Mr. Platt’s lifelong rabbi, David Wolpe, has been close friends with Marc and Julie Platt since college. We talked just after Ben was named to the Time 100 list. “What do you do if you’re one of the most influential people at 23?” Rabbi Wolpe said. “What do you do at 25? Or 30? Or as you truly age? That’s where his family’s wisdom will come in. I think he understands the ephemeral nature of being in Time, and the permanent nature of the support that comes from the people who love him.”

His mother isn’t leaving that to chance. Part of her job, she said, is “to be very diligent about stopping and saying: ‘Let’s process this wonderful thing that’s happening to you right now. Let’s think about who came to see it today. What did that feel like to have them come backstage?’ I’m equal parts worry and celebration, but I want to help him focus on the celebration.”

Exposure and Retreat

“To-ny! To-ny!”

Outside the stage door on that Sunday afternoon, a brief chant broke out, rooting Mr. Platt on to the award that he hadn’t yet been nominated for. He raised his hands in a gesture that seemed to say “Thank you, and I’m humbled,” but also, “Please stop.”

He moved down the line, signing what had to be more than a hundred Playbills and ticket stubs and posters, nodding and briefly responding to people telling him how moved they are by his performance, that they suffer from anxiety, too, or their kid does, or their sister, and that they’re so grateful for what he’s done. Two girls who had been standing there since midway through the second act (they came in from Long Island because they’d heard he comes to the stage door on Sundays) cried as they told him they’d seen the show three times and they loved him.

He had this glazed, slightly pained look on his face that was hard to describe. It made me think there must still be a little transition period, even after all of these performances, between Evan onstage and Ben in real life, between all of that raw exposure and the self-preserving retreat from it.

That’s a lot to project onto a moment, I know. It might be more accurate to just say he was very tired. Whatever the case, I liked the idea that even as we all stared, projecting ourselves onto him, he was slipping back into his own skin, and for the next 48 hours, anyway, he didn’t have to be anything other than a 23-year-old in New York, listening to show tunes and waiting for his Seamless order to arrive.