Chris Ellis-Stanton on Playing a Hunk and Falling for a Co-Star in London's Legally Blonde

Chris Ellis-Stanton is one of the UK’s most appealing young musical actors, having jumped from understudying and playing Billy Flynn in Chicago on the West End to Billy Crocker on tour in Anything Goes. For the past 18 months, the strapping 29-year-old has been stripping off—well, somewhat—in the West End company of Legally Blonde, playing a trio of roles, including the hunky UPS delivery man, Kyle. (Andy Karl originated the attention-getting part in New York opposite his wife, Orfeh.) The engaging song-and-dance man chatted with Broadway.com one recent evening about the pleasure of a long run, dating his (former) co-star and what it’s like to be male eye candy.

Legally Blonde has just had another cast change, with Carley Stenson taking over as Elle Woods, and you’re continuing in the show. You must be having fun.
Yes, I’m totally the old guard now [laughs]. There are probably nine of us from the original cast, and we’ve got more changes coming up in October. I think I’ll be staying on again, at least for a short while. There are times when I’ve thought, “What have I done?” but when you bring in a fresh cast and new faces, it sort of revitalizes the show: The energy from those people carries you through. So although the show feels so settled to me, it’s still different every night.

Remind us of the various roles you play each night.
Well, there’s Chad the frat boy, but he’s quickly dismissed, and there’s Paulette’s ex-husband Dewey, so I’ve got those two roles in act one. But the main part people recognize me from is Kyle, the delivery boy in the second act. There have been people who’ve said to me, “What do you do in the first act? Do you sit and watch TV?” I guess that’s good, because I try not to make it obvious that I’m the one playing all those roles.

Kyle is the obvious scene-stealer, no?
I think with Kyle you can have a bit of a bum steer with it if you attack the jokes too much. The challenge is to play it endearing and charming and with honesty and sincerity, and people warm to that. It’s nice, too, when Paulette suddenly meets this guy, and the audience wants something to happen between them; you can feel that empathy.

Not to mention a bit of a Chippendales vibe, given the physique required for the role.
You know what? I did go back to the gym quite a bit and get back into training for this; it was a conscious decision to be more athletic. You’ve got to play the honesty of the part, but I think you also have to try and look handsome.

It must be fun to be male eye candy!
It sort of happens with every role—you get placed into a particular stereotype as soon as you walk into an audition room, and you then get judged very quickly by the way you look, at which point the roles are either going to go for or against you. With Legally Blonde, I think the way I look was a tick in the box for this particular role. I mean, I am 6 foot 2 [laughs].

You were part of the ensemble and understudied Billy Flynn in Chicago, another show in which physique matters.
What’s funny is that I was there when Brooke Shields was playing Roxie and I got to do Billy opposite her. She’s very tall, as well, which was great except for the gun number [“We Both Reached for the Gun”] where it’s very hard to be a puppeteer when someone’s almost as tall as you are! [Laughs.]

Were you ever an athlete?
It’s interesting you ask that because when I was younger, living in Weymouth in Dorset, I was really into sports, and dancing was sort of a sideline. I was a swimmer till I was about 14 and did athletics as well—running and stuff like that—and I played football [soccer] for my county. But when I was 17, I ended up in an amateur dramatics concert at the Palladium and I thought, “You know what? I’m going to try and do that.” I had to commit to a decision and I thought, “Right, I’m going to try this,” though when I look back at the naivete I had about the profession, it was just incredible.

Your name sounds as if you ought to be appearing in Oscar Wilde.
That would be nice! In fact, Chris Stanton is my real name, and Ellis is my mum’s maiden name. But there was another Chris Stanton in Spotlight [the bible of British casting] and so when I was thinking of a stage name I wanted to keep as much of the old name as possible—not least for my grandparents, so they could have that pride.

And yet here you are in a quintessentially American show. Have you ever been to Harvard to check out Elle Woods’ chosen milieu for yourself?
I’ve never been to the States at all, if you can believe it, and that is my biggest plan for the new year. People say if you’re going to go and spend the money, you should really invest in a proper trip, which I would love to do. We did get to meet some Harvard students and quiz them, and they were really nice. All my perceptions of what they were going to be like went out the window: I thought they might be a bit geekier or snootier, but they were just adorable people, every one!

I saw you during time off from Legally Blonde, helping out with Jill Halfpenny’s cabaret show at Wilton’s Music Hall in East London. That was a great evening!
Thank you! I’m seeing Jill in a few minutes, so I’ll tell her.

It looked as if you and she are very good friends.
We’re actually going out, which is amazing since we were both in relationships with other people when we started Legally Blonde. [Halfpenny has since left the show.] What happened was that thing where one of you goes on holiday and suddenly you realize you’re thinking about that person, in my case missing her, so we just went from there.

Sounds as if this has been a great job for all sorts of reasons.
The joy of Legally Blonde is that once it starts, you get on that train and it goes—the music is so upbeat, and nothing drags. However tired you feel, as soon as the music starts, it just inspires you.