Aaron Lazar Has Made Peace With ALS

When Aaron Lazar was diagnosed with ALS in 2022, his first instinct was to keep the news private. “I didn't even tell my kids for a year and a half,” he says. “The disease progressed slowly enough for me that as I started to become disabled, I just told them that I had a problem with my nerves, which is not a lie. I didn't want them worrying about me.”

After he told his sons, Lazar began sharing the news publicly in a Ted Talk-style speaking platform he wrote called “The Impossible Dream.” He began performing this talk (in which he sings the anthemic number from Man of La Mancha) but kept it to small gatherings in homes of friends. The general public was unaware of Lazar’s health status.

A Broadway actor for over two decades—known for his tall, leading-man good looks and booming, powerful voice—Lazar was worried what disclosing his diagnosis widely might mean for his career. ALS is a neurodegenerative disease that causes muscle loss and degeneration of the motor neurons, eventually leading to paralysis and death.

For Lazar, if everyone knew, would people still see him or would they just see the disease? “I had certain ideas about what it would mean to go public, particularly with regards to my career—you don't want people to think of you as somebody that is dying,” the actor recalls.

Especially because Lazar has made an energized choice to heal rather than give in to accepted ideas of the disease and its progression. Lazar has been using his diagnosis as an opportunity to evaluate and change himself, his mindset—to let go of the toxic habits of the past and to finally embrace himself, flaws and all. “I really did a deep dive into the healing powers that we all have within us from a mental, emotional, and spiritual standpoint,” says Lazar. “That's become the transformative work that I've done over the last two-and-a-half years.”

When Lazar finally went public with the news this past January, something remarkable happened. Instead of being met with pity, which was his concern, in came an overwhelming showing of love and support. “My God, there is so much love in the world—I’m open to it now. It was there for me all the time, and I just couldn't appreciate it, because I didn't love myself enough to appreciate all the love in my life,” Lazar realized.

After he went public, Lazar’s friend, producer Jonathan Estabrooks, reached out and asked if he wanted to make an album. He did, and Lazar wanted it to be a record of inspirational songs culminating in a “We Are the World”–style large-group rendition of “The Impossible Dream.” The album, Impossible Dream, has just finished recording and will be released August 23, featuring duets with Lazar and a who’s who of Broadway stars—including Josh Groban, Kelli O’Hara, Leslie Odom, Jr. and Neil Patrick Harris, and joining them on the title track are Kristin Chenoweth, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Sting, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and more than 50 other performers.

A portion of the album’s proceeds will benefit the ALS Network, who presented Lazar with the Essey Spotlight Award earlier this year for his efforts to raise visibility around the disease. The network has given Lazar support in managing the disease, including free medical equipment.

Aaron Lazar and the ensemble of *Impossible Dream* George Arnaldo

Lazar has also become an advocate for ALS patients and research, booking speaking gigs around the country—including at one of the world’s biggest biotech conferences in San Diego, California, where he spoke to an audience of over 10,000. At these engagements, Lazar shares his story—he hopes that those listening will find courage, hope, and faith no matter what adversity they face. Explains Lazar: “I'm doing it in an effort to try and find a way to be of service, with everything I've learned, so the people that are out there that are scared and don't know what to do and don't have hope—I think hope is a very powerful thing. And there's a lot of hope out there.”

Though there is no cure for ALS, there have been 61 documented cases of patients regaining functionality—known as ALS reversals, though more funding is needed to research what triggers reversals. Lazar has been in contact with lead researcher Dr. Richard Bedlack of Duke University. He is honest in his hopes to be one of those reversals, adding, “I imagine myself as having already reversed, healthy and whole."

Speaking to Playbill, Lazar is filled with conviction; his clear-eyed positivity has stayed strong, even as his leg muscles have weakened to the point where he sometimes needs a wheelchair. Lazar’s voice remains resolute, his resilience clear.

Below, in a candid conversation, Aaron Lazar details how he’s been able to find the opportunity to grow and dream amidst the nightmare of ALS, how he overcomes tough days, and how he was even able to duet with the late Rebecca Luker on one of the songs on his album Impossible Dream (Luker passed away from ALS in 2020). This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Fiancés Nawal Bengholam and Aaron Lazar Heather Gershonowitz

As an actor, you’re defined by your body, how it looks and how it performs. For you, being an actor and receiving this diagnosis—can you tell me about how you changed your mindset from one of despair to trying to be of service?
Aaron Lazar: Each of us gets to decide for ourselves what we want to believe about ourselves and about life. And what I mean by that is: If you accept the collective consciousness/belief about what this disease is, you're then limiting yourself as to what the outcomes can be—it’s some pretty bleak, limited outcomes.

It’s like saying you accept that your body has to be a certain way to be an actor, which I certainly bought into and I spent countless hours in the gym exercising almost obsessively. It became my main stress relief. If I look as perfect as I can possibly look, then I'll know I did everything I could to compete with all the Brad Pitts of the world. It's kind of a warped and not very healthy mentality. And as this disease has progressed, and it's caused muscle wasting in my legs and now muscle wasting in my arms, the six-pack is basically gone, and there's nothing I could do about it. I have to kind of watch this disease do what it does, and I have to love myself anyway, and not even just love myself, but love myself even more. There I was with basically a perfect physical body, right? I had spent thousands of hours shaping it and crafting it. And I love myself 100 times more now than I did then.

So much of healing comes from within. The Western mind wants to say, “Let me find something outside of me to cure me, give me the drug. Let me find something outside of me to make me happy—the house, the car, the money, the job, the relationship, whatever it is.” From diagnosis, almost immediately, it was like my soul was talking to me: If I want to change my destiny with this disease, I have to change. That started a journey for me that's been profoundly transformative and divinely guided and the hardest thing that I've ever done and the scariest thing that I've ever faced at the same time.

Were you surprised by the theatre industry reaction to your diagnosis?
Actually, I was. This is another example of what we were talking about before when I said, "What you choose to believe." I had in my head certain ideas about what it would mean to go public, particularly with regards to my career, and just seeing it as basically a negative. You don't want people to think of you as somebody who is going to die. That's why I didn't talk about it for two years.

By the time I went public, I had had two years to think about what I wanted to ask of people, and I knew that what I wanted to ask of people: that they imagined me at 100 percent and then fill that vision with their love and their magic—not to read something about me dealing with this disease and have pity for me and feel bad for me, because that energy does not help me heal.

What I'm most surprised by is that there is so much love in the world that was there for me all the time, and I just couldn't appreciate it. Because I didn't love myself enough to appreciate all the love in my life. And now that I have, look what's happened—the entire community is in such extraordinary support of me and what I'm going through. And then I travel the country and try to help other people in whatever way I can, so that we help each other heal.

People will say the disease is their greatest teacher. I don't want to give it any more credit than I feel is truthful, but it's definitely given me the opportunity to make a choice for myself as to what I want to learn. And do I want to expand? Do I want to live in fear, or do I want to use this as a divine opportunity to change?

You know, I've written a thank you note to ALS once a year for the last couple years. And the first time I did that, I had grown so much and I was like, “Thank you for all these things.” I listed them all. And then I was like, “Now you can go.” And then it didn't. And a year later, I was writing another thank you note, appreciating the fact that had the disease gone a year before, none of the things that happened in the year after could have happened—because I thought that my growth was complete and that I had learned all the lessons. But there were so many more lessons to be learned.

And now, in the last year, I've really said, “OK. Now you can go. I've learned a lot, and I'm sharing it with people in the world. And if that was the point of the disease, thank you. And now please, please leave as silently as you came.”

What happens if it doesn’t leave?
It's one day at a time. So I spend as little time as possible with that thought, because that doesn't get me where I want to go. If you're trying to run the four-minute mile, and you wake up every day and you doubt yourself—that is just not helpful. It does not get any closer to your goal. So I do the opposite, which is I cultivate the feeling that it’s already gone through meditation. I've read over 70 books on healing in the nervous system over the last couple of years. There’s a bibliography on my website, actually, for anybody who's interested in books that I find really helpful.

But I sort of cultivate: What does it feel like to be healed? What do I want my life to be? And the irony of that is, there I was with an impossible dream of becoming an actor, 23 years ago, and I'm singing “The Impossible Dream” [in graduate school], and I feel like that dream is starting to come true. And then along the way, I lost confidence in myself. I lost belief in my dreams, because the dream of becoming a Broadway star became, “I have to be a TV star,” became, “I have to be a movie star.” And that was all under the pressures of, how do I provide more for my family and be a perfect actor and perfect husband, a perfect father—all this pressure. And the more I lived with doubt, the further away the dreams felt. And the angrier I got, the more frustrated I got, because the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger, despite me wanting it more and more and more.

And ALS has really taught me, again, if I want to change my destiny, I have to change. So I'm like, how can I do this differently? So instead of that gap getting bigger and bigger and bigger, I shrink that gap to nothing. I go into meditation and I immerse myself in the feelings of joy and gratitude and love and awe and adventure that I want to feel in my life as a healthy, whole person. And so that's the spiritual mindset of health to me.

There are bad days, there are hard days, full of sadness and tears and fear and the darkness—I reduce those to, OK, that's this moment in time, and it doesn't have to last any longer than it needs to for it to just move through. It's a lot of work, but it's transformative work. It's not busy work. I'm a different person because of this work, and I get to share that with other people and say, “Hey, I wish I could have learned all of this without ALS, maybe you can.”

You sang “The Impossible Dream” in graduate school, and you started singing it again for the first time last year. What do you think about when you hear it now on the album?
Oh, I can't wait for you to hear it. There's almost no words for it. It's an anthem of love and support for anybody going through anything challenging in their life, to keep going and keep dreaming. “The Impossible Dream.” Shouldn't it be, “The Possible Dream”? The point of the song is that we all have the power within us to make the impossible possible. Whether that was my dream of becoming an actor or to beat ALS—it all starts with belief. People need to know that they've got support and love. And if listening to a song, even just for a few minutes, can remind you of your own power, can give you hope, can give you courage, that's the healing power of music. And I can't wait to share it with people.

Josh Groban, Aaron Lazar, and producers Tom Korbee

The song that you’re singing with Rebecca Luker on Impossible Dream, how did that happen?
So that's a song called “I Am Loved.” It's from her Cole Porter album, “Anything Goes.” Her label, Concord, pulled some files for us that allowed me to sing with her, which is just amazing. And I spoke with [her husband Danny Burstein] about it and got his blessing.

I wanted every song on this album to be hopeful and healing and inspirational. So I was like, how do I want to celebrate Rebecca and what I remember from performing with her, and what I find every bit as moving about her as a performer now, as I did then or when she released that song all those years ago? There's just so much love coming through her, her glorious instrument, her interpretation, her performance, her soul. I just thought it would be beautiful to just celebrate love through a song with her.

Are there misperceptions about ALS or living with it that you want to clear up?
Just give love and support to people who are going through difficult things. Don't judge them. None of us really knows what someone else is going through. The journey is so personal. Don’t presume anything about anyone. We're all going through something. But people who are disabled, it can be really challenging, getting in and out of cars, getting places, doing things. And I am so blown away by the strength and resilience and courage of some of the people that I've met, who are dealing with tremendous physical challenges and tremendous adversity. I'm dealing with it to a certain extent, but there's always somebody out there who's dealing with something tougher.

I can say, with so much awe and gratitude, that all of the love that everyone has been giving me has been a strong wind in my sails. And so thank you. And I hope that people can do that for anybody that they see dealing with something difficult.

The Impossible Dream album is currently available for pre-order.