Nicole Scherzinger is currently starring in the London revival of Sunset Boulevard, which is about to open, so the PR machine has pushed out a couple of interviews, one with the Guardian and another with The Sunday Times.
Highlights from the Guardian interview:
What convinced you to return to theatre after a decade away?
I grew up loving musical theatre and went to a performing arts school, so it’s always been in me. Music is the best way that I know to communicate. Why not do it through theatre, where you have the liberty to communicate the fullest way possible? Jamie [Lloyd, the director] knew I’d been itching to come back, and asked to meet in London 18 months ago. He said: “I’ve got this vision of you as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.” I was like “What?” So I read the script, listened to the music and there was no looking back. Jamie was bold enough to see me in this daring, iconic role. I grew up wanting to be Miss Saigon. I never dreamed I’d be playing someone like this, but in a batshit crazy way it makes complete sense.
Were you already familiar with the story?
I knew that Glenn Close had won a Tony for it. I listened to her recording of it and also Patti LuPone’s, because I’m a massive fan of hers too. And then I watched the film and was like: “Yo Jamie, we’ve got to have a talk because I don’t know if I can do this!” He said: “Don’t watch the film! It has nothing to do with what we’re doing!” This is our interpretation of the story. We’re telling it anew. It’s a modern-day setting not a period piece. I’m working my ass off. I have bruises on my body in places I’ve never had them before.
How come you’re bruised?
This Norma’s dancing, darling. I’m bringing Scherzinger to the table. We’re going full Scherzy on this.
Is the story relevant today?
100%. There are songs about how to make it in Hollywood which remain completely true. This industry is a harsh, savage beast. I know what it’s like to be the hot new thing on the block. You blink your eye, time goes by and you’re like: “Woah, where did it all go?” The younger generation comes in and suddenly you’re fighting to be seen and have a voice. I’m still doing that. So it speaks to the ageism of Hollywood but it’s also about how hard it is to get and keep any job. In the past, Norma’s been misunderstood. If anybody’s got passions and dreams, then it’s taken away from them, it leaves an emptiness inside. I think most people can relate to that.
Do you go to the theatre much?
I’m so inspired by it and try to see as many shows as I can. I recently saw my dear friend JoJo in Moulin Rouge! on Broadway. Here in London I’ve seen Six, which was genius, and Cabaret blew my frickin mind. I cried at the end. But I cry at everything. I cried at Finding Nemo. It’s probably why Jamie cast me, because I’m an emotional basket case.
Finally, I’ve got to ask. Are you ready for your closeup?
I’m getting there! Every day in rehearsal I was learning new things, which gives me such a rush. On day one, Jamie said: “I just ask you to do one thing, and that’s to be open. Every day you have to be fearless enough to be completely vulnerable.” It’s a lot easier said than done. But I promise you, I will be ready for my closeup.
And from The Times interview:
When the director Jamie Lloyd offered Nicole Scherzinger the lead in his new musical production of Sunset Boulevard, “I was like, ‘Are you out of your mind?’ First of all, I still look great under bright lights. And isn’t that an older woman who is, like, an old relic? How does that even remotely have anything to do with me?”
The former Pussycat Dolls pop star couldn’t see herself as Norma Desmond, the tragically faded and forgotten, psychotically deluded former silent movie starlet who at 50 still dreams of a comeback. Hand on hip, adopting a deep southern drawl of indignation: “I was, like, ‘Yo, this chick is crazy. I don’t want to play her. She crazy.’”
What persuaded her? “When I listened to the music I felt those were songs I could have written, like they were my songs. This is a completely different show than the musical people know. I feel like we might as well change the name of the show because it’s a completely different story we’re telling.” In her performance Desmond “is not crazy. She’s madly passionate about what she feels like she was put on this earth to do. She’s in love with her art. And there’s nothing tragic or pitiful about that.” She fixes me with a heartfelt stare. “She’s wanting to be seen for who she really is.” And so too, in Sunset Boulevard, is Scherzinger.
“People are going to see a very different side to me, aren’t they? Like they’ve never seen before in 45 years. I would like people to know me for the artist side of me.”
“Musical theatre was always my first love. And deep down inside I know that I am chosen. I know that I have something that no one else has in this world. You give me a song, and you put me on that stage, and it’s just a gift that I have, the gift to make people feel something. It’s my innate gift from God.”
Having grown up “dirt poor”— her mother was a clerk, her stepfather a welder — she works hard to support them and her grandparents back in the US. “Coming from nothing, my family needs me. My money is their money.” The decision to forfeit her highly paid job on The Masked Singer to be in Sunset Boulevard was, therefore, difficult.
“But I had to follow my heart. I chose this because this is where I belong. You don’t do this for money or cameras. You do this for love, the love of art — literally for art’s sake. And how are people going to know the artist side of me if I don’t put it out there? So it’s up to me to start making those choices in my life, to put myself where I can really share my true talents.”
Scherzinger’s legendary work ethic is in overdrive. She gets up 6.30am, takes a sauna “to sweat out toxins”, and works out with her trainer before rehearsing from 10am, six days a week. The cast tease her for always working through lunch break. At 6pm she goes straight home to an evening shift on the phone to her team in Los Angeles, and makes notes before getting to bed “at 12, if I’m doing good. If I’m not, more like 4.” She has to take something to help her wired brain sleep. “CBD gummies are legal in LA,” she says, grinning. “They work for me.”
Her drive to do justice to the role of Desmond is turbocharged by her empathy with her character’s experience of ageism in Hollywood. “It’s just as relevant today. And it’s still very brutal.” My assumption that she would be too young to have any experience of it makes her laugh. “Even if I look like I’m 37 or something, the moment somebody knows your age they will just —” and she draws a hand across her throat. “So it’s relevant to parallels in my life.”
She can empathise, too, with Desmond’s fear of no longer meeting Hollywood’s impossible demands of female beauty. When she was in the Pussycat Dolls, Scherzinger used to spend more than five hours a day in the gym, and suffered for years with bulimia. Their manager told her to lose weight when the band was formed. “But I didn’t need anyone to tell me. I’m my hardest critic of myself, so I was the worst voice, right?”