It\u2019s past 10pm in Los Angeles and we\u2019re sitting in a TV studio waiting for Idina Menzel to record a live segment for Good Morning Britain, during which Event\u2019s Piers Morgan proceeds to serenade her with a tuneless rendition of Let It Go. The theme song from the 2013 Disney movie Frozen \u2013 which took $1.3 billion at the box office \u2013 has been streamed on YouTube more than half a billion times, frazzled the nerves of parents the world over and even prompted the Time magazine article headed: \u2018Let It Go Stuck in Your Head: How to Get it Out\u2019. It has also turned Menzel, who performed the song as the film\u2019s lead character, Queen Elsa, into a megastar.<\/p>\n
The Oscar-winning song that made Idina Menzel famous has frazzled the nerves of parents across the globe<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The air conditioning in the room is broken, and Morgan\u2019s delivery even more so, but while many a stage diva might have thrown a strop, Menzel doesn\u2019t raise a murmur. Surely though, she must be heartily fed up of the song by now? \u2018No, I\u2019m not!\u2019 she insists. \u2018You aspire your whole life to have such a huge song, so when it comes, you don\u2019t look a gift horse in the mouth.\u2019<\/p>\n
She\u2019ll be bringing Let It Go to the UK this month as part of her world tour, and yet despite a stellar career that includes a Tony Award-winning turn as Elphaba in Wicked (on Broadway and in the West End in 2006), 46-year-old<\/p>\n
She admits that if she didn\u2019t sing it, \u2018people would be a little upset\u2019, yet also cheerfully admits to being a woman \u2018who likes to talk about sex\u2019 and who has \u2018a foul mouth\u2019 – sentiments not quite in tune with a Disney good girl. \u2018I have a really introverted side and a [fierce] side that usually comes out through my music and performing,\u2019 she says. \u2018I just have to figure out ways to be true to myself and also not alienate the younger fans.\u2019<\/p>\n
Enviably curvy with a dancer\u2019s lithe physique, one wonders if Menzel herself has ever been asked by record producers to sex things up a bit? \u2018No, but I would probably love it because it would change my image a little!\u2019 she laughs. Her live shows have seen her give rein to her earthier self \u2013 rocking out to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and performing a strangely hypnotic version of Radiohead\u2019s Creep, whose lyrics (\u2018I\u2019m a creep, I\u2019m a weirdo\u2019) are at complete odds with the uplifting message of Let It Go.<\/p>\n
The theme song from the 2013 Disney movie Frozen \u2013 which took $1.3 billion at the box office \u2013 has been streamed on YouTube more than half a billion times<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Menzel\u2019s appeal lies in her powerhouse voice coupled with an endearing vulnerability, which was apparent from her childhood. Growing up in New York with her younger sister Cara and parents Stuart (a pyjama salesman) and Helene (a psychotherapist), she knew by the age of five that she wanted to perform. Yet even early on, her talent separated her from her friends. \u2018When you\u2019re young, you don\u2019t want to be ostracised by others, so I didn\u2019t sing in front of everybody because I didn\u2019t want people to push me away.\u2019<\/p>\n
By her mid-teens, Menzel was already working as a wedding singer. \u2018The worst gig I did was when a guest had a heart attack on the dancefloor,\u2019 she says. \u2018My boss made us keep playing, even though the ambulance and stretchers were coming in. But I knew I was good and that I\u2019d move on.\u2019<\/p>\n
When she was 15, her parents divorced. \u2018I didn\u2019t see it coming at all,\u2019 she says. \u2018The image I had of my parents was that they were very happy and just fought occasionally, so when they divorced it took the wind out from under me. It made me feel that nothing is ever what it seems.\u2019<\/p>\n
Those feelings resurfaced again three years ago when she went through her own divorce from actor Taye Diggs, whom she met during the Broadway run of Rent. They had been together for 18 years, married for ten and have a son, Walker, now seven.<\/p>\n
\u2018I definitely felt lots of guilt [about the divorce],\u2019 she admits. \u2018You want to give your child that perfect family life you have in your head, especially if you come from divorced parents, and you think, I\u2019m never going to do that to my family. But it did happen and I feel a lot of sadness and regret. But [Taye] and I always got along when it came to our son.\u2019<\/p>\n
Menzel won a Tony Award-winning turn as Elphaba in Wicked (on Broadway and in the West End in 2006)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
While Menzel was starring in Wicked in 2003, she and Diggs, the African American star of films such as How Stella Got Her Groove Back, received hate mail over their mixed-race relationship \u2013 something that shocked Menzel, coming from an inclusive theatre community. Does she feel that with Donald Trump\u2019s ascent to power, those feelings of fear and hatred have bubbled back to the surface in the US? \u2018I think it\u2019s uncovered a lot of hidden racism in people,\u2019 she says, \u2018but now it\u2019s out there, we can try to confront it and it\u2019s making people want to protest and be active.\u2019<\/p>\n
Would she ever sing for Trump? The answer is a chilly \u2018No\u2019.<\/p>\n
She once sang for President Obama, though, and, perhaps even more terrifyingly, for Barbra Streisand at a tribute concert in New York. \u2018Afterwards she just said, \u201cYou were good\u201d and then walked away,\u2019 she laughs. \u2018I was a little disappointed.\u2019<\/p>\n
The easy punchline would be to exhort Menzel to \u2018let it go\u2019. It\u2019s not like she would have heard that one before, now would she?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s past 10pm in Los Angeles and we\u2019re sitting in a TV studio waiting for Idina Menzel to record a live segment for Good Morning Britain, during which Event\u2019s Piers Morgan proceeds to serenade her with a tuneless rendition of Let It Go. The theme song from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"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":true,"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":[45],"class_list":["post-661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-45"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-aF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":662,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions\/662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}