Exclusive: Jamie Ward Talks JULIET & ROMEO Pop Musical Reimagining

See now I'm seeing so much more

Something's there. Something I can't deny. Whatever it is. It's under my skin

I'll never be the same. They say the world is spinning right

You come along and time starts down. I knew it the second that I saw your face

I knew that my heart would never be the same What about this take specifically was most interesting to you

when you first read the script? I mean, the fact that it's, you know

we're not using Shakespeare's iambic pentameter, I think that's a huge thing

It was something that I always struggled. I love the story of Romeo and Juliet, but I never quite understood exactly what I was hearing or listening to

I understood the visuals. So it was really exciting to be able to act exactly the meaning of it knowing exactly what you were saying And I think the relationship between father and son was super interesting to play especially with Jason Isaacs

He's an incredible actor. To be working with Clara Ruggard, I'd seen her work in so many different things

And then Rebel, Derek Jacoby. Yeah. Yeah. What a, what a cast. And also like, like you mentioned, I mean

I think also having that pop music sensibility is so interesting because like

there's a timelessness to the story, which is why it's still done. And so putting that through a new lens I think just goes to show how timeless

it really is that you can put it through all these different sort of filters and it's still maintains, you know, the integrity of the story

That's exactly right. I mean, it's a, it's so timeless. and the fact that we were able to adapt it into a pop musical

it just proves just how universal the themes are. And I think that that's the power of a musical

It's able to really hone in on emotions, and I think audiences can have a deeper understanding

of the things that these characters are really going through. Yeah. Yeah

I'm curious about the audition process. did you and Clara Rugar meet and have a chemistry read and what did that look like

It was a really long process. It was probably over the span of two, two and a half months

I think. We all had to send in an audition tape, you know, as you do these days

And then about three weeks later I heard that I got a call back and I met with Tim our director on Zoom I acted out these scenes and eventually he flew six of us to Rome to what felt like compete

for a role. But we all got along so well. We became like the best of friends

We were just hanging out in Rome for a few days, eating caju epe, drinking wine next

to the Colosseum. That's incredible. Oh, man. It was like. I bet it put you in that headspace, too

It probably brought it so real, those locations. Yeah. You just kind of feel..

Because we were actually filming on set. We were filming on location in these huge castles

So you can't help but just take it all in. Yeah. Swimming around on these cobbled streets, just having the time of your life

That's crazy. um romeo is a character that has obviously been played by so many actors are you somebody that

like goes and and checks out other really great actors performing the part or did you kind of try

and intentionally avoid that uh well i mean if if my intention was to not see any performances

of previous romeos it was impossible because i've already seen more sure um i'd already seen you

know the the ones that we're all thinking of um but actually my first question to our director

tim was where do you want me to start how do you want me to prepare for this do you want me to to

read the original play do you want me to watch other adaptations and he just said focus on our

script it's such a different you know it's faithful in its story but the fact that it is a pop musical

meant that it was bigger It was had a sense of adventure that perhaps the original didn It it felt really fun and energetic and i think that was the the key for me it was the energy of the new script

that's what i really focused on i was like what you were saying about the energy that's one of

the things i noticed about the movie there's this like i'm like this rhythm that is throughout and

and i always felt like like i never knew when someone was going to sing which was like because

it felt like that like momentum was always going whether it was in the like the dueling and fighting

scenes or whether it was just the spoken dialogue like it felt like there was just this momentum

and i thought that made it really you know kept you on the edge of your seat i guess

yeah uh i love that i love that you you don't know when it's gonna and it's kind of seamless

it doesn't really feel like it's uh scenes then song scenes right just molds into one which

yeah exactly great job of doing and this is also the first chapter of a trilogy correct

i think so yeah is there anything that you can tease or that you know kind of where maybe the

characters could be going in the next installment character of romeo i'm not gonna do like a tom

holland and give you all this no of course not this happens and you know that he killed someone

I don't know. All I can say is that our director, Tim, who wrote the script as well

he's done his research and he's figured out the exact world that Shakespeare was writing in

And I think a lot of it is based on truth. So a lot of it is based on the history of Italy in the 1300s

and what was happening in the country during that time. And then, yeah, you'll just have to wait and see