Jimmy Nail is currently preparing to reprise his part as Jackie White in the Newcastle-set musical, which premiered on Broadway in 2015 and closed after only three months.
With Tim Healy, Nail created the Sammy Johnson Memorial Fund, in memory of their friend and colleagues, established to help young talent in North East England. T
o aid this, he participated in the Sunday for Sammy benefit concerts, until workload forced him to resign from the board. It has recently relocated from the 2000-capacity Newcastle City Hall to the 5000-capacity Newcastle Arena and Nail made a special guest appearance, his first appearance since 2006. he sang Ain’t No Doubt, Big River and also appeared in three Auf Wiedersehen Pet sketches.
The actor was sacked at the last moment, when he was set to star in the musical The Last Ship. When the show premiered in March, Joe McGann was supposed to play the sacked actor.
Joe McGann will replace him when the show opens in Newcastle in March.
“I was very much looking forward to appearing in Sting’s The Last Ship, particularly here in my home city,” Nail said. “Sadly that’s not to be.”
Richard Fleeshman, Frances McNamee and Emmerdale’s Charlie Hardwick will play other lead roles in the show, which has its UK premiere at Northern Stage on 12 March.
The show’s producer Karl Sydow said: “After protracted negotiations carried out in good faith, we regret to announce the production’s offer of employment to Jimmy Nail has been withdrawn.
In 2014, Nail used to portray Lenord Osborne. The show directed by Sting was not drawing as many people as expected, so they sought to preserve it by substituting him with Sting himself.
The story revolved around a group of jobless shipbuilders who banded together to complete one final ship. Jimmy was the ideal candidate for the job because of his background as an English actor.
The Last Ship was written by Sting as a tribute to the shipbuilding industry in his hometown of Wallsend.