Idina Menzel Talks About “Enchanted” And Those Pesky “Wicked” Movie Rumors

Idina Menzel Provides a Few Details on “Enchanted:” “Amy Adams is playing this princess in a real fairy tale world. It starts out with eight minutes of animation, like a spoof on Disney, and she plays this princess, and James Marsden is the prince. They fall in love in one day, they sing a song where they find each other, and the birds sew her dress. Susan Sarandon is the queen and hates her, and she pushes her down a well so that she won’t marry her son. So, she falls in a well and ends up in a manhole in New York City. And then it’s a real life, New York City romantic comedy.”

Menzel plays Patrick Dempsey’s fiancee in the film, “a cool fashion designer, New York chick that is sort of jaded about love.” Although Menzel said more on “Enchanted,” the rest of her interview had to be edited – at the request of the studio – to remove a potential spoiler.

Idina Menzel Gets Animated: Asked if she’s seen sketches of what she’ll look like in animated form, Menzel said, “A little bit. I went over there and they are very excited about showing you that kind of stuff. It’s such an amazing process. It’s cool to see yourself animated.”

The Song Style of “Enchanted:” Menzel said hers is a Disney style song. “There’s a couple songs in it. Stephen Schwartz and Alan Menken are writing the songs for it and he [Schwartz] wrote ‘Wicked.’ It’s a big-budget movie. Amy is going to be great because she’s got to do that princess, fish-out-of-water thing in the middle of New York. It’s a romantic comedy with music and some animation in it. It’s kind of clever.”

The “Wicked” Movie Rumors: “They always talk about it but I think it’s doing too well, financially, right now, on the stage, so they don’t need it. They usually like to do the movie when they need a little bit more attention in New York, and then it boosts the sales again, like with ‘Rent.’ But Gregory Maguire wrote the next book called ‘Son of a Witch,’ so I figure when they make that movie, I’ll be 50 and green, and I can play the mother.”

Would she be upset if they went for a big name movie star for the film version of “Wicked?” Menzel said, “Well, that’s how I felt with ‘Rent.’ They had cast other people and then the projects would fall apart. I kind of feel like whatever is meant to be with those things will be. You can’t push them. I kind of let go of the idea that I’d get to play Maureen in the ‘Rent’ movie, and then it came back around. But, that happens. If I don’t look right, I don’t look right.

You’re not going to get someone who can sing it like that. I don’t care how cool the computers are in the studio now. You can get people to sound okay, but they’re going to have to lower keys and change the whole thing. I sound so conceited, don’t I? I guess you could find some young girl who can scream her face off. Oh, God, you’re going to bring that up four years from now when Alanis Morissette is in the movie… Yeah, I’d be so upset, but what can you do? And also, if you get too old, you get too old.”