“It was electric. It was like a rock concert,” Ryan McCartan says of Eva Noblezada’s last performance as Daisy in The Great Gatsby on Broadway. It’s the next day, and McCartan, who recently took over from costar Jeremy Jordan playing Jay Gatsby, chats with Broadway Direct from his Jersey City, New Jersey, apartment over Zoom all about the exhilarated audience.
“It was an audience of absolute superfans who have been on this journey almost as long as Eva has,” he says, noting the fandom for the novel-turned-musical. It’s based on the literary classic by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which is celebrating its centennial. “A show that runs with such a beloved original cast that people want to come back for over and over and over again and catch all of these special moments … It was so cool.”
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Notably replacing Noblezada is TV star Sarah Hyland, who began performances alongside McCartan on February 10. Her role as Haley Dunphy on Modern Family from 2009 to 2020 defined her career, though early fans remember she got her big break playing Molly, an orphan on ABC’s TV version of Annie in 1999.
“I’ve seen a couple of people online be like, ‘Oh my gosh, her Broadway debut!’ No, that happened many, many, many, many years ago,” McCartan is quick to point out. [She was on Broadway in Grey Gardens as a child.] He didn’t know Hyland would be his costar until a couple of weeks into the rehearsal process. “She’s exquisite on the stage and off the stage. I’m so excited about the work that we’re doing together.”
The green light, so to speak, on getting to play the leading man on Broadway switched on when McCartan was a teenager at the coveted Jimmy Awards, otherwise known as the National High School Musical Theatre Awards. McCartan won the top prize in 2011 following his performance of “Someone to Fall Back On” by Jason Robert Brown.
Looking back at that moment, McCartan recalls being swept away in the excitement of it all.
“I was shot out of a cannon. I was so scared. It was so big, I was sort of a golden retriever. I mean, I still am,” he recalls of getting through the robust week full of master classes and Broadway boot camp that ends with a performance on the stage of the Minskoff Theatre. For most of it, he thought about staying out of the spotlight, even going so far as picking others out of the group he thought would win. “I had absolutely no belief I was going to go all the way. I was planning on going to school, studying English, and being an English teacher.”
He studied at the University of Minnesota for a semester before dropping out and moving to Los Angeles. A year later, in 2013, came his big break: Diggie on Disney Channel’s Liv and Maddie opposite Dove Cameron. Next came his Off-Broadway debut in the original Off-Broadway cast of Heathers: The Musical, as Jason “J.D.” Dean. In 2016, McCartan starred as Brad Majors in the 2016 Fox musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again. McCartan made his Broadway debut as Fiyero in the 15th anniversary cast of Wicked opposite Jessica Vosk, followed by Hans in Frozen alongside another Jimmy Award participant, Mackenzie Kurtz. It only lasted three weeks before the COVID-19 shutdown in March 2020.
In 2024, when McCartan was presented with the role of Jay Gatsby, contingent on a face-to-face meeting, he initially thought they were joking.
“I don’t want to trivialize anything that I’ve done up until this point, because I’m really proud of the work that I’ve done. I have been in this business for 23 years, and I’m 31, so I started when I was 8. I have always been the youngest in the room, so I’m so used to being deferential to the grown-ups. Jay Gatsby is such an adult role and Jeremy Jordan is such a seasoned performer. I had internalized this thing about myself that I’m still this 8-year-old boy from Minneapolis. I’m not Jay Gatsby, I’m just Ryan. I’m not this echelon.”
In preparing for the role of a 1920s money mogul living in a mansion on the Long Island Sound pining over his long lost love, Daisy Buchanan, he had to release some of those internal fears. “I think that specific part of my process is most unique to this role because of how grandiose it is,” he says.
McCartan also looked at the similarities between himself and the character. He never tries to mold himself into the role; rather, he molds the role to himself “because I have more experience being me and no experience being an obsessive 1920s millionaire,” he jokes. “Jay Gatsby is desire anthropomorphized, and his dream is Daisy. My dream has been different, but I have been chasing one dream for my entire life. I know what that feels like. I’ve had the privilege of playing roles that go through the gamut of all kinds of different wants and needs throughout the course of the plot, and that’s really fun. Something that’s extraordinarily fun to do is a role like Jay Gatsby that is actually none of those things. He is one thing the whole time. The first thing you hear him talk about is Daisy, and the last word you hear him say is Daisy.”
Perhaps it’s kismet that Noblezada, McCartan’s first Daisy, is also a fellow Jimmy Award finalist.
Looking ahead to performances with Hyland, he anticipates more rock concerts.
“I don’t expect the good vibes to end. So many shows don’t make it to this point where they’re recasting their original cast,” he points out. “There’s going to be some new energy, and we’re going to tell the same story, but in a very different way. We’re going to ride high on that vibe for a while.”