Arty Froushan Lands ‘American Psycho’ Stage Musical Function

EXCLUSIVE: Arty Froushan, who performs Wilson Fisk’s sinister henchman Buck Cashman in Marvel’s Daredevil: Born Once more, will star as serial killer Patrick Bateman in a revamped revival of the musical adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s darkly satirical novel American Psycho.

The present will start performances at London’s Almeida Theatre from Jan. 22 by March 14, 2026.

Again in 2014, the musical — with a ebook by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik and directed by Rupert Goold — originated on the identical Almeida deal with with Matt Smith (The Crown, Home of the Dragan, Physician Who) enjoying the impeccably attired funding banker who hides a secret lust for bloodthirsty acts of depravity. (Benjamin Walker additionally starred in a short-lived manufacturing on Broadway in 2016.)

Except for Froushan’s portrayal of playwright and celebrated raconteur Nöel Coward in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, the actor looks like he’s made a profession out of enjoying “psychopaths, principally,” he says.

“Sympathetic, twisted characters, so in some senses, this position feels, it’s scary to say, a pure match,” he provides with a twinkle in his eye. “In Daredevil: Born Once more, I’ve been enjoying basically an murderer who’s mildly sociopathic. In Carnival Row, I performed a type of entitled, very vengeful, younger aristocrat.”

Froushan notes that within the stage model of Alan Hollinghurst’s 2004 prize-winning ebook The Line of Magnificence, set in Margaret Thatcher’s Nineteen Eighties Britain and which ended a restricted run on the Almeida this previous Saturday, he performed a personality who, whereas not a psychopath, is “a really intense and tortured man…”

The performer seems to be the antithesis of “tortured” after we meet; he’s charming, outgoing and has a sunny disposition.

He feels barely bewildered to search out himself making ready for a musical though, as he says, “it’s not my first rodeo,” having sung in faculty productions of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins and West Aspect Story while learning on the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Artwork. 

“I can maintain a tune,” he assures. “Clearly, I feel Rupert [Goold] clearly needed to ensure I may try this. I’m positively an actor who can sing slightly than a singer.”

When he first taped an audition for the Bateman position in June, he sang a snippet from Duran Duran’s “Abnormal World.” He was ending Season 2 of Daredevil: Born Once more on the East Coast after which whizzed as much as Montreal to shoot Amazon MGM’s romantic comedy The Love Speculation for director Claire Scanlon reverse Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman.

By the point Froushan met up with Goold (who’s in his closing season as creative director of the Almeida earlier than he goes off to run the London’s well-known Previous Vic Theatre) once more, he was making ready for The Line of Magnificence directed by Michael Grandage.

Froushan says Goold joked that the actor will “by no means escape the ’80s,” as a result of each performs are firmly ensconced in that decade. 

I keep in mind Froushan from Tom Stoppard’s heartbreaking masterpiece Leopoldstadt, wherein he carried out in each the West Finish and Broadway productions. That was a very particular present for him, one which he spent shut to 2 years concerned with. “It was fairly an invigorating and enriching expertise,” he says.

Froushan looks like he’s “native to the stage; I grew up doing performs. Movies and TV [have] at all times been a little bit of a riddle to me, and it’s one thing I’m chasing. There’s an elusiveness about display performing, which I’m attempting to analyze and, I suppose, grasp, however I do know the place I stand on stage … And if I spend too lengthy away from the stage, I really feel like I lose a way of what I’m about as an actor.” Froushan has been taking singing and dancing courses forward of rehearsals for American Psycho.

He was born in Connecticut, the place his Iranian father, an engineer, had a job designing cooling programs for a nuclear energy plant. His dad and mom moved to London when he was a 2-year outdated nipper. He grew up in Southfields, subsequent door to Wimbledon, the place he sang in choirs and, in his mid teenagers, performed in a neighborhood band.

However, till lately, at any price, singing was not on his “calling card” till he needed to “mud off the pipes” for his portrait of Coward in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.

“However that was singing as a really specific character,” he argues. “With Patrick Bateman there’s a type of pop sensibility to it, but in addition it’s telling story by tune, tune as monologue, which is an fascinating problem for me,” he provides, chuckling nervously.

Goold and his collaborators are utilizing the template of the unique 2014 manufacturing of American Psycho, however they’ve made some vital tweaks, such because the addition of a brand new authentic quantity; choreographer Lynne Web page can also be remapping her choreography resulting from a call to carry out the revival on a thrust stage, and there are different additions and revisions. “I really feel like I’m moving into one thing that has its personal id,” Froushan says.

Dwelling in NYC for Leopoldstadt and amid taking pictures the 2 seasons of Daredevil: Born Once more over at Silvercup Studios in Lengthy Island Metropolis has given him a way of life in Manhattan as a result of, as he observes, “New York is sort of a protagonist within the story of American Psycho.”

He causes that Manhattan “is that this very vivid setting and type of social context. And having lived in Midtown, seen all these Wall Road boys driving the yellow cabs downtown and in all of the bars — it has helped loads, I’ve to say, in slipping into the pores and skin of Patrick [Bateman]. And I’ve an American accomplice and he or she’s a superb accent coach and cultural guru for me.”

Froushan reveals that his character has “a correct arc” in Season 2 of Daredevil: Born Once more. “Within the first season I’m type of a lurking determine with a swimsuit and a mysterious look in my eye … It’ll be good to get some motion within the new collection,” due out on Disney+ subsequent 12 months.

At Oxford College, he studied French and German, but in addition took benefit of the intensive theater services. He debuted in a manufacturing of Laura Wade’s play Posh, which is about in an Oxford College eating membership modeled after the notorious Bullingdon Membership of which former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was as soon as a member.

It was, he remembers, “a becoming and fairly a fiery baptism” resulting from a bunch of real-life Bullingdon boys attending a efficiency after which departing considerably abruptly on the interval. 

“They left simply when the play turns as a result of it then reveals the ugly aspect of those despicable characters. However they left earlier than they noticed themselves mirrored,” he says, shaking his head.

The producer Thelma Holt despatched him off with an ensemble to carry out The Comedy of Errors in Japan. His twin in that manufacturing was the nice actor David Shields (whom I saluted in a latest column on his efficiency in James Graham‘s play Punch).

Froushan later returned to Japan in a world and U.Okay. touring manufacturing of Romeo & Juliet with an organization that included Emma D’Arcy (Home of the Dragon).

Subsequent, Froushan heads straight into rehearsals for American Psycho. He’s additionally concerned within the Blumhouse film Soulm8te, set within the M3GAN universe “wherein I’m enjoying a personality which I gained’t describe in any element … however he’s a difficult character,” is all he would disclose.

His half in The Love Hypothehis, primarily based on Ali Hazelwood’s BookTok-viral novel, is that of Dr. Tom Benton, an affiliate professor at Harvard “and once more there’s a widespread theme with my characters,” he says with a smile that implies this physician is in no way the sort of a good chap a younger lady would take dwelling to satisfy her mom.

Casting administrators, he jokes, simply have a look at him and resolve he’s the bloke to play these characters.

“I’m actually only a man,” he protests. “It’s fascinating how the trade decides how one can solid you,” he muses.

However Froushan has the chops to play any position, together with these exterior the same old psychopathic territory he’s positioned in.

Nonetheless, Bateman is a literary character that matches the invoice for our occasions, particularly, unhappy to say, in america, and even right here in Blighty.

Nodding in settlement, Froushan remarks that American Psycho “makes an excellent, very biting commentary, clearly on materialism and capitalism, which it at all times did. It’s at all times been related, however this notion … of fact and goal fact and the sort of lack of ability to agree on what that’s now on this post-truth society and with all of the type of skepticism of specialists — these seeds have been sown by Trump. And I feel Patrick [Bateman] is absolutely wrestling with the query of: What’s actuality and what’s actual and what issues? That’s perhaps the place it’s grow to be a bit extra related in that sense.”

It’s an excellent position to land. Showing hopeful, Froushan states: “It’s such a mix of comedy and satire and drama and horror and erotica and Greek tragedy and a little bit of philosophy thrown in. It’s such an incredible cocktail of a present. I can’t wait to peel away the layers.”

Along with Froushan, the solid contains Emily Barber, Daniel Bravo, Jack Butterworth, Hannah Yun Chamberlain, Oli Higginson, Kim Ismay, Alex James-Hatton, Liz Kamille, Anastasia Martin, Millie Mayhew, Posi Morakinyo, Joseph Mydell, Asha Parker-Wallace, Tanisha Spring, Samuel J. Weir and Zheng Xi Yong.

The inventive heads are: Es Devlin as set designer; Katrina Lindsay as costume designer; Jon Clark as lighting designer; Dan Moses Schreier as sound designer; Finn Ross as video designer; David Shrubsole as music supervisor; Ellen Campbell as musical director; and Natalie Gallacher as casting director for Pippa Ailion and Natalie Gallacher Casting.