Idina Menzel

It's great to have you here in London.
[Laughs.] Hey, you still sound American. You don't have a Madonna accent.

Do you feel like you're getting one—that London is beginning to rub off on your vowel sounds?
I get it when I'm out with the cast at the pubs: I start to take it on, just as an actress. I've never thought of it as anything conscious, but I'm always just so insecure about sounding stupid. I really am.

Had you spent time in London before?
I'd spent one weekend here and was in and out really fast. My husband had a publicity thing that he was on for a movie he was promoting, and I just came with him; we had a couple of nice dinners. But now I've found my yoga class and my way about on the tube, and the cast have embraced me and taken me out for dinners. I'm doing less touristy things and more just getting to know the city, which is nice because when my family comes I'll do the touristy stuff.

Wicked witches Idina Menzel & Helen Dallimore

I hope you're also getting out of central London.
I've spent some time in Islington, near the Angel: that's where Helen [co-star Helen Dallimore] is from, and I really like it there. I guess the difference is that in New York we have bridges and tunnels to get to the city, but everything keeps going here, so you don't really know where the city ends. Also being a New Yorker, I think this is a perfect city if you're going to be somewhere else, just it being so cosmopolitan and the fact that the energy rivals the energy in New York: all the different people. I like to just be able to walk and to people watch.

Where does Los Angeles fit into the mix?
I'm too in my head in a city like L.A., where I'm sequestered in my car for way too long; the traffic is immensely tiring for me. But that's where Taye is now, doing a new TV show for ABC [Day Break], and we don't know if it's going to be successful. If it is, that might be the first time that we actually have to live in L.A.

So this must be a mixed blessing, with you here and your husband an eight-hour time difference away.

Idina Menzel & husband Taye Diggs

It's a miserable time because we're so far away from each other, but it's also exhilarating because we're doing something we both love and that's helping the time pass.

Was it inevitable that you would do Wicked in the West End?
At one point when I was doing the show early on, I was saying [to the producers], "if you are ever going to London please don't assume that I wouldn't want to do it," but then by the time I left I was like, I'm done; [laughs] It was too much work. I thought, I haven't had a life in a year and a half, I mean I haven't had a glass of wine. So I did a couple of projects and got away from it, and then it came around again. I still wasn't sure when I got on the plane if I'd made the right decision but then once I sort of got here and I met the cast, I realised that I needed to have this experience. I haven't traveled a lot lately—not really traveled—and there's something empowering about living by yourself in a city and making new friends and taking a new city on. As a woman, it feels like you're giving yourself more confidence.

Do you feel an added pressure as the representative—more than that, the embodiment, really—of the show's Broadway success?
There's a little bit more pressure, but I really went back and tried to rediscover this role. Since I did Elphaba before, I've had more experience, I've been through other projects and worked with other people; I've infused my soul with new techniques or ways of working and new experiences, so it's been interesting to come back to it having more confidence. And yet, to be gone from it for a year and a half is long enough not to remember any lines, to really have to go back and study the material: this is a completely new cast which then is so refreshing because their line readings and their accents, everything is different; it's been a really great process.

Idina Menzel in Wicked

Will this be a different Elphaba from your Broadway one?
I understand the soul of this character, but she's going to be even more multilayered, I guess. Just as an actor to have to listen again, which we forget when we do eight shows a week—that's such a gift because, you know, there can be times when you stand up there and do your laundry list on stage, which is a scary thing; when you get to that point, it's time to take a vacation. It's not like that now; I have to really listen to what these actors in these characters' bodies are serving to me; you can't just steamroll over them.

There are a lot of American musicals in London at the moment, as you no doubt know. How American do you think Wicked will seem to the British?
Well, we're hoping it sits anywhere. I know [the British] grew up with The Wizard of Oz but is it as much of a milestone in their lives? I played Dorothy in the fourth grade in my elementary school, and we watched the film every year when it came on TV. So I'm just hoping they get all the inside jokes: in the States, the lady on the bicycle,. the theme music that she has, it really strikes a certain chord and so it's such a great challenge to come running on stage as a green girl, a much younger person in a school uniform, and have to break down the stereotype.

How old is Elphaba in the show?
She's a freshman in college, or maybe a year or two older, because, of course, she's had to look after her sister [Nessarose].

If you can recall the earliest days of this production pre-Broadway in San Francisco, do you think the creative team knew what they had with Wicked?
I'm not sure I knew what we had, but I just knew that I had to stay with it. There were a couple of other things that came up: a TV opportunity, and it was, like, take this or take that, and I thought, who knows, Wicked could fall apart financially, but I thought, I don't care: I feel strongly that this is something that will allow

Idina Menzel in Wicked

me to be my true self on stage and to be special, you know: to bring what I do and what's unique about me to explore as opposed to some pilot. Anyhow, I just felt it was special—sure, we had things to work out and we had character development that was needed and a song that was needed here and there. But just ever since Rent, I had been such a huge advocate of developing a musical: I thought, if you can be a part of that, whether it has the success that these two musicals have now had or not, it's still a wonderful thing to stand at a piano with an incredible composer and have them want to get to know your voice so that when he goes home that night and comes back the next day, he's inspired and writes a brand new song for you in scene one.

Did that happen to you?
[Laughs.] Sort of. Stephen [Schwartz, the composer] wrote "The Wizard and I," which was actually the fifth incarnation of that song. So I would go to his studio in Midtown Manhattan, and here I am sitting with Stephen Schwartz, and he's playing me this song, asking, "What do I think? How does this feel? What about the key?" That's the thing I feel most grateful for in terms of being part of these two successful original musicals, Rent and Wicked, which is creating a role from scratch.

As you did with Michael John's musical at the Public.
I really worked hard on that because I think people have this misconception that I'm just this sort of untrained raw rock singer who's found her way into this, but I really trained classically as a kid from when I was 10 years old through to college. It wasn't until I started doing weddings that I started to sing more R&B and soul, people like Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan. And I kind of became this hybrid: I had a much more legit voice but I also wanted to write my own music; I love more soulful stuff and more contemporary stuff. I don't know: maybe that's my niche.

But to have your professional debut be something like Rent was literally phenomenal.
Absolutely. Rent was my first professional gig, and it was life-changing: that whole experience of Jonathan Larson passing away was so important in the entire

Tracie Thoms & Idina Menzel in the film version of Rent

cast's lives, as it is still. That show became a whirlwind and we were all really young; we could have lost our perspective, and instead we were on stage having to express this man's music and story because he wasn't around any more to do it. The whole thing was bigger than ourselves is what I'm trying to say, so that with all the accolades it kept us grounded. I try still to live by that way of thinking with each project.

You are now associated with two era-defining Broadway musicals, whereas a lot of performers are lucky to be associated with one.
I know. My producers were telling me that the other day—and they're both still running!

There was some speculation that you might star in the London revival of a third epoch-making one, namely Evita.
We talked about that.

Did you actually audition?
They wanted me to fly here, and I was in the middle of technicals for See What I Wanna See, and I made the choice that I didn't want to disrupt that cast at such an important time and so it didn't work out. I really wanted to work with Michael Grandage: maybe one day in the future.

Why not? He's not going anywhere.
[Laughs.] Right, that's right.

And here you are with all these other Broadway folk also in town.
Yeah, that's great. I just emailed Tonya [Pinkins]; but I have my hands full with these guys for right now. I absolutely adore Helen and Miriam [Margolyes] I really like.

American stars in London: Tonya Pinkins & Idina Menzel

Right now we're at the point of all those silly technical things that take you out of what's really important but you've got to do it. So for me this moment right now is a little anxiety-ridden about endurance and vocal stamina—you know, elasticity because with rehearsals on top of previews, we actually end up doing more shows: we do a run-through and then a dress rehearsal and then a rehearsal the next day and then a preview. It's very busy.

How does it affect you?
During rehearsals, I was trying to sing every day as much as I can, but it's never the same as doing a show with the band, where there's that emotional thing that feeds your body and how exhausted you are from your adrenalin at the end of the day and you don't sleep as well because you're getting nervous and sleep is the biggest, most important thing for keeping your voice. You can get uptight vocally, whereas it's just so much fun when the voice is all there.

But at least you know by now what this role asks of you.
I feel like I know what to expect and where to pace myself in the show and how to warm up and when not to go out when I have to go home.

Idina Menzel & Helen Dallimore in Wicked

And how to be the team leader.
I'm trying to be. On the other hand, I like to sit with them and be one of the guys, you know. The thing is, nobody knows me here anyway. There's sort of like this little underground circle of musical theatre fans that love Elphaba and Wicked but other than that, I'm not getting a table any sooner than anybody else.

That may change.
For me to be in London is about really enjoying the city and enjoying this experience and bringing to a new place a show that's so important to me and that gave me an incredible time in my life. And it's also important to me because of the young people that are inspired by it. I don't enjoy myself always as much as I can because I worry so much, [laughs] but I want the cast to love me and, you know, I want to have a good time.