Sean Hayes: ‘I loved Will & Grace but even when I was in it, I was like, OK, what’s the plan to get out of this?’

Sean Hayes on his Tony-winning turn: ‘Nobody would have ever cast me in this role’ - (Luke Fontana)

Within seconds of meeting Sean Hayes, I realise I’ve fallen prey to a classic trap. The actor is known for playing Jack, the gloriously camp best friend in the hit sitcom Will & Grace: a spritely Peter Pan figure so melodramatic that he gets into a Cher-off with the real Cher and wins. One of the most memorable comic creations of the Noughties, Jack is hard to shake. And so, when Hayes walks – not bounds, not skips, not somersaults – into the dimly lit bar of the Barbican, it takes a minute for me to recalibrate my expectations.

I’m not the only one. Audiences are having to rethink their perception of the actor, now 55, in light of his Tony-winning turn on Broadway as the troubled pianist-raconteur Oscar Levant, who died in 1972. Three years after its American debut, Good Night, Oscar is transferring to London with Hayes stepping back behind the keys and into Levant’s shiny black wingtips. That one-year break was necessary: “They had asked me about transferring towards the end of the New York run,” he recalls, reclining in his chair. “They said, ‘Do you want to go to London?’” He raises his eyebrows past his thick black frames. “And I said, ‘No, I want to go to bed.’”