With the 2024 Tony Awards a number of weeks away and the record-breaking Broadway run of “Merrily We Roll Alongside” coming to an in depth in just a little over a month, three-time Tony nominee Jonathan Groff is wanting again on the roles that formed this primary stage in his profession. In an interview in The New Yorker, Groff recalled the impression performing within the visually-stunning and narratively-meta movie “The Matrix Resurrections” had on his psyche.
“Attending to play Agent Smith actually unlocked rage within me that I didn’t know was there,” Groff stated. “That’s helped me a lot with ‘Merrily,’ significantly within the first act. Studying the kung fu was, like, months of struggle coaching. They known as me the Savage, as a result of I used to be so into it. We have been capturing an enormous struggle sequence with Keanu, and, after the primary few takes, I keep in mind Lana [Wachowski] on the monitor, like, ‘Jonathan, come over right here. Who is that?’ I used to be, like, ‘I don’t know.’ And he or she was, like, ‘And what is that?’ I stated, ‘Homosexual rage?’”
The discharge he had in exploring that rage prompted a bodily response he didn’t fairly perceive at first, however that co-star Keanu Reeves helped him make sense of.
“I’d by no means shot a gun earlier than. I shot Keanu and thought I had peed my pants, as a result of I had this scorching feeling,” he stated. “You understand if you pee your self and it’s heat? It lasted about ten minutes after which it went away. I sat subsequent to Keanu and stated, ‘Keanu, I simply had excessive warmth from my groin for, like, ten minutes.’ And he was, like, ‘You opened up your root chakra.’”
Taking part in Agent Smith turned out to not be the one time enjoying a component proved jarring for Groff. Whereas capturing the sexually express HBO collection “Wanting,” he was additionally recording the kids’s movie “Frozen.”“It’s humorous—I keep in mind recording a few of ‘Frozen’ in San Francisco,” Groff stated. “I might be educating Raúl [Castillo], like, how one can lick my asshole whereas jerking me off—not educating him, however sharing the ins and outs of homosexual intimacy — after which going into the recording studio on a Saturday and being Kristoff and Sven in a Disney film.”