Jonathan Groff remains grateful for his relationship with the late Broadway actor Gavin Creel.
Creel — a celebrated songwriter, singer and actor — died at 48 from a rare and aggressive form of cancer called sarcoma in September 2024. Groff — who was friends with Creel and at one point romantically involved with him — spoke to his ex’s impact on his own life while promoting his new musical Just in Time on the Thursday, March 20 episode of The Broadway Show.
“Oh my God. Well, he . . . changed my life,” Groff said, after he was asked to speak to his thoughts on losing Creel. As Broadway.com’s Paul Wontorek noted in the interview, Groff has credited Creel with helping him come out as gay publicly.
“I had come out of the closet personally, but there had been no occasion for me to announce it publicly. We were dating and [Creel] was so out,” Groff said. He recalled one moment in which Creel organized buses to bring people to the 2009 March for Equality in Washington, D.C. “I remember we were on the buses and he was painting the peace sign on my cheek with the cast of Hair, and I really remember the moment of looking over at him with literally a bullhorn and feeling like ‘Okay, am I going to like [come out].’ ”
Groff referred to the moment as “essential” and said at the time, he realized he wanted to “kind of try to be as brave as” Creel was when it came to publicly embracing his sexuality.
“Because at that time it was 2009. Coming out of the closet, it was sort of an unspoken thing that you were sacrificing something in your career if you were going to come out publicly,” he said. “And I remember looking at [Creel] and feeling that I would rather feel this feeling than ever be on a TV show or do a movie. This is so much more meaningful to me. So I owe him that and I am so grateful we got to talk about it many times even after we broke up.”
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Creel’s partner Alex Temple Ward confirmed Creel’s death in September; he was diagnosed with sarcoma in July 2024. The Broadway community took the news of his death as a shock.
“It’s such an unbelievable loss – that memorial was so insanely beautiful,” Groff said in the interview. He referenced actress and singer Sarah Bareilles, whom Groff recalled saying that mourning Creel would “never be enough” during the service. “She was like, ‘Everything that we do today, any way that we try to honor Gavin, it will never be enough because he was just infinity in his life.’ ”
Groff begins performing Just in Time on Broadway on March 28.
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