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Colton Ryan
The Girl From Plainville dramatizes the 2014 death of Conrad Roy by suicide and the 2017 conviction of his girlfriend, Michelle Carter, for involuntary manslaughter. In the series, Elle Fanning plays Michelle, and <anchor>Colton Ryan</anchor> plays Conrad.
How 'New York, New York' Star Colton Ryan Conquered Broadway
# How New York, New York Star Colton Ryan Conquered Broadway

Ahead of the Tony Awards, the actor reflects on his "turbulent love affair" with New York City.

By Emily BurackPublished: Jun 05, 2023 10:00 AM EDT

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Colton Ryan's New York story began when he was 21, just before he graduated college and moved to the city to be part of the original Broadway cast of Dear Evan Hansen. I'll let him tell it: "If this sets a scene, my castmates threw me a graduation party at one of these Irish pubs over here on 10th Avenue, because they wouldn't let me off to go back and walk with my classmates."

Ryan is recounting his feelings about New York on a break between a two-show Wednesday in late May, when we grab coffee at a tiny café a block away from the St. James Theater. He's currently starring in New York, New York, his third-ever Broadway show; the aforementioned first, Dear Evan Hansen, was struggling to hire a young person to understudy the roles of the three main male characters—the titular Evan, Connor Murphy, and Jared Kleinman—until then they found him, a senior at Baldwin Wallace University in Cleveland, Ohio. Joining that production, he says, uprooted his whole life.

"I was always coming to chase this sort of dream," he says of his journey to New York, "and then somehow it came quicker. It knocked me on my ass, a little." Originally from Kentucky, Ryan moved in with his girlfriend and her two roommates in Harlem in their small three-bedroom apartment. "I was just shoved into adulthood, which was strange because I was being asked to play a very much a child and it wasn't very hard to play," he recalls. "I was playing an anxious child and it was a very cathartic experience."

us entertainment award broadway tony

LEONARDO MUNOZ//Getty Images

Ryan is a first-time Tony nominee this year in the Kander & Ebb musical New York, New York, of which he says, "We just thought this city deserved a real champion."

His relationship with New York "was very love/hate at the beginning. Well, actually, it really skewed hate. And then I only realized later how close love and hate really are." That's why he's drawn to New York, New York, where he leads the cast as Jimmy Doyle, a role first made famous by Robert DeNiro in the 1977 film of the same name. The story, he explains, centers on the "terribly intimate, turbulent love affair you have with this place."

New York, New York captured him immediately ."I fell in love with the show because I was reading it on paper, and honestly I felt triggered by it," he says. "When you live here, you're shoved into the four seasons of life, quite quickly and literally. [New York] is honestly the only place I've ever grown up. It was my university, it's my adulthood, it's my home. So if I can surmise that into a relationship, we've been going a long time. We've been going at it a long time."

The show, a celebration of the reemergence of New York after World War II, offers parallels to NYC today, as the city comes back from the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. "It's a very volatile moment, mainly because it's such a hopeful moment," Ryan says. "And we've all collectively been in grief for so long that it's so hard to feel hopeful." In that sense, New York, New York has a mission: One of celebrating the city, and bringing tourism back to Broadway. Ryan jokes, "I feel almost in my civil servant era, it's like, this is my best act of service I could do."

the girl from plainville “blank spaces” episode 108 coco’s last day michelle struggles with the future the carters and roys both try to find closure after tragedy conrad colton ryan, shown photo by steve dietlhulu

Steve Dietl/Hulu

Ryan as Conrad in The Girl from Plainville. "I still cannot believe that anyone let me go to film school on the job—school of hard knocks learning," he says. "I’m so grateful for that side of my work, and I’m so proud of it."

The coronavirus pandemic threw Ryan's own career for a loop. He opened a Broadway show, Girl From the North Country, five days before the city shut down. Due to other commitments—namely starring in Hulu's The Girl from Plainville— he was unable to return to that show when it reopened. "I feel like I've been built for instability for so long," he says. "I'm starting to predict the unpredictable. I can't believe that we get to do what we are doing right now, just because we were told we were not essential for so long. I can't believe in the middle of this storm, I have a shelter. I'm very thankful for it."

His unexpected break from Broadway during the pandemic, was, as he describes, "the best gift in the world." He first made his television debut on a 2017 episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which he calls "a gracious rite of passage," which led to a three-episode arc on Homeland, but the pandemic break from Broadway led him to venture further into the medium. In addition to his breakout role in Plainville, Ryan appeared in an episode of Rian Johnson's critically acclaimed Poker Face, where he plays the antagonist to Natasha Lyonne's crime-solving character .

Though he studied musical theater, his roles on television and film have helped shape his approach to the stage. "My worldview towards this art form, or just acting in general, has opened up so much. I've been afforded a lot of privileges to go and do on-camera stuff. Which actually makes coming here, this original dream, feel so much sweeter," Ryan says. "It's so much more levelheaded—I feel like I can see a little clearer and I haven't over romanticized it, which has actually kept it as lovely as possible."

Broadway, his "original dream," was always the goal for Ryan. He turns 28 on the eve of the 2023 Tony Awards, where he's up for Best Actor in a musical, a nomination he says "didn't feel possible." The show, which features music by John Kander and Fred Ebb, an original story by David Thompson with  Sharon Washington, and additional lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, is up for nine Tony Awards. Approaching the Tonys themselves, Ryan says he's "profoundly tired, but not drained." Mainly, he's looking forward to having a drink (or a few), as he has abstained from alcohol since New York, New York's first preview.

"new york, new york" broadway opening night

Bruce Glikas//Getty Images

Ryan, center, with castmates Angel Sigala, Oliver Prose, Clyde Alves, Anna Uzele, Kevin Ligon, Emily Skinner, John Clay III, Janet Dacal, and Ben Davis during the opening night curtain call for New York, New York.

Of playing Jimmy, Ryan says, "I've never done anything that's required me to be as plainly honest with myself. And when you do that, I think it does shock you. When you really ask what you need, and your body will tell you that. And this is marathon running in the middle of a sprint. So it's all counterintuitive. And the only thing you have is thanks that your body helps you through it."

He's superstitious, as many Broadway actors are. He hasn't had a drink since the start, and it's worked for him (and his acupuncturist agrees his liver was struggling), so he will continue to keep not drinking, apart from a respite at the Tonys. Ryan also wears a silver ID tag bracelet in the show that his grandmother gifted him on the day of the first preview, very similar to a diabetes bracelet from the American Red Cross that his grandfather used to wear.

"It's almost haunted," he jokes. When the costume designer, Donna Zakowska, tried to replace it with a bracelet with a stronger clasp, "every time I put it on, something would go wrong in the show for me. I hated it. I could feel it." So, it was back to that original bracelet from his grandmother, which he calls his "Linus blanket." (He has the bracelet on during our interview, because it's too annoying to take off in between two show days, though he hates the Wednesday matinee. "Abolish Wednesday matinees. Who comes? It's ridiculous. We need a new economic model!")

"new york, new york" broadway opening night

Bruce Glikas//Getty Images

Uzele, left, and Ryan, right, star as Francine Evans and Jimmy Doyle. The show is up for nine Tony Awards this year.

The physicality of Ryan's performance of Jimmy is evident throughout the show, but perhaps nowhere more than during "I Love Music," when he plays multiple instruments as he serenades Francine (Anna Uzele), all while singing and dancing. "I love when I get my Looney Tunes time," he says.

Audience members don't believe it's actually him performing all those instruments. When his friend Elle Fanning, with whom he co-starred with in The Girl from Plainville, came to see the show, she overheard a group of theatergoers in the lobby during intermission debating whether or not he actually played all the instruments. Ryan recounts, "I've never had to think about it in that way. I just do it, versus the believability of someone being able to do it. It was so funny because they were convincing each other, being like, I just don't think it's humanly possible, essentially. And she politely popped on the shoulder and she was like, 'That's my friend actually. And he does play all of them.'"

The sheer unstoppable energy of "I Love Music" aside, his favorite song to perform is "Quiet Thing," a number that he calls a "quintessential, top of the playlist" Kander and Ebb creation. He continues, "It explains everything. The only other person to really do it is Liza Minnelli. For it to work so brilliantly in the context of the show, for the arrangement to be so hauntingly beautiful as it is, and also just it hitting this strange moment in my life where that truth in that song, when it all comes true..." he drifts off, perhaps thinking of the lyrics When it all comes true / Just the way you'd planned / It's funny but the bells don't ring / It's a quiet thing. "I tell you what, the day of the Tony nominations, when I sang that, I'll never forget that day; it was revealing itself yet again to me."

"new york, new york" broadway opening night

Bruce Glikas//Getty Images

Ryan on opening night of New York, New York. "I have a deeper faith now that my work is being seen," he says. "And with that, the confidence that comes with,

Despite the shaky beginnings of his sudden move here at 21 years old, Ryan's romance is still alive with New York.

New York, New York is framed through four seasons—summer 1946 through summer 1947. It's an honest look at "the seasons of life that we all go through just by surviving this place," Ryan says. "Just like any beautiful Kander and Ebb composition, right as you think you're settled, it turns again, and it turns again, and it turns again. And then it reminds you at the end of it, you survived all the turning."

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Senior News Editor

Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.

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