Alex Boniello

Boniello grew up in Wood-Ridge, New Jersey and attended Wood-Ridge High School, where he began acting with roles like Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast and Mark Cohen in Rent. He enrolled at Wagner College, majoring in drama.[1]

His start in professional theatre came with the touring company of American Idiot. He was in ensemble and understudied the roles of Johnny and St. Jimmy, played by stars John Gallagher, Jr. and Billie Joe Armstrong, respectively, during the Broadway run.[2] In 2013 and 2014, Boniello has appeared in many TV and film roles, including: Alien Dawn, Contest, Floored, Unrelated, and Happyish. He appeared in an episode of Jessica Jones in late 2015 as "punk kid."[3]

Boniello returned to theatre in 2015, when he performed in the Off-Broadway production of Brooklynite.[4] He was also a member of the cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical 21 Chump Street and can be heard on the show's original cast album.[5] Later in the year, he was cast as the "Voice of Moritz" in the Deaf West Production of Spring Awakening,[6] and stayed with the company with its transfer to Broadway. He completed his run at the Brooks Atkinson theatre on January 24, 2016.[7] On April 13, 2018 it was announced that Boniello would be replacing Mike Faist as Connor Murphy in Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway.[8] He made his debut in the role on May 15, 2018 and played his final performance on January 26, 2020 alongside co-star Andrew Barth Feldman.[9]

As a producer, Boniello is known for his work on the Broadway musical Hadestown, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2019.[10]

Boniello is in a long-term relationship with girlfriend April Lavalle. They have been together since college, and live together in New York City with their cat.

He has also suffered from an anxiety disorder since he was seventeen years old, and is very candid and open about that fact online and in person, as he knows many of the people who follow his career suffer from similar issues. Boniello has claimed that he has used his own experiences with anxiety to help with his portrayal as the panicky character Moritz Stiefel in Spring Awakening.[11]