The Broadway star brings her 50-city worldwide tour to North America starting Wednesday in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Idina Menzel admits she likes a good mini-bar when she\u2019s on tour. \u201cDon\u2019t put me in a hotel that has one of those empty fridges for those people who bring their own food and cook,\u201d she said with a laugh in her recent Facebook Live chat with Billboard,<\/em> during a break in tour rehearsals in Los Angeles. \u201cPut me in a hotel where the fridge has all these cool snacks. It doesn\u2019t have to be gourmet —\u00a0just my Peanut M&Ms, some chocolate-covered almonds. I binge at night. I\u2019m a classy chick.\u201d<\/p>\n After opening in Japan, the Broadway star brings her 50-city worldwide tour to North America starting Wednesday in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and continuing with a hometown show Friday at Long Island\u2019s Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale. Though always happy to return to her roots, the stop is sure to conjure up reminders of the past —\u00a0good and bad.<\/p>\n “I\u2019m usually excited [to play in Long Island] and I think it\u2019s going to be one of the best shows, and I get up there and I\u2019m flooded with memories — good, bad, bullies, some chick that was mean to me, family stuff. I get very emotional,\u201d she says. \u201cI remember that I was a little girl, little dreamer, that wanted to do something with her life, and I was able to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n And how. Menzel is the only Tony winner to have also scored a Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit (\u201cLetting Go\u201d from Frozen<\/em>). The singer\/actress, who co-starred in Lifetime\u2019s remake of Beaches<\/em> earlier this year, earned her first Tony nomination in 1996 for Rent <\/em>before winning best actress in a musical for her performance as Elphaba in Wicked<\/em> in 2004. She received her third nomination in 2014 for If\/Then<\/em>.<\/p>\n Menzel released her fifth album, Idina<\/em>, last fall and will draw heavily from the personal, intimate set in concert, including performing such songs as \u201cSmall World,\u201d \u201cI Do\u201d and \u201cQueen of Swords.\u201d New for this tour will be background singers and \u201cthese two beautiful string players that also sing,\u201d she tells Billboard<\/em>. Plus, \u201cI\u2019m excited to reunite with my other musicians who have played with me for many years at this point,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n But she is most excited about her offstage companion: Her 7-year old son, Walker (with ex-husband Taye Diggs), accompanies her on tour. \u201cEvery time my son comes with me, he\u2019s at a different age, so I see these places through a different lens with him,\u201d she says. \u201cWe hit every children\u2019s museum and zoo in every major city. I take him everywhere with me, which is hard because on my day off, if he weren\u2019t with me, I would probably sleep the whole day away and watch pay-per-view and rest my voice, but when he\u2019s around\u2026you forge on.\u201d<\/p>\n Staying at home in Los Angeles will be her new fianc\u00e9, Aaron Lohr. \u201cHe has a regular job, so he can\u2019t just take a plane all over the place and come visit me and be my emotional support,\u201d she laments. The pair moved in together recently and bought a new home.<\/p>\n Unlike many artists who have stage fright before they go onstage, Menzel admits that she sometimes experiences the syndrome during<\/em> a performance. \u201cI do a number on myself onstage sometimes,\u201d she says. \u201cI get in my head, get very perfectionist, start judging every note that I don\u2019t think was perfect\u2026You can have those nights where the chatter won\u2019t stop in your head, but I try to keep that at bay and call my therapist from the road and I have fun. Most of the time, the music is transcendent for me.\u201d<\/p>\n And when it\u2019s not, there\u2019s always the hotel mini-bar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Broadway star brings her 50-city worldwide tour to North America starting Wednesday in Pennsylvania. Idina Menzel admits she likes a good mini-bar when she\u2019s on tour. \u201cDon\u2019t put me in a hotel that has one of those empty fridges for those people who bring their own food […]<\/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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_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","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-45"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-c9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753","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=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":774,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}