Photographer - Eddie Blagbrough
Stylist - Shuvan Khuntia
Make Up - Lilly Nuttall
Hair - Connor Calder
You’ve had such a diverse career, from theatre and dance to acting and film making. How did your early experiences in dance and theatre shape the way you approach your roles today?
Dance and theatre has shaped everything I’ve ever done, it even affects the smaller details that I pay attention to, often without noticing. Dance is my first love and, as a boy growing up in the 90s it’s something I’ve had to stay true to and not let others deter me from. One of my favorite speeches was by a lecturer Sir Ken Robinson whereby in a speech he talks about Gillian Lynne as a child. Gillian is one of the world’s most renowned theatre and musical film choreographers of all time and he says that as a child “she had to move to think”, movement and dance was a place of solitude and creative freedom for me. If you work on set with me you’ll notice I’m a very physical actor, I'm normally dancing like I need the loo and often I’ll need to move through a scene to understand it, a stationary line run is as useless as an ashtray on a motorbike! When I’m directing I see everything as energy in space, as an actor I often think of a ballroom hold and the fact that you glide with each other and as a dancer… I’m actually thinking about acting. They’re all married together, more recently myself and my girlfriend Margherita Barbieri have been developing our own style or genre of film to honor that synergy. We’re using dance and poetry to carry narrative as well as acted text, so far it’s been our favorite work yet and we can’t wait to develop it further.
Working with Drew McConie on both In The Heights and Strictly Ballroom must have been a unique experience. What is it about his direction and choreography that resonates with you as a performer?
If there was ever living proof that dance and acting/artistic vision were vital to each other, Drew McConie is the ultimate example. Working with Drew for two of the most significant jobs of my career have stood out as incomparable highlights, there’s been little near it. He’s such a visionary, such an artist and the way he weaves character and emotional truth through scenes comes from his innate and intimate understanding of movement and more importantly energy flow. A lot of Drew’s work, choreography and approach to storytelling centres around energy flow, he’ll have the cast feeding energy towards the scene even if they’re not in it, he’ll rarely choreograph a movement in isolation, he’ll workshop a thousand ways for a character to move through the space and build a sequential movement through the space, he watches everything as a company of kinetic display. He’s a master to watch and learn off and I’ve been blessed to have that opportunity twice. In The Heights was my first professional theatre debut and playing Scott Hastings in the West End Original cast of Bad Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom was the second. I think my experiences in the room with Drew has undoubtedly influenced my love of storytelling through dance, or even dancing as an actor and not through movement but through the intercostal muscles that ripple through emotion. Other major influences are companies like DV8 and Lloyd Newson as well as Jerome Robbins and great tap dancers like Gregory Hines, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. They all emote through dance which is something I’ve started building into my vision as a filmmaker, can dance be another dialogue in a scene? I think it can, and I’ll prove it.
You’ve been a part of some major stage productions, like White Christmas in the West End. What’s the most memorable moment or lesson you took away from that experience?
Theatre and shows have taught me everything, how to perform, how to socialise, how to fall in love and how to stand your ground. It taught me to be a man, the literal stages of my childhood like The Jersey Arts Centre and the Opera House stage in Jersey which has recently opened again after being shut for five years have been my childhood homes. The company becomes your family, sometimes literally. There’s no one more open hearted and instant than a theatre cast, which isn’t to say they always click but when they do it’s a belonging like no other. My most memorable moment funnily enough has to be back on the Opera House stage, it’s the return of a whole two decades of trying to make it as a performer where after the West End debut, the leads, the national fame I got to come home and host a show to say thank you to the stage that got me there. It was the best night of my life and eight years later we’re doing another one, January 2026 called Full Swing. The core memories are feeling the curtain lift at the dominion for my west end debut tapping along my ensemble, crying my eyes out after the first show of In The Heights (and most other shows to follow), our first dress rehearsal of Strictly Ballroom and witnessing Fernando Mira doing his flamenco solo for the first time, opening Top Hat with my parents a reach away from me and my favorite core memory which is walking down on the final night of every show like a changed man, particularly next to Drew McConie, Zizi Strallen, Will Young and none other than Baz Luhrmann himself!
Your performance on Dance Dance Dance was a standout moment in your career. How did your dance background influence your journey on that show, and what did you learn from competing in such a unique format?
That show was hands down the wildest thing I’ve ever done and I’m so glad I still get to say I actually did it. It was such an honor, not only working with the most elite choreographers in the entire industry but performing those iconic routines like Putting on the Ritz, Smooth Criminal and Rock Your body was a crazy dream come true. I can’t believe it never came back for a second series but the time we had filming it, in Amsterdam was surreal to say the least. What was funny with that show was being invited as an actor from Eastenders playing Paul Coker when I hadn’t long considered myself an actor but I’d only just graduated from Doreen Bird College with three years of dance training. They didn’t know that about me and even stranger that I was working with teachers of mine and icons of the dance world who were the dancers with us, all calling me the ‘artist’ when I idolized them. I will treasure that show forever and I think it set a president on how unpredictable a career can be and where you can actually end up.
You’ve worked in both the world of television and film, from EastEnders to The Sandman. How do you approach building a character for screen versus the stage? Is there a key difference in your preparation for each?
My approach is always to try and work out how that character is when they’re in a room by themselves, the side of themselves that are private, their true personality. From there I’ll then layer the situation they’re in, the elements around them and if they’re interacting with someone else then who that person is to them as in what side of version would they present to them. Most of us have this beautiful onion personality, which in incasing our core, if you find out what the core is you can have fun building up those layers. The difference with screen and theatre is the journey you’re existing in, one can film out of sequence never to be repeated and the other, once figured out can be a playground of responses but the arch is linear and emotionally goes on the same roller coaster tracks. I’d compare it to going on holiday to having home comforts, each have their benefits but are a completely different way of living. Both enjoyable yet one side of you is always yearning for the other.
Your role as Rex Gallagher in Hollyoaks has been especially compelling, with the show tackling sensitive issues like exploitation and trafficking. How do you approach playing such a complex and morally ambiguous character?
The approach sometimes feels a little backwards if I’m honest as, for an actor often the more morally questionable characters are usually the more interesting to play as people in real life who are villains wouldn’t often admit or identify themselves as that as they’ll usually have their own reasons or justifications. That’s the angle of acting that is often really compelling for me, which is going completely against the own grain of conscious and to your own moral compass, to play something ‘sensitive’ with conviction as you can’t honestly play a role thinking I’m wrong and I disagree with this as it’s not you and will never be you. Rex has been involved in a world which I’ll never fully or truly understand, he was raped and sold for sexual monetization, he grew up in gangs as a gay man and had to fight for his life nearly every day, he never had a family and has been involved, although not complicit in some horrendous crimes yet he’s a human at the end of the day and that world is all he grew up in. What has been interesting from my point of view is seeing Hollyoak’s investment into Rex and his past as well as giving him a tonne of first experiences before our eyes with tenderness, friendship and love. Starting as a wrecking ball, we’re now seeing him in his fullest range of emotional capability and learning that he’s got so much to offer.
You’re now venturing into filmmaking with your own production company, Doing Brave Productions. What inspired you to take this step, and what kind of stories do you want to tell through your films?
To be very honest it was the network of incredible people around me, having been in theatre for a long time and being on the auditioning side of acting for TV and film I’d often found the drive to be rather self focused. Film making is entirely collaborative, you literally can’t do it alone unless you’re Bo Burnham during Lock down. A lot of our early stage films (which we can proudly say we’re onto our fifth!) have been focused on experiences myself and Margi have dealt with in our past. It’s like we feel that there is gold at the bottom of both of our wells and we’ve both dug deep into exploring those corners of ourselves to charter and sail into our futures. We’ve both got such similar attitudes and interests and therefore share multiple past experiences or troubles. Both as neurodivergent, dancing actors with a history of being outcast or different and sometimes overly emotional and loving people has meant that we mirror each other on the story front yet our strengths within the film making process are incredibly different, which also really helps. Meeting her and feeding off of her passion to collaborate just symbiotically drove us down that path and it feels more serendipitous than anything I’ve ever experienced. A lot of our films centre around those experiences, my style leans into the questioning of masculinity or story of the underdog and a term I like to call the ‘fragile man’. Whereas her style of films explore the nature of being a woman and the expressing form of movement or fragile experiences.
Your upcoming film Swirl State deals with personal struggles and mental health, something that you’ve been open about in your own life. How cathartic was it to tell this story, and what do you hope audiences will take away from it?
Incredibly cathartic and in many ways it became like therapy, the time that Swirl State explores I was in my worst and darkest moment. During this time I could hardly communicate with my nearest and dearest people, family or friends. Fast forward to the realization that I’m directing and communicating/hiring/casting/writing and acting out that experience years later and having the courage to relive it with a fresh and newly inhabited self awareness, was life changing. The message of the film and especially the tonality I wanted to establish on my first ever film was the beauty of simplicity. I wasn’t planning the world of Avatar and tackling car chases (yet) but instead trying to navigate a decent recipe for storytelling, going back to an earlier question it was trying to navigate the truth, through interaction and movement what the heart of the piece was. I learnt and moulded various parts of the film as we went along which was a magical experience for me, parts of me thinks and feels that the end product was miles different to the original vision and that the experience itself shaped that, which I love. However the message from idea to the very recent wrap on the edit, with the king that is Joshua Wood, was that life and ambition is healthy when balanced with simplicity and authenticity. The all time quote of the film is “seeing smiles all day makes you smile” and that the ‘happiness exchange’, having people come up to you with happiness as they know what they’ll receive (an ice cream) can also apply to life. It felt too simple not to tell, but as a lived experience that one thing saved my life.
Gi, your film project about karate, sounds like a fun and interesting departure from some of your more dramatic roles. What drew you to martial arts, and how does it influence the narrative of the film?
There’s still loads of drama, I would feel cheated if a story would go without it. Martial Arts were a giant part of my life growing up and it can’t be ignored as to why. Gi follows our lead Remy in a true British style comedy, inspired by the great British classics such as This Is England and Billy Elliot. As an amateur ballet dancer Remy gets beaten to an inch of his life for no reason whatsoever, that’s the stark truth that has happened to me on a number of occasions in the past when I was in primary school in particular or up until the age of about fifteen. My parents thought it was handy to put me into karate lessons, which I loved for the grounded reason of discipline in a deeply traditional, oriental practice which I loved although I never truly prevented the bullying. That’s what the film highlights, it’s the characters in the dojo that inspired me as they were undeniably awkward at times yet always hard as nails. The strength you feel wearing a traditional ‘Gi’, gives you power much in the same way that Spiderman wears a suit, or Zoro wears a mask or how it feels to be armored! The strength can be accessed although it’s just a piece of cloth and yet despite learning every trick in the book, I still feared my own realization that whilst being bullied I froze. Being ridiculed or different in some way can seep into what you think about yourself sometimes and the bullying becomes a strange kind of gratification that you accept, when you shouldn’t! This film is hands down one of my favorite piece of writing so far and working with the brilliant Myles Petford and Will Robinson we can’t go wrong, I’m so exited for its future as we’re going the full pelt with it.
As a type 1 diabetic, you’ve used your platform to raise awareness for the condition. With World Diabetes Day approaching, how do you balance your personal advocacy with your professional work, and what message do you hope to send to others living with diabetes?
Can I just say a massive thank you for truly covering every aspect I hold dear it really has been a joy replying to these and I hope someone reading will feel inspired to chase passion above opinion. World Diabetes day is approaching and I can proudly say that I’m joining with Breakthrough T1D Charity and we’ll be igniting loads of avenues for the coming year ahead, I really do hope to host more events and build the community I’ve found with film making, with fellow type one diabetics too. The beauty of the community and like minded people is an experience that can save lives and bring more wonderful futures into fruition, never let it stop you pursuing your goals in life but don’t think you have to be indestructible and prove your flawless, no one is. If there’s a condition that braves you for the ups and downs of life it’s Type 1 Diabetes; with literal highs and lows, emotions like no other and a mindset that no one will understand but other Type 1’s. I’m excited where our collaboration will take us, there’s talks of podcasts, events, films and all sorts so if you have any plans or ideas which you feel someone you know would appreciate don’t hesitate to get in touch and more importantly don’t feel like you need to do it alone, the charity have helped me on more than one occasion and they’re hear to listen and help you through anything.
