The ‘Sunset Boulevard’ actor shares a speedy breakdown of the audition process and his preparation for the award-winning show.
Sunset Boulevard at the Savoy Theatre was the stand-out success at the Olivier Awards 2024. The show took home seven well-deserved wins, with one of them going to Tom Francis for ‘Best Actor in a Musical’ for his role of ‘Joe Gillis’.
Tom played this role in both the West End and Broadway versions of the show – as well as a unique live performance at the Olivier Award ceremony – and has also been a part of other successful musicals such as & Juliet, What’s New Pussycat?, Rent and Hair.
We were lucky enough to run into Tom at the CDG Awards 2024, which he attended as one of the presenters, and asked him about his audition process for Sunset Boulevard and how he prepared for the role. Here’s what he shared:
Hi, Tom! Can you tell us about the audition process from ‘Sunset Boulevard’?
It was quite rigorous. Over two weeks, I went in 10 times and it was a lot of material every single time. I’m pretty sure they knew that they wanted to cast me from about audition number four. Jamie (Lloyd) was quite… Not obvious, but he was hinting a lot. But we kept on going with it. Yeah, it was tough. It was really tough. A lot of auditions!
How did you prepare for the role of ‘Joe Gillis’?
Jamie put parameters on me. I wasn’t allowed to watch anything. I wasn’t allowed to listen to anything. So, I just had a couple of sessions with the musical director and had the show note-bashed to me, which is all fun.
[Then, I spent], just literally, a full month in my room learning it and just deciding little things and coming up with different ideas and different ways to approach the character. And then I just offered them to Jamie in the room at different points and we just went with whatever felt right.
Thank you, Tom, for taking us behind the scenes of your brilliant performance!
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