Max Harwood on Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, streaming now on Amazon Prime Video

Inspired by true events, and set in a working-class English town, there’s now a new film based on the award-winning West

End show which follows Jamie New, played by newcomer Max Harwood. The teenage boy has a hidden dream: to be on the stage as a fierce and proud drag queen. “I remember watching the West End show initially and seeing a queer, effeminate person as the lead role in the centre of the story, not being victimised and not dying at the end of the first act, and

I was like, ‘Wow, this is a story that’s centred on a queer person winning!’” recalls 24-year-old Harwood, who grew up in Basingstoke. “It felt like something that I hadn’t seen a lot of. And being gay myself, this is a story that I want to tell.” While Everybody’s Talking About Jamie has plenty of upbeat moments – catchy songs, a heartwarming dynamic between the youngster and his mum, Margaret (Sarah Lancashire), and a funny, tender friendship with classmate Pritti (Lauren Patel) – Harwood notes the film does “touch on some incredibly potent topics”. “This film has been a huge part of that process of me discovering who I am. I grew up with not a lot of queer representation and queer people in my hometown, so when I moved to London and started working on this project and got to work with three queer creatives, and work and meet so many more people, my universe expanded, because I was seeing and interacting with people that had lived experiences as queer people.”

He continues: “I’m so grateful to my team, who have not made me dampen my queerness. It’s been celebrated in this film in a way that’s not being like, ‘Oh, aren’t you worried you’re going to get typecast?’, which is usually a question people ask people who play roles like this in the past – but I feel like I’m so much more than my sexuality.”