EXCLUSIVE: Arty Froushan, who plays Wilson Fisk’s sinister henchman Buck Cashman in Marvel’s Daredevil: Born Again, will star as serial killer Patrick Bateman in a revamped revival of the musical adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s darkly satirical novel American Psycho.
The show will begin performances at London’s Almeida Theatre from Jan. 22 through March 14, 2026.
Back in 2014, the musical — with a book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, music and lyrics by Duncan Sheik and directed by Rupert Goold — originated at the same Almeida address with Matt Smith (The Crown, House of the Dragan, Doctor Who) playing the impeccably attired investment banker who hides a secret lust for bloodthirsty acts of depravity. (Benjamin Walker also starred in a short-lived production on Broadway in 2016.)
Aside from Froushan’s portrayal of playwright and celebrated raconteur Nöel Coward in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, the actor feels like he’s made a career out of playing “psychopaths, basically,” he says.
“Sympathetic, twisted characters, so in some senses, this role feels, it’s scary to say, a natural fit,” he adds with a twinkle in his eye. “In Daredevil: Born Again, I’ve been playing essentially an assassin who’s mildly sociopathic. In Carnival Row, I played a sort of entitled, very vengeful, young aristocrat.”
(L-R) Buck Cashman (Arty Froushan) and Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini) in Marvel’s Daredevil: Born Again on Disney+. (Courtesy of Marvel)
Froushan notes that in the stage version of Alan Hollinghurst’s 2004 prize-winning book The Line of Beauty, set in Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s Britain and which ended a limited run at the Almeida this past Saturday, he played a character who, while not a psychopath, is “a very intense and tortured man…”
The performer looks the antithesis of “tortured” when we meet; he’s charming, outgoing and has a sunny disposition.
He feels slightly bewildered to find himself preparing for a musical although, as he says, “it’s not my first rodeo,” having sung in college productions of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins and West Side Story whilst studying at the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art.
“I can hold a tune,” he assures. “Clearly, I think Rupert [Goold] obviously wanted to make sure I could do that. I’m definitely an actor who can sing rather than a singer.”
Arty Froushan in the Almeida Theatre’s auditorium. (Photo by Marc Brenner)
When he first taped an audition for the Bateman role in June, he sang a snippet from Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World.” He was finishing Season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again on the East Coast and then whizzed up to Montreal to shoot Amazon MGM’s romantic comedy The Love Hypothesis for director Claire Scanlon opposite Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman.
By the time Froushan met up with Goold (who’s in his final season as artistic director of the Almeida before he goes off to run the London’s famous Old Vic Theatre) again, he was preparing for The Line of Beauty directed by Michael Grandage.
Froushan says Goold joked that the actor will “never escape the ’80s,” because both plays are firmly ensconced in that decade.
I remember Froushan from Tom Stoppard’s heartbreaking masterpiece Leopoldstadt, in which he performed in both the West End and Broadway productions. That was a really special show for him, one that he spent close to two years involved with. “It was quite an invigorating and enriching experience,” he says.
Froushan feels like he’s “native to the stage; I grew up doing plays. Films and TV [have] always been a bit of a riddle to me, and it’s something I’m chasing. There’s an elusiveness about screen acting, which I’m trying to investigate and, I guess, master, but I know where I stand on stage … And if I spend too long away from the stage, I feel like I lose a sense of what I am about as an actor.” Froushan has been taking singing and dancing classes ahead of rehearsals for American Psycho.
He was born in Connecticut, where his Iranian father, an engineer, had a job designing cooling systems for a nuclear power plant. His parents moved to London when he was a 2-year old nipper. He grew up in Southfields, next door to Wimbledon, where he sang in choirs and, in his mid teens, played in a local band.
But, until recently, at any rate, singing was not on his “calling card” until he had to “dust off the pipes” for his portrait of Coward in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.
Arty Froushan as Nöel Coward in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. (Courtesy of Focus Features)
“But that was singing as a very particular character,” he argues. “With Patrick Bateman there’s a sort of pop sensibility to it, but also it’s telling story through song, song as monologue, which is an interesting challenge for me,” he adds, chuckling nervously.
Goold and his collaborators are using the template of the original 2014 production of American Psycho, but they’ve made some necessary tweaks, such as the addition of a new original number; choreographer Lynne Page is also remapping her choreography due to a decision to perform the revival on a thrust stage, and there are other additions and revisions. “I feel like I’m stepping into something that has its own identity,” Froushan says.
Living in NYC for Leopoldstadt and amid shooting the two seasons of Daredevil: Born Again over at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City has given him a sense of life in Manhattan because, as he observes, “New York is like a protagonist in the story of American Psycho.”
He reasons that Manhattan “is this very vivid environment and sort of social context. And having lived in Midtown, seen all these Wall Street boys riding the yellow cabs downtown and in all the bars — it has helped a lot, I have to say, in slipping into the skin of Patrick [Bateman]. And I have an American partner and she’s a good accent coach and cultural guru for me.”
Froushan reveals that his character has “a proper arc” in Season 2 of Daredevil: Born Again. “In the first season I’m sort of a lurking figure with a suit and a mysterious look in my eye … It’ll be nice to get some action in the new series,” due out on Disney+ next year.
At Oxford University, he studied French and German, but also took advantage of the extensive theater facilities. He debuted in a production of Laura Wade’s play Posh, which is set in an Oxford University dining club modeled after the infamous Bullingdon Club of which former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was once a member.
It was, he recalls, “a fitting and quite a fiery baptism” due to a bunch of real-life Bullingdon boys attending a performance and then departing somewhat abruptly at the interval.
“They left just when the play turns because it then reveals the ugly side of these despicable characters. But they left before they saw themselves reflected,” he says, shaking his head.
The producer Thelma Holt sent him off with an ensemble to perform The Comedy of Errors in Japan. His twin in that production was the great actor David Shields (whom I saluted in a recent column on his performance in James Graham‘s play Punch).
Froushan later returned to Japan in an international and U.K. touring production of Romeo & Juliet with a company that included Emma D’Arcy (House of the Dragon).
Next, Froushan heads straight into rehearsals for American Psycho. He’s also involved in the Blumhouse movie Soulm8te, set in the M3GAN universe “in which I’m playing a character which I won’t describe in any detail … but he’s a tricky character,” is all he would disclose.
His part in The Love Hypothehis, based on Ali Hazelwood’s BookTok-viral novel, is that of Dr. Tom Benton, an associate professor at Harvard “and again there is a common theme with my characters,” he says with a grin that suggests this doctor is not at all the kind of a decent chap a young woman would take home to meet her mother.
Casting directors, he jokes, just look at him and decide he’s the bloke to play these characters.
“I’m really just a guy,” he protests. “It is interesting how the industry decides how to cast you,” he muses.
But Froushan has the chops to play any role, including those outside the usual psychopathic territory he’s placed in.
Arty Froushan rehearsing The Line of Beauty. (Photo by Johan Persson)
Still, Bateman is a literary character that fits the bill for our times, especially, sad to say, in the United States, and even here in Blighty.
Nodding in agreement, Froushan remarks that American Psycho “makes a brilliant, very biting commentary, obviously on materialism and capitalism, which it always did. It’s always been relevant, but this notion … of truth and objective truth and the kind of inability to agree on what that is now in this post-truth society and with all the sort of skepticism of experts — these seeds have been sown by Trump. And I think Patrick [Bateman] is really wrestling with the question of: What is reality and what is real and what matters? That’s maybe where it’s become a bit more relevant in that sense.”
It’s a great role to land. Appearing hopeful, Froushan states: “It’s such a blend of comedy and satire and drama and horror and erotica and Greek tragedy and a bit of philosophy thrown in. It’s such an amazing cocktail of a show. I can’t wait to peel away the layers.”
In addition to Froushan, the cast includes Emily Barber, Daniel Bravo, Jack Butterworth, Hannah Yun Chamberlain, Oli Higginson, Kim Ismay, Alex James-Hatton, Liz Kamille, Anastasia Martin, Millie Mayhew, Posi Morakinyo, Joseph Mydell, Asha Parker-Wallace, Tanisha Spring, Samuel J. Weir and Zheng Xi Yong.
The creative heads are: Es Devlin as set designer; Katrina Lindsay as costume designer; Jon Clark as lighting designer; Dan Moses Schreier as sound designer; Finn Ross as video designer; David Shrubsole as music supervisor; Ellen Campbell as musical director; and Natalie Gallacher as casting director for Pippa Ailion and Natalie Gallacher Casting.
