Category: Interviews

Idina Menzel Hosting Thanksgiving Potluck Dinner with B’dway Co-Stars

Idina Menzel Hosting Thanksgiving Potluck Dinner with B’dway Co-Stars

Posted on by Flor

Idina Menzel is one of many stars who’ll be performing in Thursday’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, but she says after she’s done, she and the rest of the cast from her Broadway musical If/Then are going to chow down.

“A Broadway schedule doesn’t really leave a lot of time for a normal Thanksgiving. We do have the day off, so that’s great. So, yes, I will come home from the parade, but I’m making a bunch of my castmates come over, but it’s pot luck,” the Frozen star tells ABC News Radio, laughing. “I’m not cooking for them! I’m too tired! So everyone’s bringing something. I said I’d provide the turkey and they have to bring the rest.”

As for what she’ll be most thankful for this year, Idina tells ABC News Radio, “I’d say I’m thankful for my little boy for sort of showing me where my priorities are and giving me the real, true perspective on life.” That’d be Walker, her five-year-old son with her ex-husband, actor Taye Diggs.

“I’m thankful for all my friends and family that have been a great support system,” the Tony-winning star adds. “And then, thirdly, I’m thankful to get to do what I love — to sing and to act and to perform for a living.”

Idina is doing the full New York City holiday event rounds this year, in support of her new Christmas album Holiday Wishes. In addition to performing in the iconic parade, she’ll be singing at NBC’s annual Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting special, and earlier this week, she sang at the unveiling of the holiday windows at Bloomingdale’s flagship New York City store. Idina says it all brings her back to happy times growing up in the suburbs of New York City.

“I grew up in Long Island,” she tells ABC News Radio. “So my parents would bring my sister and I into the city all the time. We’d do the windows, and we’d go to Rockefeller Center and see a Broadway show. So, it’s a special time in my life. It’s got a lot of memories.”

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Idina Menzel lets it go where the music takes her

Posted on by Flor

If the themes of Idina Menzel’s songs resonate so well with her female audience members, it may be because she’s been there herself.

The 43-year-old star with the shake-the-rafters-voice, the emerald eyes and the cascade of chestnut hair has pulled off a trifecta of relatable songs that any actress would envy.

First, there was Elphaba, the odd-green-girl-out from Wicked, who declared her independence with the clarion call of Stephen Schwartz’s “Defying Gravity,” a number so potent that — as Ana Gasteyer once said — “every woman I know has wept over it while on the Stairmaster.”

Then, for a slightly younger demographic, she delivered the goods in Disney’s Frozen, launching Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez’s Oscar-winning hit “Let It Go” like it was a melodic guided missile.

And now, back on Broadway, she’s bringing all the generations together with a powerhouse number called “Always Starting Over” by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, which brings the house down every night in the powerful new musical, If/Then, at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.

So how does she feel about hitting the bullseye so many times in a row?
“I don’t know, I really don’t know,” she laughs from her dressing room, between a matinee and an evening performance. “I’ve thought about it myself. It’s not that I’ve been so successful that I can just sit at home and wait for the perfect project with the perfect song to come along. Sometimes, it’s all about taking a job and paying the bills.
“But I do believe that you’re given things in your life that you need, things you can explore that are going to teach you something about yourself. Every role or character or song can come at a time in your life when it relates to what you’re going through and you learn how to use it.”

Continue reading “Idina Menzel lets it go where the music takes her”

Redbook Magazine sneak peek and videos

Redbook Magazine sneak peek and videos

Posted on by Flor

While her jaw-dropping version of “Let It Go” became the anthem of 2014, Idina Menzel was quietly moving on after separating from husband Taye Diggs, recording a holiday album, headlining a Tony-nominated Broadway show… and panicking about raising her son, just like any mom.

On what inspired her to make Holiday Wishes, an album full of Christmas songs

“To be honest, my love for Christmas came when I started dating Taye. One of my fondest memories of our relationship was how we celebrated Christmas. He has a big family, so we would reserve Christmas Eve for ourselves. I wanted to be the good shiksa girlfriend.”

On how Frozen and John Travolta flubbing her name at the Oscars reset the course of her career

“It’s the best mistake that’s ever happened to me. Just having the kind of success where people might know my name—my real name! It took me a long time to stop chasing it and just embrace it.”

On starting to date again after her divorce

“I’m open to it. I just don’t have a lot of time. They’d have to meet me at, like, midnight after the show, and that’s kind of slutty, isn’t it?”

On being a single mother now and balancing her commitment to Broadway show, If/Then

“The guilt is the thing that we as women all feel, whether we stay at home or we work. There are a lot of double standards with the way the men in our lives see how we make those choices. I think there’s an accounting for how much time I spend with my son, and men don’t have to account for how much time they spend with their child. It hurts to feel that’s a judgment being made. Because we’re already judging ourselves.”

Read the full interview in the December/January issue of REDBOOK, on newsstands November 18.

All you have to do is listen to “Let It Go” once to know that Idina Menzel doesn’t hold anything back, which is at least part of the reason why we loved spending time with the musical powerhouse at her cover shoot—it also didn’t hurt that she regaled us with a tale about how she recovered from her most embarrassing moment (spoiler: It involves a wardrobe malfunction) and taught us how to sing in gibberish. When you watch this, you’ll see what we mean.


Week Round-Up

Week Round-Up

Posted on by Flor

Slow week in Idinaland while we wait for the big surprise reveal! I’d ask what you think it is but I think the guessing game has turned to “when do you think it’s going to be revealed?” by now ;)
So anyway, while we exercise our patience and test our let it go skills, I’ve compiled a short list of some of the things that happened this week all in one post.

Canada AM Interview
On Wednesday morning, Idina talked about Holiday Wishes, Frozen and If/Then. Cute little interview. Click below to go to the interview site.

canadaam

Halloween at If/Then
Everyone in the If/Then pit dressed as Idina for Halloween and Carmel Dean (If/Then’s conductor) posted the pictures to her twitter:


Random Gallery Updates
Mostly stage door pics sent by awesome fans (send yours!) and some other random pictures that I still have lying around.

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Site Info / Help the site
I updated the “donate” page with other non-money ways you can help the site if you feel like doing so. Read about it here.
And I’m going to use this short tidbit here to say first, thank you SO MUCH to everyone who has sent pictures and/or commented about the site recently, you’re awesome. And secondly, I’m slowing down the site work the next 6-8 weeks so if you send anything I might take a while to reply. Worry not, all the latest news and events will still be posted as they happen, here or on twitter.

BCEFA Fundaraiser
To finish this post on a fun note, great video taken last night by @srodillado

Funny thing tonight @Ifthenmusical.@idinamenzel was talking when she noticed me filming and then commented not to focus on her bottom but top. She is a funny funny woman.

Idina Menzel’s Roller Coaster Year

Idina Menzel’s Roller Coaster Year

Posted on by Flor

Idina Menzel is still riding the success of the past year. The songstress made her triumphant return to Broadway in If/Then, starred in Frozen, the top-grossing animated film of all time, and her song “Let It Go” from the film has quite literally become a culture phenomenon.

But, when ET Special Correspondent Jessica Shaw sat down with the 43-year-old, she shared that not everything has been so rosy in her life.

“This whole year has been professionally rewarding and fantastic,” she admits. “Personally [it has been] a little more challenging and that is the way of life.”

While promoting her new holiday album, Holiday Wishes, Idina opened up about her split from Taye Diggs after 10 years of marriage and how she balanced that with her tremendous career successes.

“Thank God I have music and a play that I am in on Broadway, If/Then, every single night actually is a really great opportunity for me to work through some of the emotions that I have.”

It’s through music and her new album, out now, that she has also overcome her feelings on the holiday season.

“My experience with the holidays has kind of wavered,” Idina told ET. “My parents announced they were getting a divorce on Thanksgiving Day.”

But Idina says these days she has found a new appreciation for the season thanks to her 5-year-old son Walker with Diggs.

“But now that I have a son I am sort of rewriting history and rediscovering the holidays through his eyes,” she said.

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