While he loves being on Broadway, Josh Groban has said in the past that he didn’t feel old enough to pull off the lead roles in certain musicals. But he says he’s finally comfortable with the idea of starring in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which starts rehearsals this week and opens on Broadway in February.

“I don’t think it would have been right for me 10 years ago. I know it wouldn’t have been right for me 10 years ago,” Josh tells ABC Audio. “I am the age now that the character is. And it also is a weighty show emotionally; there’s a lot to it. And I’m a little wiser and I’ve got, y’know, stuff to draw on.”

But since he’ll be playing a barber who gleefully murders his customers and then helps turn them into meat pies, he laughs, “Hopefully, nobody has the things that Sweeney has gone through and is doing to draw on! There should be no method acting in Sweeney Todd.”

However, though Sweeney Todd is a ruthless killer, Josh notes, “There is still a human there … and I think the more interesting approach is to find the part of those characters that is in all of us, that we can all be scared by — how somebody could become that.”

“The thing I’m excited to do, beyond just singing my face off every night, is tapping into that side of it,” he adds.

The cast of Sweeney Todd also includes Broadway star Annaleigh Ashford; Stranger Things‘ Gaten Matarazzo; and Jordan Fisher, a Broadway performer and past Dancing with the Stars winner whose TV credits include To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You. Previews begin February 26.

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