He acts, sings, dances – and calls out racial profiling: why everybody’s talking about Layton Williams

As a child, he was chosen from 4,000 hopefuls to play Billy Elliot on stage. Now he’s starring in a musical about a young drag queen and using his profile to challenge homophobia

‘I’ve not been in here before,” says Layton Williams as he steps into an upstairs bar at the Apollo theatre in the London’s West End, where he is about to star in the hit musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Our interview is ready to start but he is busy craning his neck to look out of the window to see the exact spot where his likeness will appear on the theatre’s billboard overlooking Shaftesbury Avenue. “Oh, that’s going to be my face,” he says. “Wild.”

When you speak to Williams, everything is larger than life, from the 20ft picture of him that’s going to adorn the Apollo to his mile-a-minute storytelling and RuPaul-like lexicon (“wild” and “iconic” feature regularly during our hour-long chat). He is part mixed-race Bury lad with an accent that has barely softened after a decade in London, part West End showman who slips into lingo you would expect to hear while watching Paris Is Burning. He is extravagant, ebullient and infectiously enthusiastic.

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2RIRmd9

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