Billy Elliot’s Patrick Mulvey Isn’t a Nutcase, He Just Plays Them On Stage

Age & hometown: 26; Joliet, Illinois

Current Role: Making his Broadway debut as Billy’s abrasive big brother Tony in Billy Elliot

Tony-in-Training: When Mulvey joined the Chicago company of Billy Elliot, it was like “letting the dog out of the cage,” jokes the Illinois native, who graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. “In the UK, they’d never cast an American as a Geordie, so I’d been waiting to do a part like this for five years. I lived there from 18 to 23, so I really became a man in Scotland,” he says with a laugh. “The casting notice said, ‘Northern English, young 20s, up for a fight.’ I thought, ‘I know these guys!’” After many auditions, the Billy Elliot team “really took a chance” and gave the classically trained—and at the time, non-Equity—Mulvey his first professional role in a musical.

Boy Meets World: He may have played Americans abroad (his first role out of college was “Liam McNulty, a hot-tempered chef from Chicago” on the BBC drama River City), but at home, it's exactly the opposite. “Since I moved back to America, only one part I’ve played has been American,” he says. “Before Billy, I was playing a Russian poet named Sergei Esenin: I dyed my hair blond, spoke only in Russian and had to learn how to play the mandolin.” Foreign origins aside, his roles have another common denominator. “I seem to play nutcases,” laughs Mulvey, “Which is funny, because I don’t really have a temper at all, seriously. I think it’s because I have so much fun playing someone so unlike me that it shows.”

Family Matters: When Mulvey’s UK visa was running out, a return to Chicago was a natural choice. “My parents are absolutely the reason I am where I am,” he says, remembering how his father encouraged him to attend the prestigious Interlochen Arts Camp. When Billy Elliot took him to Toronto and then New York, Mulvey had to say goodbye to his parents, two sisters and a brand new niece who is “literally perfect,” according to Uncle Patrick. With his real family far away, his Billy Elliot family is standing him in good stead. “[Previous Tony] Will Chase is a class act. He left me a bottle of whiskey in the dressing room, which I get to share with Greg Jbara and Joel Hatch,” he says, “Emily Skinner is next door and Carole Shelley’s next to that. It's amazing—all I have to do is listen and I’m learning!”