Oliver! talent show runner-up storms back as Shakespearian actress

 
P3 The Tempest/ Jessie Buckley as Miranda
Nigel Norrington
1 May 2013

When Jessie Buckley lost to Jodie Prenger on a BBC show to find an actress to play Nancy in the West End’s Oliver! both judges and the TV audience were shocked.

Now she has another chance at stardom after being cast as Miranda in a new production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Globe Theatre. From tomorrow, the 23-year-old actress will take to the stage alongside award-winning actor Roger Allam and fellow rising star Colin Morgan.

She won the role after choosing to study Shakespeare at Rada following the disappointment of missing out on Nancy. Today she said she felt “very lucky” to have been cast and explained how Allam, who plays Miranda’s father, Prospero, is being her mentor. She said: “To share the stage with someone like Roger Allam is very exciting and a great privilege. He imparts wisdom on me every time. I just sit on the side of the stage and watch him and think ‘how did he do that?’ He’s so generous.

“He doesn’t consciously impart wisdom on me, he does it without knowing. He’s such a lovely man. I’ve completely fallen in love with him, I feel like he really is my dad now.”

Buckley, from County Kerry in Ireland, was the favourite to win the I’d Do Anything show. Both Andrew Lloyd Webber and Oliver! producer Cameron Mackintosh — though not a judge — gave her their support. But Prenger won the public vote and went on to an award-winning run as Nancy for nearly a year.

Buckley has since appeared in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music directed by Trevor Nunn — and she performed at a birthday tribute to Lloyd Webber at Hyde Park.

She took a short Shakespeare course at Rada, but was so inspired she decided to enrol at the drama school full-time. She said: “I only really discovered Shakespeare properly when I moved to London and did a workshop at Rada and thought ‘this is pretty good’. I really fell in love with him. It was a really big reason for me to go back to study, really, because I wanted to do more than just sing and stuff.”

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