The way Darren Criss recalls it, he and actress Bernadette Peters had quite the moment. The Glee alum learned that the story he’s had in his head wasn’t quite what happened, though, when he sat next to the Broadway legend Tuesday on The Kelly Clarkson Show.
“About 10 years ago, around Tony season,” Criss began, “I was hosting a red carpet event…and in the foreground you see her with [designer] Zac Posen, who she tends to be with,” Criss told Clarkson. “And, in the background, I was interviewing somebody.”
Criss, who works on the Great White Way, as well, then joked that he was auditioning for the part of Bernadette Peters and reenacted what he believed had happened.
“I get a full double-take, and she [mouths], ‘Who’s that?’ I get a ‘Who’s that?'” he said. “And then I get a full licking of lips and up and down.”
Peters, 77, hid her face in embarrassment, but the 38-year-old Criss had a much different reaction. He called it “one of the greatest honors,” quipping, “I should have been doing this to you the whole time!”
He declared the obvious crushing “mutual” now.
Clarkson playfully suggested that Peters had actually been eying someone next to Criss, perhaps Rob Lowe.
That’s when Peters broke it to the actor: “I love like this impression of it and what you think happened, because I like that kind of reputation. But, the truth of the matter was, I was thinking, ‘Is that the guy from Glee? I was starstruck!” She added, “I like that version better.”
He didn’t seem too disappointed.
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Criss played Blaine, a member of the central New Directions glee club, for all but the first season of the Fox series that aired for six seasons between 2009 and 2015.
The actor, who received his first nomination for a Tony this month (Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for Maybe Happy Ending) said he had always considered his encounter with Peters, who’s won three, to be “one of the more charged moments of my life.”
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