- When I found out SZA wanted to cover this song,
look, I can't even talk about it.
It's such an incredible honor.
I'm so happy that she connects to it
and feels it in her heart.
When I first heard it, I was with Ben Platt at his house
and he was like, "You know SZA covered this song, right?"
And I was like, "No, naur!"
And he was like, "Yeah, I'll play it for you."
And so we were by his pool, he put it on the speaker.
I don't think I said a word.
I think like he played it, I didn't say a word.
I couldn't speak, I was just like, I'll see you later.
So we wrote this song
for the character Alana in "Dear Evan Hansen"
and the intention was to deepen her as a character
and understand that she's actually going
through her own struggles with mental illness.
And she's trying to convince Evan,
in the movie and in the musical,
to be a part of this foundation
that she started called the Connor Project,
which is like a mental health awareness foundation.
And so she's trying to tell him,
you might feel alone in everything that you're going through
but there's so many people, the anonymous ones,
who are also going through it too
and who are also struggling with mental illness.
You just have to get to know them deeper
and then you might actually connect
and be vulnerable with each other
and we might all feel less alone.
So I wrote this song with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul,
who are like renowned songwriters,
who created "Dear Evan Hansen".
It started with just kind of talking
about this concept of like,
what is that moment when you're seeing someone pass by you
and they're presenting their facade or their mask
and they're smiling and they're happy,
but what is that moment when that mask slips for a second
and you see something deeper in their eyes?
And so that was kind of where the seed of the song started
and we went from there.
I don't think it's possible
for anyone to have it all together.
We're all human.
We all struggle with social anxiety.
We all struggle with not being sure
of how to engage with the world.
A lot of us need help, you know.
A lot of us need therapy or need medication.
I need both of those things, personally.
And so this is about that.
It's about seeming like everyone knows
how to engage socially,
but it actually being really difficult.
So Alana has just admitted to Evan in the movie
that she's on meds too, she's on Lexapro, 10 milligrams,
which is what I'm on. (laughs)
I think that that moment is really special between them,
that they're able to bond and connect over being on meds
'cause there is so much stigma around medication.
I have been prescribed medication since I was 15.
It wasn't something that I started taking
until I was like an autonomous adult,
possible of making my own decisions,
because there was a lot of shame and fear
that I felt around it
and it wasn't normalized in my family especially.
And I didn't know how it could be beneficial
to me as a tool like I do now.
I think I have learned to give people more space
than what I might initially assume about them
when I first meet them.
And I hope that people, you know, do the same thing for me.
Sometimes I feel really socially awkward
or just concerned about people's perception of me
and that can make me kind of introverted,
which maybe comes off as me
just kind of being a bitch. (laughs)
But it's not that, I promise!
Yeah, it's just sometimes it's hard to engage.
And so I think that the message of the movie
is also to kind of give people the benefit of the doubt,
give them a moment and allow them the space
for them to feel comfortable
to truly show themselves and be themselves.
I don't really know anyone, at least in my life,
who isn't, you know,
struggling with depression or anxiety in some form
or other neurodivergences.
But "The Anonymous Ones" speaks to, you know,
people who are loners or haven't found their people yet
or have a hard time being vulnerable
or connecting with other people 'cause it's scary,
not necessarily just people who have depression or anxiety.
I think that one of the trappings of mental illness,
and I'll say neurodivergence,
'cause I don't even necessarily think of it as illness,
is that it tells you that you're alone.
Like if you're feeling depressed or anxious,
you have this little voice in your head going,
you're alone, you're alone, you're alone.
No one understands how you're feeling.
No one can connect to you right now because you're alone
and you have less value as a person because you're alone
and because you're feeling this way.
And so I guess the advice that I would give
is that sometimes you have to listen to that little voice,
recognize it as a little voice,
and tell it to shut up. (laughs)
Staying in motion, to me,
means proving myself to be perfect,
always trying to achieve something
to prove to myself and to the world that I'm capable.
And that's what Alana,
my character in the movie, does as well.
She's the leader of a bunch of different clubs.
She's class president.
She has perfect grades.
And she's super hard on herself.
And a lot of that stuff we kind of pulled
from my life as a teenager in high school.
I was a really intense student.
I was so hard on myself.
I had a 4.7 GPA.
I had a couple friends.
And I just had this like compulsion
to always prove myself further to the world
because I felt like if I wasn't perfect,
if I didn't have the perfect grades,
if I wasn't the perfect student or daughter or person,
like, I didn't know what I was worth.
And so the message of this part
and kind of Alana's struggle as well
is about the fact that we have value as human beings,
regardless of our achievements.
Yeah, so this was also
kind of like an ode to Instagram. (laughs)
So we have this line,
"stuck inside the perfect frame they're faking."
We feel this need to present
these certain images of ourselves online
and to create this facade
of the perfect individuals that we are
who are living their best lives at all times.
And so, yeah, that's what this part is about.
I've definitely held secrets
that then I realized weren't a big deal.
Being gay is one of them.
That's a huge one.
When I was in high school, me and my best friend,
we were both queer and we didn't know it yet fully.
Or at least we didn't have enough queer people around us
to be like, oh, this is what's going on.
And we had feelings for each other
and we were experimenting with each other
and it was the secret that we were burying
and we didn't want anyone else in our school to know about.
Because it's just, I don't know,
you know how high school is.
People talk, it feels uncomfortable.
And now, I'm like, whew, thank God
that I don't have to feel that way anymore.
Thank God that I have a queer community
that I'm so proud and out.
And also that friend and I
have like processed it together since
and that's been a really beautiful thing for us too.
I will give myself pep talks in the mirror sometimes.
Like if it's that urgent. (laughs)
I will fully be like, "Whew, okay."
And I look in the mirror and I'll be like, "Baby girl."
Because also there's that one Beyonce lyric
where she's like, "Baby girl, you can't survive like this."
(laughs) You know what I'm talking about?
So sometimes I will Beyonce it
and I'll look in the mirror
and I'll be like, "Baby girl, look.
"You're doing great.
"You're fine.
"You are deserving of love regardless of what is going on
"or whatever mistakes you've made
"or what thing you're worried about.
"You got this and you are deserving of compassion."
'Cause if you can't have compassion for yourself,
how can you have compassion for anybody else, you know?
Writing this song and then performing this song,
like the moment that we sang it in the movie
was kind of emotional for me and Ben,
because I think the movie is kind of this moment
that we're hoping reminds people
that they don't have to be anonymous
or that they're not alone.
And so singing those lyrics, you know,
was a part of the film but also felt like,
hopefully singing out to all kinds of people
who might watch this movie.
It's normal to struggle.
It's normal to feel like a weirdo. (laughs)
It's normal to struggle under the weight of that.
And hopefully, you know,
we can learn to be vulnerable with each other.
And I hope that my vulnerability too
makes people feel less alone
and makes them feel comfortable opening up
and being themselves, even though it's really hard.
You know, it's like a part of my job
to present myself a certain way.
I think, like, over the past couple years or so,
or maybe the last year, really,
I have kind of released putting the pressure on myself
to always seem like I have it together or I'm good.
And that actually maybe has made me feel closer
to the people who are paying attention to me
or my career or whatever,
because they're like, oh, you're a human too, okay, got it.