Alden Ehrenreich received his first Tony nomination for his Broadway debut as the acerbic Max in Gina Gionfriddo’s darkly comedic play Becky Shaw.

It’s a role Ehrenreich is relishing, in part because of his character’s warped and complicated worldview, but also because he gets to deliver some of the play’s harshest blows.

As Max, he calls love a “by-product of use,” speaks about other people’s pain as an inconvenience to his own goals and snidely comments on his first-date’s attire saying, “You look like a birthday cake.” His character, a 36-year-old money manager, has developed this persona as both a power move and coping strategy after being adopted into a similarly sharp-tongued family who continually reminds him he is not actually their flesh and blood.

When that date, Becky Shaw, whose presence kicks off the central action of the play, asks for advice on how to handle Max, his would-be sister, Suzanna, says “Inasmuch as you can, don’t show him any weakness.”

And yet, Ehrenreich says audiences seem…