Jonathan Bailey makes desire and wonder easy to read, without looking embarrassed by either. We rate his openness and the physical assurance of his musical work; his charm is dependable, but it cannot make an underwritten part satisfying.
Fi1m perspective
In Jurassic World Rebirth (2025), Jonathan Bailey’s palaeontologist Henry Loomis watches long-necked animals moving through a valley. We were moved by how plainly he lets the wonder show. Alexandre Desplat brings in John Williams’s theme softly, and Bailey makes the encounter matter without a speech explaining it. Gareth Edwards gives the dinosaurs time and space, but the scene depends just as much on the man watching them. The people elsewhere in the film are thinly written; here, at least, we can see why one of them came.
Before the international breakthrough of Bridgerton (2020), there was steady work in British television and on stage, including Broadchurch (2013) and Company (2018). As Lord Anthony Bridgerton, he helps make family belonging part of the romantic appeal, alongside Ruth Gemmell’s Lady Violet. We like his willingness to make feeling readable in a programme that wants its attractions understood. It is not coy acting, and coyness would do little for this material. Fellow Travelers (2023) followed, before the move into large-scale musical and adventure films.
In Jon M. Chu’s Wicked (2024), his Fiyero arrives with the charm the role needs, and he has the singing and dancing to justify the attention. Editors Myron Kerstein and James Finlan let the dance numbers hold on whole bodies, a useful choice for an actor whose physical work matters. The musical gives him room to use those skills. Away from the songs, the second hour drags, and his presence does not make the crowded supporting stories move any faster. We recommend it to musical lovers with that fairly substantial reservation.
Wicked: For Good (2025) exposes the limit of relying on his appeal alone. Fiyero is engaged to Ariana Grande’s Glinda and looking past her, which gives Bailey something awkward to play beneath the easy appeal. Bailey keeps Fiyero charming, but the film lets the character lose his footing as it goes on; the writing is at fault, not the actor. We would welcome another musical, provided somebody checks the scenes between the songs.
Biography
Jonathan Stuart Bailey (born 25 April 1988) is an English actor. He began his career as a child performer with the Royal Shakespeare Company and, at the age of eight, played Gavroche in a West End production of Les Misérables.
Bailey has appeared in numerous stage productions, including the 2018 West End revival of Company, for which he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical. On screen he is known for roles in the crime drama Broadchurch (2013–2015), the comedy Crashing (2016), the Regency series Bridgerton (2020–present) as Lord Anthony Bridgerton, and the miniseries Fellow Travelers (2023).
He played Fiyero in the musical fantasy films Wicked (2024) and Wicked: For Good (2025), and Dr. Henry Loomis in Jurassic World Rebirth (2025). His performance in Fellow Travelers earned him a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.
