I Am What I Am by John Barrowman (white hot kiss .TXT) 📕

first met Jodie, she said something sassy and she made me laugh. A sense of humour makes good television, so I knew she had to be involved in the programme. I also knew the audience would like her because she was very down to earth and honest in her presentation of herself. She came across as your sister, your co-worker, or the girl you’d want to talk to if your boyfriend dumped you.

I know a lot of people may not believe me on this, given some of my comments after a few of her performances, but in the beginning I also thought Jessie Buckley was very talented. I still think she is. From the initial auditions, I thought Jessie would have incredible growth during the series, and I thought the same thing about Ashley Russell. I believed that, given the chance, both women would develop into strong performers. Sarah Lark was equally formidable when she started because she was already working in the West End. Ironically, this may have worked against her because she may have appeared too polished for the role of Nancy.

All in all, the performers trying for the part were as talented a group as any of the artists I’ve had to work with on these shows. So it was a bit of a blow from left field, and certainly not one I saw coming, when the high drama of this series came my way from another member of the panel.

Sir Cameron Mackintosh was not officially a judge on this show, but as the main producer of Oliver!, he took a keen interest in the casting process and joined the judging panel once the competition came down to its final four contestants (Jodie, Jessie, Sam Barks and Rachel Tucker). Cameron was in the audience for all the panel auditions, the rehearsals post-Nancy camp, and for all the shows, but because of his decision to stay in the wings until the climax of the series, he didn’t have much of a chance to build a public rapport with the contestants, or a relationship of any kind with the show’s audience. In the end, I think this may have had an impact on the show’s finale and Cameron’s offstage confrontation with me.

Over the course of I’d Do Anything, as Jodie began to demonstrate to the panel that she was learning from all the feedback we were giving her, the viewers were beginning to recognize that Jodie might be the one to watch. This also meant that some people, Cameron in particular, were getting tougher with their critiques of her performances.

After every show, and this held true for Maria and Any Dream too, the contestants would come up to the BBC bar afterwards. If they asked me for advice or more feedback, I’d happily give it. Almost every week, Jodie would come over and chat with me. One night, after a tough show when things had not gone well for her, Jodie approached me in the bar to ask how she could help herself to improve. I told her to try to see herself at a distance, and as much as possible to view her performance without emotion.

This is a very hard thing to do, even for a seasoned performer, and I think it was advice that was applicable to us on the panel, too. When I give my feedback, I try to frame it in a way that makes it clear I’m not judging the performer as a person; I’m judging their work. I may be saying ‘you’re not right for this job’,7 but it’s because of the performance, not the individual. Working in showbiz means facing and accepting rejection, and it’s the toughest lesson to learn.

On Saturday nights before airtime, all the judges would gather for a confab before going on, and we’d prep ourselves for what might happen if each girl on the show failed or succeeded. We’d draft out a rough response that related to whatever points or challenges we might have given her earlier performances. I took very seriously the aspect of the show that expected development in the performers, and this meant I paid attention to whatever the other judges and I had said in the past.

Since we didn’t know what was going to happen, we had to be ready for both eventualities: the good and the bad. The show was live, and in live television there’s no time after a performance for a judge to stare blankly into space because he or she was gobsmacked by the success or the failure of a contestant. A performer may have a great dress rehearsal, but things can change in a heartbeat when you’re in front of a live studio and television audience, and it often did.

During those pre-show meetings, I began to get the impression that Cameron and Andrew were pushing a bit harder for Jessie Buckley. At this point in the series, about midway, I had not really made up my mind yet. It wasn’t until the semi-finals, when I started to see enough growth in people, that I began to think seriously about which performer could carry a West End show.

The reasons, in the end, that I didn’t support Jessie were that I didn’t see enough maturation in her performances, and I thought she was too young to play Nancy. I also suspected that she might not be able to handle the leadership that a leading lady would be expected to demonstrate and, to be honest, I saw limited emotional depth in her repertoire.

For example, when Jessie was singing an emotive song, she’d raise her hand and touch her forehead to suggest she was feeling something. She would do this quite deliberately. Lots of performers have a trait or a small movement that becomes part of their onstage persona. For example, Carol Burnett always tugs her ear at the end of her performances, and in Tonight’s the Night, when I stepped down from my ‘illuminated ring’,8 I always did a spin at the