Omar Baroud is currently playing Clifford Bradshaw in the multi Olivier award winning Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. Cabaret won seven of the prestigious Olivier awards, including Best Musical Revival.

Omar took over the role in March and can soon be seen in Disney+’s upcoming rom-com thriller Wedding Season as Jackson. From the producer of Emily in Paris, this is Disney+’s first UK show. The show follows a group of friends as they navigate engagement drinks, stag-dos, hen-dos and weddings cumulating in their friend Katie’s big day that ends with more than one dead body. Having previously starred in Netflix’s The Innocents and BBC’s Baptiste, Omar has also written his own musical After Elijah, which was the winner of the Stiles & Drewe Mentorship Award in 2021, the biggest musical theatre writing prize in the country. Omar also works closely with a charity called, Compass Collective, who deliver theatre, music and film projects to aid in helping young refugees integrate into the UK.

Omar Baroud chats with 1883’s Amelia Walker about his upcoming role in Wedding Season and performing in such an emotionally charged musical eight times a week. 

I’m just going to jump straight in and talk to you about Wedding Season, because I am loving everything that I’m seeing of it and hearing about, but the secretiveness is kind of a great way to get viewers invested. there’s a lot of buzz surrounding it, but we’re not really getting much information about it. How would you describe the show?

The secretiveness is the best part about it! I think the secretiveness is definitely a great tactic because it’s so hard to describe! Which is the best thing about it. Okay, so there’s not much out there like it right now. I guess the best way I would describe it is that it’s like a murder mystery, rom com, action, comedy,  thrill ride of a roller coaster! Once people see the first episode, they’ll understand immediately why.  The way of blending all the genres together, which you don’t get to see often, all these bits go so well together! 

I love when shows cross genres anyway, because so many shows can be typecast into a genre and then not reach a huge demographic of people because they could have written it off because of which box it fits in most! In terms of your character, there is very little out there, all we know is that his name is Jackson and that he is queer, which I was very happy about. Can you tell me a bit about them?

What I can say without spoiling anything because it’s in the title, it’s called wedding season. This is a beautiful friendship group who are in their mid to late 20s, they go to a bunch of weddings but they’re all getting to that point in their life where they have to make decisions about relationships, which are getting a bit more serious, as they do.  Things are starting to solidify and questions about longevity of relationships come up and I think Jackson is the one character who is against all of that. He’s a really gorgeous character, I love him. Age is a factor that needs to come into deciding what the next step in your life is and he’s the one in this friendship group that constantly tries to twist the notion that we have to find solutions and we ‘have to’ settle down. We don’t have to do these things just because we’ve reached a certain point in our lives. He’s also super silly. He’s a clown. 

So you must have had a lot of fun playing him then? 

Oh  my gosh, so much fun but also that’s mainly down to the cast.  I remember the first day we met we were filming on a beach and a crew member came up to us and said “oh good, you guys all know each other already!” and I was like, no, I met them five seconds ago. It was brilliant.I have definitely made lifelong friends and I hope that shows. 

That’s so nice to hear, especially as this is Disney+’s first UK production, was that quite daunting for you all? 

It is! it’s so big but it’s very exciting, I think that’s why the blending of genres and the newness of it works so well as their first venture. It’s something that I think people will really enjoy because there’s so many facets to it. You can hang onto so many different things. It’s very exciting. I can’t wait for it to be out.

I can’t wait either, I think audiences are going to love it. You are currently in the incredible cast of Cabaret at The Playhouse Theatre, so you’re getting a great mixture of screen and theatre acting, which do you prefer to do? They’re obviously two completely different crafts. 

I love both. I think that the beauty of being an actor and the luck that I have gotten in this last year is being able to explore both. That doesn’t come along very often and I don’t take it for granted. I hold it very close to my heart because it’s something that I’ve always dreamt of and just to be able to do both is such a dream. They are similar in certain ways; you’re trying to tell the story and you’re trying to tell it with truth, but there are very different feelings on stage. I get such an adrenaline rush on stage, because it’s live and anything can happen. There’s such a different kind of creative part to filming, which is very minimal and close and quite intimate with someone, which you sometimes don’t always get on stage. I really love both. 

I think that you can tell when there’s a stage actor on screen. I don’t know what it is. There’s just something about it where there’s just maybe more nuanced in their interpretation. I think theatre is a great learning curve before you go into screen acting because it really teaches you about moments and silence.  love watching stage actors on screen, it feels like a masterclass in acting. In addition to Cabaret and a Disney plus show, you’re also writing a musical! You really are doing everything! Do you think your acting has informed your writing or do you keep them quite separate? 

They’re all connected, absolutely. I’m still learning so much. Being in Cabaret I’m learning so much from The team who’ve written this in the 60s and it is just so brilliantly written. It’s like a masterclass in art, this is like a masterclass in storytelling. They’ve just cut away all of the fat and get straight to the hearts of these characters. Especially as I’m writing something, I’m so inspired by the way that they structured the story and how clever it is,  especially with the acting being done so right,  and to try to write dialogue which feels natural. They help each other very much.

Cabaret has been a huge success, it must be great to come in to such an acclaimed show. How are you finding it? It’s a very emotionally charged and intense show. Unfortunately, it’s actually quite relevant at the moment. How are you finding going in and telling that story 8 times a week? 

It is, I don’t know if this is the right word to use, but it’s beautiful. It’s such a beautiful experience to be able to tell this story. I remember in rehearsals that I really had to try to figure out a way to do it, because it‘s a tough story to tell and it’s quite emotionally draining. But for a reason. It has to be , it really has to be there and the beauty of that story is that it has that emotional weight. That emotional weight translates to what’s happening exactly right now in the world. It’s not faked. There’s no fiction to that feeling that you end up leaving the theatre with, it’s all real.  I think that’s the beauty of storytelling. During rehearsals and especially in the first few weeks, I had to put my headphones on and just listen to really bad pop music on my way home. 

That sounds really helpful actually, going into that story and telling such an intense story, you need to be able to have ways to snap out of it quite quickly 

Exactly.  That’s really the genius of Rebecca Frecknall, our director, Tom Scott (set and costume design), the design team, and everyone combined, Jordan Fein who is our brilliant associate director and Julia Cheng’s choreography… All of their work combined sets you up in this way that you’re transported to this nightclub and you feel what I’m trying to recreate when I go home and put the music on and you get that feeling and then it goes into a different direction at the end. That’s the genius of this production is that this sinister part of it is so beautifully hidden that when it comes it really hits. The most precious thing as an actor is the end and hearing the silence. A lot of people are leaning forward in their seats and holding their breath and again, it’s the genius of the creative team.

In the show, your character Cliff goes on quite a journey, has he taught you anything unexpected about yourself? 

I was telling you earlier about how I feel about life and things that have happened to me, so much of that aligns with Cliff, to the point where he’s a writer that has come to this new place and I find myself in my life also moving around quite a lot, so that I wasn’t restricted by place. I wanted to really explore this queer side of myself and for that to happen, it’s so stereotypical, but you have to move physically. A lot of people do to explore that. You get into a place and you make up this new version of yourself and I was doing that and I was writing and I was trying to find inspiration everywhere, I really relate to Cliff quite a lot. 

Wedding Season is available on Disney+ globally, Star+ in Latin America and Hulu in the U.S.

Interview Amelia Walker

Photography David Reiss

Grooming Kieron Lavine