When it came time to find Mean Girls’ Damian Hubbard—one of the most beloved characters in the original movie—director Casey Nicholaw knew where to turn. Tony nominee Grey Henson had made his Broadway debut in another Nicholaw-helmed musical: The Book of Mormon.

Just as he did with Book of Mormon’s Elder McKinley, Henson found the overlap of truth and humor. “I love that Damian is so confident and comfortably himself. He's a really really good friend and it was a mission of mine to make him human and normal and not a stereotype,” he says in the video above. “I feel like Damian is so many of us in high school. I've met so many ‘Damians’ at the stage door who are like, ‘It is so lovely to see someone like me represented in a Broadway show on a Broadway stage in a spotlight leading a musical number.’ It means the world to me.”

In fact, that resonance with theatre audiences is why Henson says he and co-star Barrett Wilbert Weed get to break the fourth wall and play storytellers. “Damian and Janis do play the narrators but it's because people who come to the theatre were those people in high school,” he says.

Watch the full video above.