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 instalment of which will drop towards 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 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 travelling. 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 theatre, so maybe, but it would be led by work.”
