Nicole Scherzinger on Bringing ‘Sunset Boulevard’ to Broadway: ‘I’m Gonna F—ing Go Out There Every Single Night Coming for Blood’
Nicole Scherzinger sounds like a kid desperately clinging to those last fleeting moments of summer break before school starts. She’s calling from an airport in Portugal, having recently wrapped up a beach vacation. In a few days, she’ll relocate to New York City to reprise her role as Norma Desmond in a radical reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard.”
“I have not looked at my script,” Scherzinger admits. “I have not thought about it. In the past few months, I’ve been on a break, just shutting down. Because the moment I step into the rehearsal room, this show is going to get all of me. Until then, I need to preserve my energy.”
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Playing Norma, a silent film star still nursing celluloid dreams long after Hollywood shoved her aside, has been a career-redefining role for Scherzinger, best known for her work as a member of the girl group the Pussycat Dolls. The show, which debuted last year on the West End, became the hottest ticket of the season, winning seven Olivier Awards. And much of the attention centered on Scherzinger’s ferocious performance. The full-bodied intensity with which she charted Norma’s defiance and desperation had London crowds, normally allergic to standing ovations, leaping to their feet mid-show after she completed one bruising musical number after another.
“This is what I’ve been waiting for my whole life, what I’ve been praying for,” Scherzinger says, “and I’m gonna fucking go out there every single night coming for blood.”
By the end of the show, Norma has murdered her lover and lost all touch with reality, leaving Scherzinger standing center stage, sweaty, tear streaked and caked in blood. “She is utterly without vanity,” says Jamie Lloyd, the show’s director. “It can be hard to see where Norma begins and Nicole Scherzinger ends. The two become so blurred together.”
Yet when Lloyd approached her about playing Norma, Scherzinger hesitated. Gloria Swanson’s Grand Guignol performance as Norma in Billy Wilder’s original 1950 film loomed large, and Scherzinger, who’s 46, wasn’t sure she was the right person to play a faded talent. “I can’t say she was flattered — there are many roles Nicole always dreamt of playing, and this was not one of them,” Lloyd admits.
But Lloyd made it clear he wasn’t interested in positioning Norma as a predatory has-been, obsessed with a younger man. He wanted to expose the entertainment industry’s ageism, the way its obsession with youth snuffs out careers when many performers are still at their peak. That was something Scherzinger understood all too well.
“The tragedy is that I am in my prime,” Scherzinger says. “I’m stronger than ever and my voice has never been better. And the industry doesn’t see that. They just see your age. So they discard you and dismiss you.”
This production also reimagines the relationship between middle-aged Norma and Joe, a 30-something screenwriter she hires to punch up a script before forming a romantic attachment. In the film, Joe is a reluctant gigolo, accepting Norma’s advances because he’s broke. In Lloyd’s revival, Norma isn’t the user — she’s being used. “Jamie is all about shifting your perspective,” Scherzinger says.
When “Sunset Boulevard” premiered on Broadway in 1994, the onstage drama was overshadowed by offstage melodrama — namely, a breach-of-contract lawsuit that Patti LuPone filed against the producers after she was fired and replaced by Glenn Close. There were also headlines about the show’s massive (for the time) $13 million budget, which paid for lavish sets that included Norma’s ornate mansion, as well as a car chase featuring an actual vehicle. Lloyd, best known for stripped-down productions of classics like last year’s “A Doll’s House,” dispensed with all that. This “Sunset Boulevard” has minimal sets and props, putting the focus on the performances and Lloyd Webber’s haunting score.
“The starting point for us is simplicity — what is the bare minimum we need to chart the journey of the characters?” Lloyd says. “It turns out we don’t need much. That allowed us to press reset on the piece and discover it anew.”
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