Nicole Scherzinger was exhausted. It was every week since Jamie Lloyd’s new manufacturing of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sundown Boulevard” had begun performances, and Scherzinger was taking part in the lead function of Norma Desmond — the forgotten star of the silent display whose try at a comeback doesn’t finish effectively.
In Lloyd’s stripped-down, psychologically centered manufacturing on the Savoy Theater, Norma’s unraveling psyche is the center of a narrative that’s much less concerning the lack of stardom than the emotional fallout of being handed over whereas in possession of all of your presents. On the finish of the present the earlier night time, Scherzinger stood alone onstage, lined in blood and dazed, showing to hardly register the viewers’s wild applause.
“It’s grueling,” she mentioned final week whereas curled up on a chair within the depths of the Savoy. “However for a few years I’ve been saying I’m utilizing a fraction of my potential, and now I really feel I’ve actually tapped into that.”
The glamorous Scherzinger, 45, may initially appear to be an odd match for the function of Norma, immortalized by Gloria Swanson within the 1950 Billy Wilder movie on which the musical is predicated. Scherzinger rose to fame because the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls, a lady group fashioned within the early 2000s. And although she performed Grizabella in a revival of Lloyd Webber’s “Cats” within the West Finish in 2014, her post-Dolls profession has encompassed two solo albums and lengthy stretches as a decide on “The X Issue” and “The Masked Singer.”
Scherzinger herself was greatly surprised when Lloyd, the acclaimed experimental director, requested to satisfy and advised the half some 18 months in the past. “There are numerous roles I wished to play in musical theater, however this isn’t one in every of them!” she mentioned over the course of an hourlong interview. “I wasn’t certain if the concept was flattering or insulting. However Jamie mentioned to me, don’t watch the film; learn the traces, hearken to the music. And I fell head over heels in love with it.”
In a phone dialog, Lloyd mentioned he first considered directing a revival of “Sundown Boulevard” throughout the pandemic, and “instantly thought Nicole ought to be in it.”
Norma Desmond, Lloyd added, had come to be seen as a task for an older actress. However he wished a girl “who’s in her prime, actually sensible, however has been discarded, simply as we speak even now about girls over 40 not having the alternatives they need to have,” he mentioned. “I felt there was a connection for Nicole, who had extraordinary worldwide fame, however then didn’t have the chance to dwell as much as her potential.”
Speaking about her profession, Scherzinger mentioned that though she had been a shy and awkward little one, she had “at all times had a starvation and a drive.” Born in Honolulu to a Filipino father and a Hawaiian Ukrainian mom, she was raised in a non secular and sheltered setting in Louisville, Ky., by her mom and a German American stepfather, whose final identify she took.
Though her dad and mom have been blue-collar employees with little cash to attend live shows or the theater, she grew up singing and loving music (her mom’s household had a musical group referred to as Sons and Daughters of Hawaii). She attended a performing arts highschool, acted professionally in Louisville, and studied theater (“Stanislavski and Shakespeare and all that”) and voice in school.
After leaving school early to hitch an acoustic rock band, Scherzinger auditioned for “Popstars,” a actuality collection that supplied the profitable contestants a spot in a musical group and a recording contract. Her profitable group, Eden’s Crush, was modestly profitable, and “it obtained me out of Louisville,” she mentioned about her transfer to Los Angeles.
In 2003, she auditioned for the Pussycat Dolls, a former burlesque act reimagined as a horny singing and dancing lady group. Scherzinger grew to become the lead singer and a family identify, with the Dolls promoting thousands and thousands of data on the again of hits like “Don’t Cha” and “Buttons.”
She was well-known, however for a girl who “grew up singing in church,” she struggled with the group’s skimpy clothes and sexualized picture, and spent over a decade obsessively exercising and battling bulimia. “I want I might return and luxuriate in it, notice this isn’t going to be ceaselessly,” she mentioned. “Possibly that’s what Norma feels: It was her youth, she labored so onerous, and she will’t get that again.”
The Pussycat Dolls disbanded in 2010, and Scherzinger pursued a solo profession with modest success. It was throughout this time that she carried out “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” (from Lloyd Webber’s “Evita”) as a part of a TV particular celebrating Lloyd Webber, who, together with the director Trevor Nunn, requested her to hitch the solid of the 2014 revival of “Cats” on the West Finish. Scherzinger described the expertise as transformative (each night time “I obtained to shed my outdated self and be reborn once more”), though she didn’t stick with the manufacturing when the present moved to Broadway. She determined to hitch “The X Issue” as an alternative, and Lloyd Webber was open about his annoyance.
In a phone interview, the composer mentioned that he had been upset as a result of he believed in her expertise and “would have liked to have seen her present Broadway what she might do.” However they remained buddies, he added, and was delighted when Lloyd advised Scherzinger play Norma. “I imagine she is without doubt one of the most gifted singer-actresses I’ve seen carry out my work,” he mentioned. “It’s a tricky function, however Nicole is fearless musically and dramatically. I’m a complete fan.”
Scherzinger mentioned that “The X Issue” had given her the time and monetary stability to pursue her personal music, which she did whereas additionally taking over different initiatives, like voicing the character of Sina in “Moana,” and starring in a tv model of “Soiled Dancing.” However she at all times believed, she mentioned, that she would return to musical theater, significantly after performing within the tv particular “Annie Reside!” in 2021.
Now that she’s again onstage, how does it really feel? She mentioned that getting ready to play Norma had been cathartic: “I felt I knew precisely this sense of abandonment, the fixed thread of loneliness, the insatiable want for affirmation, validation. Now, there may be this epic, iconic rating to throw all this into and create artwork from locations of torment.”
Lloyd mentioned that Scherzinger was “continually looking out, questioning, discovering particulars, deepening her understanding of the interior world of the character.” Her work ethic (asking questions, taking notes and dealing by means of breaks), he added, has been an inspiration to all the solid. “You’ll by no means know, by means of this complete course of, that she didn’t have an appearing background.”
Requested about future plans, Scherzinger mentioned her dream was to write down her personal musical, loosely primarily based on her life.
“In any case these years, I lastly have the braveness to not fear about what others suppose, to know I’ve one thing to say,” she mentioned. “As Jamie at all times says, ‘You’re courageous, be braver.’”
