LOOKING GOOD
In Looking, HBO's buzzy new series, Jonathan Groff proves he's got game. By Ashley Baker
When Jonathan Groff orders a turkey burger and a Diet Coke, he is terribly polite about it, probably because it wasn’t all that long ago that he was a struggling actor working for tips in a restaurant on the edge of Times Square. “I was a great waiter,” he declares, dunking a French fry in ketchup at the Mercer Kitchen in downtown New York. “You have to be a shape-shifter. Some tables want to talk, some want to flirt, and some don’t want anything to do with you. I learned how to connect to what people want.”
That approach has served Groff well both in and out of the dining room. In late 2005, he scored his first big part: the co-lead, alongside Lea Michele, in a little show called Spring Awakening that quickly became the toast of Broadway. “I was Mary Poppins for Halloween when I was three, and we went to Disney World when I was four, which was a very transformative thing,” explains Groff, 28, of his nascent taste for theatrics. He grew up in what he swears is “a house in the middle of an Amish cornfield” in rural Pennsylvania, where his father trains and races horses and his mother taught P.E. “We had to shovel horse shit and mow lawns,” he reminisces. “From age three to 10, it was romantic—running through fields and building tree houses. From 10 to 18, it was not fun.”
During Groff’s senior year, he was cast in a tour production of The Sound of Music, and soon after, he moved to New York. Spring Awakening led to a Tony nomination, and, most recently, television roles on Glee and Boss. Now, he’s starring in HBO’s new series Looking, which industry circles are referring to as Girls-for-gay-guys-in-San Francisco. “I love that, because I fucking love Girls and I’ve seen every episode at least once,” says Groff. “In reality, Looking is a half-hour dramedy about a group of friends, and other than that, there aren’t many similarities.”
Groff’s character, Patrick, is a lovelorn video game developer just barely on the right side of 30 who spends his office hours surfing OkCupid. “I’m not quite as awkward as Patrick in relationship settings,” Groff deadpans. (From the looks of his previous relationship with Zachary Quinto, which was heavily chronicled in the tabloids, definitely not.) “I think I have more game—I think, I hope—but I certainly relate to those first moments when you’re with someone and you don’t know how to connect, respond, or eat.”
The series’ opening scene shows Patrick on the receiving end of an aborted act of fellatio—one of many saucy moments that will transpire this season. “You can’t lie in those scenes, because they’re so intimate,” says Groff. “In some ways, I feel more comfortable in those scenes than others.”
Looking films in San Francisco, which Groff admits is “pretty dreamy”; he lives on a jasmine-scented street and rides his bike to the set. Before he knew the city well, he recalls, “San Francisco felt like the gay Oz—a place where you can be whatever you want. The fairy tale I have of it—men with handlebar mustaches—isn’t really there anymore, but there’s still something magical.”
Groff experienced a similar sense of wonder entering the world of David Sedaris in Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s 2013 film C.O.G., where he played a disenchanted prep schooler who comes of age while toiling in the bowels of the Oregon apple industry. At the film’s Sundance premiere, Groff, forever at your service, interrupted his first-ever conversation with Sedaris to track down a Diet Coke for his mother, who was likely the lone educator in a room swarming with Hollywood cognoscenti. Sedaris demanded an intro, and 45 minutes later, Sedaris and Mrs. Groff were still deep in conversation, while the former scribbled notes furiously. “I was like, ‘Oh my God—is my mom going to be one of your characters?’” Groff recalls with a laugh. “And David said, ‘She’s absolutely fascinating. She must be the shortest gym teacher in all of Pennsylvania.’”