We speak to Jeremy Jordan, star of new musical comedy The Last Five Years
Thirty-year-old Texan hottie Jeremy Jordan came to fame in Newsies on Broadway and Smash on TV. His latest venture: Movie musical romance The Last Five Years opposite Anna Kendrick. He speaks to Attitude’s Simon Button below – just don’t mention the dancing…
Tell us a bit about The Last Five Years…
It’s the story of a five-year relationship between Cathy, played by Anna Kendrick, and Jamie, played by myself, from beginning to end. They meet, get married, and ultimately the relationship ends, and his version of the story is told linearly from beginning to end and hers is told backwards. It sort of trades off; you get his story, her story, his story, her story, then they meet sort of in the middle with a marriage and it diverges again. And the movie is pretty much all sung-through and it’s a really cool way of looking at it.
You have a great rapport with Anna Kendrick. Is she as nice as she seems?
I love Anna with all my heart but I wouldn’t say she’s ‘nice’. She is feisty and sort of firecracker-y and witty and quippy and crass and fun. She was a blast to work with and she’s incredibly intelligent about the world of film. I had a lot to learn from her in that aspect.
So was it hard breaking her heart on screen?
[Laughs] Was it hard? No! It was fun.
Most of the singing appears to be live or are you just a brilliant lip-syncer?
Almost all of it was done live, except for a few exterior things in which the environment around us wouldn’t have allowed us to capture quality vocals. I’d say probably 94% of it was live and we had to do it that way because the entire story is sung-through and you can’t create a fully-developed character in a recording studio then go lip-sync to it. You have to tell the story through song as it’s happening. There’s one song towards the end of the movie that I did in one take, in one shot, a six-minute song that I think we did 14 times. We used take 12 or something and at that point I was so emotionally exhausted – and physically and vocally exhausted as well – that it was easy to tap into the emotion needed for that scene.
If you burst into song on the streets of New York do you think anyone would bat an eyelid?
[Laughs] I think they would. I suppose you’re right, though. I’ve definitely seen crazier things on the streets of New York than a couple signing a fight at each other.
You have some shirtless scenes in the film. Are those easy to do?
I’m very self-conscious. I was a bit chubbier when I was a kid and there’s a little bit of baby fat I’ve never been able to quite lose. So I do feel self-conscious, especially being an actor these days and seeing, you know, superheroes and A-list actors with like eight-packs. I’m not that. I think you have to be confident with what you have and I’m in good shape, but those scenes made me feel like you were seeing a real person not some chiseled meta-human.
You didn’t seem very shy on the Rock Of Ages calendar, with just some beer to hide your modesty…
God, you’re dredging up the past there! But no, I guess not. That’s what my body looks like, you know? If I were a woman I’d have a little bit of a curve but still be slender. It’s how I’m built.
Would you ever do the full monty – as in frontal nudity, not the stage show?
I did that, actually. The first professional play I did was The Little Dog Laughed where I played a male call boy and I had to get completely naked and make out with another guy onstage. Being a straight man, it was a strange and surreal experience for me and two and a half weeks into that performance my appendix decided to get infected and I had to leave the show to have an appendectomy. That’s the only time I’ve had to go the full monty on stage and I don’t know if I could do it on film, but you don’t see it much on film anyway – you just see a bunch of butts and I guess I’d show my butt.
That show you mentioned, The Little Dog Laughed, is about a closeted gay actor in Hollywood. Can you understand why some actors still choose not to come out?
I guess so, yeah. Even someone like Neil Patrick Harris, who is famously out of the closet, plays straight characters but it’s normally in comedy. Sadly I do think there’s still a stigma and I think it’s something that’s going to be difficult to overcome. In fact, I’ll go up for gay roles and I’ll get the response ‘They want someone who’s actually gay to play the part’ which I totally get but it shows it’s going both ways at this point. Being gay is more widely accepted but it makes it more and more difficult for actors to diverge from who they really are in a role and for people to walk into the movie theatre or see them on stage and view them with a clean slate as a character.
How was it working with Harvey Fierstein on Newsies?
He’s fantastic. I love that guy. He’s one of a kind and for as funny and goofy and silly as he is he’s also very sentimental. He’s got a wonderful heart.
If Newsies comes to London would you revive your role of Jack Kelly?
I don’t know if they’d let me because I’m getting a little long in the tooth. I mean, I’m already 30. They’ve been talking about bringing it over there for a few years now and I imagine they will eventually but they’re certainly taking their sweet time. Maybe in the next couple of years they’ll bring it in and maybe I’d do a limited run but I think it’s a great role for some young up-and-coming talent to shine in and get his feet wet. It was sort of my first big break and it’s an incredible role to have your big break on.
You were in series two of Smash. Do you have any idea why it flopped?
[Laughs] I have lots of ideas. They couldn’t quite crack the formula. You have a show about creating a Broadway show and you have to have a show-within-a-show that’s relatable enough without you needing to divulge the whole story. Plus you’re singing original music every week. There are shows that have done it well, like Nashville and Empire, but the songs on those shows are all pop songs sung by pop artists. Also there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen on Smash. There were countless producers clashing with the writers and clashing with the network and no-one could seem to fully agree on it. I think the shows that work best are the ones where you have a singular vision.
You sing, you dance, you act… What are you rubbish at?
You say I can dance. That’s what I say I’m rubbish at! I fake it. I can do choreography given enough time but I would say that’s certainly my weakest area.
The Last Five Years is now showing exclusively at the Empire Leicester Square, London, before being released on VOD on May 1st and DVD on May 4th.
WORDS BY SIMON BUTTON