Exclusive: Gaten Matarazzo Feels Mark Is Often ‘Criticized’ — but That’s Why He Loves Doing RENT

Growing up, Gaten Matarazzo was told that he should play filmmaker Mark Cohen in Jonathan Larson’s Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical Rent. 

It’s a role that the Stranger Things alum has always had his eye on, even if the musical played its final performance at Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre on September 7, 2008, one day before Matarazzo turned 6. 

“Every theater kid’s dream is to do this show at some point,” Matarazzo, who is making his West End debut in the London production of Rent celebrating the show’s 30th anniversary, exclusively tells BroadwayWorld. 

After nearly a decade playing Dustin Henderson in Netflix’s hit supernatural series, Matarazzo — whose pre-TV Broadway credits include Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Les Misérables — is getting back to his theater roots, and he couldn’t seem happier.

“I thrive and feel healthiest in a routine,” he explains, adding that he’s “content” to focus on theater and his time in Rent (currently playing The Tom Stoppard Theatre) for “a while.” 

He’s still learning all there is to know about Mark, the struggling artist at the center of the musical who documents his friends’ experience with the AIDS crisis in New York City in the early 1990s. 

“After learning a lot about Jonathan and meeting Julie [Larson] — Jonathan’s sister who’s been out to see the show already and has been very kind to us — Mark feels like a big extension of Jonathan specifically,” says Matarazzo. 

“He was always struggling with the cost-of-living crisis in New York,” Matarazzo says of the late songwriter, who died at age 35 shortly before his musical opened in 1996. “As far as the AIDS crisis goes, he was watching his friends endure that, and he was writing a story about it.”

Mark Cohen is doing the same and trying to “capture that experience” even if it’s one “he doesn’t personally have,” says Matarazzo. “And that’s something Jonathan did — and did very well.” 

When it comes to the character of Mark himself, Matarazzo thinks Roger’s roommate sometimes gets a bad rap. 

“He is a character who doesn’t have a seamless fit into this group,” Matarazzo points out. “And there are a lot of questions as to why they are putting up with him. If [he and Roger] met at a bar…they would not click in the slightest. How did he and Maureen build chemistry?” 

“That is always something that I think people have criticized, but I really love, because it gives [the actor] an opportunity to develop a really rich history with these people,” says Matarazzo, adding that there’s “always an innate love” that keeps them all together. 

The actor says he also respects that Mark “doesn’t get the big songs” in the musical and “doesn’t have a huge overwhelming, overtly moving emotional arc.” 

These criticisms of Mark are why Matarazzo loves the role “so much,” he says, adding: “That’s what’s been really fun about tackling him. He is difficult to navigate, and he’s hard to get right.”

Being an observationalist, both in and out of character, has taught Matarazzo a lot throughout the process. “Watching my friends do this show, not just experiencing it with them — taking a step back and just observing — is so fun to do,” he says. “It’s stunning, and what Jonathan made is just objectively a feat.” 

Following Rent’s October 8 opening, Matarazzo has a lot more time to keep discovering new things about his character, his newfound friends in the cast and what it’s like to live in London. 

“I’m living in a new city on my own, making new friends and creating new circles, and it feels kind of like college in a way, but I am content to ride this out,” Matarazzo says. 

“The people I’ve met on this show have been really easy to engage with out of the building as well,” he adds. “It’s become a real tight-knit group. Theater is always like that, though… At least I’ve been very lucky.”

Photo Credit: Pamela Raith/Victoria Stevens