Ramin Karimloo

If you haven't seen it, you need to watch the 25th anniversary West End performance.

It's available for rent on Prime Video with Sierra Boggess as Christine and Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom.

I'm also literally reading a retelling of it called Our Strange Duet right now, and it's all from Christine's perspective.

It's so good.

But the director, the artistic director came to me and basically said, "Hey, we wanna do a concert version of Chess.

We want you to play Anatoly," this very serious, very like, like a role that I would, that like Josh Groban did it, uh, Ramin Karimloo's done it.

Fucking, um, [smacks lips] Nicholas Christopher just did it in the revival.

None of these people and I share any s- similarities except that we can sing the house down.

You know Roxanne, the tango, the Rox- the, the incredible film, Baz Luhrmann's film, she's the one doing the tango.

And then Ramin Karimloo as, uh, you know- The bad guy ...

the baddie.

Just this powerhouse cast.

And then I get to go to New York and tell them about it, and make these little snippets that are on YouTube.

So- [laughs] Think about that.

We have Ramin Karimloo, he's from Iran.

His family fled Iran when the Shah was removed, uh, because his dad, Ramin's dad was in the military, and so they left, they fled and went to Italy first, and then they landed, uh, for, they went, from there they finally landed in Canada is kind of where the family landed.