Rising star-crossed lovers! Noah Jupe & Sadie Sink are the 21st century Romeo & Juliet
In an extremely naturalistic, foliage-framed building adjacent to the winter-shuttered stage of Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, two young stars are approaching the end of a week of rehearsals for Robert Icke’s new Romeo & Juliet. Sadie Sink, 23, is first into the communal kitchen, which is wood-lined, scruffy and not dissimilar to the inside of a tree trunk. ‘It’s like a sauna,’ she offers, in a lilting American accent, her black Prada bag slung on the sofa. Looking at her right now, it’s easy to forget that Sink was recently nominated for a Tony Award; was part of the gravity-shaking Stranger Things franchise; and was even cast in a Taylor Swift video (currently on 111 million YouTube views) – she’s make-up free, wearing baggy trousers and a plain, long-sleeved top, with her signature red hair pulled up in a bun. She heads straight to the tea station, offering around a brew. Tea, yes. Sink, who has been in London since August – filming the top-secret new Spiderman alongside alleged newlyweds Zendaya and Tom Holland – is a convert. ‘It’s impossible to escape, it’s always being offered,’ she shrugs. ‘So I’m like, “OK, fine,”’ she laughs, in a gesture of surrender. But which type? ‘Hmm… well, the one I’ve been on recently is this,’ she says, peering at the box to read out ‘Malty Biscuit Brew’, pronouncing malty like ‘mole-tee’, as she brandishes the yellow-packaged Yorkshire Tea stalwart. ‘Basically, it makes the tea smell nice.'
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Right on cue, Noah Jupe, 21, appears in a brown knitted jumper, bringing with him a strong aroma of cigarettes, having clearly nipped out for a post-rehearsal smoke. He’s fresh from scooping
a Breakout Artist gong at the UK strand of the Newport Beach Film Festival Awards, held the previous evening at Churchill’s Old War Office, now the luxury Raffles London hotel. It was a night that ended at the Four Seasons – a night he only agreed to after being texted a 2pm call time for rehearsals the following day. ‘I’m not on the late nights at the moment,’ he says, somewhat sheepishly, pulling out a chair at the table. ‘But [last night] was just great because in my category there were four of us, and two of the other people were my close, close friends,’ he says with teddy-bear-like warmth, referring to actors Jay Lycurgo and Archie Madekwe. ‘We all got together and had a drink afterwards.’Living
Awards, attention, glitz and glamour? These two former child stars, both making their West End debuts, are in their ascendancy. And that feels like an understatement. To reel off a list of their co-stars would be to rewrite the Hollywood walk of fame. For Sink, there’s Winona Ryder, Brendan Fraser and Helen Mirren, more of which later. And as a child actor, Jupe racked up an enviable list of on-screen parents: Hugh Laurie, Christian Bale, Emily Blunt, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. Most recently, he’s become part of the national discourse thanks to Hamnet, in which he starred alongside Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal and his real-life brother Jacobi Jupe, 12, who played the film’s titular character.
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In many ways, this ‘Shakespeare moment’ has been entirely accidental for both Sink and Jupe. It was Stockton-on-Tees-born Robert Icke, 39, a theatre director celebrated for his modern
reimaginings of classic texts, from Oresteia to Oedipus, who reeled them both in – Sink first, when she met with Icke in London last summer. ‘Rob has such a great way of modernising Shakespeare in a way that just enriches the original text,’ says Sink, who went to see his awards-sweeping Oedipus on Broadway. ‘Before I met him, I wasn’t really interested in doing Shakespeare,’ she says honestly, carefully unwrapping a eucalyptus lozenge and popping it in her mouth. ‘It wasn’t like Juliet was a dream role of mine. But then in re-reading it, but also reading it under the lens of Rob and his vision for it, I felt like this is actually something that I want to do and feel like I need to, right now.’ Jupe nods in agreement. ‘When I first got the audition through, I was like “Romeo and Juliet, again?”’ he winces, in mock disbelief. ‘Everyone’s done it so many times, but then within five minutes of speaking to Rob, I was like, “No, this is going to be completely fresh and new.”’
There was another aspect: ‘The big fear going into it is that you have to be so trained in Shakespeare and there’s a certain right or wrong way of doing it,’ Sink offers. ‘That’s my experience, definitely,’ Jupe agrees. ‘You see it, and it’s all very intellectual and detached and you’re not really connected to it. Through this [Ickean] process, I understand completely what’s going on – and it just goes to show how much knowledge Rob has of what it’s really about.’
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Sadie Sink and Noah Jupe met for the first time at the ‘chemistry reading’. Sink had already been cast; the search was still on for a Romeo. The pair clicked – although Jupe, feigning ignorance, claims: ‘I had no idea who she was, I’d never seen any of her work.’ That would make him one of the few people on Earth. ‘No – it’s pretty hard to not have seen Sadie’s work,’ he grins affectionately, their rapport effortless. ‘We’d never crossed paths,’ says Sink. ‘I’d seen your work from when you were a kid… and then I saw Hamnet.’ Like Jupe, Sink cried watching the film – unlike Jupe, she didn’t have Jacobi laughing, ‘Oh, I made you cry!’ at her during the screening. Now, they crease in hysterics; at one point, a bearded colleague potters into the kitchen, entirely oblivious, singing in a rich baritone as he pops his mug in the dishwasher. Hamnet’s Oscar nominations presented a fleeting dilemma for Jupe, with the awards ceremony falling on the eve of Romeo & Juliet’s opening night. ‘When it came out that we got nominated, there was a small question of “Would you?” and I was like, “No way, no way.” My brother will be there. He’ll be representing the Jupe family – which, honestly, that’s all the people need.’
Jacobi and Noah, who in February appeared together at the Burberry show at Old Billingsgate Market, look nothing alike. Jacobi has blonde hair and fair features while Noah’s hair is dark and curly. This was an issue for Chloé Zhao, Hamnet’s director. ‘“F***, I didn’t really think about this, but you look nothing like your brother,”’ Jupe recalls Zhao saying when she walked into his
make-up trailer. ‘I need you to look more like Jacobi, otherwise this isn’t going to be as effective.’ Which is why, in the film, Jupe appears in Hamlet, the play supposedly inspired by Shakespeare’s dead son, with gold-painted hair. ‘We started talking about Shakespearean-era wigs, straw hats and all.’ Luckily the painting stuck – but it wasn’t the first time Jupe had gone blond, after shaving his head and bleaching it when he went travelling in Thailand years back. A decision he describes as ‘rogue’.
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And, now, of course, Jupe and Sink are living their best London lives. ‘I live in London and I’m never f***ing there,’ Jupe says, chafing at all the location-trotting his career demands. Now, he’ll be staying put for the full run of the play. ‘I now get home every day at the same time, I see my friends…’ he says, the light catching his stud earring – a piercing bought for him by FKA Twigs when he was 13. ‘You can nest – it’s so good,’ Sink adds, able to relate. London-born to a filmmaker father and an actress mother, Jupe lives in south-west London, in a little flat with his housemate. ‘It’s just great,’ he says, ‘[London’s] the perfect balance of social when you need it to be, but also you are allowed to chill.’ He loves The Pelican in Notting Hill and The Fox and Pheasant in Chelsea. ‘Those are probably my two favourite pubs. The food’s amazing, the vibe is amazing.’
‘You been to any pubs?’ Jupe asks Sink. ‘I have but I don’t remember the names,’ she says, civil yet unyielding. And what does she get up to in her free time? ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugs. ‘Recently, it’s just been this, I don’t do anything!’
The lady doth protest too much. Pap shots of the previous weekend show that Sink was reunited with the cast of Stranger Things at co-star Maya Hawke’s New York Valentine’s Day wedding. Here we have two households (Sink and Jupe’s), both alike in dignity, both alike in childhoods but poles apart in openness. Sink says ‘I don’t know’ a total of 23 times throughout the conversation. Get her on her work, she’s fluent, thoughtful and perceptive; on anything else, the barriers go up. She might be bringing back old-school Hollywood mystique.
But she does rave about Barry’s Bootcamp. Jupe asks what it is. ‘It’s a workout class and it’s basically just very intense running. You feel like you’re going to pass out, but you don’t,’ she explains. ‘And then you walk out and you feel amazing.’
Hysteria breaks out when Jupe’s fitness is brought up. ‘Ummm, I walk up and down the stairs?’ he offers. ‘I walk down the stairs to get my Uber Eats and then I walk back up the stairs to eat it,’ he laughs. ‘No, I’m fairly fit. I like boxing and I drive on my F1 simulator,’ he says. For the unacquainted, that’s a high-immersion racing experience which replicates driving an F1 car – low slung, cockpit-style position et al. ‘It has force feedback, which is basically, as I turn it, a force that pushes against my hand,’ Jupe explains. ‘I’ll do it shirtless, because you sweat.’ Jupe is crackers about F1. ‘I’m a maximum nerd about it.’ He’s been to Vegas and Silverstone and is mad-keen on Lando Norris. ‘I had a day off yesterday, and they’re doing testing, which isn’t even racing – it’s like six hours of just people driving in circles. And I watched the whole thing!’
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Sink, who was born in Texas into an American-football-loving family (her father was a coach; she was the ‘musical theatre nerd’), has been in the UK since August 2025. She’s got into tea; she’s au fait with Marmite and she’s planning to have a roast soon – albeit a vegetarian one. And the Royals? They’re a topic Sink’s remarkably well-placed to talk about, given she played the young Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience on Broadway. ‘I got quite the education on the Queen and her prime ministers when I was, like, 13 years old,’ laughs Sink, who performed with Helen Mirren as the adult Queen. (It was the first straight play Sink had done after starring in Annie on Broadway: ‘I wore a wig… but I had redhead energy.’) ‘She [Mirren] is amazing and has kept in touch.’ When the Tony nominations were announced, she sent Sink ‘a very nice message’. ‘Because, the first Tonys I went to, she took me, and it’s such a full-circle moment. She’s definitely one of the greats.’
Of course, fame has its price. Jupe went cold turkey on social media at the start of the year. ‘People try and make you think it does [have an impact on your career] but it doesn’t, and I realised that it was just not healthy.’ He worked out that the time he was spending on social media daily – about two and a half hours – was the length of a film. ‘So if I took it away, I’d get to watch a movie a day. And that’s what I’ve been doing this year so far.’ Sink has an equally delicate relationship with Instagram, where she has close to 32 million followers. ‘I don’t have it on my phone right now,’ she says. ‘I definitely did when I was younger. And then once the show [Stranger Things] happened, it became a very public account,’ she says. ‘It can get so dangerous so fast.’ The rehearsal space is entirely phone-free, so from 10am till 4.30pm, six days a week, Sink and Jupe are offline. ‘It’s nice to step away from it,’ says Sink. She also likes the relentlessness of rehearsals. ‘I love it. I love having somewhere to be.’
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Less than 36 hours after our interview, they had to be somewhere else, gliding down the red carpet at the Baftas, feeding a viral frenzy, to co-present the award for Best Production Design. Sink in mint-green satin Prada and Jupe in Jacquemus, two young stars at the peak of their powers… Two young stars born to play Romeo and Juliet. What light through yonder window breaks?
Romeo & Juliet runs until 20 June at the Harold Pinter Theatre; romeojulietplay.com. This feature is published in the May issue of Tatler, on newsstands 9th April.
