The general attitude towards Ben Platt does not sit right with me (if that wasn't already obvious from the obnoxiously long series of posts I've made defending him).
The other night I saw someone say that his comments defending his right to be in the Dear Evan Hansen movie were arrogant and entitled, and that they showed how "out of touch" he is, and how "unwilling" he is to acknowledge the privilege that he's had in breaking into the industry. I can understand how someone would reach that conclusion if they don't know much about him or about Dear Evan Hansen, but I completely disagree. I think context is everything in this situation, and many people are jumping to conclusions and judging him without actually understanding the context behind the issue. It's important to remember that Ben only came out and said these things after WEEKS of being harassed online for his presence in the movie. Multiple weeks of people calling him old, untalented, arrogant, etc. The sheer amount of ugly, hateful tweets I saw in those weeks following his casting announcement was enough to put me over the edge. I can only imagine how many he was seeing, and how much nasty behavior he had been putting up with before finally choosing to defend himself. If I were in that position, I would probably want to snap back at people too. And realistically, what he said wasn't even that bad or unreasonable. Let's take a look at it.
There's nothing he said in this statement that strikes me as false or self-aggrandizing. It's a pretty understandable reaction if you actually know how much he poured into this show over the years, and how large of a role he played in catapulting it to the level of success and acclaim it reached. Pretty much ALL of the buzz for Dear Evan Hansen that was circulating early on in its run was about his performance, and how powerful it was. I remember early on in the Broadway run, he was so integral to the popularity of DEH that many people, including critics, were questioning if the show could actually survive once he left. And understandably so. He gave this show EVERYTHING he had. He WAS Evan Hansen. He was the face of it all. Despite the obvious challenges of the role and its heavy emotional demands, he was there giving his all every performance, and rarely ever missed a show unless he absolutely had to. And he did it for YEARS. From its conception all the way through to its Broadway run. And then he won the Tony, which drew even more people to the show and won it even more publicity.
Obviously DEH did end up surviving after he left, and it did pretty well with theatergoers (until the internet decided to turn against it for no real reason, but that's an argument for another post). But a movie is a different thing entirely. Outside of theatre circles, the average viewer probably had no idea what Dear Evan Hansen was, and wouldn't have had much motivation to go spend money on a movie ticket unless there was something to pique their interest. And if you want to draw attention to your movie and market it to this entirely new audience while also drawing back in those who were already familiar with the show, casting the actor who originated the part, and who had essentially become the face of the role feels to me like the most obvious and sensible thing to do. It's not like musical adaptation films are some big box office draw on their own. They needed someone with his built-in reputation to really sell this movie.
Was he too old for the role at this point? Sure. But did that warrant the harassment he received for taking the part? Absolutely not. Especially when teenagers are played by adults in almost every other film and TV show and no one really bats an eye. For whatever reason though, people took it as a personal offense this time around, and thought they should just be able to say whatever they wanted to about it. And they expected him to just sit there and take it. And when he didn't, they got angry. What I think we're forgetting here is that these actors are still PEOPLE, no matter how privileged or "removed" you may think they are. Obviously they're going to want to defend themselves and their right to create art when people decide to harass and degrade them for no real reason.
So his decision to fight back and argue that this movie "wouldn't have been made without him" isn't so much him overestimating his importance as it is just him accurately assessing his place within this show's commercial reputation, and acknowledging what was needed in order to bring it from the stage to the screen succesfully. And it was compeletely reasonable for him to be upset about all the backlash, and to defend his right to play a role that he is obviously passionate about. That doesn't mean he's arrogant or out of touch. It just means he's human. And even though there is validity to the age criticism, it's crazy that people have twisted that criticism and distorted it into claims that he somehow didn't deserve the part, or that he didn't earn it, and only got it because his dad was involved in the movie. Considering all that he's given to Dear Evan Hansen over the years, there really is no one who deserved that role more than him. And unlike the people who only found out about him once he was cast in the movie and jumped on the hate bandwagon despite knowing nothing about him, I think the people who have actually followed his career from the beginning understand that.
Not to mention almost every actor who has worked with him has said he is lovely and very down to earth. The Parade cast has had nothing but positive things to say about him, as did his Dear Evan Hansen castmates (both from the stage production and the film). That, in my opinion, holds a lot more weight than some strangers on Twitter who think he's arrogant and full of himself based off of one comment he made to defend himself against unnecessarily cruel backlash. You don't have to agree with what he said or how he worded it, but it's pretty gross and actually kind of scary how the internet has twisted his words and used them to paint some false portrait of him as this deeply arrogant and entitled person. I am once again begging people to do an ounce of research before jumping on a bandwagon they don't actually understand.
