Growing up in Texas, one videotape that got a serious workout in Jeremy Jordan's home was the film “Newsies.” The musical about a bunch of turn-of-the-century newsboys who band together to strike against the publishing empires of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst touched a chord in the future Broadway actor. “I was very shy and I always felt like I was the little guy. I mean, I was little — I was small. So something like that really inspires you and makes you feel like, ‘OK, yeah, I can do big things even though I'm a little guy,'” he says. Now, years later, Jordan finds himself playing a charismatic newsboy leader in “Newsies,” a Disney-produced musical stage adaptation of the film he so adored. “It's one of those weird, amazing things,” he says. It almost didn't happen. Jordan was committed to playing a less heartwarming figure — the murderous Clyde Barrow in the Broadway musical “Bonnie & Clyde” — when word came that “Newsies” would make the jump from the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey to Broadway. Fate intervened when the musical based on the bank-robbing legends closed after playing only 69 performances. While the failure was painful, it freed Jordan to rejoin the cast of “Newsies.” “I can't express how grateful I am for the lucky breaks I've been getting. I'm just happy to be able to do it all,” he says, wolfing down a salad during a break in rehearsals. “Hopefully, this one'll be a hit.”
