Elf The Musical's Leading Man, Grey Henson, Isn't a Real-Life Buddy—But He's Learning to 'Buddify' Himself Every Day

“It was the number when I’m in the suit,” says Grey Henson, surrounded by the Christmas decor of Lillie's Victorian Establishment in Midtown Manhattan, holiday soundtrack humming in the background. He's recounting one of the final preview performances of Elf The Musical, just two days before its Broadway opening at the Marquis Theatre. Henson stars as Buddy, the overgrown and overeager human-raised-as-an-elf made famous by Will Ferrell on screen 21 years ago. “I pick up that guy,” he continues, detailing the scene where Buddy’s impulse toward exuberance wins out during a visit to his long-lost father’s workplace. “I throw him in the air—but as I picked him up, it popped out of place and went right back in.”

Henson’s thumb is the “it” in this story.

“I kind of saw it out in my periphery and then I panicked,” he says. He eventually made his way to urgent care, but only after finishing another act-and-a-half of the most taxing musical he’s ever done in front of an audience that was none the wiser.

“The cartwheel had already been done,” Henson clarifies. “So at that point, it was fine.”

As Buddy, Henson cartwheels, lifts, ice skates, bear hugs—anything to keep his six-foot-three frame in perpetual motion. After all, it’s in Buddy’s DNA to vibrate at a frequency his body can’t possibly contain. Translate that to a Broadway musical and you have one of the most exhausting roles you’ve ever seen someone pull off with an unflappable smile. But rest assured—the smile is genuine.

“It's a high sing, it's a lot of dancing and it's screaming for two hours.” (Buddy does not speak, he gleefully exclaims.) But, Henson, adds, “It's the most fun I've ever had on stage. It feels like this is what I'm meant to be doing.”

Henson is the third Buddy to lead a Broadway production of Elf, a musical by theatrical heavy hitters Thomas Meehan (book), Bob Martin (book), Matthew Sklar (music) and Chad Beguelin (lyrics). Sebastian Arcelus originated the role during the musical’s premiere during the 2010-11 holiday-season, and Jordan Gelber took on the part for the 2012-13 return of the Casey Nicholaw-helmed production (Philip William McKinley directs the current revival).

Henson, coincidentally, was also working with Nicholaw in 2012. It was his first job out of Carnegie Mellon’s musical theater program and he was launching the national tour of The Book of Mormon as Elder McKinkley (the late Gavin Creel was starring as Elder Price). “You are a perfect Buddy,” Nicholaw said to Henson on their opening night in Denver. It was a passing comment, but one that put the role of the giddy, Christmas-crazed elf in Henson’s peripheral vision for 12 years.

“I've always known I would play the role,” Henson says without sentiment or affectation. "There are very few parts like Buddy the Elf that exist." He knew he needed to build the muscles it takes to lead a show: “If I had been up for it 10 years ago when it first came on Broadway, I wouldn't have been ready to play it." But the role itself was less a matter of aspiration and more a matter of “I'm going to do that because I can do that.” Tailor-made to his collection of special skills, Henson has taken to calling the show "Special Skills: The Musical."

Comedy is one of the actor’s greatest special skills, though he doesn’t necessarily recognize himself as having a signature style when it comes to putting over a joke. “So much of good comedy, I think, just comes from an earnest place of communication. When it's overthought, it seems phony—and you can smell a phony from a mile away.” He delivered punchline after punchline as Storyteller 2 in the 2023 musical Shucked, the bizarro Hee Haw-inspired musical that lasted only 10 months but basked in Broadway’s good will. Prior to that, he earned throngs of devoted fans when he played the infinitely quotable, consummate gay bestie Damian Hubbard in the 2018 musical adaptation of Mean Girls, even earning a Tony nomination for his performance. Fittingly, he decides that the bedrock of his humor is probably Mean Girls creator Tina Fey. “30 Rock for me was everything,” he says. “Working with Tina was wild, but in a weird way, it felt so right, because I knew that her sense of humor sort of taught me how to be funny.”

His Mean Girls fans are also familiar with Henson’s talents as a dancer—something he’s called his “secret little trick” that few people expect from someone who, in his words, is “built like a linebacker.” In fact, one of the Georgia native’s first trips to New York City was for a ballet competition. A 10-year-old Henson and his mother took in a handful of Broadway shows in their free time. One was Annie Get Your Gun, starring Bernadette Peters—at the Marquis Theatre. At his mother’s prompting, Henson wrote a letter to Peters inviting her to his ballet competition the next day. “She came out to sign afterwards, and I said, ‘I wrote the letter. I'm doing the ballet competition,’” Henson remembers. The Broadway legend responded, “Honey, we've got a matinee. I can't come."

“Of course she wasn't going to come,” Henson laughs. “But that memory happened for me there.” Henson is now on the other side of the Marquis’ autograph line, talking to kids who have just experienced what is often their first Broadway show. “It is really special,” he says, though his conversations also regularly have to include an explanation as to where his bright-red mop of Buddy hair has gone. (“It's a little easier for me than Sean Astin, who plays Santa,” Henson concedes.)

It shows just how much Buddy—with his wild, curly hair, neon elf suit and irrepressible honesty—expands the definition of a leading man. “I've always played this sort of side character that pops in and says some funny things,” says Henson. “I've never kissed anyone on stage professionally. I’ve never been a love interest.” As Buddy, he’s the hero, the comedy, the pathos—and he gets to fall in love with the reformed Christmas cynic, Jovie (played by Kayla Davion). “Of course it's through Buddy the Elf that I get to do all those things.”

Until now, the role that’s been farthest from his real-life persona has been The Book of Mormon’s Elder McKinley. “A gay, closeted Mormon is a little bit far away from the comfortable gay person that I am,” Henson says. Still, people tend to watch his performances and believe they’re seeing him—an observation that’s only slightly true. “At the end of the day, I try always to tap into what makes me special and bring that to the role. That’s why I’ve had a career,” he acknowledges. “People that actually know me know I'm a lot darker and a little bit more closed off. I do present as a very warm, bubbly teddy bear—which I'm happy to be for people. But I think people who don't know me think I'm way more of Buddy than I actually am.”

He's learned that he feels familiar to everyone, habitually reminding people of a brother or a best friend. “I always take that as a compliment. I think that just means I make people feel comfortable.” Buddy does the same, but with a warmth that feels stifling until icy exteriors start to thaw. “They all slowly loosen around Buddy,” Henson says. “That's the beauty of the show—that reconnecting with the innocence and the inner child that we all so quickly get rid of in order to protect ourselves from the harsh realities of the world.” He calls it getting “Buddified.” And in the world of Elf, no one is left un-Buddified—not even the actors.

“I was in therapy last week talking about this—because it's a hard schedule and there's a lot of pressure and I was dealing with some stuff," Henson relates. "She was like, ‘You have to be Buddifying yourself every night.’ That really hit me hard.” Considering the amount of energy (and risk of injury) it takes to be Buddy on Broadway, powering your own Buddy optimism machine is no simple task. Then again, if it were, everyone would do it.

“It's such a gift that I get to get lost in such a beautiful character. I get to just be reminded myself of how important it is to not sweat the small stuff.” It still doesn’t make him immune to the frustrations of Times Square’s holiday foot traffic: “I get so mad at tourists going so slowly,” he freely admits. But it’s an ongoing daily practice.

“I slowly have to Buddify myself throughout the day—which is sort of a meditation in a way.” Henson thinks for a second.

“Buddy is, I guess, the Dalai Lama of Christmas."

Credits: Location: Lillie's Victorian Establishment | Grooming: Taylor Rose Beauty