Darren Criss on counting his lucky stars

37-year-old Darren Criss is a star of Broadway and a regular at piano bars. “Keep up the music, you know?” he said. “I think the expression is, ‘Life is a cabaret!'”

When he’s in Los Angeles, it’s Tramp Stamp Granny’s, where he and his wife Mia are the owners. “It’s kind of a beautiful little Hollywood story,” he said. “She slings the drinks and I sling the music.”

A rule in a piano bar? Play the hits. Criss had his first hit at the University of Michigan. He starred as Harry Potter in an unauthorized student show based on the books and became a YouTube sensation in 2009.

“That was a very interesting moment in A Very Potter Musical,” he said. “That really changed my life. That would put 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 it. I guess we’ll let the YouTube historians decide the validity of that,” Criss said.

But Criss took a detour on his way to Broadway by becoming a TV star. “‘Glee’ happened then,” he said. “And I got involved in it, like hundreds of thousands of other people in my situation at the time. And I booked it by accident.”

He played Blaine Anderson and quickly became a fan favorite. “I owe my involvement in this show to the army of subcultural fan base we have assembled through the Potter story,” 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Now he plays an outdated robot named Oliver in a new musical, “Maybe Happy Endings,” one of the most acclaimed shows currently on Broadway. The New York Times calls it “joyful,” “heartbreaking,” and “super smart.”

Criss said: “This show opens with a song that asks the question: Why love? Why are we doing this? If we know that loving something locks one into a contract that has an inexorable end—namely, the loss of something—why do we do that when we know that’s what’s going to happen?”

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

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

“Well, it’s definitely a blessed day,” Criss laughed. “I have had some extraordinary years in my life and I think this has certainly been an exciting time.”

He too has had some difficult 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.

Criss said: “I don’t necessarily think about my own experiences with the people in my life that I’ve lost. But I think about the feeling of loss, the sadness, emptiness and loneliness that that brings, because we all feel it.” But the things that move me in life and in (“Maybe Happy Ending”) are not those darkness of loss, but the Herculean grace it takes to withstand the inevitable truth of it.”

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

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

You can stream the Christmas album “A Very Darren Crissmas” by clicking on the embed below (free Spotify registration required to hear tracks in full):

For more information:

Story produced by Mary Raffalli. Editor: Lauren Barnello.

See also:

Check out these special performances of Christmas music by Darren Criss for Sunday Morning: