A year-long tour of the huge-hit musical & Juliet is a remarkable way to make your professional debut.
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Lovely to
00:06speak to Geraldine this afternoon on her professional debut. And goodness, what a professional debut!
00:12You are touring until the middle of next year. You've been on the road for three months already,
00:18touring as Juliet in And Juliet. That's a pretty good way to start, isn't it? You've
00:24only just graduated.
00:26It's quite something. It's definitely a standard to follow, that's for sure. I never imagined
00:34that this, as something on the scale of this, would be my professional debut. So it's quite
00:40a dream, for sure.
00:41Wow. So how many hoops did you have to jump through to get this part?
00:45Well, I did about, I think I did about five rounds.
00:50Really?
00:51Yeah, five rounds of recalls and auditions. So Juliet came into Urdang, where I trained,
01:00and they did a whole year group audition. They did a dance call with all of us and sort
01:05of whittled it down to there.
01:07Wow. And the fact that you are the only one who got it, does that make you very popular
01:12or very unpopular?
01:13Well, it depends how you want to look at it. There's a few, there's four of us from Urdang
01:21in my year that are on this job. So there's a few of us that got it from that call, which
01:27is really, really nice to have people that I knew before.
01:30Oh, that's great. And what makes Anne Juliet, what makes Juliet such a good role? And this
01:38is an alternative ending to Romeo and Juliet, isn't it? A rather happy ending. Why is it
01:43such a good role to do?
01:46So I see Juliet as a heroine for young people, not just young women, but for everyone, really.
01:56There are different characteristics about her that I actually very much aspire to be
02:05and want to have those characteristics. I've actually learned so much about myself playing
02:11Juliet.
02:12Have you? What would you say you've learned? What have you learned there?
02:15So she, to put it plainly, she doesn't, am I allowed to swear?
02:23Yeah, go on.
02:24Okay, all right, just checking. She doesn't take shit. And that for me is something I
02:32really have previously struggled with. But acting like I don't give a shit has now made
02:42me like, feel like I can do that. I can say no to things.
02:48So you are becoming Juliet then, aren't you?
02:51Well, I mean, I hope not too much. But there are definitely different aspects of her as
02:58a character that I think a lot of young people could take away from as well.
03:05Oh, brilliant. And you've got this stretching months ahead. That must be a lovely prospect.
03:10Because as you're saying, since you started, the cast is just bonding more and more.
03:15100%. It's like that on tour as well, because you don't know anyone else in these cities
03:21that you're going to. So you're living together, you're spending every single day together,
03:27you're at work together. So it's inevitable that we're like this, we're interlocked.
03:36Don't get me wrong, sometimes I do want to pull someone's hair out, but
03:40listen, it might be my own hair that I pull out.
03:43Fantastic. Well, by the middle of next year, you're going to, just looking at the list
03:47of places, you're going to have a fabulous knowledge of this country and all the big
03:51cities. But for us, you're playing Mayflower Theatre, St Hampton from November the 5th
03:57to the 9th. It's been lovely to speak to you and congratulations on, well, a fabulous
04:03professional debut. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Thank you.