Jersey actor to play leading Percy Jackson role in West End show
A Jersey actor has been announced as the leading role in a West End musical.Morgan Gregory will be playing Percy Jackson in The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical at The Other Palace in London from March.The 24-year-old said his love of the arts was inspired from a young age and that his career would not have been possible "without the Jersey" performing arts scene.Gregory, who moved from playing ensemble to the main role after auditioning and acting up as the lead for a week, said he was "over the moon" to officially land the role.
He said: "I love the show, I love the people, we have such a fun time... it's a real fun piece of theatre, so I think taking that step of of being of now playing the role full time will be will be interesting."Gregory added he was nervous: "Percy kind of sits in this high energy place the whole time, so bringing that eight times a week is tough, but I'm really looking forward to it."
'Just so grateful'
Gregory's past stage credits include performing in 42 Balloons, Elf, Newsies and Back to the Future. Before heading to London to attend a performing arts course at Bird College, Gregory had appeared in a plethora of shows in Jersey.He said: "The dream back in Jersey was to just kind of get to London and hopefully be on the West End one day, that was always the pipeline dream. "To be in a position where I'm taking on parts is kind of more than I ever could have hoped for and I'm just so grateful to be doing that, but it's still down to those years in Jersey, of doing Jersey Academy of Dancing and Drama Lab and all that stuff."
Gregory said there was "never another option" when it came to his career."My mum went to a drama school in the UK when she was younger and she was so brilliant in what she did with the amateur dramatic community, it was always my life anyway," he said.
When asked what people could expect from his performance as Percy Jackson, Gregory said they would "love every single minute of it".He said: "Most of the time the people and the kids coming to watch this, it's their first time sitting in a theatre, so to be up there and and being their first time watching this magic on stage is a wonderful thing. "My aim right now is to just is to deliver that and bring that magic to life."Gregory's first performance as the official lead role will take place on Wednesday 5 March.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
a day ago
- Times
Huey Lewis: ‘I got picked up hitchhiking in America by an ex-convict'
The lead singer of Huey Lewis and the News retired from performing in 2018 having suffered hearing loss for years. His band hit the big time with their third album, Sports, in 1983, which sold over 30 million copies. Their 1984 album Fore! spent 52 weeks in the UK charts and The Power of Love single featured in the Michael J Fox hit film Back to the Future. Lewis, 74, lives on a ranch in Montana. Aged 17 I spent a year bumming around broke in Europe, often sleeping by the side of the road, but it helped me to find my future. I stowed away on a plane to London after somebody that picked me up hitchhiking across America told me how to do it. It was 1967, the Summer of Love, and I sat on a TWA bench at New York's Idlewild [now John F Kennedy] Airport for three days. Then I befriended a pre-computers counter attendant who got me on a flight to London. The trick involved a silver pen for writing my flight and seat number on a special ticket … and generally making myself invisible. Hitchhiking from Spain to Portugal, I lost my passport after a ride with a slightly hammered Dutch guy in his 1930 Chevrolet, which ended up in a river. I had to go back to the embassy in Seville for another. But the fee was $20 and I had to busk to raise it, playing with a harmonica. Some students liked my act, heard I needed money and threw a concert for me: my first, and very nerve-wracking. I not only got the $20 but a bell went off in my head: this is what I want to do. I love British people, even though in the Seventies I toured in the band Clover with Thin Lizzy and got booed off every stage around the UK. When we became big in America, in 1983, I told my manager I wanted to go to Europe. The record companies gasped because we'd sold zero records there until then. But we went, playing at tiny clubs and London's Marquee Club, and we ended up with gold records in most of Europe. Childhood holidays in Marin County, California, were always camping, fishing or sailing with my brother and parents. Or we'd pack up our little car and go abalone-diving on the California coast. My dad and I went fly-fishing a lot and had close calls sailing, once getting stranded in San Francisco Bay and having to wait four hours for the tide to come back in. • Read our full guide to California Nowadays I never travel without my hearing aids. I have a cochlear implant in my left side that enables me to hear because I'm mostly deaf. My hearing's so bad I can't perform any more or hear music when I sing. So you might as well fish! Fishing's wonderful for hearing-impaired people because fish don't talk. • 10 of the best places to visit in the US I live on a river in Montana where we fish all the time, and I have my own drift boat and raft. I've had Nick Faldo in my boat, Jimmy Kimmel, Kevin Costner, Michael Keaton … my fishing pals. Every year I go down to Espiritu Santo Bay in Mexico with a group to fish for permit, bonefish and baby tarpon. I go steelhead (trout) river fishing in British Columbia, my biggest a 38-inch, 25-pound on a dry fly; and I've caught a 120-pound tarpon in Florida. My travel style is a mix of camping and five-star hotels. If you want to put it all together, I love Poronui, in Taharua Valley in New Zealand, which is a world-class fly fishing lodge meets luxury hotel. I also fish for trout in Scotland and, as a golfer (handicap 7) have played 16 times in the annual pro-am Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in St Andrews and Carnoustie. • Read our full guide to New Zealand Some holidays have been pretty seat of your pants, like trout fishing in Bristol Bay, Alaska, where you'd be in a tiny seaplane taking off from, and landing in, rivers. Seeing bears, moose and cranes was great; you just hoped the pilots knew what they were doing. I was nearly mugged in Morocco once, until the thieves realised I had nothing for them to take. Another time I got picked up hitchhiking in America by an ex-convict who siphoned gas at night all the way from southern California to Denver, Colorado. I had $200 on me but wasn't telling Heart of Rock and Roll, a musical featuring Huey Lewis and The News's music, finished its Broadway run last year and is expected to reach the UK in 2026 In our weekly My Hols interview, famous faces – from the worlds of film, sport, music, politics, and more – share their travel stories from childhood to the present day. Read more My Hols interviews here.
Wales Online
05-06-2025
- Wales Online
Will Ferrell ‘excited' to bring Eurovision musical to Broadway
Will Ferrell 'excited' to bring Eurovision musical to Broadway The American actor, 57, is basing the project on his Netflix movie, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga, which he starred in opposite Canadian actress Rachel McAdams and British actor Dan Stevens (Image: Netflix ) Will Ferrell has said he is "excited" to bring a musical version of the Eurovision Song Contest to Broadway. The American actor, 57, is basing the project on his Netflix movie, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga, which he starred in opposite Canadian actress Rachel McAdams and British actor Dan Stevens. "We are more than excited to bring Eurovision to Broadway," said Ferrell. "The stage musical is a perfect place to continue our celebration of all the things we love about this amazing and unifying song competition." The production will feature a book by Ferrell, Harper Steele, who both co-wrote the original film and were in the documentary Will & Harper together, and Anthony King, a TV and Broadway writer. Music will come from Savan Kotecha, who was behind the songs for the Netflix movie, and will be directed by Alex Timbers. Article continues below "Will Ferrell and Harper Steele are my comedy heroes," Timbers, a Tony award-winning director, said. "And when I first saw their joyful movie Eurovision during the pandemic, it buoyed spirits during a very dark time. "With this stage adaptation, I can't wait to bring that same mix of heart, spectacle, irreverence, and awe to audiences across the world." In the 2020 movie, The Notebook actress McAdams, an Oscar nominee, and Elf star Ferrell play Icelandic musicians Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdottir who are competing at Eurovision. It was nominated for a best original song Academy Award for Husavik (My Hometown) written by Kotecha, Fat Max Gsus, and Rickard Goransson. Eurovision director Martin Green, from the organising group, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), said: "This is a stellar team for what I am sure will be an equally stellar adaption of a film the world loved. "Our aim always is to bring the joy of the Eurovision Song Contest to more people globally – especially as we approach our 70th edition in 2026." Last month, the 2025 winner of Eurovision was crowned as 24-year-old opera singer JJ from Austria, who entered with the dramatic Wasted Love. The UK came 19th in May after Remember Monday earned 88 points from the national juries for their song What The Hell Just Happened? and no points from the audience. Article continues below Netflix has previously turned its popular science fiction show Stranger Things into a play in the West End called Stranger Things: The First Shadow, which serves as a prequel to the series.
Sky News
04-06-2025
- Sky News
Michael J Fox appeals for help in finding lost guitar played by Marty McFly in Back To The Future
The scene in Back To The Future where Marty McFly grabs a guitar before bursting into a rendition of Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode is perhaps one of the most iconic in movie history. However, in 2025 the guitar's creators might be wishing they had time-travelling capabilities of their own as the location of the Cherry Red Gibson ES-345 is a mystery 40 years after the film's release. Gibson, based in Nashville, Texas, is asking for helping tracking down the instrument as the company produces a new documentary about the search called Lost To The Future. Filmmakers had gone looking for the instrument while making the movie's 1989 sequel but it was nowhere to be found. In a trailer shared on X, stars from the movie including Michael J Fox, who played Marty McFly, and Christopher Lloyd who played Doc Brown, have appealed to viewers to help try to find the guitar. Lloyd, in the cadence of eccentric inventor Doc Brown, says in the video that the guitar has been "lost to the future". "It's somewhere lost in the space-time continuum," says Fox. "Or it's in some Teamster's garage." Harry Waters Jr, who played Marvin Berry in the film, says the instrument was last seen in 1985. In the film, McFly steps in for an injured band member at a 1955 school dance before leading the band into a rendition of Johnny B Goode. The time-traveller refers to it is an "oldie where I come from" as the 1958 song doesn't yet exist for his audience. The students at the dance fall into an awkward silence as McFly's riffs turn increasingly wild.
