{"id":559,"date":"2015-10-23T14:52:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T14:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/?p=559"},"modified":"2015-10-23T14:52:02","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T14:52:02","slug":"idina-menzel-is-not-that-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/idina-menzel-is-not-that-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"Idina Menzel is not that girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Broadway superstar on being a gay icon, diva and role model<\/em><\/p>\n

Idina Menzel may be on top of the world, but the American actress and singer insists that she\u2019s no diva. \u201cI\u2019m pretty low maintenance,\u201d says Menzel. Her rise to fame originated from her Tony-nominated role as Maureen Johnson, in the 1996 Broadway musical Rent. She later won the Tony for best actress in a musical in 2004 for playing Elphaba in Wicked, a role she would reprise when the show opened in London\u2019s West End in 2006. Superstardom came when Menzel voiced the character of Elsa in the Disney movie Frozen, and topped the charts with her Oscar-winning anthem \u201cLet It Go.\u201d In this edited interview, Daily Xtra sat down with Menzel to talk about fame, performing and being a gay icon.<\/p>\n

Daily Xtra: How do you protect your voice on a long world tour like this one?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Idina Menzel: I warm up with my voice teacher. We treat it like an athlete trains for the Olympics. You don\u2019t run a marathon coming out of nowhere. It\u2019s important to train, especially for when you have a cold or you\u2019re having a bad day. You have to be able to get up there onstage and still be powerful even if you\u2019re not 100 percent.<\/p>\n

How did your recurring role as Shelby Corcoran on the TV series Glee affect your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

More people see television than see theatre, so I think if anything, people said, \u201cOh, that\u2019s the girl from Wicked in the green make-up!\u201d It allowed people to connect the dots.<\/p>\n

Speaking of Wicked, I have to ask you about your Jan 8, 2005 performance, when you fell through a trap door and cracked a lower rib.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I thought I had punctured my lungs or something. It was crazy and I was surrounded by all the crew guys backstage, who were my friends. They were trying to get me to breathe and were afraid to move me because they wanted to make sure my spine was okay. It was scary.<\/p>\n

How different is it performing on Broadway versus the West End?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not much of a difference. Londoners get a bad rap for being more refined of an audience, and I think that is completely unfounded. I find them to be as or more supportive than any New York audiences. They\u2019re excited, smart and sophisticated, and I love going back there.<\/p>\n

Are you involved with the upcoming US national tour of the Broadway musical If\/Then?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am going to headline a couple of the opening cities, get it started, because it\u2019s really important to me that the rest of the country gets to see this incredible show that I was with from the very beginning and feel very connected to.<\/p>\n

Will you star in the Broadway adaptation of Frozen?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019ll see if they want me to. They\u2019re still working on the story, and I might be too old to play Elsa onstage.<\/p>\n

Beyond your championing LGBT civil rights, what is it about Idina Menzel that your gay fans love?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That question is always one of the hardest ones for me to answer because I\u2019m not quite sure. I think it\u2019s partly the underdog characters that I\u2019ve played \u2014 characters who overcome alienation, or being ostracized, who overcome adversity to feel beautiful. Also, good big hair, a good big voice and a nice vibrato is always good for the gay community. I owe everything to my gay fans, ever since my Rent days.<\/p>\n

A new generation and wider audience discovered you via Frozen. What is it like for you when young girls and women celebrate you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s beautiful, but it\u2019s also quite a responsibility. It makes me need to be on my game and make sure I am not just talking the talk, but walking the walk, that I am practicing what I preach. I am out there singing about empowerment and accepting who you are, and what makes you extraordinary in this world. So I make sure I do that for myself, as a 40-year-old woman. I don\u2019t want to be hypocritical. It\u2019s a big responsibility, not just to young girls, but also to young boys.<\/p>\n

Is Idina Menzel a diva?<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Laughs) Not in the negative context they use it these days. I hope I\u2019m not. I\u2019m grappling with asking for what I need [to do my job] as a powerful woman in this world, because women get a bad rap when they stand up and speak for themselves. But I\u2019m pretty low maintenance, I would say. It\u2019s a balance. It all ties into Frozen and Elsa and not being afraid to embrace power and harness it, and know you can change the world. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Broadway superstar on being a gay icon, diva and role model Idina Menzel may be on top of the world, but the American actress and singer insists that she\u2019s no diva. \u201cI\u2019m pretty low maintenance,\u201d says Menzel. Her rise to fame originated from her Tony-nominated role as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[36,38,40],"class_list":["post-559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-36","tag-frozen","tag-ifthen"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/daily.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-91","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":561,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559\/revisions\/561"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}