The Big Issue, a UK magazine, featured an exclusive interview with Idina Menzel. Idina’s alter-ego, Elsa, was featured on the cover. Here’s an excerpt:
New York also seems to have caught Frozen fever. The city is just emerging from a long, hard winter as The Big Issue shares a taxi with Menzel, on her way to the Richard Rodgers Theatre on West 46th Street.
“The cold really bothers me,” Menzel says. “I have to sing and I can’t get sick so when I get sick it’s not fun.”
Before she was Elsa, Queen of Arendelle, Menzel, 43, was Queen of Broadway. In the mid-1990s she starred in the original production of Rent, before donning green face paint and winning a Tony Award for playing Elphaba, the misunderstood Witch of the West in Wicked. Her latest show If/Then, in which she plays a new divorcee looking for a fresh start, is in its final week after a year of sold-out performances.
“It’s bitter sweet,” she says as the taxi pulls up. “It has been the most rewarding and most exhausting experience. When I’m gone from the theatre too long I really start to miss it. I like the consistency in an industry where it’s so ephemeral. It’s nice to know you have a place to go every day and do your job as an artist. But I’m ready for a break.”
You can read the entire interview at BigIssue.com.
