THE PERSON THEY THOUGHT I WAS

The hardest part of musical theatre for me was never the stage.

It was everything around it.

For years, I genuinely believed there was something fundamentally wrong with me because I didn’t behave like most actors.

Most people who know me now can’t believe I was ever in major West End productions.

Because I’m quiet.

Not shy exactly.
Not socially incapable.
Just quiet.

I’m not the person organising huge nights out. I’m not naturally loud or constantly performing socially for attention. I don’t walk into a dressing room and immediately become the centre of it.

And in theatre companies, especially large long-running ones, that can become a problem very quickly.

Because theatre doesn’t just reward performers.

It often rewards personalities.

There’s an unspoken hierarchy in companies. The funny ones. The loud ones. The quick-witted ones. The naturally theatrical extroverts who can walk into a room and instantly create energy around themselves.

And then there are people like me.

People who observe first.

People who listen before they speak.

People who take time to trust.

That was me.

Whenever I joined a company, I absolutely made an effort. I would go out, mingle, try to let people get to know me.

But in bigger groups I naturally became more reserved. More observant.

And once people notice that in theatre, they start attaching meanings to it very quickly.

If you’re quiet, you’re moody.

If you don’t instantly join in, you’re unfriendly.

If you’re not socially “on” all the time, people think there must be something wrong with you.

And what nobody really talks about is how quickly theatre companies can quietly decide who you are without ever actually knowing you.

I think part of the reason I became guarded was because I learnt very early on that some people in theatre are not trying to know you when they first meet you.

They’re assessing you.

Working out where you fit.

Whether you belong in the clique.

Whether you’re socially useful to them.

And if you open up too quickly to the wrong person, suddenly deeply personal things about yourself start travelling around a company through whispers and half-jokes before you’ve even realised you trusted the wrong person.

So over time I became more careful.

More reserved.

I could be sarcastic sometimes, hopefully funny. I’ve always had a good sense of humour, but if people decide early on that you’re “not fun,” they never really give you the chance to show another side of yourself.

Eventually you just stop trying.

What I found exhausting was the fakery of some of it.

Not everyone. There were lovely people too.

But there’s a type of theatrical behaviour that always made me deeply uncomfortable.

You’d come back after a day off and someone would ask:

“How was your weekend?”

And you knew they didn’t really want the truth.

Because nobody was going to say:

“Honestly? It was awful. I barely slept, argued with my partner and spent most of Sunday convinced people at work hated me.”

You were expected to say:

“Yeah, lovely thanks.”

Then listen to twenty minutes about somebody else’s fabulous weekend while feeling completely disconnected from the room.

Or the corridor smile.

That fake theatrical smile.

“Hiya… you alright?”

Then gone.

No warmth behind it. No sincerity. Just social theatre.

And the thing is — you know when somebody genuinely likes you.

You feel it.

And you also know when they don’t.

Nobody has to openly bully you for you to feel isolated.

Sometimes the silence does all the work.

I remember walking into stage door in one particular show and instantly feeling something was off.

The stage door keeper clearly didn’t like me. I can’t explain it properly. Just the look. The coldness. Like I was an inconvenience before I’d even spoken.

What I didn’t know at the time was that the actor I was replacing had died.

Nobody told me.

Not management.
Not the company.
Not my agent.

Nothing.

So I walked into that theatre genuinely excited to be joining another West End production, completely unaware that emotionally I was stepping into a company that was grieving somebody they loved.

And honestly, I think I was doomed from the start there.

Not because I wasn’t capable of doing the job.

But because emotionally, nobody wanted another person standing where he had stood yet.

And instead of preparing me for that, I was just sent in blind.

So every day became psychologically exhausting.

You’d walk through the building, up winding staircases to the dressing rooms, passing people on different floors.

Some would give half a smile.

Some would say hello.

Others would look straight through you.

Nothing openly cruel was ever said.

That’s the important part.

Nothing.

But the silence was the killer.

Because thirty seconds later you’d hear those same people laughing and joking with someone else further down the staircase.

And because I didn’t understand anxiety properly back then, my brain obsessed over everything.

Every look.

Every silence.

Every tiny shift in somebody’s tone.

Every half-smile.

I was constantly analysing whether people liked me, tolerated me or wanted me gone.

The irony is that once I stepped onto the stage, most of it disappeared.

Focused.
Confident.
Reliable.

That’s what people find hard to understand about performers like me.

The stage was the easy part.

The dressing room was harder.

Especially because I knew I didn’t fit the expected mould.

Most companies were filled with naturally theatrical extroverts in one way or another. Some genuinely lovely. Some hilarious. Some completely real underneath all the noise.

But many had learnt how to socially perform in company life too.

I never could.

I’m very much:

take me as you find me.

I can be professional. Polite. Friendly.

But I cannot do the fake luvvy-darling act. It makes my skin crawl.

And because I didn’t perform socially in the same way, I think some people genuinely couldn’t understand how I’d ended up there at all.

“How did he get the job?”

I got the job because I was talented.

Because I could act.

Because I had a very good baritone voice.

Because when it came to the actual work, I delivered.

But offstage, I was just… normal.

Quiet.

Thoughtful.

And apparently for some people, that was disappointing.

Over time I became “the grumpy one.”

Partly because I do naturally have what people call a resting grumpy face. Heavy forehead lines, deep lines between my eyebrows… when I relax, I look serious.

I can’t help my face.

But gradually people started attaching personality traits to an expression.

Moody.

Boring.

Not fun.

Unfriendly.

And eventually those ideas solidify into a company version of you.

The person they think you are.

Not the person you actually are.

And the worst moment of all came during a Secret Santa.

One of the principals hosted it in his dressing room between shows on a two-show day. The whole cast packed in there. People on sofas, people on the floor, everyone opening presents one by one while the room watched.

Most gifts were thoughtful.

Funny in a warm way.

Then my name got called.

And I opened a cheap chrome cake slice because I played a cake slice in the show.

And a Mr Grumpy badge.

That was it.

And in that moment, I honestly felt humiliated.

Not because the gifts were cheap.

Because it confirmed every fear I already carried about how I was viewed.

It felt like the whole room had just been handed a public definition of me.

“This is who Richard is.”

And the horrible thing was I had to sit there smiling while feeling myself collapsing internally.

Because there was absolutely no way I was giving anyone the satisfaction of seeing me break in that room.

So I smiled.

Laughed weakly.

Took it on the chin.

Then went home devastated.

Crying my eyes out thinking:

“Why do they hate me so much? I’ve never done anything to them.”

And years later, I still think about that moment.

Not because of the badge.

Not because of the cake slice.

But because it represented something much bigger.

The person they thought I was never truly existed.

It was a version built from assumptions, silence, awkwardness, anxiety and shallow conclusions made by people who never genuinely tried to understand me.

And if I had understood anxiety back then the way I do now, I genuinely believe things would have been different.

Not perfect.

Not magically fixed.

But different.

I would have understood why certain social situations overwhelmed me so deeply.

Why silence affected me the way it did.

Why I withdrew when I felt emotionally unsafe.

Why my brain spiralled after tiny moments most people would probably forget within minutes.

And I probably would have communicated better too.

Because I accept something now that I couldn’t see at the time:

People could sense something wasn’t right with me.

They just completely misunderstood what it was.

And because I didn’t understand it either, I wasn’t able to help them understand me.

That doesn’t excuse the cruelty.

It doesn’t excuse people quietly ostracising someone they barely knew.

But it does explain why I spent so many years trapped inside a version of myself that was never really me at all.

 

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