{"id":850,"date":"2020-03-30T19:50:40","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T19:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/?p=850"},"modified":"2020-03-30T20:27:16","modified_gmt":"2020-03-30T20:27:16","slug":"idina-menzel-talks-frozen-2-uncut-gems-the-west-end-and-broadway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/idina-menzel-talks-frozen-2-uncut-gems-the-west-end-and-broadway\/","title":{"rendered":"Idina Menzel Talks \u2018Frozen 2\u2019, \u2018Uncut Gems\u2019, the West End and Broadway"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Frozen 2<\/em> now playing in theaters, I recently sat down with Idina Menzel to talk about making the highly anticipated sequel. During the wide-ranging conversation, Menzel talked about why making the sequel was a team effort, how the film doesn\u2019t have the typical villain to contend with, how the sisters\u2019 protective relationship means so much to so many people, the amazing animation, if she had any songs that were cut out of the sequel, if the story changed during production, and more. In addition, she talked about being part of Uncut Gems<\/em> with Adam Sandler and the differences between the audiences on the West End and Broadway.<\/p>\n

As most of you know, directed by Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck and produced by Peter Del Vecho, Frozen 2<\/em> takes Anna (Kristen Bell), Elsa (Idina Menzel), Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), and Olaf (Josh Gad) on an all-new adventure that finds Anna and Elsa investigating the truth behind their parents\u2014and possibly Elsa\u2019s powers. The sequel also features the voices of Evan Rachel Wood, Alfred Molina, Martha Plimpton, Jason Ritter, Ciar\u00e1n Hinds, Jeremy Sisto, Alan Tudyk, and Rachel Matthews.<\/p>\n

Check out what Idina Menzel had to say below.<\/p>\n

Collider: First of all, congratulations on the sequel. You guys did the impossible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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IDINA MENZEL: Thanks. It\u2019s not us. It\u2019s them. It\u2019s the creative team.<\/p>\n

I agree with you that Bobby [Robert Lopez], Kristen [Anderson-Lopez], Jennifer [Lee], Chris [Buck], all the people involved are all geniuses.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

MENZEL: And the animation.<\/p>\n

\u2014 all of them. But I also think that you guys inhabit these characters.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MENZEL: Yeah, it\u2019s so collaborative. It\u2019s the most collaborative process. I mean, theatre is pretty collaborative, but you just wouldn\u2019t expect it in a film out here in Hollywood. You come in and everyone wants to share with you where are the scripts at. They want to show the storyboards and the illustrations or the visuals that they have going and they want to share with you where the demos are or the music. They want to know what we think and what we feel about stuff and they just keep us informed along the way. It\u2019s just so much fun. Jen was running a studio, and she found the time to come in and kick off her shoes and sit with us with Chris Buck and read and direct us for hours and hours. I will say that I know that she loved it because she liked to escape from the corporate part of things and get back to her creative writer artist self. But I just always admired that about them.<\/p>\n

I think my favorite part of this movie is that there\u2019s no villain. I love that aspect of the film. Talk a little about that aspect, that it\u2019s not about someone coming to get your character\u2019s powers or come between the sisters or take over the land.
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MENZEL: Yeah, and about contending with a past that we all have to reckon ourselves with. The mistakes we make as people, how that informs us as kids and how we decide where we\u2019re going, what we\u2019re going to believe in, and what our principles are going to be. You know, acceptance, the people that don\u2019t accept us. Fighting to be accepted. You know, there\u2019s challenges, there\u2019s things, but there isn\u2019t your necessary villain. Every Disney is just the quintessential nemesis. That was supposed to be Elsa, especially in the first movie. And then they wrote \u201cLet It Go\u201d and they were trying to think\u2026 I think it was sort of a chicken and the egg type of thing. But I remember because I was involved very early on when she actually had blue skin and she was just, like, the mean sister, the ice queen or whatever. Then they start to realize, \u201cWhy do we have to do this very one-dimensional thing? Can\u2019t she be this complex character?\u201d And then when they wrote that song, you know, music speaks to us in ways that you can just feel these different dynamics and textures to somebody. And it started to become more obvious that somebody can be a lot of things. There are gray areas, you know? And then it became more about the relationship between these two sisters and their love for each other and no man being the answer to everything, and all that.<\/p>\n

But I think it\u2019s the relationship between the two sisters that\u2019s everything in this movie. And it\u2019s the reason, I think, why so many people around the world love these characters. Especially when I saw it last night with these girls sitting near me and they were captivated. They loved this movie.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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MENZEL: Yeah. Yeah. And I have a younger sister and I know how it feels, this fierce loyalty to each other, to being protective of each other, wanting the most for each other, wanting each other to sort of find their thing, their authenticity, their passion in life, what they\u2019re meant to be, what\u2019s their purpose. These two women just want that so much for each other.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been asking this of a few actors recently that have worked on the West End and on Broadway \u2014 I asked Jonathan [Groff] this earlier. Have you noticed the difference between the audiences on the West End and on Broadway?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MENZEL: I have to think back now, because I did Wicked. I think they\u2019re different for musicals and for straight plays. They seem like they just let it loose and have more fun in musicals. They\u2019re not uptight about it. When we went over there [to the West End], they warned us, \u201cYou know, these audiences are more reserved and blah, blah, blah. Don\u2019t expect them to get up and give you a standing ovation.\u201d And they were effusive and yelling, \u201cI love it.\u201d But you have to remember, they had Phantom of the Opera and all these things. But their plays is their Shakespeare and their\u2026 you know, you don\u2019t mess around with that. So I feel like they\u2019re more fun in that way, and then New York is a little bit\u2026 it\u2019s harder on the musicals. I don\u2019t know. That was just my take. What\u2019d Jonathan say?<\/p>\n

Jonathan said that in Broadway, there\u2019s a lot of standing ovations, sometimes when people just come out.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MENZEL: Yeah, that\u2019s true too.<\/p>\n

And that in London, if you get a standing ovation, they really mean it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MENZEL: That\u2019s true. That\u2019s true. So I just contradicted everything I said. (laughs)<\/p>\n

No, no. You\u2019ve done different stuff than what Jonathan has done.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

MENZEL: True.<\/p>\n

You can only report on what you\u2019ve actually experienced.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MENZEL: Yeah. I don\u2019t know. I was the only American in an all British and a little bit Aussie cast, and I had the time of my life when I was in the West End. I actually learned how to do eight shows a week and actually have a beer. They taught me how to party and do it. It\u2019s probably because I had already won the Tony and I didn\u2019t have as much to prove and I wasn\u2019t as uptight about everything, and I just laid back and had a good time and everybody was awesome.<\/p>\n

Before I run out of time with you, I thought Uncut Gems<\/em> was awesome.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MENZEL: Isn\u2019t it good?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s so good.<\/strong><\/p>\n

MENZEL: I didn\u2019t see that coming at all. I mean, I knew it would be good, because I\u2019ve always been a fan of Adam Sandler\u2019s and Punch-Drunk Love<\/em>, and I get so frustrated with people that give comedians a hard time, are always so surprised when they\u2019re really good actors. Because then they\u2019re, like, the most courageous, risk-taking artists of all of our mediums. But I didn\u2019t know it was going to be like this and I didn\u2019t know how much I\u2019d love the Safdie brothers and how fucking crazy and cool and brilliant they are.<\/p>\n

I could go off on that, but I only have two more minutes. So let\u2019s jump back into Frozen<\/em>. Kristen and Bobby told me that there were seven songs or so that they wrote that didn\u2019t make Frozen 2<\/em>. Was there something that you were sad to see go?<\/strong><\/p>\n

MENZEL: Not mine. Mine are all there. (laughs) Oh, their way they arranged it changed. On Show Yourself, which is actually my favorite song, even though everybody talks about Into the Unknown. I love the last song in the movie that I have when I\u2019m riding on the ocean with the horse. They rearranged that song. It had a different undercurrent to it and they re-orchestrated it and it went into this ballad-y thing when she\u2019s singing in her mind as she\u2019s having her black stallion moment. It gives me chills. I don\u2019t get chills from hearing my voice, but I get chills from the visual of it. It brings me back to my childhood.<\/p>\n

The animation in this movie is just so breathtaking, it\u2019s just ridiculous. Disney animation and what they do, it doesn\u2019t make sense.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

MENZEL: That\u2019s why I said it\u2019s a teamwork. It\u2019s everybody. There\u2019s a spectacle of it, but there\u2019s also the emotion in their faces. I mean, the stuff that they grab is just crazy. Like when Anna sees her sister, when she\u2019s thinks that she\u2019s gone, you know. I mean, there\u2019s just the humanity in what they do. It\u2019s pretty incredible.<\/p>\n

An animated movie always changes during the development process. Was there anything that really changed along the way, or was it very \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

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MENZEL: For me, the biggest change is not as much the animation as the approach of Elsa was \u2026 We were used to making her apologetic all the time for herself. \u201cI am sorry I have these powers. I\u2019m sorry I almost hurt everybody and\u2026\u201d You know, that was more of like the first movie. She was always fearful that she was going to endanger the people that she loved with this power. In this film, she steps into it and she owns it. But at first, we had done a lot of readings and recordings of dialogue where it still came across a little bit apologetic. And then they\u2019d watch the screen and they\u2019re like, \u201cWe need to stop thinking the same formula.\u201d It\u2019s Anna that\u2019s actually afraid for her sister all the time, and worried about what\u2019s going to happen, but Elsa has this certainty. She hears this voice, but there\u2019s something all-knowing that she knows that if she just follows this thing inside of her that she\u2019s going to find whatever it is. It feels right. It feels powerful. It feels good. And so we went back in and re-recorded a lot of her lines with more of an optimism and enthusiasm and sort of like\u2026 She\u2019s sort of like letting everyone around her know that everything\u2019s going to be okay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Frozen 2 now playing in theaters, I recently sat down with Idina Menzel to talk about making the highly anticipated sequel. During the wide-ranging conversation, Menzel talked about why making the sequel was a team effort, how the film doesn\u2019t have the typical villain to contend with, […]<\/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":[56,53,54],"class_list":["post-850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-56","tag-frozen-2","tag-uncut-gems"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-dI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850","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=850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":851,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850\/revisions\/851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}