The Feeling’s Dan Gillespie Sells wants to bring Everybody’s Talking About Jamie to schools: ‘We’d never seen a young gay, effeminate boy the hero’
metro.co.ukEverybody’s Talking About Jamie has successfully taken over the West End and beyond – and now one of its creators wants to see the production being retold in schools.The Feeling singer Dan Gillespie Sells wrote and composed the music for the hit show, which was created by Tom MacRae and is based upon the true-life story of 16-year-old schoolboy Jamie Campbell, as he overcomes prejudice and bullying to step out of the darkness and become a drag queen.
It has even been turned into a movie, keeping Dan very busy amid The Feeling’s hiatus, which began in 2016 and came to an end recently with the release of their new album Loss Hope Love.
Reflecting on Jamie’s popularity on the theatre boards, Dan told Metro.co.uk: ‘We’ve just been trying to keep up with its success, it’s kept us all so busy and we’ve loved it and are trying to look after the story and trying to make sure it doesn’t get pulled out of shape by producers, especially when there’s big executives from movie companies getting involved, you’re like, we need to look after this story because I don’t want it to become something it isn’t. ‘That’s our main job with Jamie is to look after him.’ Dan revealed that he, and other members of The Feeling who also contributed music, were drawn to Jamie’s story because they could ‘see ourselves in it’. ‘We’re three guys who went to regular state schools, come from working class backgrounds and basically were big dreamers at school,’ he explained. ‘We recognise ourselves in this character and could make him into our hero, which we’d never seen on-screen or stage before. ‘We’d never seen a young gay, really effeminate boy who was actually the hero of the story, so that was what drew us to making it.
