Aaron Tveit Tell-All! Nine Quotes from the Graceland Star on Missing Broadway, Ditching Facebook & His Adoring Fans

Now that Graceland star and Broadway.com Audience Choice Award winner Aaron Tveit is a Hollywood big-shot, we were starting to get nervous he’d forgotten all about the Great White Way and his devoted Broadway superfans. He proved this definitely isn’t the case in an interview with BuzzFeed, where he talks about his love for his loyal Tveitertots, his dreams of returning to the stage and his memories of starring in Next to Normal and Catch Me If You Can. Check out nine must-read quotes from the great Tveit!

On taking the Graceland gig: “I was like, listen, if the thing goes to series, it’s gonna shoot by a beach somewhere, so that’s not a bad job to have.”

On returning to his theater roots: “I definitely miss being on stage. One nice thing about Graceland, too, is—hopefully we run a few years, but it’s a cable schedule, so it’s only half a year. I have half a year feasibly to do other things and be on stage or do a movie or sing.”

On his 54 Below show: “I was like, I miss singing, I’m just gonna do this myself, I have an opportunity, I’m gonna put a show together. That was a tremendous success, and I was so fulfilled by that.”

On Next to Normal: “I had so many silent moments in that show, so many moments where I was just sending energy to Alice [Ripley] across the stage. But also the nature of how I was so physically everywhere on that set, I had created all these things where, in my head, Gabe was basically the puppet master making all these fucked-up things happen to this family.”

On Catch Me If You Can: “Ultimately, [Frank Abagnale, Tveit’s character] was dealing with the fact that it was this broken family and my father was dead, and I didn’t want to believe that my father was dead, so I just didn’t want to deal with it. So I just approached it that way, that I just wanted to try to get everyone to buy into my fantasy.”

On his Broadway routine: “When I’m doing a show, every morning when I wake up I have to check and make sure my voice is there. Especially a show like Next to Normal or Catch Me If You Can, where I was singing the whole show and you kind of have to keep your voice there.”

On the magic of theater: "That’s the thing about stage: It’s something you can’t find anywhere else. It’s a two-and-a-half, three-hour experience, and it’s a real relationship. You’re sending out energy from the stage, but the audience is giving you back so much also, so that’s also lifting you and pushing you forward as you’re performing and giving you so much energy. You can’t find it anywhere else, and that’s why people get addicted to being on stage, and when they’re not on stage are kind of looking for that and constantly searching for it."

On Broadway fan love: “It’s a weird thing to get used to, at first, when people [approach you], but at the end of the day, it’s people who are just complimenting you on your work and happy with the work you’ve done, so it’s such a flattering thing. It’s really, really nice whenever it happens or has happened.”

On going Facebook-free: “The whole thing with Facebook and social media—I started to be friends with directors and casting directors on Facebook that I knew in New York. And I kind of said to myself, wait a minute, I need to audition for these people, and they need to suspend some disbelief to who I am.”

Can't get enough of Tveit? Watch his most recent appearance on Show People below.