From music to medicine and back again! Casualty star Lee Mead talks to What’s on TV about his new album and his plans for the future…
These days Lee Mead’s a familiar sight on BBC1’s medical drama Casualty. But his musical background is returning the foreground with the release of his new album, Some Enchanted Evening.
In our video above, with special highlights from the album, he explains what fans can expect: “I wanted to do a collection of songs from that film era – films like Singing In the Rain, Guys and Dolls, South Pacific.
“When I was younger I watched these films growing up on a Sunday afternoon. I clearly remember being on my belly, after a roast dinner, with my brother and we’d sit for hours and watch these classic films.”
Lee also tells us there’s no shortage of classic tracks from this iconic film era on Some Enchanted Evening such as: “Foggy Day in London Town, Almost like Being In Love, By Myself – a great ballad by Judy Garland, that I enjoy singing, I’ll See You I My Dreams, title track Some Enchanted Evening, Where or When, and Feeling Good.
“It’s been nice, I’ve had the chance to sing these live already and now I’m going to do a full tour of the album in October.”
Not only does West End star Lee sing classic songs, he’s no stranger to writing his own tunes and has an exciting project lined up with Wet Wet Wet’s Marti Pellow! Lee reveals:
“I do write my own music. I haven’t written my own songs for a while… thinking ahead for my next album, after this one, I’m thinking of doing original songs. And Marti Pellow, who I’ve been doing panto with recently, has agreed to do some writing with me. He’s a great songwriter and a massive success with Wet Wet Wet. I’m going to go see him in concert in Glasgow… we got really close [working on Aladdin] and I’d like to do more writing again.”
We also questioned him about rumours he and Casualty co-star Amanda Henderson do a LOT of singing on the set of BBC1’s long-running medical drama…
Lee laughs: “We are always singing! I just sing on my own sometimes, quite randomly. You have to remember the days on set are quite long… so [you’re] walking the corridors, always singing a little song and trying to rope people into doing a duet!”
