Aaron Tveit kicked off 2016 with a widely praised performance as Danny Zuko in Fox’s “Grease: Live,” considered the most successful of the four live TV musicals that have aired so far.
The show’s success (it snared 12 million viewers) did not change his life, Tveit says. He was already an old pro with two series to his credit — The CW’s “Gossip Girl” and USA’s “Graceland” — and had his next job lined-up: the CBS political sci-fi comedy “BrainDead,” created by Robert and Michelle King of “The Good Wife.”
“The pitch they gave me was it’s ‘The West Wing’ meets ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers,’ ” says Tveit, 32, at Cafe Fiorello on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “I read the script with that in mind. I was a big comic book kid. I’ve always liked heightened stories. To be completely honest it was also 13 episodes, straight-to-series. No pilot. I haven’t had a steady job in New York since ‘Catch Me If You Can’ closed on Broadway in 2011.
“It was great to come home to work.”
The series, filming on the old “Good Wife” stages in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, casts Tveit as Gareth Ritter, a Washington, D.C. legislative director having a hard time getting anything done during a government shutdown that’s further complicated by the arrival of space bugs that have escaped from a meteorite in the Smithsonian. The bugs are crawling into the brains of addled politicians and other Beltway denizens. Those who accept their infiltration go to political extremes. Those who don’t come to an unfortunate end: their heads explode.
“The show’s saying that extremism in our country is really what prevents our government from functioning,” Tveit says. So far, he’s been spared having to act with brain matter prepared by the special effects department, but he has plenty of scenes with love interest Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the show’s heroine, who plays a documentary filmmaker turned Nancy Drew.
“You’re trained to think when they meet [that] they don’t like each other so they’re going to end up together,” says Tveit, who is single. “Our relationship ebbs and flows. There’s an attraction there. It goes places but maybe not necessarily where you think it’s going to go.”
While sipping an iced tea, he reveals that he and Winstead will be presenting a Tony award to the Best Featured Actress in a Musical Sunday night at the Beacon Theater. The timing — the night before “BrainDead” premieres — could not be better, but at least Tveit has real connections in the Broadway world.
Besides playing the Leonardo DiCaprio role in “Catch Me If You Can,” he has also starred in “Next to Normal” and “Hairspray.” He also performed on the Tonys show in 2009 and 2011.
“I couldn’t be more excited,” says Tveit, a prodigy who grew up in Middletown, NY, and learned to play the violin when he was just 4 years old (he also plays the French horn). “It’s just a wonderful thing to be part of. I have so many friends nominated.”
When “ BrainDead” wraps production in August, Tveit has some solo concerts lined up, but they won’t satisfy his appetite to get back on stage.
“There’s no other feeling like that,” he says.