Jonathan Bailey Supports Childhood Friend at Broadway Opening — and Reunites with “Fellow Travelers” Costar Jelani Alladin

Audiences flocked to see Jonathan Bailey in Wicked: For Good on the evening of Thursday, Nov. 20, as the highly anticipated sequel finally opened in theaters.

But PEOPLE’s reigning Sexiest Man Alive was in another theater — the Longacre Theatre in New York City, specifically — where the new musical Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) officially opened on Broadway.

It was a special moment for Bailey. His childhood best friend, Kit Buchan, penned the book and score for Two Strangers, alongside Jim Barne.

“I couldn’t be prouder,” Bailey, 37, explained during a visit to Late Night with Seth Meyers earlier this week. “We grew up together, we spent our teenage years together. He took me to see Wicked for the first time together and his brother illegally downloaded the original cast recording. So it’s just the most unbelievable thing.”

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Photographers snapped Bailey posing on the red carpet with Buchan prior to the show, their arms around one another. They were together post-curtain too, at the Hotel Edison where an opening night afterparty for the musical was being held.

That’s also where Bailey reunited with Jelani Alladin, his former costar from the 2023 Showtime miniseries Fellow Travelers.

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Speaking about their friendship on Late Night_, Buchan and Bailey recalled first meeting when they were 14 years old, at what Buchan called “a forbidding school environment” that was “preoccupied with rugby.”

“That desperate need of escaping,” as Bailey explained, immediately bonded them. After school and on weekends they’d make short films together, exploring their creative energy. “We just clung to each other,” Buchan said.

“Despite the fact that it sounded so intense, it was like, the most creative couple of years. I don’t think we could even think about what we were going to eat for dinner, let alone think of the future. But my goodness, we had the best time. We were really safe in each other’s company.”

“We had no plan but it was such a generative I sort of credit that time — my friendship with you, and with Jim, my co-writer and my brother Alastor — without those friendships, this show, which is sort of about friendship, never would have happened.”

It also helped that Bailey was able to cheat off Buchan. “I just copied [his] history essays word-for-word, with no intelligence” the actor joked. “He’s a ferocious talent.”

Buchan has been working on Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) for a decade now. The musical, directed by Tim Jackson, follows a wide-eyed British visitor to the Big Apple and a no-nonsense New Yorker who are thrown together on a chaotic quest to deliver a wedding cake. As they trek across Manhattan, their unlikely partnership softens guarded hearts and reshapes what they thought they knew about family.

The show had a long road to Broadway, with productions in the UK and on the West End before making its North American premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Boston last May. That time, it turns out, helped Buchan make tweaks to ensure the story landed with New Yorkers.

“You can’t get anything past a New Yorker,” he said. “When we were in Boston, for example, there’s a radio announcement at the beginning of the show where a traffic reporter refers to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. And on opening night, I was told by the sound designer, ‘Oh by the way, no one would ever say that.’ I was like, ‘Great, you could have told me earlier!’ ”

Another tweak came to a scene in which the show’s two stars — played by Broadway newcomer Sam Tutty and Broadway vet Christiani Pitts — go on an extravagant shopping spree. “A lot of the input from New Yorkers was like, ‘That cake isn’t expensive enough, that taxi bill isn’t expensive enough, that hotel isn’t expensive enough.’ ”

The end result is something critics and audiences have cheered — praise that Bailey echoed on Late Night.

“It’s the most astonishingly brilliant show and it’s a ticket everyone should buy this next season,” he said. “Anyone who loves the 90s rom-coms, it’s got such wit and brilliance and charm. And the soundtrack itself is brilliant.”

Previews for Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) began Nov. 1. The show, which also stars Vincent Michael and Phoenix Best as understudies, is playing an open-ended run. Tickets are now on sale.

Wicked: For Good is in theaters now.