Jonathan Bailey has always flatly refused to pose topless on a shoot. For British Vogue, he relented. How come? “There was this pair of Loewe trousers and I thought, Fucking hell, what an incredible silhouette. No one suggested it, I just knew it was right.” He pauses. “But please don’t mention I said I’m always asked to take my top off.” I plead with him. “OK,” he replies. “It’s the truth.”
But why all the prudishness? Didn’t he reveal his naked bum in season one of Netflix’s phenomenally successful Regency romp, Bridgerton? It was quite the performance, I say. Has it been nominated for any awards? “Not yet,” he replies, rolling his eyes.
We are lounging on a velvet sofa in an anteroom at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane, the location a nod to the Brit’s imminent, post-stratosphere-hitting return to the West End. He was last on the London stage in 2022, in Mike Bartlett’s Cock at the Ambassadors Theatre, already a star, and yet the 36-year-old’s wattage has continued to grow and grow. Any attempt on my part to observe him dispassionately disappears quickly. His dark-haired and unshaven beauty is too intoxicating, as is his style. He is male-model catwalk-ready in pale blue Levi’s, an ivory Sunspel rib-knit short-sleeved polo shirt, off-white slip-on suede Birkenstocks, and beige socks. M&S? “Uniqlo—they’re my favorite holey socks,” he answers, raising a tanned, muscular arm (an Omega De Ville watch dangles from his wrist) to scratch his head. His biceps look like they’ve done time in the gym. “I did that on purpose so you’d notice,” he says cheekily. “I’ve got real gunnage.”
Bailey has managed to achieve what was once thought impossible in Hollywood. He is among a new guard of out actors to be lusted over by men and women (the latter tag him their “internet boyfriend”), while also evading falling into a gender pigeonhole, snagging roles of every persuasion. Tragedy, comedy, singing, dancing, stage, big screen, small screen, fashion week, fan mobbings… he can do it all. Scarlett Johansson, his costar in next year’s looming installment of the Jurassic Park franchise, recently gushed on the red carpet: “I adore absolutely every single thing about that man.”
Bailey, who, despite a tightly honed skill set, never attended drama school, has been acting since the age of seven, when he was scouted by the Royal Shakespeare Company to star in its production of A Christmas Carol at the Barbican Theatre. But it was in 2020 that he became swarmed-in-the-streets famous, following his performance as Lord Anthony Bridgerton (the second season, in which his character, a viscount, took center stage, became the most-watched English language series on Netflix). Hollywood beckoned. Now, he’s riding a wave of Wicked mania, his career having been taken to a whole new level thanks to his turn as the fleet-footed, high note-hitting, dashing male lead, Fiyero, opposite Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in the big-screen musical, not to mention the accompanying press tour to end all press tours. Next year, he’ll go on to star in the aforementioned Jurassic World Rebirth. True blockbuster fare.
Theater, though, has been his foundation. A run of television hits (he has starred on the small screen in W1A, Bramwell, Broadchurch, Heartstopper, Fellow Travelers, and Leonardo, among others) has been built from, and woven through with, a long career on stage—notable roles in the past decade, aside from Cock, include Company, King Lear, The York Realist, and Othello. He has a shelf full of shiny hardware, with awards including an Olivier for best actor in a supporting role in a musical, for playing panicked groom-to-be Jamie in Marianne Elliott’s 2018 production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company, and a Critics Choice Award for best supporting actor in a limited series or movie made for television in Fellow Travelers earlier this year. On balance, he loves the protection of being on stage—how immersive it feels, how he feeds off the reactions of an audience. “There’s security in the theater community,” he says.
And so, he is ready to make a return to live performance. His next role feels like a career zenith: In February, he will appear as Richard II in director Nicholas Hytner’s production at London’s Bridge Theatre. It is his most high-profile Shakespearean role to date, his second with Hytner, who first cast him as Cassio in Othello at the National Theatre in 2013. “People talk about fame and Bridgerton, but the one moment where I really thought I’d made it was when Nicholas cast me as Cassio 10 years ago,” says Bailey. “He gave me the biggest break. He’s been an incredible mentor. With Richard II, I am returning not just to a play, but to a theater director. He’s seen me freak out in the rehearsal room. He’s seen me sobbing.”
On Bailey’s far-reaching talent, Hytner tells me: “Jonny is eloquent, mercurial, intelligent, and transparent.” The star director is giving little away ahead of the production, only to comment it will reveal: “a feudal world on the cusp of modernity.” He recalls: “As Cassio in Othello—and later as Edgar to Ian McKellen’s King Lear, which I didn’t direct—he had the rare ability to speak Shakespeare as if it’s his first language. His imagination is vivid enough to put himself directly in the position of characters… It becomes completely natural in his hands.” Doubtless he will lean heavily on Bailey’s gifts for precision wit, dark charm, and petulance for the flawed, weak Richard. “What do you do when a ruler is absolutely inadequate?” Hytner wonders. “How do you get rid of the rightful leader?”
In person, Bailey’s flair is plain as day. He’s not just stylish—he is friends with Loewe creative director Jonathan Anderson, who dressed him for 2024’s Met Gala (and with whom he designed a T-shirt for the LGBTQ+ initiative he recently founded, the Shameless Fund), has worn Givenchy on the red carpet, and modeled Emporio Armani eyewear in its latest campaign—but also intoxicatingly charismatic. He laughs readily and expansively, gesticulating often, occasionally jumping up like a young Rudolf Nureyev about to leap, before crashing back down and curling his legs underneath him. The writer and actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge, with whom he costarred in her 2016 miniseries Crashing (a precursor to Fleabag), once described him as “a meteorite of fun.” I can see why.
“There’s a big, wonderful tribe of friends in London to which we both belong,” longtime friend and actor Andrew Scott tells me. “As well as being the most charismatic and gifted performer, he’s always struck me as someone who adores and prioritizes his friends and family and loved ones. That counts for so much in my book. It’s so wonderful to watch Jonny soar.”
So too is he eloquent and honest, especially when we veer to the more personal, such as what it was like growing up questioning his sexuality and how he only came out as gay to his family and close friends in his early 20s. Did he have a sense of his sexuality from a young age? He indicates it was more of a gradual realization, mentioning how he went out with a girl for two years in his early 20s. “It’s interesting with the binary,” he says, “where you’re perceived to be either this or that. That’s how I saw it at the time, but there are so many nuances to it. My experience of that relationship was not that I was in the shadows. She remains one of my best friends.”
“I think other people understood my sexuality before I was even aware of it,” he continues. As a young boy, he remembers rummaging through the family’s dressing-up box, jumping around and being flamboyant, and entertaining his grannies by singing and dancing whenever he stayed with them. He sounds like Billy Elliot. “A bit, but really Shirley Temple, if I’m honest.” He credits his parents with encouraging him to take up ballet. “I remember looking through the window at these girls at school in their tutus. They were doing, like, first position, second position, and I knew I just wanted to be in there.”
One night at a sleepover with primary school friends, he remembers excitedly asking them: “‘Guys, guys, who else thinks they’re gay? Do you? I do. I do.’ It was a conversation I really, really wanted to have, to see if everyone else was on the same page,” he says. “But everyone went quiet.” Then a teacher called him out in front of the whole class. “I was having trouble with my work and he said, ‘Well, if you weren’t so busy being a fairy you’d understand.’”
More recently, and in addition to his work with the Shameless Fund, he became a patron for the charity Just Like Us, which aims to ensure young LGBTQ+ people in school and beyond can thrive. He is keenly aware of the challenges that still exist, even in the everyday. “I’ve always been a confident hand-holder in relationships,” he says. “I had a boyfriend who wasn’t experienced at holding hands in public. We got heckled in London. But that kind of behavior is now outweighed by the smiles you get.” Is he currently in a relationship? “Not discussing that,” he answers, sharply.
We talk instead about how he deals with the nature of fame. “It felt quite hard-hitting after Bridgerton came out,” he says. “I really struggled initially; I was overwhelmed by it. But the people in your life have to adapt too. That’s the hardest thing: you see them struggling before you see it in yourself, someone pushing past your dear mum and dad to get a picture. I’m really good now at saying no to photos.” Does he think he might become too big for his boots? “Let’s see,” he says. “It would be good if you could keep your eye on me as we go through the next few years, tell me if I’m doing well or I’ve fallen down the [fame] hole.”
Friends like Andrew Scott will no doubt help keep him grounded. “The search for us to be in the right thing together is on,” says Scott. “Bert and Ernie: The Movie is the frontrunner, it just depends on who’s willing to shave off their eyebrows.”
Bailey was brought up in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, along with three older sisters, and later attended the Oratory School. His mother was an audiologist and his father, a one-time DJ who played in Sloopy’s, a ’70s nightclub just off Piccadilly Circus, would go on to become the managing director of Rowse Honey. “Every time I see an easy-squeezy bottle of honey I think, My dad was an absolute legend.”
He was five when his grandmother took him to see Oliver! in the West End. He knew at that moment he had found his calling. His first acting role was at school, where he played a raindrop in Noah’s Ark. A year after starring in A Christmas Carol at the Barbican, he landed the role of Gavroche in the West End production of Les Misérables.
In 2017, he appeared in King Lear at the Chichester Festival Theatre, as Edgar, opposite McKellen in the title role. “We had amazing conversations,” he says of his costar. “I was like: ‘Tell me everything. Tell me what it was like back in the day.’ I assumed everyone would have been happily expressing themselves, fucking in the wings, all the things you’d hoped. And he said, ‘No, no. No one knew, not even in the most creative pockets.’”
But liberation can be found on stage too. Cock, as its title suggests, focused on some of the thornier realities of gay romance and proved life-changing for Bailey. “I was able to mine and explore and have this experience on stage which felt like everything I would want for my life. It was all about a boy coming out and falling in love at school, and somehow by experiencing it within someone else’s story, you can dress-rehearse your own life.”
We discuss his most recently released film, Wicked (a two-part adaptation of the hit musical, the second installment of which will drop toward the end of 2025). “What did you think of it? Did you like it?” he asks nervously. I tell him I’m not usually a fan of musicals, but it took me by surprise and I found it emotionally touching. He breathes a sigh of relief. “Isn’t it lovely, isn’t it special, isn’t it actually!” he says, bouncing on his knees like an excitable teenager. “You’re the first person I’ve spoken to who’s seen it. When I watched it, I sobbed. I think it’s a masterpiece.”
For now, having just finished filming the latest season of Bridgerton, he’s finally taking a break. “Everything else is on pause until Richard II opens.” He admits to finding it difficult, going between roles and his everyday life in Brighton, where he moved in 2020 so he could be close both to the sea, which he loves, and his mother’s side of the family, who live there. “It can be a hard, cold transition, so I get back to friends as soon as possible or I go traveling. I love Salento in Italy—I try and go every year.” Is he tempted to move to the US? “No. That’s a hard no,” he says. “I love New York theater, so maybe, but it would be led by work.”
He says that, more than anything, he yearns for quiet. He spends time in nature, either walking, paddleboarding, or mountaineering (in 2018, he hiked to Everest base camp, and a year later climbed Ben Nevis, Snowdon, and Scafell Pike in 24 hours in aid of a motor neurone disease charity), as well as cold-swimming in the sea and cycling (he has competed in marathons and triathlons). He likes the calm those activities bring him but always takes his noise-cancelling headphones wherever he goes. “I feel naked if I forget them.” What does he listen to? “I go through phases, most recently ’60s and ’70s California rock, and the Beatles.” But surely he parties too? “I love a dirty martini,” he says. “The dirtier the better. But really I’m obsessed with breakfast, especially oats. Sometimes I make my own granola. I just love a seed.”
While he might not tell me if he’s in a relationship, he is surprisingly candid when I ask him if he wants children. “Yes, it’s such a privilege for a man,” he says. “But I can’t bring children into my lifestyle now.” Because he is so busy? “Yes,” he answers. I tell him it’s never a good time. “I want to make sure I’m going to be present. I’m reading books on adoption. I might coparent with a woman, but I’m thinking it will be with a man.”
Just as we’re about to say goodbye, he squeals, holding up his phone. “Andrew Scott has just texted me! He calls me ‘J-Bads.’ I told him I was doing a Vogue shoot, with the total self-awareness of what that sounds like.” He slips on his Birkenstocks. “You know I’ve got them in Parma violet too,” he says, as he slinks out of the door, headphones on.
Richard II will be at London’s Bridge Theatre from February 10 to May 10, 2025.
In this story: grooming, Alfie Sackett; set design, Josh Stovell. Production: The Production Factory.