Ivan Hernandez on Joining Dear Evan Hansen & Remembering All the Times He Auditioned for Rent

Ivan Hernandez is teaching audiences how to break in a glove as Larry Murphy in Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway. This marks Hernandez's second Broadway credit (he was previously seen in Chicago), and he is only the second person to play the role full-time on the Great White Way, replacing original cast member Michael Park. "It's nothing you can really grasp in your mind," Hernandez told Paul Wontorek in a recent interview on Broadway.com's #LiveAtFive. "You're so busy trying to get into the role and perform it. I watched Michael perform and learn from him but I also worked with [director] Michael Greif and started from scratch. Ann Sanders, who plays my wife, and I got to go into the show together and it was really nice to have that in rehearsal. It's been a crazy five weeks."

As a father of two himself, playing Larry Murphy has struck a personal chord for Hernandez. "It's rare, especially doing a musical, to have a show like this," he said. "It's really like a play to go through these emotions and depth of story. I'm a dad and my kids are a little younger, so it's been interesting trying to figure out what it'll be like. It's kind of a nightmare to actually imagine what it's like having teenagers."

It wasn't until he was a teenager himself that the musical-theater scene caught Hernandez's eyes. "I was playing sports and was playing clarinet in the band," he said. "I went to the school where Carol Channing went and they do plays and musicals every year. We did Sweeney Todd my junior year and I was still in the orchestra. When I listened to it I thought it was the most amazing thing, it was the first time I had heard Sondheim. Then someone gave me a tape of Sunday in the Park with George with Mandy [Patinkin] and I wanted to be George. We did Evita senior year and they tossed me into the room and I started yelling the song on pitch and got the part."

Partaking in high school theater led Hernandez perusing theater in college and eventually led him to New York City where he met Dear Evan Hansen's director for the first time. "I auditioned for Rent in front of Michael Greif, he actually doesn't know this story," he said. "It was that open call they did where you would sing for fifteen seconds and if they liked it you would move on to another round. I got all the way to singing for Michael Greif and then didn't get it. They called me a year later and I sang for him again and didn't get it. Then like six months later they said, 'We're looking for an immediate replacement on Broadway for Roger.' I thought I should do something different, this was such a dumb thing to do, but we stayed out at a bar and smoked cigarettes the night before. I wanted to go and have a real grit but I only got like four hours of sleep and I opened up my mouth to sing and they were like, 'Thank you, next.' It took twenty years for Greif to hire me after that."

Catch Hernandez in Dear Evan Hansen, now playing at the Music Box Theatre.

Watch the full #LiveAtFive episode below!