Q&A and Interview: The Development of EVERYBODY'S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE and Actor Ivano Turco on Joyful Queer Representation

After a hugely successful UK tour, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie has made a return to the West End's Peacock Theatre before heading off around the country again.

BroadwayWorld was invited to a celebration of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie at the Peacock Theatre. We were treated to a Q&A with Dan Gillespie Sells (Music), Ivano Turco (Jamie New), Giovanna Fletcher (Miss Hedge) and Talia Palamathanan (Pritti Pasha), hosted by Jonathan Butterell (Director). Here are some highlights from the Q&A, as well as an interview with Ivano!

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Jonathan: What was your first meeting of Jamie? And why’d you come and join us? I’ll ask Giovanna first, because she's literally just arriving into the company!

Giovanna: Well, the first time I ever heard of Jamie was at the Attitude Awards, and I remember just being like, “This is amazing! There's so much energy.” And obviously, at that event, it feels [like] such an important piece of theatre to be a part of that event. Then it seemed like you were everywhere at that time! And then Shane [Richie] was with you guys, so I came to see it. As a mum of three boys who are very individual and live in their own world. One in particular, he lives like no one's watching. And I think to see a show that’s all about acceptance, about loving yourself, and what you put out into the world, it was such an amazing thing as a mum. And I absolutely loved Miss Hedge! She's very different to everything that I've done before. The last few things I've done on stage have left people feeling quite depressed - to come out of the theatre feeling enamored by life is such an amazing thing. So it's a very different vibe for me, and I'm loving it. 

Talia: I’ve had quite the journey with Jamie! I've been in many productions for my entire adult life. I started my journey with Jamie when I was 16... And that's what I love about the show even now - you know everyone, you see yourselves and all these characters, especially Pritti, for me. It's such a rare occasion to see a written South Asian woman on stage in front of you. For me and my entire family that was a “wow moment.”

And for me being in the show, I have to thank my mum and Instagram, because she sent me the open call for dancing for the film. And for some serendipitous reason, my English A level was canceled that evening and I got to go to the open part of the audition. And through many, many different stages, I was just a backup dancer. Then the wonderful Kate Prince [Choreographer] cornered me at a train station in Sheffield and asked me to audition for the tour. And then I was Becca before Covid and Becca/Cover Pritti after Covid, and then here I am now as Pritti, the role that’s always been a dream role for me. 

Ivano: My journey was a little bit different to these lovely women over here. So I was in the same training year as Max Harwood, who was cast in the film. I didn't know too much about the show... And then I found these videos of the OG cast with John [McCrea]. And similarly to you, Gi, I was bewitched by what I was seeing. And then I was looking like at the legacy that I followed. Layton [Williams] and Noah [Thomas] and these people have stepped into the role. So now my head has just gone ding because I'm like, “Okay, I can walk that path. I can see myself represented in that.” So I became very excited, because we can tell the truth. For a lot of new roles that come into the industry for people of colour, your first worry is if it has been originated in a specific way you get worried and think, “Is there a space for me next to that as well?” And even whilst I was still doing other shows in town. I was like, “I just need to know as soon as there is a chance for me to try and like be a part of this story”.

Jonathan: As a director, you can only really fully exploit somebody’s uniqueness. And that's what's been beautiful about working with many different casts - they bring their own unique and beautiful quality into that place, they make it their own. I would never ever be pejorative about who Jamie is. Like Jamie says, “I don't know who I am.” For me to say I know who Jamie New is, I don't! We can only discover him each and every time we find him.

Jonathan: When I was flicking through the TV and saw the documentary, Jamie: Drag Queen at 16, I wanted to tell that story, because it felt very personal, it was about a working-class kid and I felt like at the very centre of that could be a working class and feminine hero, which I'd never seen on stage. So I thought “Well, that can be exciting!” And then I went to talk to Daniel Evans, who was the Artistic Director of Sheffield Theatres at that moment in time and said, “I want to do this.” And he said, “Okay, let's find a way of doing it. and he said, who would you want to write it? And I said, “Well, I don't know yet. I'll find them. But one thing I do know, it has to be a pop writer.” 

And very fortunately enough, two weeks after I said that I got a phone call from Michael Ball of all people, and he said, “I've just met Dan Gillespie Sells from The Feelings, and he says he'd been riding with a writer called Tom McCrae, and they're trying to write a musical. They played it for me, and there's some really good stuff there, but I'm not quite sure they know exactly what they're doing. Will you go and meet them?” And I said, “Of course!” All this time I’m thinking, “I’m gonna meet Dan. I’m gonna meet a pop writer.”

So I went down to Dan’s studio. Tom and Dan played me all the material that was written for this musical - they'd written all the songs and had some brief outline of the story. And I went, “I'm not quite sure you can write a musical by writing all the songs. Then you're gonna have to fit the story to every single song. We should talk about how you construct a musical little bit."

So I got out of Dan’s studio and I rang Daniel Evans straight away and said, “I think I found our writers.” On the weekend, I pulled Dan and Tom aside and I said, “Look, you know that musical you’re writing? It’s really good, but can I offer you a different story?” And he said . . . 

Dan: The best pop music I love, it's something you get in quite a lot of queer pop music, which is this idea of this devastating ballad to a disco beat. [Laughs]

I know that I can write catchy melodies, but it needs to be more than that. For me, it needs to carry something more than just the catchiness, because otherwise, I'd just write jingles. It has to carry something more. I try and feed it into everything because otherwise, I find it boring. A happy song sung in a happy way . . . I don't know whether it's enough for me. And a sad song in a minor key sung in a sad way, I find it so boring. Unless you put a thread of hope in it or something to juxtapose it, it's just a bit one note. 

Jonathan: But Jamie was the first theatre score you wrote - what did it feel like coming into that world?

Dan: Well, you told me not to write musical theatre! Don't write a musical, whatever you do.

[Laughter]

Dan: So I just wrote an album! I just wrote the music I wanted to. The lucky thing with musical theatre is it allows me to do music that I don't really get on radio anymore, which is music with middle eights, modulations, key changes, and are rich in harmony, but they're still pop songs. Musical theatre needs that. Radio doesn't need that.

Normally for me, the stuff that I find interesting is the stuff that lets us know a little bit more about our character on a deeper level. For me, that's something that the song can do. It can lead us into a character's internal world a bit. That's the style of songwriting that suits me best and it really suits theatre. 

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After the Q&A and some wonderful performances of songs from the show, we had the chance to interview Ivano about his time in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. We discussed how he got into the world of theatre in the first place, what makes Everybody’s Talking About Jamie such a special show and the importance of joyful queer representation on stage.

How did you first get involved in the world of theatre? What made you want to be a part of it? 

I don't remember a specific point! I found out really late. When I was about 18, I realised “Oh, I actually want to do this.” At 16, I realised I could actually sing, because before I would never - even though I was singing in church, but if you're a child, you have no choice! [Laughs] No matter whether you can sing or not . . . 

You’re singing! [Laughs]

Exactly! So I never like was like, Oh, I haven’t sung anything!” So when I actually discovered that, “Okay, there's potential here that needs to be worked on, but there's something there.” That's when I started looking towards musicals. I used to do musicals in high school, but it wasn't a serious thing then for me. I just thought, “I'd love to do this.” And because I was younger, the older people would get the roles. And I remember, I didn't get Fizzy in Bugsy Malone, and I was pissed off!

[Laughs]

I didn't speak to anyone for the whole week, and then left the school and went to a different school! So dramatic! So that's when I wanted to become an actor. And then I began my training, I went to a musical theatre sixth form. And that's when I was subject to all of this information, because there was so many people. It was a year of 25, it was a small year. But in terms of the people that were in that year, between them, the collective knowledge that they had about musicals was absolutely crazy.

So I remember the first weekend before we had started, we all met up and were sitting at one of our friend's houses and I had seen the Heathers bootleg. That was the first time I'd ever seen it and I was like, “Oh my gosh!” And then I watched the Bare: Pop Opera bootleg, the one of the Las Vegas version with Jonah Platt and Lindsay [Pearce]. I was obsessed with Bare for ages! And then it all fell into place. And then I got into Urdang and studied there. I was very fortunate with the people who were on my path and it all just went from there!

And what is it about this show that you love about it?

This could be a controversial opinion. But I think for the queer guys, at least, we share the sentiment that we feel that musical theatre is built for women. [Laughs] The big song and the great moments and everything . . . We usually feel that it is written for women to do that. And you hear all of us singing the women's songs, belting out and wanting to be Effie [from Dreamgirls]. So I think this role isn't in that kind of world for me because it's such a power vocal [with]  room for dance and finesse.

I feel like the character Jamie now, with the way I'm taking it, I'm trying to hark back to older musical theatre stars who would be belting a B whilst giving you a step, kick, step, kick, step kick, chaîne, chaîne, chaîne down the street. So that is what physically drew me to the role, to see how much of a big showcase and how much you could really just inject yourself everywhere. 

So that's my favourite thing about the show, as well as its queer story - it's not riddled with strife, death and dread. Need I say more? It's freeing. I feel like that's us taking control of the narrative again, because a lot of the time when we seek queer representation, it's not always necessarily in the best way. We watch them struggle, we feel sorry for them and we just leave it at that. Whereas here, he struggles, we watch him fall down, but we watch him get up and we watch him just soar and go off into the distance, and it's all good again. That is a lovely narrative to push.

It's almost a little bit of a period piece. Because people are more aware now of social cues and their social responsibility, what not to say and just how to be a genuine nice person. Those kinds of constructs in society didn't exist when the show was first opened. More so when they wrote it, because they're writing about their experience at school, even though we're playing it in a 2010s world. It's nice to know that, for the most part, I would hope, it's not riddled with that kind of homophobia in a classroom. 

And finally, how would you describe the show in one word? 

Epic.

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie is at the Peacock Theatre until 23 March, then touring

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