Gavin Creel and Jonathan Groff in 2009.
Photo: Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic
While speaking at the The New Yorker Festival on October 26, Jonathan Groff shared the bittersweet story of his final interaction with Gavin Creel, whom he dated in 2009. The two hadn’t spoken in years but shared a text exchange after Groff mentioned how Creel had positively affected his life in a June 2024 The New Yorker interview. “I got a text message a couple of days after the interview came out from Gavin Creel,” Groff told The New Yorker journalist Michael Schulman, who wrote the original article. “We had dated 15 years ago. I shared in the interview how he’d changed my life and how that relationship altered the course of my existence.” After reading the quotes, Creel texted Groff that “I think I know now that I mean as much to you as you mean to me.”
Groff revealed that he and Creel had continued to chat “all the way up until the Tonys that year.” When Tony Night came, Groff won Best Actor in a Musical for his work Merrily We Roll Along. “He texted me congratulations,” Groff said. “And that was the last interaction we ever had.” Creel died of cancer just three months later, on September 24, 2024.
In the interview that caused Creel to text him, Groff recalled coming out publicly to Broadway.com in 2009 after the couple attended the March on Washington for marriage equality together. Groff remembered “looking at Gavin, who was holding a bullhorn, directing people into the march,” and getting inspired to come out. “I was, like, I fucking love him so much,” he said. “I’m coming out.”
“I know it wasn’t your intention to close a loop with a guy I dated who was about to die,” Groff told Schulman. “But I really thank you for that.”
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