Video: Darren Criss Hopes to Boost the Battery Life of MAYBE HAPPY ENDING

What does this Tony nomination mean to you

Um, it's, they're, they sound like cliches, but they're cliches for a reason because they are useful

Uh, obviously it's an honor. I've loved the Tony awards for so long

Um, they are emblematic of something that's so much bigger than individual ego or pageantry

they are a vessel and a venue for a much larger dialogue

about this art form and this community that I love so much

you know anything that is being acknowledged by the Tonys as a whole for our show

is a massive spotlight that isn't just about this season it's about years

down the line for regional productions and tours and translations and other cultures and other times and other contexts. And

this is the seedlings of that. So that means a lot to me, getting to be part of something that

can hopefully elevate and continue on the battery life, as it were, about maybe Happy Ending beyond

the Belasco Theater in 2025. You know, hopefully that many people in this room's grandchildren

hopefully can go see or be in one day. You know, this is what this leads to, hopefully

Your performance is flawless. Oh, I don't know about that. I've seen your..

We've just dusted a lot of the flaws under the rug. I have seen your show three times

I was here just a few weeks ago. There's something about what you do in this show

that no one else has ever done before. You playing a help bot who really not supposed to have emotion but we see all the emotion into your heart and we see it through your eyes into your soul And not everybody can do that and that why they acknowledged you with the Tony nomination

But what it means living in this role and living in this show? Well, it's a funny thing getting to originate a thing

because I have carte blanche to kind of do whatever. I don't envy my many colleagues that are doing a version of a thing that is known before

whether or not they were familiar with whoever did it before, there is that sort of thing of like for the audience, you know

that may be familiar. So that's both a blessing and a curse

It's good to be interested because you have familiarity, but it can also be a burden if you are now beholden to that expectation

So I've been given kind of a miraculous free dance card to kind of do my own thing for better or for worse

So I'm very proud of what we've built. It's not an individual thing

Theater is a glorious collaboration between so many people, and no one's coming to see this show just to see me

or any of my individual colleagues. It is so nice to have your ego be completely absolved

by a very clear, clear collaboration between all departments, everyone firing off at 1,000% on all cylinders

where there's no one piece that's like, oh, well, that wasn't very much present

It's all there, and I feel very much part of a very fun part of a large machine

And so that's nice. There's no imbalance, I think