Dear Evan Hansen Director Stephen Chbosky on Deleted Scenes and His First Cut of the Film

With director Stephen Chbosky’s Dear Evan Hansen now playing in theaters, I recently got to speak with him about bringing the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical to movie screens. During the interview, he talked about wanting to make sure the audience never loses empathy for Evan (Ben Platt), how he only ended up with two deleted scenes between his first cut and the finished film, and the challenge of editing during COVID and not being able to screen the film to audiences. If you’re not familiar with Dear Evan Hansen, the high school-set film is written for the screen by the show’s Tony-winning writer Steven Levenson, with music and lyrics by the show’s Oscar, Grammy, and Tony-winning songwriting team of Benj Pasek & Justin Paul. The story is about a high school outsider (Platt) who gains friendship and fame by falsely claiming that he had a tight bond with one of his deceased classmates. The film and play is a powerful look at isolation, social anxiety, and grief and shines a light on the importan