Idina Menzel\u2019s public persona is defined by her starring role in a blockbuster children\u2019s franchise (the \u201cFrozen\u201d movies), a Tony Award-winning performance in Broadway\u2019s \u201cWicked\u201d and a Christmas album or two, so it\u2019s more than a little jarring to see her show up as Dinah, Adam Sandler\u2019s estranged wife, in Josh and Benny Safdie\u2019s high-tension underworld thriller \u201cUncut Gems.\u201d<\/p>\n
In just a handful of scenes with Sandler\u2019s rakish, charmingly duplicitous wheeler-dealer, Menzel generates serious emotional heat, upping the stakes of an already taut street-level drama.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just so yearned to be part of something that was different from what people expected for me,\u201d Menzel says. \u201cI really feel like I haven\u2019t had the opportunity to show that kind of range.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Safdie brothers saw her in Joshua Harmon\u2019s Off-Broadway dark comedy \u201cSkintight,\u201d and discovered that she might make sense as a fierce, self-possessed, well-heeled Long Island McMansionite.<\/p>\n
She grew up lower middle class in Syosset, on Long Island, and says she recognizes Dinah as an \u201cEast Coast Jewish girl\u201d like herself. \u201cAnyone who knows me knows that it\u2019s just where I live, literally and metaphorically. I know that character, and I know many women like her. And I\u2019ve probably been known to act like her once in a while, after maybe a couple of beers late at night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though Dinah is largely absent from the main setting of \u201cUncut Gems,\u201d which takes place in and around Manhattan\u2019s Diamond District, Menzel said that milieu also felt familiar.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy father was a pajama salesman, so he was in the Garment District, just a couple blocks from the Diamond District.\u201d She\u2019d go visit him at work as a little girl, and go to the diner with him and his friends. \u201cIt\u2019s a world I know and feel comfortable in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Safdie brothers\u2019 films are marked by a documentary-style realism that couldn\u2019t be further from the storyboarding and careful scripting behind a mass-market animated film like \u201cFrozen.\u201d Menzel says that she was electrified by the Safdies\u2019 approach, with its fast pace and allowance for improvisation, and refers to \u201cthe frenetic, beautiful chaos that they create.\u201d<\/p>\n
But she pushes back against the idea that \u201cUncut Gems\u201d posed a new kind of challenge. \u201cLook, I\u2019ve been singing professionally since I was 15 years old,\u201d Menzel says. \u201cI guess I have tough skin. I know how to get up in front of an audience where nobody gives a … and do my job. And then being a creature of the theater and knowing that every night is different and to welcome mistakes \u2014 I\u2019m comfortable in that environment. I like spontaneity. The only thing I had to get used to is that [the Safdies] don\u2019t say \u2018Action!\u2019 because they don\u2019t want you to feel like \u2018the red light is on, now do something.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
She was on set only for a couple weeks, so at a certain point, Menzel says, \u201cI stopped worrying about being perfect and just stayed in the moment with Adam [Sandler]. He\u2019s always in character, and he\u2019s so generous and focused and has done so much preparation. He knew the rhythm, so I just kind of keyed into his rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though \u201cUncut Gems\u201d introduces the characters\u2019 marriage at a moment well past its breaking point, Menzel and Sandler make clear through their shouting matches that their passion isn\u2019t entirely extinguished.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like in order to get to that kind of place of anger or hatred, you have to love deeply and hurt deeply,\u201d Menzel says. \u201cI just imagined that she fell in love with the dreamer in him and made the same mistake that I\u2019ve made in my own life with men where, are you falling in love with the boy or the man?\u201d<\/p>\n
Though it seems destined to represent the Safdie brothers\u2019 mainstream breakthrough, and may even earn an Oscar nomination or two, \u201cUncut Gems\u201d is clearly the underdog of Menzel\u2019s two winter 2019 movies. But for Menzel, who says she \u201ccontend[s] with a lot of insecurities and neuroses,\u201d the nonsinging role is crucial to her continued evolution as an artist.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a gift and a curse to know what you\u2019ve wanted to do your whole life,\u201d she says. \u201cEver since I was a little girl, I just sang, and that became my identity. But as you get older, you start to feel like, \u2018Well, when I can\u2019t sing or I have a cold or I can\u2019t get the best performance of my life, then who am I? Am I special anymore if I\u2019m not wowing people with some kind of vocal acrobatics?\u2019 I\u2019ve learned a lot about myself \u2014 that it\u2019s not about those high notes; it\u2019s about the essence of who you are and how you tell a story and what you have to offer as an artist. But it\u2019s taken me a long time to come to that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Idina Menzel\u2019s public persona is defined by her starring role in a blockbuster children\u2019s franchise (the \u201cFrozen\u201d movies), a Tony Award-winning performance in Broadway\u2019s \u201cWicked\u201d and a Christmas album or two, so it\u2019s more than a little jarring to see her show up as Dinah, Adam Sandler\u2019s estranged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":826,"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":[56,54],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-56","tag-uncut-gems"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com_.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-dj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825","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=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":827,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions\/827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}