Ben Platt Breaks Down Why The Politician Is A Huge Step For Queerness On Screen

The Politician centres around Ben’s character, Payton Hobart, a highly-ambitious high school student who is set on becoming US president one day.

Ryan Murphy has said he envisages the show spanning multiple series, each one focusing on a key election in Payton’s career, the first of which is the race to be named his class president.

The character was created specifically by Ryan Murphy for Ben, having been impressed after watching him in Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway.

“Ryan came backstage afterwards, in a beautiful fur – of course, as you would hope,” Ben recalls. “And he was very effusive and complimentary. He said, ‘I would love to find something to do together’. And I thought that was an incredibly lovely thing to say, but I didn’t really want or expect anything – I mean, he’s Ryan Murphy, he’s got a million things going on.

“Shortly after that, he reached out to me, and said ‘I have an idea’, and I was like, ‘oh cool, maybe he’ll put me on one of his shows, put me on American Horror Story or something’. And then we had lunch and he basically said, ‘I’ve created this character for you, and it’s something that I think would be very special for you’. And he laid out everything about it – he knew he wanted Gwyneth, he knew what he wanted the look to be, the tone to be, the people writing it, the directors, when he wanted to shoot it, where he wanted to shoot it… he had a very, very clear vision, and made it very hard to say no.”

And for anyone who already finds watching the news fatiguing enough, without voluntarily tuning into a show called The Politician, Ben is insistent that the series is more in keeping with Ryan’s existing hit shows than the likes of House Of Cards or The West Wing.