Brandon J. Dirden calls 'Waiting for Godot' costars Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter 'ridiculous human beings'

Brandon J. Dirden recently opened up about how it felt working with Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter on Waiting for Godot on Broadway.

For those unaware, Waiting for Godot is a classic play written by Samuel Beckett, which revolves around two friends, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), “passing the time by a tree, waiting for a man named Godot who never arrives.”

Dirden, who played Pozzo, a pompous, wealthy, and cruel landowner who thinks he has complete control over his circumstances, in the Broadway revival of the play.

The 48-year-old American actor chatted with PEOPLE magazine while celebrating his first-ever Tony Award nomination for his portrayal of Pozzo and talked about performing with Reeves and Winter.

At the 2026 Tony Awards 'Meet the Nominees' event on Thursday, May 14, he told the outlet, “Everything you've heard about Keanu and his generosity is absolutely true, and then some. What I loved about working with Keanu and Alex is that they never stopped being kids.”

Both actors did not make Dirden feel the burden of philosophically dense themes of Waiting for Godot because of their youthful energies, and they talked about “anything but the play” on the set.

“They were just ridiculous conversations. Some of them were adolescent teenage boy talk. And you look at these movie stars and you're like, ‘Right. Right.’ We're all very much human and we're very much ridiculous human beings,” The Americans star recalled.

What deeply inspired him about Reeves and Winter was their seriousness about the play despite having childlike spirits.

“They held on to that spirit while we were entering this very difficult journey of climbing the mountain of Waiting for Godot. It was just quite necessary to approach the work with that much joy,” Brandon J. Dirden noted.

It is pertinent to mention that Waiting for Godot ran from September 28, 2025, to January 4, 2026, at the Hudson Theatre in New York City.