New York Audiences Are Noisy — and Nicole Scherzinger Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way: Hear the Stars Dish at Variety’s Business of Broadway
Back during Nicole Scherzinger’s run in the West End revival of “Sunset Boulevard”—the show that won her an Olivier Award and has now brought her to Broadway to reprise her performance—she never had a problem recognizing the Gothamites in the crowd. “I could always tell when the New Yorkers came across the pond to the U.K. because they were so loud!” she said at Variety’s Business of Broadway breakfast earlier this month.
Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below:
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But rather than distract her, those vocal New Yorkers energized her. “I love it when they’re more vocal. I’m like, ‘Yeah! I’m gonna give you what you came for!'” (New Yorkers were true to form during the first Broadway preview of “Sunset,” when Scherzinger received a whopping four standing ovations, three of them mid-show.)
Scherzinger’s conversation with director Jamie Lloyd is one of the Business of Broadway panel discussions that are now available on the latest episode of “Stagecraft,” Variety’s theater podcast.
In their talk, Lloyd and Scherzinger shared some of the backstage secrets to the buzzy “Sunset,” including a description of a bravura sequence during the show in which co-star Tom Francis sings the title song while walking around in the Times Square, while the Broadway audience watches via a live broadcast in the St. James Theatre. During that first preview, Francis did it in the rain. “It’ll be interesting in a blizzard, but let’s see what happens!” Lloyd laughed.
Also available to “Stagecraft” listeners is a panel discussion with four stars of the well-reviewed new Broadway revival of “Our Town.” At first, the starry quartet—Jim Parsons, Zoey Deutch, Ephraim Sykes and Michelle Wilson—all approached the play with different levels of opinionated familiarity.
Parsons had heard of the play, but didn’t know it. Sykes had never read it or seen it. Wilson had seen it and thought it “corny.” For Deutch, on the other hand: “This is my favorite play of all time. I’ve read it more than anything ever. It’s sat on my night table since I was 13.”
Now, all four of them love the show. “I’ve never been in a play that has so much room for humanity,” Parsons said.
“Stagecraft” listeners can also hear an insightful panel discussion with four producers behind some of this fall’s most notable shows, including Hunter Arnold (“Maybe Happy Ending,” “Othello”), Mara Isaacs (“Gypsy”), Caroline Kaplan (“Redwood”) and Sammy Lopez (“JOB”).
In a talk moderated by Erik Piecuch of City National Bank (the sponsor of the annual Business of Broadway event), the four of them talked attracting new audiences, breaking the Broadway mold with innovations and experiments, and their individual philosophies of producing.
Isaacs, for instance, explained how her current attachment to “Gypsy,” the upcoming revival starring Audra McDonald, marked the culmination of her 30-year goal to work with the show’s director, George C. Wolfe. “I actually say that if I ever write a book on producing, it’s going to be called ‘Relentless Patience,'” she said. “Because that’s how I operate.”
To hear the full conversations from this year’s Business of Broadway event, listen at the link above or download and subscribe to “Stagecraft” on podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the Broadway Podcast Network. New episodes of “Stagecraft” are released every other week.
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