Aaron Tveit, Broadway Wonder Boy, Is Anything But ‘BrainDead’

Aaron Tveit, Broadway Wonder Boy, Is Anything But ‘BrainDead’ 

On Ham4Ham, Knaussguard, and 'The Princess Bride' (AKA on being your dream man) 

By Dana Schwartz • 07/07/16 4:16pm

Even if you don’t know that you know Aaron Tveit, you know Aaron Tveit. The 32-year-old singer and actor first became famous within the Broadway community after his performance as Gabe in Next to Normal, and since then his career has looked something like a theatre kid fantasy: RENT at the Hollywood Bowl, originating the role of Frank Abagnale, Jr. in the Catch Me If You Can musical, Grease Live!, the Les Miserables film, and endless, endless Tumblr gifsets. 

 Meeting him in person, I wasn’t sure what to expect—given his exceptional career, his personality might have varied anywhere between pretentious L.A. vegan to pretentious New York City ac-tor who would spend the better part of an hour talking about his craft. Instead, he came in, shook my hand, and proceeded to respond to my questions with answers that felt so funny, so natural, so downright intelligent, that it felt more like a really great first date than something I would need to transcribe and type up for work. 

After the cancellation of Graceland on USA, Tveit is back on TV with BrainDead on CBS, a comedy-horror-science-fiction-thriller series from The Good Wife creators Robert and Michelle King. “It’s totally off-the-wall,” Tveit laughed. “It’s really hard to describe it. You give it the setup, and you say it’s this political thing with bugs eating politician’s brains, and people kind of go”—he imitates a sympathetic, confused face—“‘Oh. O.K.’” 

 Did you catch that? The show is about parasitic alien bugs who are eating brains in Washington, D.C., and causing extremist behavior. Tveit (rhymes with “wait”) plays Garreth Ritter, a Republican chief of staff for a Congressman played by Tony Shalhoub who gets eaten by the bugs early on.