'Cabaret' says "Willkommen" to Matt Willis

Busted bassist and co-vocalist Matt Willis talks about transforming into the shapeshifting Emcee in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club.

Summary

• Busted frontman Matt Willis is stepping into the shoes of the Emcee in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
• He stars opposite Katie Hall as Sally Bowles
• Willis has several West End credits including Wicked and Flashdance

Matt Willis was touring with Busted when his two worlds collided and he got the call about auditioning for Cabaret in the West End. After a quick gig in Newcastle alongside McFly’s Tom Fletcher (who is also Paddington The Musical’s composer/lyricist), Willis travelled to London for his audition the next day. Only hours later, the musician and actor returned to the tour in Sheffield.

Having booked the job, Willis is now in the midst of an intensive two-week rehearsal period and likens the experience to a “bootcamp”. During a rare break between rehearsals and a costume fitting, he reflects on the whirlwind audition process from a plush room deep in the bowels of the Kit Kat Club at the Playhouse Theatre. He recalls thinking: “It’s time to throw yourself in the deep end and play the role in the West End.” The part in question, of course, is the Emcee: the sinister, shapeshifting master of ceremonies, who watches over the inhabitants of Berlin’s infamous Kit Kat Club during the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.

Rebecca Frecknall’s production of Kander and Ebb’s masterpiece musical has been running in London for five years, and a succession of high-profile actors have played Sally Bowles (Les Misérables’ Katie Hall is up next) and the Emcee, including Eddie Redmayne, Jake Shears, Mason Alexander Park, Layton Williams, Billy Porter, and most recently Broadway star Reeve Carney. Willis admits there is a certain pressure as he follows in their footsteps, not least because he counts himself a huge fan of the show and wants to do the role justice.

After seeing Redmayne’s performance in 2021, Willis became obsessed with the cast recording for the next year — “I was listening to either that or Hamilton”. For those who know the performer for his 26-year history with the pop-punk band Busted, this may come as a surprise: “People ask me in interviews all the time, ‘what’s your favourite album?’ expecting me to say a punk band. Hamilton is the best album ever made.”

A self-confessed theatre kid, Willis started his musical journey at 15 on a two-year scholarship to Sylvia Young Theatre School. “I went from what I thought was a normal school, with fighting in the corridors, to people singing Les Misérables and pirouetting,” he says. Alongside auditioning for Guildford School of Acting, Willis was signed to Busted. He thought that he could always return to school, but admits that he followed the band route for longer than he expected, and has since won two Brit Awards, released four studio albums, and toured eight times. “It was a happy accident and the gift that keeps on giving. I think of Busted as my side project,” he quips. “When I’m not [performing with the band], I’m an unemployed actor.”

Despite now having an extensive list of musical theatre credits to his name, including Flashdance (his West End debut in 2010), Footloose, Wicked, Little Shop of Horrors, and Waitress, as well as TV gigs like Love is Blind UK (presented with his wife Emma), Willis says it is his time with the band that has best prepared him to play the Emcee in the intimate, in-the-round Kit Kat Club. “There’s an interaction with the audience, which is unlike any other show I’ve ever done. In [my previous] musicals, you are addressing them, but you never really break the fourth wall. In this, they’re in the club with me. I’m taking a little bit of that stage presence from within the band,” he says.

And that’s not all he’s taking. Sally and the Emcee both have eye-popping, extravagant make-up in the show, and each new performer puts their own stamp on that ‘look’. For Willis’s Emcee, he plans to make the character “a bit more grungy, a bit more messy”, yet he can’t wait to put on a pair of false eyelashes. Willis is also excited to be wearing designer-of-the-moment Tom Scutt’s costumes, having previously worn his creations during Little Shop of Horrors. The designer, who joins the team for the highly anticipated Jonathan Bailey and Ariana Grande Sunday in the Park with George in 2027, is praised by Willis for his “mesmerising” style of costumes, which for his character include alter egos like a Nazi youth, a terrifying clown, and a skeleton with talons.

The costumes are emblematic of the many sides to this slippery character, who can be hard to capture in words. Interestingly Willis, who has been admirably open about his past struggles with substance abuse, thinks of the Emcee as an “addict”. He continues: “Everything about him is about holding on to power, [and he’s thinking] ‘how do I hold on to power in a world that is changing?’ I don’t think anyone thinks that they’re a baddie. No one thinks they’re evil, but [he is] doing something that we know is so integrally evil. So how do you play that and make it human? And that’s what I found quite challenging — to not make him just a stereotypical baddie.”

Willis is particularly excited to perform the show’s opening number “Willkommen”, in which the Emcee welcomes the audience to the Kit Kat Club, dressed in long, leather shorts, a string vest, and a party hat, perched slightly askew. “It lulls them into this false sense of security and then, bang, here’s this unbelievable, harrowing story.” As political tensions between warring countries continue to make headlines around the world, he notes that the musical’s modern-day relevance is hard to miss, believing “if the show was written now it would make perfect sense. If you want to know about human behaviour, just look through history.”

In such an intense show, I ask how Willis plans to decompress when he leaves the stage. “My kids get up early and I like to see them in the morning, so when I get home I try to go to bed, which is sometimes impossible! I’m going to try to find some happiness and joy on my way home, watching a TV series.” Love is Blind, perhaps? “That might be a bit too much,” he says, laughing.

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Photo credit: Matt Willis in Cabaret. (Photo by Marc Brenner). Inset: in Cabaret, Little Shop of Horrors, Waitress. (Photos by Marc Brenner, Johan Persson)

This article first appeared in the February 2026 issue of London Theatre Magazine.