Slow Horses star coming to Dublin with new stage adaptation of beloved movie

JOE spoke to the actor about the new production, his roles in Black '47 and Sharon Horgan's Youth, and Slow Horses.

The stage production is a new adaptation of the classic 1950s musical romantic comedy of the same name, which itself was a remake of The Philadelphia Story. The original High Society movie starred Grace Kelly (in her final film role) as Tracy Lord, a wealthy socialite about to be married.

On the eve of her wedding, she is visited by both Dexter (Bing Crosby), her singer and composer ex-husband, and Mike (Frank Sinatra), a journalist assigned to cover the event. Both men vie for Tracy's affections, as she tries to decide on the ideal new husband.

Co-starring Celeste Holm and Louis Armstrong (playing himself), High Society's songs were written by Cole Porter (Anything Goes, Kiss Me, Kate). Thanks to its charismatic cast, great songs, and fun story, the movie was a huge hit and is still beloved to this day.

Freddie Fox interview for High Society in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre

JOE spoke to Fox in person at the Dublin theatre. We talked about High Society, following in the footsteps of Frank Sinatra, and his previous projects with Irish connections. The latter includes the historical thriller movie Black '47 and Sharon Horgan's newly released comedy series Youth.

You can read that conversation in full below, which has been slightly edited for clarity and length.

JOE: You've said that you've always wanted to do a musical. This is your first. What was it about the show that made you think this would be a great musical debut?

Freddie Fox: When I was, oh, a kid, about five or six, I went to see Guys and Dolls at the National Theatre in London, and I have this really strong sense memory of Richard Eyre's production, the staging, Clarke Peters' performance, the moment he throws the dice into the audience, the signs that were in flashing lights. I just remember it very, very vividly.

And the most vivid memory, of course, is the music. I bought the cassette tape when I was whatever that age, and I learned all the songs. I still remember them all now.

I think the world of that golden age of great jazz, of great rhythm and great lyrics - which Cole Porter was at the top of the tree of, along with Lerner and Loewe and Frank Loesser and these other great musical theatre writers - is music that just got into my brain at that early age. 

So, when this musical came up, which is not a million miles from the Guys and Dolls songbook, I thought it just fills me up; it makes me feel so happy. I get to sing some of the best songs, and [Mike's] a wonderful part, and the script was tight and funny. And I thought: 'Come on, if you've been talking about wanting to be in a musical for this long and you don't do it, then you know you're being a chicken. Come on, get on with it, do it.'

JOE: How familiar were you with the 1950s movie, and is it an intimidating following in Frank Sinatra's footsteps?

FF: I think it's not intimidating in the sense that I can't follow in Frank Sinatra's footsteps. Frank's Frank, and you know you. You just have to tip your hat to him whenever you listen to his beautiful voice.

So, I come at it as an actor, coming at it from an actor's perspective and getting into Mike the character and then allowing the work that I've done on my voice over the years to sort of allow it to be Freddie's Mike, not Frank's Mike, so no, I didn't feel any apprehension.

Freddie Fox in High Society

And as for watching [the 1956 movie], I watched it a few weeks before we started rehearsal just so I knew what people were talking about. I mean, there are a couple of nods in the choreography and certain things that we do to the movie, and so just to be on the same page as everybody else was useful.

But again, because it's Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby, you can't hold a candle to these guys. You just have to go your own way, I think.

JOE: I'm always in awe of theatre actors who perform night after night and hit their marks and learn their lines and build these characters. I imagine when you add singing and dancing into that, it's even more difficult. How has it been touring with this musical compared to your other theatre work?

FF: It's much, much more tiring, and you are much more conscious from the minute you wake up in the morning. The first thing you do is [Fox starts humming]. Is it there, you know? Is my voice literally there?

And so you think about it from the minute you get up. Your day off isn't a day off. You're building yourself up by degrees to have the energy to do it, and on Wednesdays and Thursdays, we do two each day, and so by the end of Thursday you're just on your back. You can't move; your legs hurt, everything hurts.

So that's something that was new to me, and therefore the preparation for that and the preservation and the way you have to live your life, i.e., not drinking very much, not really going out very much, becomes a part of the way of life of doing the show.

By the time this is over, I will be well and truly ready for it to be over, but I'm enjoying every moment of doing it because it's all-consuming in the best way.

JOE: High Society is coming to Ireland in October. You've been in Irish projects before, like Black '47. Can I ask you about your experience filming that? Just because you worked with incredible Irish actors and it's become a real totemic Irish film.

FF: Yeah, it's so lovely to hear that coming here, that it's been embraced in that way. Because, of course, like so many ignorant Brits, I didn't know very much about the Famine before I read the script.

And the way that [director Lance Daly] and the writers dealt with it as a Western to kind of allow audiences from around the world into that history, I thought was very, very clever.

The fact that I was able to develop a personal friendship and relationship with people I've looked up to my whole life like Stephen Rea and Hugo Weaving and Jim Broadbent, and have a moment early in Barry Keoghan's career and to have become friends on that is... You look back at those moments, and you think how lucky I was.

They do shape you as a person. Because... when you're working with Hugo Weaving, and I've since come and seen him in plays at the Gate in Ireland and I've seen him in the plays at the National, I go: 'I've got someone to reach for, some standard to aspire to'.

Barry Keoghan, Freddie Fox, and Hugo Weaving in Black '47

JOE: You are both part of the Slow Horses world as well, sadly not together...

FF: I know! We've compared notes on the making of it, and I was so annoyed to have missed them by one season, but he's like Gary Oldman, a great hero of mine.

So yeah... I think we all felt when we were making Black '47 that we were lucky to be involved in telling something that was so personal to the Irish people. I'm just very glad that it's been embraced in the way that it has.

JOE: That's great. Youth just came out, which is Sharon Horgan's new show, and you have a part in that. What was your experience like working with Sharon, and is there anything you can tease about the character?

FF: Yeah, he's called Grayson. He's a literary agent. He's a bit of a sh*t, you know, not territory that I'm completely unfamiliar with, but very different to other parts that I've played before. 

I always try and make the parts... regardless of their device within the structure of the script, very different. So, he sounds different; he looks different. He's a bit of a peacock. He's quite camp. He's quite acid.

Freddie Fox and Kristin Scott Thomas in Slow Horses

I've based his voice on someone who will remain nameless because I don't know whether they'd be very grateful [he says, laughing].

His physicality emerged quite strongly, quite quickly for me because Sharon's writing is so specific and so detailed, and as soon as I read her first script I was like: 'I have to try and get this part' because I just want to be working and around something she's a part of. 

She's a sort of powerhouse, and the ability to write like that, to act like that, to showrun like that, to produce like that, I would love to try and somehow emulate one day.

JOE: You're here with your first musical. You've just directed a documentary [Into the Breach, which is about British theatre]. I saw an interview with you recently where you said that you always want to try and do new things. Is there anything you're searching out for now specifically?

FF: Well, I'm about to do some Shakespeare in London after the musical ends, and that will be a real new challenge for me.

I mean, I've done plenty of Shakespeare and Shakespearean leading parts, but Richard II is a very different mould to a Romeo or to a Hamlet or to any of the characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He's a very delicate and complicated creature. So I'm really looking forward to that.

That will feel like a real challenge and [I'm] doing it in rep with King Lear. Roger Allam will be playing King Lear. I'm playing Edmund. So to have two big parts on the go at the same time will be a real challenge, both energetically and how I will, I haven't yet, but how my brain I hope will come up with something interesting.

So I'm looking forward to that, and then after that some more House of the Dragon, which I'm very, very lucky to be a part of, and I love that show. And then [Fox mimes resting].

High Society will be performed at Dublin's Bord Gáis Energy Theatre from Tuesday 21 to Saturday 24 October 2026. Tickets priced from €29.80 are on sale now through Ticketmaster.