'Six' still rules the global stage — and now, the movie theatre

A filmed live capture of the award-winning pop musical, featuring the original London cast, comes to North American cinemas for a limited time starting August 14.

"It's taken over the world, hasn't it?" observed actress Laura Dawn Pyatt about Six: The Musical. "Just because it needs no translation, in a way. Women are women, and it's so empowering, and it's so one of a kind, isn't it?"

You might even say Six is one of a kind, no category, to quote a line from the show's title track. The brainchild of then-college students Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, Six — a concert-style pop musical that gives voice to King Henry VIII's six long-suffering wives — has grown from a fringe show into a global phenomenon that's played for seven years in London's West End and five on Broadway, with multiple other global productions to boot. In its latest milestone, Six isn't just ruling the stage, but the screen, too: A professional filmed capture, or proshot, of the London production comes to U.S. cinemas for a limited time starting August 14. (It was previously screened in the U.K. in 2025.)

The proshot features the six original Queens who led the 2018 U.K. tour and 2019 West End premiere: Jarnéia Richard-Noel as Catherine of Aragon, Millie O'Connell as Anne Boleyn, Natalie Paris as Jane Seymour, Alexia McIntosh as Anna of Cleves, Aimie Atkinson as Katherine Howard, and Maiya Quansah-Breed as Catherine Parr. (Pyatt, a Boleyn understudy, stood in for O'Connell in interviews.)

Coming back to Six in 2022 to film the proshot, and in 2025 and 2026 to promote it, made the cast reflect on how they've grown since they first donned the Queens' crowns.

"You remember who you [were] in that moment," McIntosh said of looking back on her performance. "You say, 'Oh my goodness, I've changed so much.' I'm watching myself saying, 'I remember her.'"

"When I started this show, my son was 8. He is now nearly 17," she added. "Six has been his world."

"What's great about the show is that we are playing these Queens [...] but we also bring so much of ourselves to the character," echoed Paris, who will also be reprising her role in Six on Broadway later this year alongside Atkinson and the American cast. "Over the years, we grow as humans. We get older, and we learn, and we develop. Each time, you can approach it in a different way to where you are in your own personal life."

That evolution has happened not just individually, but together, according to Richard-Noel. "There's so much we've grown and learned about each other," she said. "It must still show with our bonds when we do perform, but the characters have always remained the same because we've created them, and they've got that stamp."

As such, the actors always pick up right where they left off with each other. "When we got back together and put the costumes on, it was like, 'Avengers assemble,'” said McIntosh. "We are back."

"The sisterhood, obviously, is not manufactured," Quansah-Breed added. "We went through the trenches, you know what I mean? And we came out the other end. We are bonded for life."

Atkinson echoed that sentiment, noting that because the show is a "collective piece," it's important for the cast to connect off stage. Reimagined as members of a contemporary girl band, the Queens first compete, then bond, over their troubled marriages, deciding that the best way to get out of Henry's shadow is with each other's support.

"We were used to performing it on stage with each other, and the best thing [about watching the proshot] was getting to see the girls perform," Paris said. "I've never seen it from an audience point of view."

The cast encouraged Six fans to see both the proshot and the stage show, which each provide a different experience. "There's nothing like live theatre: You can never take away from that feeling you get when you're in the audience [...] and you hear the band warming up and you can feel the energy," Atkinson said. "But I have to also say that seeing the movie myself, you really do feel like you're sat in that theatre and you've got the best seat in the house."

And when it comes to the live production, "you never see the same show twice," said Pyatt. With so many different actresses putting unique spins on the Queens, "you need to see it multiple times because you'll get a totally different version of the show."

What both versions have in common, of course, are the foundational elements that dazzled audiences from the start: creators Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss's Tony Award-winning pop score, Gabriella Slade's royal costumes, the flash and energy of an arena concert. McIntosh even predicted that, like at the live show, people will show up to Six screenings in costume.

"The Queendom in the USA have been waiting with bated breath for this," she said. "It's going to be a riot."

Get Six tickets now.

Bridget Gross contributed reporting to this story.

Photo credit: The cast of Six The Musical: Live! (Photos courtesy of Focus Features)