Nick Jonas reveals why he has a leg up on his 'Voice' competitors
Nick Jonas has had one of the busiest years of his life after reuniting with the Jonas Brothers and marrying actress Priyanka Chopra. But despite these major milestones, the 27-year-old singer and actor isn’t slowing down. Instead, he says that he’ll continue to take new opportunities as they come, and feels “lucky” for it.
“How lucky are we to get to juggle things, you know? And that’s sort of the position that I take,” he tells Yahoo Entertainment. “If it becomes overwhelming and I don’t feel like I’m doing my best work, then I’ll take a step back to live some life and to be inspired again. But at the moment, the work is actually inspiring me.”
Alongside this year’s return of the Jonas Brothers — which included an album release, documentary, an American tour and an upcoming book — the youngest Jonas also acted in movies Midway and Jumanji: The Next Level. His most exciting move, however, might just be his most recent, which is the announcement that he’s joining Season 18 of The Voice.
After making the big reveal in early October, fans are already gearing up to see how Jonas will navigate his role as the youngest coach to appear on the NBC show, alongside seasoned coaches Kelly Clarkson, John Legend and Blake Shelton. He says that aside from giving the show’s audience an opportunity to learn more about him and his two-decade-long career, he also hopes to bring a new perspective and energy to coaching.
“Fans of the [Jonas] Brothers or people that are aware of kind of my work will know, but those that are fans of The Voice might learn just a bit about my background — whether it’s musical theater or the acting side of things. All of it is influential in the way that I will coach my team,” he explains. “But also, I’m the youngest coach and I’m excited to come in with some new energy. It’s my first season, they’ve all done it before.”
Particularly when working with younger contestants, who can be as young as 12 years old, Jonas feels uniquely equipped to deal with the challenges that come. Still, he acknowledges that social media and the pressures of being a teen in the spotlight today might be a little different than when he was new to the industry — although he won’t necessarily use that as an excuse to go easy on his team.
“I have been through that in my own way. It is a challenging aspect of it, but the same could be said about whatever the obstacle was, let’s call it 10, 15 years ago,” Jonas says. “There will always be something and it’s kind of a matter of how you approach it and the focus you have, and how badly you want it. My dad always used to say that there’s someone out there working just as hard, if not harder than you, so get after it. I subscribe to that and I think that’s important for anyone that’s on a singing competition show like this to be aware of. The level of excellence is very high, so you have to show up ready to bring it.”
Ahead of the season’s spring premiere, Jonas isn’t taking much time off. He’s still focusing on his numerous other work projects and his relationships with family and friends — one of which is with his long-time collaborator, John Varvatos. The duo just released a third men’s fragrance together, JVxNJ Silver Edition fragrance.
Varvatos and Jonas have released two others as a part of their JVxNJ partnership, in addition to launching a separate tequila brand called Villa One. Although, to some, it might just seem like more work for the two entrepreneurs, both tell Yahoo Entertainment that it’s a freeing process that they’ve been inspired to work on.
“Our lives the last year have been pretty crazy, both the work we’re doing together and separately and I think we wanted to kind of bottle that up and build a fragrance that had that energy, that had that spark, that electricity to it,” Jonas says of creating the latest fragrance. “The exciting part about creating something like this is that it’s sort of reflective of music in my mind and the fact that you can continue to evolve new inspirations, new influences and I think we try to sort of not put any boundaries around the way we think about creating together.”
“Just coming out with more fragrances isn’t something that we need to do,” Varvatos adds. “It’s if we were really inspired to do something, to create something that felt it added something to our shelf that we wanted to wear it a different part of our day or at night, that type of thing. And that’s really how that’s really evolved.”
As a result of this collaborative process, Jonas says that the scent has become a reflection of the incredible place he’s in.
“It’s been a year of focusing on relationships and I feel most free when I’m around the people that I love and that I want to share life with. [...] It’s a year that’s been quite busy and sort of more career-oriented in a sense. But within that, I feel very fortunate to have been able to also focus on these relationships that inspire me every day and are the thing that makes me feel most free,” Jonas says. “I’m happy to be in that position. I know when I need to disconnect too and have the right sort of community around me to also tell me that I need to take some time off. Right now, it’s not that time though.”
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