Layton Williams is not impressed. The “great British summer” is “great British summer”-ing, and he’s having to take a taxi from the train station to the theatre where he’s currently performing to avoid the torrential rain.
“I was literally on a Lime bike, topless, cycling to the theatre last week, because the sun was beaming outside,” he says (“there’s no shame here, I worked hard for this body – so it’s getting out and it’s getting tanned,” he adds, as an aside).
“But now look where we are,” he notes, turning his attention back to the rain. “Miserable.”
Despite his glumness about the weather, talking to Layton Williams is as much fun as anyone who’s seen him on either Strictly Come Dancing, his many West End jaunts or even just being interviewed on TV would expect. High-energy, animated and full of fun (a “slay” here, a “period” there, a “girl” near everywhere), Layton has plenty to be excited about right now.
After a year that’s already seen him touring arenas around the UK with his Strictly co-stars and headlining his first ever solo show with dance partner Nikita Kuzmin, he recently made a triumphant return to the West End as a lead in the hottest show in town, Cabaret.
While Layton’s CV is full of shows that pack in the joy – including Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Hairspray and Billy Elliot, which first gave him his big break as a child performer – his latest jaunt as the sinister Emcee is a bit of an unexpected turn for the award-winning performer.
“I watched Eddie Redmayne do it, and didn’t necessarily look at the Emcee as a role that I thought I could do,” he admits to HuffPost UK, revealing it was only when watching fellow Jamie alum John McCrea take over playing the character – who evolves over the course of the play to represent the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Berlin – that the idea entered his head that he could be a good fit for it himself.
“All of a sudden, something clicked, and I was like, ‘wait a damn minute, I think I got this one in the bag, I could probably do this!’,” he recalls.
“I think I did have it in the back of my mind that people would probably never have considered me or even seen me in this role – which was quite exciting for me because I’m always down to surprise people. And myself, I guess.”
The West End’s current incarnation of Cabaret opened at the end of 2021 with Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee. In the years since, a host of actors have put their own spin on the character, including It’s A Sin’s Callum Scott Howells, pop singer Jake Shears and Netflix star Mason Alexander Park (the production’s Sally Bowles have included everyone from Jessie Buckley and Cara Delevingne to Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood and Heartstopper star Rhea Norwood, with whom Layton can currently be seen sharing the stage).
With Eddie’s version of the Emcee having created such a big impression, his successors have each put their own spin on the character, and Layton is no exception.
“I do think mine is unapologetically queer, for sure,” he says of his own version of the legendary stage character. “Even just the glam look – it’s super glam, which I’m obsessed with.”
Layton describes the Emcee as “a shapeshifter, someone who can be super queer at one point, but then have the girls and the boys”
“I like to play him very open, very fluid. I really do believe that everybody can bring their own kind of spin to it. I enjoy what I do and I like the fact that my Emcee is super queer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that every single one has to be,” Layton says, responding to the ongoing debate among Cabaret fans about whether actors who don’t identify as LGBTQ+ should portray a character viewed by so many as queer-coded.
Crucially, Layton is also the first actor of colour to play the Emcee during Cabaret’s current production, which he says has massively informed his own distinct portrayal of the character.
“We took all of that into consideration with how I’m playing the part,” he explains. “There are certain –isms that I’m trying to portray when I’m playing the character. You know, if my Emcee is a person of colour, he could be next when it comes to what was going on in Nazi Germany at that point. So, I always have that in the back of my mind.”
“I kind of play him with a sense of delusion,” Layton continues. “It’s hypocrisy. He’s trying to fool himself, as if to say, ‘everything’s fine’.
“There’s this moment where I sing a song in the first act, and pull out this wig box – and it’s even the same blond wig that all the other white actors used. We made a choice to keep that, because he really is trying to blend in. He’s really trying to not be seen by whoever is next to come for him.
“I would like to think it’s quite layered. And it hits way harder when [the character is] being derogatory to Jewish people. It’s like, ‘woah, you’re in a minority yourself, how are you doing that?’. It makes it even more evil, in a way.”
And Layton seemingly didn’t have to look too far for inspiration, either.
“You know when you see people… not to name names… but people who have been in power recently doing stupid things for people who are of their race,” he observes. “Like, ‘wow you really are turning a blind eye on your own people’ type vibes? Do you know what I mean? It’s wild.”
Cabaret has also implemented more technical changes since Layton took over the role of the Emcee, most notably when it comes to makeup and lighting.
“The team have been unbelievable in being like, ‘OK, cool, we’ll try this, we’ll try that, we’ll take this out’, so I really feel grateful for that,” he says. “That’s how it should be if you’re casting, and going in a different direction.
“We redesigned a lot of my makeup choices, because obviously it is very different from a white person playing this part, some of the makeup looks didn’t work, quite frankly.
“And we even did a whole new lighting plot, because the lighting was set for a certain person’s skin tone – and I’m not that! And I don’t wanna be in a blackout, baby! I need to be lit!”
Layton actually first had the opportunity to audition for Cabaret when he was deep in the trenches of last year’s Strictly Come Dancing.
“It all came out of nowhere, honestly,” he says. “I went into that audition and I just poured my heart and soul into it.
“I was, like, mid-Strictly run, I was absolutely exhausted, learning the Cha Cha or something, and at that point in my life, it didn’t matter how big the audition was, I was like, ‘I’m throwing myself around every single weekend in front of millions of people for them to judge me from head to toe’ – the pressure that I was under [on Strictly], going into an audition was almost like an escape.
“Like, ’this is actually so nice to have, to take my mind off what’s actually going on in the real world, which is a really intense journey.”
For his audition, Layton was tasked with learning the tri-lingual opening number of Cabaret, Wilkommen (“it was crazy – of all weeks for me to learn material, it has to be ‘willkommen, bienvenue, welcome’, I can barely speak English for goodness’ sake”), with Layton’s professional partner Nikita being one of only a handful of people who knew what he was up to outside of the show.
“In the rehearsal room, I was like, ‘I really need this’, and he was like, ‘hold up Layton, you don’t need it, you want it’. And I was like, ‘oh my god, that is such a good way to reframe your mindset on things’, because it was so true, I didn’t need it,” he says.
“Obviously, she needs to pay the mortgage, darling,” he quickly clarifies. “But I was booked and busy at that point, so it wasn’t a necessity. But it was something that I really wanted to do. I wanted to come out of an experience like Strictly and have something to look forward to, and something to go, ‘look, this is what I actually do’.
“I’d not been on stage for a good few years, as well, and it is such a different part for me, and it showcases so many different elements of what I can do, because the Emcee is very ooky-spooky, and a chameleon of sorts that transforms into all these different characters.
“So yeah, it was a great kind of, ‘I want it, and I’m going to give it my all’, and then you forget about it and you just crack on. And, you know, if they call, they call, and if they don’t, their loss, I like to say!”
“I don’t want to say it felt like a walk in the park, but, in the bigger picture of things, it was just an audition,” Layton reiterates. “And I just did what I needed to do. And I really did do what I needed to do because I got the damn part!”
Layton recalls that it took around “four or five months” for Cabaret to tell him he’d landed the role due to timings and casting the part of Sally Bowles.
“I think it was the second or third night of the arena tour, at the beginning of this year, when I found out, and let me tell you, I was strutting around that arena like I was that girl,” Layton recalls. “I was like, period, she’s booked, she’s a West End Wendy, she’s back! By popular demand!”
It’s now approaching a year since Layton was first unveiled to be part of the Strictly 2023 line-up, making it all the way to the final alongside his dance partner, in one of only a handful of same-sex pairings the show has featured over the last two decades.
While Strictly is currently under plenty of scrutiny at the moment (the BBC is currently investigating it after complaints from several contestants, including two of Layton’s former castmates), Layton looks back at his personal experience on the show fondly.
“I do not regret it for a second,” he says, although he acknowledges that the extra level of recognition that comes from being part of a show like Strictly has “definitely changed my life”.
He admits: “I’d seen bits and bobs of the show, but I’d never been a fanatic fan of it. So I didn’t realise how many people actually watched it.”
Since Strictly, Layton says he “can’t really go many places in the UK now without somebody saying, ‘you were robbed’”, which is lovely, but also, ugh there’s zero peace now”.
“It’s like, ‘oh wow, this is probably going to be my life for a little while’ – but it’s always sweet, so I can never complain if people are being nice.”
And “people being nice” hasn’t always been the case for Layton.
Throughout his Strictly journey, he spoke out about the issue of online trolling, which he said verged on “overwhelming” at times. Many of the comments aimed at him were rooted in his background in performing, which some critics felt put him at an unfair advantage, although Layton himself has previously suggested the hate sent his way could have been rooted in racism and homophobia.
“I definitely didn’t let it fully overshadow the experience,” he says of the online abuse now. “Of course, when you mention something a couple of times, people will pick up on it, the press will pick up on it and it becomes more of a thing.
“I’d be be like, ‘guys, I’m really not honing in on it. Of course it happens, it probably happens to all of us’. I just felt like I was getting it a lot more unfairly than others just because of this whole ‘professional dancer’ blah blah blah. But as I said back then, and now, I’m not the first and I’m not the last, so why are we making such a big deal out of me?”
“And I know why!” he insists. “It’s because I wasn’t shit! Do you know what I mean? There were some people [on the line-up], that are professional [performers], that have done just as many musicals as me, but they weren’t getting as much stick. And that just really annoyed me, because I was just kind of enjoying the experience.
“Basically, people were saying, ‘you’re good because you’re this and that’. And it’s like, ‘no, I’ve actually just been working double double hard and putting in all of the hours’.”
“I just tried to distance myself from it a little bit,” Layton adds. “But oof, I just wasn’t expecting… the constant articles, and the press turning up to my parents’ house, trying to find my family, and knocking on my neighbours’ doors.
“It was quite overwhelming. I’m just a boy from Bury – you really don’t need to know that much about me. It’s not that deep.”
“And also, hold tight for that book one day. Then I’ll spill all my tea,” he jokes. “You’re not getting it knocking on my neighbours’ doors.”
Layton notes that Strictly was “definitely there to look out for us”, and while he was offered the chance to speak to a counsellor, “of course, I have my own therapist, so I was like, ‘I’m good, thanks, I’m rolling with it’”.
“Anybody that’s thinking about doing Strictly, I’d say ‘do it’, but you have to be quite a strong person to get through it,” he adds.
This strength in the face of criticism has seemingly also been beneficial to Layton since joining Cabaret.
“For the most part, I’ve had such an amazing response from most people, anyone who’s come to the stage door has been complimentary,” he says. “But it was really funny, because I did my West End Live performance literally barely a week after Eddie Redmayne did his Tonys performance. And of course, I knew I was going to get a lot of comparisons, because he was getting a lot of traction, and even I saw his performance and I was like, ‘slay, but we are so different’.
“It’s ridiculous, but that’s the whole point – Cabaret aren’t stupid, they’re casting this part every four months so new people can come in, put their new spin on it and bring in a new group of fans, and let them enjoy it in a different way. At the end of the day, you’re getting the same story just in a different interpretation, and we all deserve to be on that stage because we all got the job, quite frankly.
“So, you know… people literally will be like, ‘this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen’ talking about me, but then people will be like, ‘he’s the best Emcee I’ve ever seen’. So, everyone’s taste levels are different, do you know what I mean? And I kind of back that, fair play. You just don’t need to tag me, quite frankly.”
Layton reveals he deleted all of his social media apps following his West End Live performance, namely because he “really couldn’t be bothered with anybody else’s comparisons” with his Broadway counterpart.
“Of course, everyone thinks they’re a musical theatre critic nowadays… but girl where are your credentials please, sat on your couch at home, probably not being able to hit a note in tune?” he remarks. “‘This is my opinion…’, girl, shut up, I don’t care! You try and do it.
“And most of these people probably haven’t even seen the show, that’s what annoyed me! I’d like to invite them, but we’re pretty sold out most nights.”
With Strictly now over, and Cabaret in full swing, Layton is already looking to the future, and has his eyes on one goal in particular.
“I would really love to originate a part. I think it’s time for me to be, like, the OG,” he says. “I’m always stepping in, the first one to do this, the first person of colour or da da da, but I just want to be the first, for once! So fingers crossed.”
Before that, though, you can still catch him performing as the Emcee every night, and despite Cabaret’s heavy subject matter, Layton is evidently having a blast.
“Everybody has their own way of doing it… I’ve been doing it for such a long time, I am just quite good at switching it on and switching it off. Because at the end of the day, we’re doing fab things, and it’s beautiful, and hopefully people are enjoying the work, but we’re all just doing our job here. Do you know what I mean?
“And I don’t want it to affect my daily life as such. I’m playing a pretty wild character – and I’m a wild person myself – so I don’t want it to infiltrate too much. So I kind of just crack on – I’m probably playing the Pussycat Dolls before I go out, bit of Spice Girls on, and then they shoot me through the floor and I start singing in the Kit Kat Club. It’s really as simple as that.”
“I’ll need to wind down – do a little cool down, get my voice back to a good level, have a shower, take off all my makeup and my gosh, my makeup changes are so intense on my face, I do like five hot towels during one show it’s ridiculous, so I’ll have a little wind down moment, get in my car and just be like, ‘cool’.”
“And usually,” he adds. “I’ll say, ‘that was a slay’.”
Layton Williams stars as The Emcee in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club until 21 September 2024.