I’d wanted to play the Phantom since I was 12. I saw it on a school trip. I had been a typical small-town Canadian boy who played ice hockey. My life changed that day. I wanted to make people feel like I’d just been made to feel. Colm Wilkinson was extraordinary in the role – it was almost as if every note he sang would be his last. Because I came from such a small town, ignorance was bliss. If I told anyone that’s what I wanted to do, they’d say: “Cool, OK!” No one told you me how hard it would be.
The Phantom is unhinged. He kills people, he’s manipulative, but there’s something about him as an underdog. This is what society has created. How can you not have compassion or empathy for him?
I couldn’t get into the role when we were rehearsing. But putting the makeup and the mask on helped. Usually it’s good to work in a character’s shoes – with this part I needed the face and mask. I was in my attic the other day and found a bunch of them from Phantom and the sequel, Love Never Dies. I gave one of them to Nicole Scherzinger after we did the Royal Variety performance because she did such an extraordinary job. I said: “All right, you get a mask!”
Whenever people start telling me stories about theatres being haunted, I walk away. I don’t need to know that! When I played the Phantom I was always the last to leave the building because of all that makeup I had to take off. My tough-guy attitude really disappeared when I was left alone.
I love working with Sierra Boggess, who plays Christine. We both love to perform but for the first two or three weeks of lockdown neither of us wanted to sing. I went into dad mode – are we healthy, is my family OK, have we got groceries? Once it became clear this would be our norm, I still wanted to sing. So we performed Once Upon Another Time from Love Never Dies together online.
I’m just as much a fan of the show as I am the Phantom. I grew up loving it and then I happened to be the Phantom for a moment in time and now I’m a fan again. It will be great to relive it with everyone. This is a crazy time. We are all at home looking for something to help us forget. It should be quite a special moment.
The Phantom of the Opera is free to watch from 7pm BST on Friday 17 April (for 24 hours for UK viewers and 48 hours in other territories) as part of The Shows Must Go On, a series offering a different Andrew Lloyd Webber musical each week.
