Charlie joining me now is star ben platt, nominated for best actor in a musical, and writer steven levenson, nominated for best book. Im pleased to have them at the table. Tell me about your character. Liz evan hansen . Liz evan hansen . Ben evan hansen is an incredibly lonely highschooler, he has trouble connecting to other people. That is heightened by the hyper conductivity of social media. He feels under deep scrutiny, which pulls him deeper into himself, and makes him retreat even more. He really just cant find a place to belong and be heard and feel connected to anyone or anything. Through this rather terrible lie that he tells about a fake friendship with a kid and his cast classroom committed suicide, evan grows closer to the family and helps them heal, and finds a new voice, and a place to be important, and find new confidence and come out of his shell, although it is all predicated on this fabrication. Charlie is it also a critique of social media . When we started working on