Once upon a time amiable Aussie Peter Andre was best known for his rippling six pack and being married to a controversial model.
Since then, high profile appearances on I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! And Strictly Come Dancing showed Peter to be a genuinely nice guy winning him many new fans. Peter is now turning his hand to musical theatre and is back on the road in Grease, which is back at Leeds Grand Theatre from Monday 29th November.
You played Teen Angel on the 2019 Grease tour and now you’re also doing double duty as Vince Fontaine. What are the logistics of playing dual roles?
I may even be doing a third role, namely a police officer, depending on whether or not I can get changed on time. The more characters the better for me. Each one of them has a different accent, so I get to do different dialects, and it’s good to be acting as well as singing. With Vince Fontaine and Teen Angel it’s a very quick change, but I love the energy of that. There’s just one song, which I’m not in, during which I have time to get out of one outfit and into a completely different one, with the wig and everything. But it’s really good fun.
There are so many iconic musical numbers in the show. Do you have a favourite to perform?
Even though my main song is Beauty School Drop-Out, I also get to sing Grease with the rest of the cast and that’s such a great, iconic song that really gets everyone going.
Are you comfortable in 1950’s fashion?
Love them! I do love the big 50’s hair, though. Nowadays you don’t want to look too vain so for guys it’s short-ish hair but back then it was all about the quiff and the DA, and I love that.
Since it premiered in 1971 Grease has proven such an enduring musical both on stage and film. Why do you think that is?
Everybody loves it. For me as a child there were two movies I watched again and again – and those were Back to the Future and Grease. What’s interesting about the theatre version is that it’s the original script, not the one we know from the movie. It’s still the same songs and still pretty much the same dialogue, but some of the songs are in different places and in the original script Sandy is dark-haired and from America, not blonde and from Australia.
Grease is that rare show that can appeal to different generations.
Everyone can relate to being a teenager, whether that’s from a nostalgic point of view or if you’re a teenager right now. There’s a glamour to the teenagers in Grease, though, and that’s another draw, it’s set in sunny America whereas you might have grown up in wet and windy England.
How does it resonate for audiences today?
I think it’s what we as teenagers always wished our high schools were like. And it appeals to all ages. When I said to my kids Junior and Prince ‘Let’s watch the movie Grease, it’s brilliant’ before I went on stage with it they were like ‘No thanks, it’s not our type of thing’. Then they came to see me in the show one night and suddenly they were like ‘We love this, let’s watch the movie’. It’s come full circle. The new generation see the stage show and then go and watch the movie, whereas the old generation have seen the movie and now they want to go and watch the stage show.
You made your musical theatre debut in the 2019 production. What took you so long to get around to doing it?
It was just something I never thought of doing, ever. It’s the same when people ask me ‘Why didn’t you audition for Home and Away or Neighbours?’ but, although I loved them, it just never appealed to me. I feel to proud to say that I sold out the likes of Wembley Arena and The O2 over three decades and now there are all these other things I get to do that I’ve never done before – like feature films and stage shows.
But you’re known in this country more as more of a singer and reality TV star than an actor.
Acting is something I studied as a kid and I love doing something that combines acting, singing and dancing. Back in the old days, if you wanted to be an actor you had to learn how to sing and dance and if you wanted to be a singer you also learned how to act and dance. Now a lot of kids are like ‘I want to be a singer’ and that’s it. In the olden it was all about performance. You would go and see artists like Michael Jackson, Prince or Madonna and it was all about the show – the dancing, the singing, the drama. Getting to do all three with a show like Grease is brilliant.
You made your professional debut as a contestant on Australia’s New Faces when you were just 16. Did you ever imagine you’d have such a lasting career in entertainment?
No, but I’m so grateful I’ve had this career and I never take it for granted. I remember being on tour with Bobby Brown as the opening act in Australia and at the time he was the biggest R&B star. There I was on stage with him and he was a megastar to me. I thought he’d be going for ever and I’d just have my five minutes of fame, so I look back and think ‘I would never in a million years have expected to have had all this’.
And you’ve never been afraid to reinvent yourself.
I feel very lucky, and luck does play a big part in it, as does staying with the same people, I mean, I’ve been with my manager for 30 years now. I think loyalty and keeping friends in the industry are definitely part of it.
Grease The Musical will be at Leeds Grand Theatre from Monday 29th November to Saturday 4th December 2021.
*Peter Andre is scheduled to appear in performances from Wednesday 1st December to Saturday 4th December. Leeds Heritage Theatres cannot guarantee the appearance of any named artist and refunds will not be given on this basis. https://leedsheritagetheatres.com/whats-on/grease/