerse myself in them. Like I just literally ending yesterday, had two weeks of really having nothing. and there was a couple of opportunities within sprinkled in there that we could have added in that might have been helpful in like the music sphere or like a couple of pieces of press that I just really tried to resist because I knew that this was the only two weeks that I had to really just like kind of disengage from it and I just feel like there

if I learned anything from the Evan Hansen experience it's that it's important to put self-care at the top of the list particularly when you're trying to do something that's a little bit like soul involved so I think what about Evan Hansen taught you that? I think just doing that eight times a week and having no extended break from it was just like a really emotionally draining experience and just like really I had to kind of turn

my other parts of life completely off like no social life at all no personal life no dating, I didn't see my family much like really was a solitary experience but I mean a wonderful solitary experience and so I think I knew going forward I wanted to even though things are now starting to pile up really try my best

to find the pockets and I thankfully have a really nice very tight group of buddies who I made it here at Harvard Westlake in high school who we've all stayed very close and they're all working too in New York and mostly actors, a couple of singers and directors. So I try to see them as much as I can. The dating is there's not always a lot of time unfortunately, but I try my best. Sometimes. How do you do a show twice in a day, period, let alone one where you have to be that vulnerable? How do you reset? What do you do in that three hours? In between? I would have a physical therapy session. So I'd have someone come to my dressing

room. Her name was Natalie Kinghorn. She's a really talented physical therapist. And she would do like cupping and like needling and acupuncture and stuff and kind of reset my body. And I would nap and then I'd eat like very curated foods like lean proteins and veggies and rice and stuff like that.

And then do it again. Wow, that's really interesting that it's a physical, that you do something physical to reset. To reset. Totally. Because I'm mentally mental. Emotionally it's just really a willpower kind of thing. So to kind of trick yourself into feeling like you've physically reset. And also to literally physically reset

is a really helpful, like, clean slate. So I didn't realize that you were an EP on the show. I know I'm like all over the place, but I'm just asking questions that are just coming to my head and why not? Ask them all. You know, that's how we're going to become friends. Yeah. I'm going to learn everything about you very shortly.

So wait, so you're an EP on a show. On the politician, yeah. And my assumption is that, so your dad as a producer has done a lot of theater television film. By jumping into this executive producer role, does that put you on a path of doing a similar arc with your dad? Or is just sort of like, that's fun. I just want to do this also. What's the desire in getting into production at this point? I think I definitely plan to remain primarily an artist and performer. I think producing is always something that's mentioning to me as a way of having some sort of creative ownership over a project.

I think for this particular instance, the reason it felt right was I had just come off of Evan Hansen where I wasn't, for all intents' purposes, as a producer, but I was involved from the very first reading, so I felt a real ownership over the piece and understanding of the process, and I felt like my voice was really heard creatively,

and I didn't want to go into something where I felt like I had lost all of that ability and lost my voice in that conversation completely. And so when Ryan pitched me the show, and obviously on a very superficial level, I was just like, this is an amazing role and an amazing guy, so of course I want to do it. But then he also, right from the get-go,

said he would love for me to execute to produce with him, which felt to me like a way to ensure that I could feel like it was mine, at least partially, as opposed to feeling like a cog. Sometimes with film, I find that the difficult part of that experience is giving what you can, doing your performance, and then having it be completely curated for you after the fact and edited for you, and you feel like sort of you have no control over it, which is some actors really love that aspect of it,

but I'm a very type A kind of controlling fellow, so I like to feel that I have at least some hand in the mix. But that said, Ryan and Braddonie and are complete pros, and they don't necessarily need a whole ton of input for me, but it was just nice to feel like I had a seat at the table. Songwriters, you could be the grand prize winner and score up to $5,000 in cash, one of 12 marring guitars,

as well as a mentoring session with El King, Joe London, or myself, The lyric winner will win an opportunity to be mentored by award-winning songwriter Tom Douglas as well as other coveted prizes. Enter the 20th annual NSAI song contest presented by Martin Guitar Strings and CMT, now through October 31st at NSAI.com. NSAI, the National Songs Association International, is one of the biggest supporters of songwriters and played a major role in helping past the Music, modernization act, a historical piece of legislation that allows you to have a future as a songwriter. This is your opportunity to experience industry access,

one-on-one mentorship with hit songwriters and fun your creative passions. Song and lyric-only categories are open now for submissions. We can't wait to hear your songs. Today's podcast is brought to you by the musician website platform, Ban Zougal. For regular listeners, the man the writer is, you already know you can use Ban Zougal to design a website, EPK, you know, sell your music, merch, commission-free, from your website, use the tour calendar to promote your shows, collect emails from fans,

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That's Banzoogle.com promo code ATWI to build your website for your music. Did you learn about that collaboration growing up with your family and the entertainment business? Or did you learn about the collaboration having been a performer in these shows? Both. I mean, I learned a lot more about the film side of things for my dad because that's his primary world. done some theater and TV as well, but the film is sort of his most consistent arena. And so I learned about kind of the inner workings of that through him. But then theater, I think I very much from the ground up learned on my own and just experiencing what different dynamics, the different

rehearsal rooms were like and what it was like to do a pre-existing show, what was like to do, a tour of a new show, what was like to do a show from the ground up? Like, they're all very different experiences. One of the things Pete asked was, what is your ideal collaborator like? Wow. Well, in the context of songwriting, I feel like there has to be some kind of stylistic baseline. Obviously we can come from very different places and have different preferences, but I think if there's nowhere to meet up on like a musical sonic level of like things we both feel good listening to and singing and then it's difficult to have a jumping off point.

And then I also think just someone that I feel, you know, open enough with to express real things and be as transparent as possible and not be around the bush because I feel like the difference between a song that's really good and a song that's fantastic is saying a lot of really potentially damaging things so I think it has to be a person where you feel open

saying the really horrible ideas and then within them finding the really great one the theater world and the film world seems so organized and the songwriting world once you're in that room it's like massively disorganized by almost by design

yeah it's good you know there's no paint by numbers for it But you don't have any time to make, I feel like you don't have, do you have any time to make those mistakes? You know, if you're meeting at like one and then you have to have a song in the next like six hours. Yeah, and I mean, and if you have two weeks to write, you need to get, you know, the goal is to get like all 10 songs done in those two weeks. I mean, do you, are you able to take risks in that environment for you? I try to. I mean, I think that's more what I mean, and this like kind of speed dating thing. of meeting your collaborators and then immediately starting to work with them

is like it's easy to tell right away if it's someone who you're going to feel comfortable like shooting and missing with or if it's going to someone who you're going to feel like too reserved to really contribute until you have something that you feel like 100% behind which obviously eventually it'd be great to feel 100% behind all the pieces of the song but to get there I feel like you have to be unafraid to throw out the absurd stuff and I feel like I can tell within the first like hour of hanging out with someone if that's that comfortability is going to be possible and largely just by virtue of type of people that want to make this

art and want to create music together it generally tends to be pretty open-hearted or at least well-intentioned people so I've never had really much of an issue because you have you somehow have like one foot in 10 places just a lot of feet

but I'm trying to figure out when you have you do this Hamel drop stuff which obviously that became pretty successful that's fun you know both you and Lynn are if what Sarah Borellis did by going from pop to musical theater

and the wrong man going to musical theater in New York or you and Lynn going into the pop world. But it's all the same thing. Why is our generation, why are we doing that? Were they doing it in previous generations? I mean, I know there was, you know, Barbara Sraising was really successful. I know some of these people were. What is it about our generation?

in particular that's opening their mind to each other's art form. I think it's, you know, originally like in the golden age, like in the 60s and stuff, like the radio hits were the songs from the shows and they were one and the same. And I feel like it was largely because the type of popular music people want to listen to like at home and on the radio and stuff was stylistically the same as the music in the theaters. And then for a long chunk of time, there was this belief that there was no connection between those two things and that like songs that young people or anyone want to listen. to in their own lives

doesn't sound like the kind of songs that tell stories and musicals. And I think in the recent years of things like Spring Awakening and Next Normal and then obviously most sort of forcibly Hamilton there's an ability to sing music on stage that feels adjacent

to the music young people are listening to anyway and feels like kind of a gateway and sort of gets rid of that stigma that like anything that's emotionally involved or that's narrative or that's character-driven or that's verbose or that's like full song is like nerdy or that it's like not can't be pop structured or can't be like palatable and I'm really I'm all for that mix and mingle totally I mean it takes artists like you to feel confident in releasing you know it's what

it's what Adele does you know it's what Sam Smith does where they're willing to belt yes you know for lack of a better word they're just willing to go all the way there and in an era where people are listening to music on headphones where the speakers literally next to their eardrum you really have to tactfully record that experience otherwise

it sounds like you know because you're yeah you're communicating literally you know whenever I'm vocal producing people I keep reminding them the microphone is the ear

of the human is listening so if you're gonna belt you know it's our job as producers, as writers to create an environment where that's not yelling. 100%. And also emotionally is earned. I feel like because I came from theater, I always, songwriting to me is always

like when you can't speak anymore, now you have to sing about it. That's sort of the way I go into writing anything. So I feel like by virtue of that kind of checklist, it makes it an easier arena in which to like full voice sing. Did you study this stuff in school?

Did you go to school? Did you go to college? Not really. I went to Columbia for like seven weeks and then well I deferred initially for a year to do Pitch Perfect and then I went in the following fall and I lasted until like mid-October and then I got Book of Mormon so I left and then I never went back. Yeah that makes

sense. It was fun. Having gone from Pitch Perfect Book of Mormon Dear Evan Hanson do you have an expectation from projects that they're all going to be that successful? You know there's a pressure I think more than an expectation. I try to be as from who? As realistic.

possible just like on myself from like you know wanting to be part of things that are well received and but I think that the the sort of way that things are received and the way that I consider them to be success is sort of changing as I get older like I don't necessarily think I mean Evan was a really rare occasion where it's like critically and and sort of from people that I really respected like they really loved it as a piece as a piece of work and also it happened to appeal to a big commercial group of people but I think as I move forward and like have the luxury of choosing things based on just creatively if I respond to them. It's more to me about how people who I really respect

and the artists who I really respect, what do they feel about it and can they see themselves in it and do they connect to it. And then if it happens to connect to a huge group of people too, then that's a great plus. But I think it's not necessarily the goal. I mean, I'm also not a commercial producer, so I get the luxury of having that not be the goal.

But I think more times than not when something is so qualitative, it's hard not to find a great audience for it. So I'm hoping that trend will continue. How do you get the Oscar part of the EGat? I'm in like the least rush ever because I just feel like once that's done like game over. Do the Lopez is where you try to get it twice or something? Oh yeah.

Oh yeah, they won for Coco too, yeah? Yeah, they won. And then also Frozen. Awesome. I mean, you know, as in someone who's been acting since I was a kid, of course, my ultimate dream is to win as an actor. But any kind of Oscar or anything is a wonderful cherry. And they say that you have to do music in order.

to get an egot, you know? But that's the, I mean, that's sort of, well, and then there's the P-GOT, which is the Pulitzer. Oh, wow. Who has a P-Got? I bet Lynn has a P-Got. I think there's like two people who have a P-Got. I don't know. But, I mean, it's like Kendrick's closer to getting a P-Got than most people.

Like, there's, you know, it's, I don't know. Not that it's all about the- No, of course, no. The letters are fun to talk about. Why don't you write musicals? Why write an album? album and not write a musical. Two parts of that answer.

Firstly, I think in order to write a musical, I really wanted to learn how to write music period first. And I also really wanted to figure out what my own sort of organic sound was. I separate from musical theater, not forcibly pulled away from musical theater, but not in just the overarching umbrella of musical theater. And I found that it's, obviously, there's little sprinklings of influence from it, but it's very much not that. I definitely do want to write a musical at some point for sure. I think in my life, that would be something I would regret never trying to do.

Sure. But it's just like the hardest thing. I mean, as you know, it's like the hardest thing ever. So I feel like unless it's the perfect idea, I'm not in any rush to make that happen. But I think once that idea presents itself, then I'm very gay. And I have to find the right collaborators and sort of decide, do I want to write all aspects of it, or just the music and lyrics, or just the book or things like that. Right.

But definitely on the bucket list. You're starting to write the next album, right? A little bit, yeah. Do you feel like musically you have to go somewhere you haven't been before, or do you feel like lyrically you have to go somewhere you haven't been before? What's the point of doing the next album? It's definitely something I'm still figuring out and, like, grappling with because this is my first time trying to follow something up like this.

I think I'm trying to relieve myself of the pressure to like, now it needs to be just like a techno record. Like it has to, like, you know what I mean? Like, we should have to take a left turn and go to country. but like I also want to challenge myself not to restate the same things over and over again so I think just by virtue of who I am and the experiences that I've had

there will always be the same you know umbrella of romantic experiences and my family and friends and things that actually mean something to me but I think it's about finding ways to state those experiences that haven't been said before and also stretching myself sort of sonically into things that feel

because I think I was very married to you know as organic and as live in the room as possible for the first time around because my favorites are Adele and Carol and James and like that and I think it's about being unafraid of edging towards bigger scarier things but also not forsaking

like the kind of baseline of that so we'll see how far on that scale I feel comfortable going it's interesting when dear Evan Hanson was obviously very successful and so few Broadway actors

succeed in performing their own music, but all of them try. It's a very popular course. Why is it working for you? And what's advice you could give them that would help them pursue their music outside of performing other peoples? Well, as far as why it's working for me, it's anyone's guess. I mean, I think it's a real kind of amalgam of circumstance and also just my ability. I mean, I think because I've enhanced was stylistically not so far from pop and it wasn't this big legit phantom of the opera. It wasn't such a huge leap

to try to have people then want to listen to my own pop music. And I think the other reason it's working is because I'm like I said, trying to be as completely transparent as possible whether that means being open about sexuality or talking about my parents or talking about heartbreak and all that kind of stuff. I feel like I've been as completely sort of filterless as I possibly can be, which I think is something that can't be found

in work that I do in the theater or soundtracks that I'm on in musicals. I feel like that's part of the reason people are interested in it separately from that. But that's the advice. That's the advice I give people that I meet, you know. I know there's some that, like, Anthony Ramos' album is really cool. There's some of these guys who do it really well.

But the things that's unanimous around them is that they tend to write songs that they would want to sing and they would want to hear and not songs that their audience necessarily wants to hear. Right. And that's unique in your case because... I think it sort of lines out. Like, it actually fits your personality, it feels like?

Hopefully. Yeah, but hopefully, so many people try to write the music that they just got famous for performing. Yeah, I mean... But then they're just doing watered down versions of the songs that... That's why I was very averse to... I mean, not just using Benj and Justin songs, but also not singing Way Me Through Window on this concert tour

and not making it the Dear Evan Hanson continued story. I definitely wanted to be a different piece, its own piece and very much my piece. And I think people can smell that, at least that desire for authenticity, if not the authenticity itself. So I think that's part of what's helped to go out. How do your parents feel about you writing songs about your family?

Really good. I mean, I've only ever written very loving things because that's all I ever really feel about the two of them. So I think obviously apprehensive about me sharing my vulnerabilities at all less so than specifically about them but very supportive

and I think it means a lot to them hopefully. How do you feel about being vulnerable about your sexuality in your music? I imagine that it's exceptionally empowering. Very. As is any artist who actually is able to say what

put out their authenticity. what is it like to be able to do that? And I mean, amazing to be part of this era where it's celebrated and it's asked for. Like, people want you to do that. Right. I mean, I'm kind of putting words in your mouth.

No, it's true. I mean, I think going into it, I never really made like a conscious decision. Like, I'm going to use this album to come out in the closet. I'm going to use this to be like, Ben is queer and here and get used to it. Because I've been out since I was like 12.

I truly told him all my parents, everyone in my life when I was, a kid and anyone I've ever worked with or met or had any meaningful relationship with longer than 10 minutes I've been very open with about it. And it's never been something I've actively kept hidden just because it's never been relevant to the work that I've been doing when I'm playing other people and doing other people's stories. But I think once I made the decision to be transparent at all and try to be authentic and not sort of go in and edit for any reason to generalize or to make things palatable in any sense, then it seemed like very upset.

to then go in and change pronouns or like go and fix an experience or change it to something that was, you know, heteronormative or something like that, just because why would I go change any part of the experience? And so because it was part of that larger umbrella decision, I think when I released it, I wasn't thinking so much about like, oh, what's this going to be like now that I'm discussing this for the first time. It wasn't thinking about it as like, today I come out when I like press send on this video. It was just more like, here's my story in general. And so I think to see how affected people still are by representation and how much it still means to them was such a surprising,

joyful byproduct of it all. Something that I didn't expect to be such a rewarding part of it is having queer couples come to the concert and say that they don't feel there's been an album that's represented them this way or that they feel like it's something that they've been through in every way. I'm hoping that I'm perpetuating this kind of like step three,

like point C reality where it's like a part of the tapestry and it's part of the assumed reality, but it is not like the event of the piece or of the music and it doesn't exclude people that don't have that experience. It's the same as Brittany asking someone to hit her one more time. It's like all the same. Yeah, I mean, it puts you in an interesting place of being the advocate and the voice of a community.

You know, one of the things that I think Sam Smith does really well is, you know, I don't think, maybe it's our generation, but it feels like there's sort of a handful of artists where, whether it's Janelle Monet or whatever it is that you feel, I feel like as a listener there's this just feels like an error where it's

accepted to be who you are and it's, you know. Yes. One of our friends, Ricky Reed, he said he said the currency for social media is honesty. It's true.

And the more honest, you know, the more you put yourself out there, the more vulnerability that you put out there, the more people are going to actually listen to the rest of your lyrics. Here's the next segment. We're going to do five for five. Five for five.

So I'm going to list something and then you're going to just say a name and you can tell me off the top of your head. Okay. Something. Let's start with Pasach and Paul. You could do Justin or Ben, separately, but we'll go to Pasoacan Paul as number one of your five for five. Justin has two really cute babies that are really cute.

Yeah. It's cool to see him be a father because when I met him, he was like a scrappy song right now. He's in L.S. Justin? Yeah. I can find him. He's not like literally in this building. That would be amazing.

And here he is. Right, exactly. All this. Lynn Manuel. When we were doing the March for Our Lives thing, we had like three extra hours on the day when we were in D.C. waiting to go sing at the march. And we were like sitting around a piano with Lackamore and Lynn. And Lynn was like, can we just sing like a bunch of Broadway?

songs while I have been here. So we did like rent and Elfa Bun Glinda and Wicked and Wicked and like side show. We were like the conjoined twins and I just got to sing to like all of my dream bucket list with Lynn for like an hour. That's probably my favorite experience with him. That is a good experience. Adam Mersell, your manager. A light in the darkness. You know, I was clueless going into this. I know nothing about this business. I really, I know what kind of music I liked and I know what I wanted creatively and beyond that. I didn't know anything about how to make that happen or who to meet and how to make that vision or reality and so he's just helped me do that every step of the way and kept it very much and the

integrity very much at the forefront when you say and i you know i we'll go back to my list but when you say that you know you know i didn't know the kind of music that i you know i liked or that i wanted to do how would you define you in the next album that you haven't even started like what into the second one yeah oh i have no clue i mean hopefully more of the same focus on the music and the singing and the instrumentation rather than like the palatibility. But other than that, it's who knows. Let's go with Pete Gambar and the Atlantic Records team. The first thing that comes to mind is that they took me, when they wanted to like properly

discuss making an album to dinner at this place, I don't even remember the name of it, but it was like in a basement. There was like a stone basement in New York that was like this little Italian food dive. And I was like, have I been taken here to be like, as there is like, is there a hit out on me? And then the most delicious food of all time just kept coming out with no one asking for it. I was like, oh, this is a big deal. And that's when I realized like shit was real.

Yeah, that they weren't going to kill you. But they weren't going to kill you. But they were going to record music. So as I saw that bolognaise, I knew that an album was coming. The new Bensplett album. Bolognais. Yeah, exactly. That's like a direction.

Some little Italian influence. Yeah, that's basically what I've been trying to get at is like, why are we writing an Italian? focused song. I'm listening to Lightning the Piazza all week, so I'm very much in that mindset. The only relative I have in the music industry as a whole was the music director. Of a Piazza?

Yeah. Who's the director? I'm going to go and find out. My mom's going to hit me up after this and be like, oh my God, how did you not know? Ted Spurling. Ted's Burling. He's excellent. He's my second cousin once removed or something.

There's always, you're a Jew, right? Yeah. Oh, it's all Jewish Jewish. I mean, we're probably related somehow. Yeah, somehow. Probably three or four steps. We did like the 23 Me thing. I'm too afraid because I don't want the government to like know who I am.

I'm going to show you my mind literally said 100% Ashkenazi. No, it didn't. Yeah. 100%. 100%. You didn't even get like a .3 Native American or something? It's like, it's actually like shockingly. It's pretty, it's pretty.

Bunny. Let me see. Yeah, I will show you. Wow, 100%. It's as Jewish as they come. Let's go with your father, Mark Platt. That's such a hard. I mean, that's 25 years of memories. We used to do buddies weekends, which were these things. He would take each of us on like one-on-one weekend trips when we were growing up. And like, my older brother was pal, my sister was princess. I was buddy. My other sister was like Rose.

And so for ours, it was always some theater. related event because that's what I love to do so we would go to like Costa Mesa or like San Diego or whatever like Beating the Beast was on tour and go see Beauty and the Beast

and then go see them up and movie. Amazing. And here you are. One of the things that I've been discussing with Mozilla who's been on this podcast as well she would say how

the this is, we're done with that segment by the way. Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. Okay. Mosella was talking about. about how the sexism in the music industry isn't as overt as people think it is. And one of the things that she points out is that there are all these amazing female writers, but there are so few that get to be an executive producer.

And you are one of the people who had an executive producer that was female. I did indeed. So from your perspective, I want to hear your experience with Jen DeSilvio. It was a really organic thing. Hi, Jen. She's awesome. Hi, Jen. What's up, Jan? I think she's in the UK. Maybe not anymore.

I went in knowing these three names that I'd heard because of, like, Adele or just like producers that you like hear enough about as like a layman to know about them. But I had absolutely no clue what it really entailed and also what I would really really want. So I went in very much open-minded. And just very randomly in one of the sessions, one of the writer's sessions I got paired with Jen to write. And she and I, and this great writer, Jordan Riley, wrote this song called Honest Man that ended up on the record. And she did just the sort of bounce of the day where we laid it down and sent it in. And I really loved it. I was like, this is very beautiful. This is exactly what I was thinking. It's like very

just like raw parts and there's not a lot of frill. And it's just, this is really what I'm, you know, was hoping for, do you want to try a couple more? So I would send her one or two songs at a time and each of them was just really fantastic and I was like, you seem to really understand the vibe of this and we really get each other. So why not do, I mean, save for like two songs that were produced by the people who wrote them,

she did essentially the whole record. So it just felt like a really natural way to collaborate. I mean, it helps also that we're both queer. I think we connected over that as well. But as far as like her being a woman, it never really factored into it for me in a positive or negative way. It was just sort of like

she understood the music the best. She was a collaborator I really liked and she did a beautiful job and that's that. You had like a lot of your collaborators were ones that you used multiple times throughout the album whether it's Mike Pollock

and Nate Seiford, Ben, Abraham, you know, people that you wrote really well with. Is that sort of by design that you just wrote really well with them or was that a structured thing? I mean, how did that work? It was pretty organic

because Atlantic set me up in a very like impartial first camp where it was lots of rooms with lots of people. And I think it just became clear to me immediately, not only on a interpersonal level who I loved spending time with, but also who we really connected with musically. And like in that first week alone, we got like bad habit older and temporary love, which was like three of the main songs on the record. And those were, you know, a lot of Ben Abraham, a lot of Nate ciphered, a lot of Michael Pollock. And I think it just became clear that we all really were on the same wavelength. And so it seemed dumb not to

continue to write with them. Older is a crazy song. I play. I play. that for a few people behind your back before I knew you were. So, you know, first of all, thank you for doing this. Thanks for having me. Kind of last of all, because we're finishing. But, you know, I mean, this is kind of cool because I don't meet that many people

in Los Angeles that understand the journey and the path that I've been on in New York. It's a different feeling. It is. And to watch people straddle the line between, you know, the theater world, the pop world, the, you know, the film, TV world, all these things. And to do it so well, you obviously have a really high bar of what is good. And that's one of the things that you can't teach.

We have all these so many writers. ask why the music industry doesn't pay songwriters well or why they don't pay actors well and the short of it is often that maybe the music they're writing and maybe their abilities aren't really up to par and when you see somebody who's able to do so many parts of the music and film entertainment industry so well and it's so rare to watch that and to have you do it with where, I mean, obviously, you have a lot of friends because the minute that I text these people to say, hey, you want to ask a question,

they all said, they all just came back. But I can't think of a better compliment because now that I've gone through doing, we've done 70-something episodes or something like that, there just aren't that many people who get that kind of love from so many different people, from so many different genres, and it's obviously something that you've earned.

So congratulations on everything. Thanks, man. I'm happy that we're friends now. Me too. What a beautiful thing to say. Thanks. All right. Well, thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist. Or visit our website at and The Writer is.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us. You can also like us on Facebook and Facebook. Twitter. And The Writer is, is produced by Joe London, edited by Miles Bergsmah, and published by Big Deal Music. A special thanks to David Silberstein from Mega House Music and Michael White.

Until next time, this is Ross Golden.