Jack Davenport: 'We're not the new Glee'

Jack Davenport: 'We're not the new Glee'
Jack Davenport: 'We're not the new Glee' (Image credit: PA)

Jack Davenport has insisted his new musical show Smash is nothing like Glee, apart from some singing. The This Life actor - who plays a British director in the US series about the staging of a musical about Marilyn Monroe - said it was a lazy comparison to make. Jack said: "I've never really seen much of Glee. Here's the thing - there's one other show on television that has some singing in it, so we got compared to it. Whereas if it was a cop show I don't know how much it would have. "Until Glee came along there hadn't really been a successful show with a musical element, but theirs is set in a high school, theirs is about high school, ours is not, it's about Broadway. "So yes we both have singing so that's kind of it." The British actor said his character was certainly not the hero of the show. He said: "I'm a mildly sociopathic English director of musical theatre who... you wouldn't take him home to meet you mother, let's put it that way." And Jack admitted he had taken some inspiration from directors he had worked with. He said: "There might be little bits of people I've worked with, but it's not a direct lift from one person or I'd be in court!"

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.