It’s strange to think that Jamie Muscato fell into musical theater.
“I never really wanted to do it,” the British actor says about belting out stage hits in front of a live audience. “I already knew from however old I was, 10, that I preferred the acting side, and was kind of embarrassed and scared about the singing side…[But] it turns out I can sing quite well.”
We’ve weaved our way to Kerridge’s Bar, nestled at the back of London’s 5-star Corinthia Hotel. Its low-lit, leather-laden decor is a welcome break from the sticky city heat, though the two iced teas on the table in front of us are also doing their bit. A random location it is not — Muscato, son of a plumber and school teacher and once admittedly reluctant to hone his voice, is due in warm-up across the road at the Kit Kat Club in just over an hour.
Though that 10-year-old kid might not have suspected it, the now-36-year-old has steadily risen the ranks to become one of the West End‘s most bankable stars, an Olivier Award nominated, industry-recognized talent whose latest role, as the Emcee in John Kander’s legendary, twisted Cabaret, has challenged him more than any character he’s ever taken on before.
For those of you outside of the U.K., Muscato might be best recognizable as J.D. in the musical Heathers. His magnetic rendition of “Meant to be Yours” went viral on TikTok in 2022. “My phone just started blowing up,” he recalls. “I went on TikTok and I would just swipe and [I’d] be all of them. It was fascinating. I’m not sure I’d like that to happen too often,” he adds, before remembering: “Billie Eilish did one!”
His next stop is the transfer of One Day: The Musical to the British capital’s iconic theater scene, and Muscato — whose career acclaim has, intriguingly, come exclusively through the stage rather than in film or TV — is crossing his fingers that this will finally be his ticket to Broadway. Ask anyone on the West End, and they’ll all tell you the same thing: For Jamie Muscato, it’s about time.
Growing up in Brighton and having made peace with his gift for singing, Muscato began landing lead roles in local amateur theater shows, and would even find himself in the running for Harry Potter alongside hundreds of other young boys (and eventual winner Daniel Radcliffe). At 15, he was encouraged by his mother to enter a singing competition. The prize? Tickets to Wicked — a prospect that excited her more than it did her teenage son — and, unsurprisingly, he won. One of the judges of that contest, Pippa Ailion, a casting director for Wicked, took his details, and soon Muscato found himself auditioning for the original London production of Spring Awakening. “It’s about young people finding their sexuality, and they were looking for young people to play those roles, so I was in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing in front of the right person,” he says.
Muscato was just 17 when he booked the Spring Awakening job, and 18 when he moved to London for it. It was quite the baptism of fire, moving in with a horde of fellow young actors in the show, a time in his life that he describes as “incredibly intense. It was chaos and carnage in the most amazing way,” says the stage star. “It’s sort of what I see my university experience as, or my drama school experience. It’s not glamorous, it’s a lot of work, a lot of hours, but there isn’t anything else quite like it.”
The aforementioned Heathers firestorm was years in the making. “I did the workshop with [director of the L.A., Off-Broadway and London shows] Andy Fickman and the writers a couple of years before it moved here,” Muscato explains. “I guess I did a good enough job for them to want me to carry on, but I had no idea that [it] would be the job that would change things, because I’d never seen the film before I did the workshop. He’s a potential school bomber,” he continues about Jason “J.D.” Dean, “and it doesn’t really have any of the hallmarks of a show that’s going to travel or have life. And it’s still going. It’s amazing, because a lot of the stuff they’re doing now is stuff that we just created in the room. I see a lot of mine and my colleagues’ work still surviving, however many years later.” That was in 2017, and though he had already tallied up what he describes as “bitty parts” in the likes of the Les Misérables 25th Anniversary Tour, Dogfight, and Big Fish opposite Kelsey Grammer, “covering really good people, learning and stealing all their techniques,” it is Heathers that Muscato considers his big break.
As difficult as the prep work was for a school bomber — Muscato recalls reading actual manifestos from those types to better understand J.D. — his performance generated millions of views on TikTok and, most importantly, earned him more auditions. Did the wider recognition matter to him? “On a very crass level, it helps you get jobs. But I’m more interested in doing a good job, and then whatever comes, comes… Like, [British theater director] Marianne Elliott came to watch the show. And Quentin Tarantino, I know he’s doing a workshop for a show he’s doing. I want them to think, ‘Oh, he’s good,’ rather than…” The actor doesn’t finish the sentence, but it’s implied he’d prefer to win roles based on his musical theater chops rather than his Instagram following.
Just as life seemed to be hitting a sweet spot, COVID-19 shut the entire world down, and live theater became one of its most bloodied victims. It was at this time that Muscato changed agents after asking an old childhood friend-turned-PR professional for advice, and he credits Gavin Denton-Erikkson with changing the trajectory of his career post-pandemic. His first project back was Enjolras in the Les Misérables stage concert — though, to avoid cross-contamination, the actors were required to rather awkwardly face away from each other — and at the same time came a role in Danny Boyle’s Sex Pistols miniseries Pistol.
We pause the theater focus here to reflect on Muscato’s onscreen roles, of which there are actually quite a few: 2014’s Cilla, 2019’s The Trial of Christine Keeler, and a multi-episode role in The Undeclared War next to Simon Pegg (“a dream”). Unlike his peers, a sea of 30-something British actors who balance high-profile TV shows and films with the annual or biennial theater stint (think Jonathan Bailey, James Norton or Jack Lowden), Muscato has stayed pretty loyal to the stage. “It’s sort of happened that way,” he explains. “And one of the tough things about doing theater is that you are booked out — you have no time to go and film something… I also always think it’s easier in America for casting directors to accept that people on stage can also work in TV or film. There’s a lot more crossover with their Broadway actors in TV than there is here.” Why does he think that is? “I don’t know,” Muscato responds. “I think it’s an old-school mentality a little bit.”
One can’t deny that we Brits — particularly those who believe themselves to be real actors, the thespians — still hold the West End in the highest regard, over film and television even. “It’s addictive,” says Muscato about what keeps pulling A-list stars back to Soho’s oldest, dingiest venues. “It’s a shared experience, like when you go to the cinema, there’s maybe 10 other people in there with you, unless it’s pretty popular, but you’ve got a whole row of people all around you who are experiencing this with you. It’s rare that we have those spaces these days. To be the person who is creating that experience for those people is addictive. And it’s quite a privilege as well.”
Still, he is keen to add more on-camera work to his portfolio: “I want to be working when I’m 80. I can’t do that on stage. I need a wide foundation of experience, and that is honestly all I want to do, just continue working.” He tells THR he would love to be doing more film, especially.
Before we arrive at what he hopes Cabaret and One Day: The Musical can do for his career, we must touch on last year’s titular role in The Great Gatsby at the London Coliseum. One of the West End’s buzziest limited musicals with, he says, a pretty hefty amount of money in it, being tapped to play Jay Gatsby was undoubtedly the industry’s biggest vote of confidence in Muscato’s leading man capabilities yet.
“I was slightly wary about Gatsby,” he confesses over the last few sips of iced tea. “Because it was such a machine of a production. I [worried] I’d have to be the little cog that slots in to where it needs to be. Luckily, it wasn’t like that. I loved it more than I thought I would.” Muscato relished getting to add his own minuscule, physical inferences of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tragic character. He wasn’t put off by the show being very American and very commercial — “it’s hard to say because Gatsby is all about American commercialism,” he laughs — but the huge resources behind it were balanced with, to his relief, an enormous effort to also hire the right people, including cast members Frances Mayli McCann and Corbin Bleu: “A lot of my fears kind of subsided.” And no, he had not seen Bleu’s famed turn in High School Musical. “It was one of the latter things that we spoke about,” Muscato giggles. “Because he gets it all the time from every single angle. And Corbin is so much more than that. One of the most amazing, beautiful men I’ve actually ever worked with.”
His run of form made it a no-brainer for producers on Cabaret to pass the reins to Muscato earlier this year. Kander’s Berlin-set show, meshing the camp euphoria of the Jazz Age with the sinister rise of the Nazis in the 1930s, continues to pack the Playhouse. As the Emcee, an eerie, contorted figure who represents the slow blackening of the city’s soul, Muscato picks up from a prestigious line of talent that includes Eddie Redmayne, Billy Porter and Matt Willis. He delivers a show-stealing performance, his audience uncomfortably hypnotized — and Muscato is having the time of his life.
“It’s unlike any other character I’ve done before, and yet there are nuggets of lots of different characters that I’ve done throughout it,” he says ahead of show number one of eight this week. On whether playing the Emcee feels like another landmark moment for his booming stage career, he responds: “I never really look or hope to play roles. I know a lot of people have dream roles, [but] I’ve never really done that. The Emcee was one that I didn’t think I’d have the opportunity to do. I didn’t think anyone would just look at me and be like, ‘Oh, what a great fit.’ But having the opportunity to play [him] has been one of my career highlights, because I get to be stupid, be silly, be quirky and wacky and stuff, and then completely flip it and be the embodiment of Nazi Germany. It’s such a full spectrum.”
It helps that he has a cracking co-star in American singer and actress Joy Woods, playing Sally Bowles, though the two scarcely rehearsed together. A seasoned performer like Muscato prioritizes that cast rapport: “I [have] to do my best to foster what I can do to make it a good relationship with everybody, because you spend so much time there. Everyone has to feel valued and feel like they’re coming to work in a safe and fun and exciting place.” It’s rare that this isn’t the case, he says, though he has experienced it.
The Emcee will likely be quite the contrast compared to his role as Dexter in the stage adaptation of David Nicholls’ One Day, which THR exclusively reported would be transferring to the West End after Muscato and co-star Sharon Rose performed in Edinburgh. It follows the enduring bond between Dex and Emma, from their first meeting on July 15, 1988 — St Swithin’s Day — through life-changing moments that unfold on the same date each year.
When the production came up, he had watched only one episode of Netflix’s recent TV adaptation with Leo Woodall and Ambika Mod. Muscato met with director Max Webster and uncovered a show unlike anything he’s tackled before. “I read the book, and I saw there was a lot that I recognized,” he says. “I can see where my life is heading and it felt such a gift of a role to be able to track this person from his young, idiotic, enthusiastic, hubris days to his… well, the opposite of that, over two hours. It’s a very rare thing to be able to do, because not many stories are told like that. I knew I had to do it.” It was something of a relief to escape London for a little while, even if this show is nothing short of heartbreaking. “If Cabaret is physically demanding,” laughs Muscato, “this is so mentally demanding, because you spend the last 20 minutes sobbing.”
One Day might also be his first real shot at a Broadway transfer, which he says, for various timing reasons, has evaded him until now. “It’s a very unique piece,” he explains about why he’s particularly positive about this show. “The music is written by a band, a husband and wife team called Abner and Amanda Ramirez of Johnnyswim. She is Donna Summer’s daughter. He is this amazing guitarist, and together they work seamlessly and create these beautiful melodies.” And though he isn’t very producer-minded, Muscato can hazard a guess that the production needs a certain amount of financial and artistic success to convince Broadway producers to put in their own time and money. It would be a long overdue feat for this West End hero.
A final, potentially cringe-inducing question for Jamie Muscato: Does he feel like a celebrity? “Not at all,” is his quick answer. “I think within maybe seven or eight streets in London, at specific times, people recognize me, but once I get out of that very small zone where all the theaters are… It’s [anonymity].” He doesn’t mind this, though he does admit to having groups of fans that will wait for him at every stage door. “People tell me it’s their 15th or 20th time seeing the show, and they’ve been able to create communities around it as well, which I find amazing. This lady was telling me a while back how there were people coming from abroad to come see one of my shows, and they booked an Airbnb together,” he beams.
His popularity adds up — the West End is healthier than ever, with 17.64 million attendances recorded in 2025, surpassing Broadway by nearly three million. And Muscato, who tells THR that his downtime involves a trip to the wine bar near his home in Haggerston, a gym session (“just because I know I have to take my top off in One Day“), and planning a well-earned, post-Cabaret vacation, just might be a real beacon of hope that those stats should only rise.
He puts it more modestly: “It’s one of the first times I’ve felt comfortable, and that is a very rare thing for an actor to feel. Touch wood, it may continue.”
