Zachary Hart: ‘I might be the only UK actor with a forklift truck licence on Spotlight’
The factory worker-turned-actor is going from strength to strength on stage and screen, next appearing as Reg in Stereophonic. He tells Fergus Morgan about his admiration for The Glass Menagerie and his efforts to champion the Black Country accent
Actor Zachary Hart is having a remarkable year. He is currently in rehearsals for the West End premiere of David Adjmi’s Stereophonic, the most Tony award-nominated play of all time, less than a month after he finished performing alongside Cate Blanchett in Thomas Ostermeier’s radical staging of The Seagull at the Barbican, during which his Brummie Medvedenko played an electric guitar and drove a quad bike.
“That was a dream come true,” Hart says. “That quad bike was meant to be a forklift truck, but it was too heavy for the Barbican stage. I’ve got a forklift truck licence from a previous life. I think I might be the only actor in the UK with one on their Spotlight. Thomas saw that and has been trying to get me on stage in one ever since.”
“I knew there would be one hairy moment with that quad bike during the run,” Hart adds. “It came when I was off stage and accidentally reversed into a very, very high flat, which wobbled a lot. Fortunately, someone was there to grab it and straighten it up.”
‘I finished my final day on a Friday in overalls covered in oil, then I was at drama school in a leotard on the Monday’
Hart grew up in the Black Country. He was a promising footballer on the books at Stoke and West Brom, but that career did not work out and he ended up spending six years working in a factory, hence his forklift licence. In his mid-20s, though, his life changed when an ex-partner secretly applied to drama school on his behalf.
“Everything changed overnight,” Hart says. “I finished my final day in the factory on a Friday in overalls covered in oil, then I was at drama school in a leotard on the Monday.”
Hart left ALRA in 2017, but it was not until after Covid that his career took off, with screen roles in Masters of the Air and Slow Horses and in Ostermeier’s West End adaptation of An Enemy of the People – where the director spotted his forklift licence – and in Joe Penhall’s The Constituent at London’s Old Vic. He was there when co-star James Corden delayed the play to watch England beat Switzerland on penalties at Euro 2024.
“We were watching it backstage before the show and I said to James: ‘Please, let’s just go out there and say the show will start late because we are watching the penalties,’” Hart says. “James being James, he walked on and decided to get everybody involved watching it together. Oh my god, it was amazing. That was really special.”
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Related to this article
What production made you fall in love with theatre in the first place?
I never went to the theatre growing up. We had one school trip to the Royal Shakespeare Company to see Antony Sher in The Tempest. The first play I really loved was The Glass Menagerie. I saw the John Tiffany production in London. That was amazing.
What are you finding inspiring at the moment?
I think Rosie Sheehy is unbelievable. I saw Machinal at the Old Vic last year and thought it was incredible.
‘A really confident mouse came on stage. We had to improvise this scene where we tried to get rid of it’
What role do you really want to play?
Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. There are so many parallels between our stories.
What do you wish you could change about the performing arts industry?
I would like to see more opportunities to get involved in theatre in working-class areas. I don’t think the industry truly cares about it. Kids from those areas have something to say. We don’t see enough of them on stage and that breaks my heart a little bit.
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What is the worst thing that has happened to you on stage?
Shubham Saraf and I were in An Enemy of the People last year when a really confident mouse came on stage. We had no choice but to address it and improvise this scene where we tried to get rid of it, then had a nightmare trying to get back on script.
What is the best thing that has happened to you on stage?
Being on stage in The Constituent and hearing Lenny Henry laughing in the audience at my lines in my Black Country accent was amazing. Being on stage in The Seagull and seeing Liz Truss sat next to Margot Robbie was mad, too. I struggled to carry on.
What projects are you involved in at the moment?
I am in Stereophonic in the West End. All the awards make complete sense. I didn’t know anything about it until I printed off the script, which is like the Yellow Pages, and started reading it on the Victoria Line. I didn’t get off until I’d finished it.
It is about a band in 1976 who have had a successful album and an enormous tour and who have been thrown back into the studio to replicate the genius of that first album. There are five band members and two engineers. The audience watches their creative process and all the explosions that involves. And we play all the music live.
I play the bassist, Reg. It is an extremely difficult part. He is always coked up. I don’t stop itching and wriggling for three hours. I’ve been going back and forth about whether or not to use my own broad Black Country accent. You don’t hear it a lot on stage, and I do feel like I am on a bit of a mission to inspire people from the area, if I’m honest.
Stereophonic runs at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London, until October 11. Visit: stereophonicplay.co.uk
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