Shopping for Marmite With Harry Hadden-Paton

NEW YORK — “It feels just like home,” the actor Harry Hadden-Paton said.

On a crisp Sunday morning, Hadden-Paton was standing in Myers of Keswick, a West Village grocery store on Hudson Street that caters to British expats and local gourmands. With a checkerboard floor and flapping Union Jacks, it’s an Anglicized Aladdin’s cave, crammed with jars, bottles, boxes, bars and vegetarian haggis in a can.

“What is a vegetarian haggis?” said Hadden-Paton, who was appropriately tweedy in a nubbled overcoat. He didn’t seem to want to find out. “I’m not going to be reaching for that.”

Best known for playing Bertie Pelham on “Downton Abbey,” the marquess who finally gives poor Lady Edith her happy ending, and Martin Charteris, an affable private secretary on “The Crown,” Hadden-Paton specializes in buttoned-up men who “come in and cry for a little bit,” he said.

A week earlier, he had flown in from London, accompanied by his wife, the actress Rebecca Night, and their two young daughters, to begin rehearsals for Lerner and Loewe’s musical “My Fair Lady,” which begins previews at the Vivian Beaumont Theater on Thursday. He will play another Englishman, Henry Higgins, the no-filter phonetician who teaches Eliza Doolittle all about the rain in Spain.

Higgins isn’t a crier. Neither is Hadden-Paton, 36, though he had reason enough. The girls had caught colds on the flight over and were still waking up on London time, which meant 3:30 a.m. screams. He described the last several days as “a haze of jet lag and rushing around” — assembling cribs, bingeing on pizza, placing desperate Amazon orders. “All the joys,” he said.

Some home comforts were in order. His face, dashing and slightly rabbity, lit up when he found a display of Marmite, the love-it-or-hate-it sticky yeast paste. Hadden-Paton is firmly in the love column. “I need to get some,” he said.

He was surprised to find packages of Percy Pigs, the English, porcine version of gummy bears. “Now these really are niche,” he said. Gentleman’s relish also caught his eye. “It’s an anchovy paste,” he said. “It doesn’t sound nice. You have it on a crumpet with melted butter. Sparingly.”

“This is going to get expensive,” he said.

After admiring the preening shop cat, he pulled out his phone, its screen cracked just that morning, and pulled up a list from his wife: Marmite, Colman’s English Mustard, oatcakes, Lee & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, Twinings Earl Grey Tea, Twinings English Breakfast Tea. He added a bottle of elderflower cordial and some bars of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.

“If I don’t come back with some chocolate, I’ll be in trouble,” he said.

He also threw in a bottle of HP Sauce. “My initials,” he said. “For years that was my Hotmail account, HPSaucy.” Which is the just the sort of charming remark that would probably send a language purist like Higgins into a furious solo.

As Hadden-Paton had predicted, it did get expensive. A small basket ran to more than $100. But one item on the list, a box of smoky Lapsang souchong tea, eluded him, so he set off through the warren of West Village streets, getting turned around only a few times. “I’m going to start following the sun,” he said jokingly.

He arrived at the Tea & Sympathy annex, a small shop on Greenwich Avenue stocked with teapots, chocolate boxes and kitsch accessories. He found the Lapsang souchong there and went next door to treat himself to a cup of tea.

“I’m right underneath the queen,” he said, settling into the cozy tea shop. Then he looked at the photo above his chair more closely. “A look-alike.” After two seasons on “The Crown,” he knows the difference.

He marveled at the menu: bangers and mash, sardines on toast, steak and Guinness pie. “This is more English than the English,” he said. He ordered the Earl Grey tea, served in a pot adorned with poppies, and a plate of scones with jam and cream.

“My Fair Lady” will be his Broadway debut, and he is still surprised he booked it. When he came out for an audition in October, he received a text from the director, Bartlett Sher, asking him to arrive in something Henryish. In a panic he phoned his one friend in New York who is a similar size. That friend, Charlie Cox of “Daredevil,” kitted him out in a shirt, jacket and sweater vest — “the full Henry Higgins.” It worked.

Hadden-Paton said that he feels very sympathetic to Higgins, but isn’t sure how some of his lines will land in 2018, lines like “Why can’t a woman be more like a man.”

“How am I going to do that?” he said. “I don’t know.”

“I’m going to get booed,” he said, neatly deploying a tea strainer.

For now he has fans. The waitress recognized him from “Downton Abbey” and asked to take a selfie. He obliged, even stooping slightly to bring both their heads into the frame. “Where are you from? I like your accent,” he said, perhaps channeling Higgins, a dialect expert. (“I paid her,” he later deadpanned.)

With one jammy scone eaten, he hurried to bring his bounty to his wife and daughters. Would Higgins have headed home with a similar haul? “Maybe Marmite,” Hadden-Paton said. “He’s a Marmite lover.”