Once upon a time in New York City, two young talents set off on a near-impossible quest: a successful Broadway career. Since childhood, Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell had focused on their quest with a ferocious drive \u2014 and learned to avoid the trolls.<\/p>\n
In Long Island, Menzel, the daughter of a pajama salesman, spent her weekends singing at weddings and bar mitzvahs, and otherwise kept her big voice a secret. \u201cNo one knew how good I was at school because I didn\u2019t want kids to know,\u201d admits Menzel today. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be the one to show off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile in Michigan, Bell signed up for every community play and helped support her single mother by modeling underwear and karaoke machines for Kmart catalogs. Classmates would brandish shots of her in a training bra. Bell didn\u2019t care. That money would get her to Manhattan.<\/p>\n
Both Menzel and Bell arrived at New York U.\u2019s Tisch School of the Arts and began to audition. Menzel got to town a little earlier, and the very first gig she landed was the original Broadway production of \u201cRent.\u201d Her full-throated performance as the sexually fluid performance artist Maureen earned her a Tony nomination \u2014 in part thanks to her cocky delivery of the line, \u201cThere\u2019s always going to be women in rubber flirting with me!\u201d \u2014 and icon status among theater fans who obsessed over the soundtrack. One of whom was Bell.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was such a young queen,\u201d Bell says. \u201cShe was so powerfully inspiring when I was studying music and theater at NYU.\u201d<\/p>\n
Menzel made success seem easy. After \u201cRent,\u201d she inaugurated the role of the resentful green-skinned Elphaba in \u201cWicked,\u201d which won her that Tony, and spun her Broadway smashes into thematically adjacent roles in movies including \u201cKissing Jessica Stein,\u201d \u201cEnchanted,\u201d the film version of \u201cRent,\u201d and, of course, \u201cFrozen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even Menzel\u2019s disasters were spun into gold, as when she fell through a trapdoor during the melting scene of her next-to-last performance of \u201cWicked\u201d and cracked a rib, forcing her to cancel her final show. That night, Menzel put on a track suit and swallowed enough pain medicine to walk onstage during the closing bows. Her show of strength made national headlines, including a farewell salute in the New York Times.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have no choice! That\u2019s just what you do!\u201d says Menzel. As for that time John Travolta flubbed her name during the Oscars, that, too, became a blessing. \u201cIt ended up being this really wonderful mistake that helped ingratiate me to people. Anyone that didn\u2019t know me knew me now, and anyone that did know me was more supportive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard to go unnoticed when you sing like Idina,\u201d Bell says. To most people, Menzel\u2019s career seems a string of mega-hits, as though, like her fantastic characters Elphaba and snow queen Elsa, she was born with a superpower she simply had to harness. To her, however, the fairytale story has crumpled pages.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the time in between those jobs, they\u2019re close to a decade,\u201d Menzel says. \u201cIn those off-times, I have gotten very insecure and felt that I couldn\u2019t get a job, and was dropped from record labels, and had to go on many an auditions that I didn\u2019t get. Having a career that goes up and down has made me really appreciate when I do have success. I know the real deal \u2014 the days where nobody is calling and you feel like crap.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Bell, she, too, found success fast. Bell scored her first Broadway gig as Becky Thatcher in \u201cThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer\u201d before she could graduate college. A year later, she was onstage alongside Liam Neeson and Laura Linney in a revival of \u201cThe Crucible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have always been a hustler,\u201d says Bell. \u201cI\u2019ve been really, really, really lucky that at the times I was available and ready to audition, someone was in need of a 5\u20191\u201d blonde with a little bit of quirk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bell had always planned to spend her career on the stage. Yet, now that she was a 22-year-old Broadway veteran, Bell began to think about a trip she\u2019d taken to Los Angeles when she was 14. Though money was tight, her mother had agreed to fly her precocious daughter to meet a Hollywood agent. She and her mother walked down Hollywood Boulevard to look at the stars, and Bell was struck by how many names she didn\u2019t recognize.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was taken aback by the sheer number of people that have contributed to the arts here,\u201d Bell says. \u201cIt made me realize how many artists there are in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
She chose to stay committed to finishing high school and studying theater in New York. But when her L.A.-based co-stars in the Off Broadway production of \u201cReefer Madness\u201d urged her to join them in California, on a whim, Bell decided to see if her happily-ever-after was on the other coast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely heard from numerous adults in my life that cared about me, \u2018Have a backup plan, have a backup plan, have a backup plan.\u2019 But I also heard from some other artists, \u2018If you have a plan to fall back on, you\u2019ll fall back,\u2019\u201d says Bell.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I just decided to go for broke \u2014 I\u2019ve always been an optimist.\u201d Within a week, Bell booked a guest spot on \u201cThe Shield.\u201d Within a year, she was cast as the lead on \u201cVeronica Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, even after proving she could charm audiences in every genre from crime-fighting teenagers to bitter comedies (\u201cForgetting Sarah Marshall,\u201d \u201cBad Moms\u201d) and cerebral sitcoms (\u201cThe Good Place\u201d), Bell was nervous when she finally met Menzel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d always looked up to her,\u201d Bell says. \u201cYou could never have convinced me that the first time I would meet her would be at her house to practice a duet to present to Disney executives after the \u2018Frozen\u2019 reading.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two spent an afternoon perfecting a duet of \u201cThe Wind Beneath My Wings,\u201d the ultimate ode to sisterly love. Finally, Bell admitted that it felt surreal to sing in person alongside a voice she\u2019d known so intimately on tape.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was incredibly gracious,\u201d says Bell, \u201cbut also looked at me in a way that was like, \u2018OK, you can be excited, but also, we\u2019re trying to get this job, so let\u2019s do the work.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
On audition day, they sang the Bette Midler mega-hit while staring deeply into each other\u2019s eyes. At the end, according to \u201cFrozen\u201d director Jennifer Lee, the entire room was misty-eyed. Yet Bell says she and Menzel burst into giggles at the absurdity of sharing this big moment in a generic boardroom. \u201cAnd then,\u201d says Bell, \u201cwe went on this crazy eight-year adventure together.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFrozen\u201d became the highest-grossing film of 2013, raking in more than $1.2 billion worldwide, and it won Oscars for animated film and original song, thanks to Menzel\u2019s showcase \u201cLet It Go.\u201d In the past six years, the property has snowballed into books, costumes, toys, theme-park rides, Norwegian tours, holiday specials, ice skating shows, and, of course, live musical theater. And on Nov. 22, Disney is releasing \u201cFrozen 2,\u201d the same week that Bell and Menzel will receive stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in a joint ceremony. That\u2019s harmony.<\/p>\n
The two girls who dreamed of making it on Broadway will now have their names engraved into Los Angeles\u2019 Hollywood Boulevard. It\u2019s a little ironic, but the timing is apt \u2014 particularly for Menzel, whose dramatic turn as a jilted wife in the Adam Sandler thriller \u201cUncut Gems\u201d is one of the year\u2019s best surprises \u2014 and one in which she doesn\u2019t sing a note.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to push myself in all different directions. It\u2019d be fun to let people see the other side of the Disney princess \u2014 or queen,\u201d she corrects herself. \u201cThere is a more raw, quote-unquote, uglier side that I would not be afraid to show.\u201d<\/p>\n
In that spirit, Bell has a pitch for Menzel when the two are octogenarians: a musical version of \u201cWhatever Happened to Baby Jane.\u201d \u201cThat would be a nice way to go out, right?!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love that she\u2019s got us booked when we\u2019re 80!\u201d laughs Menzel when she hears of Bell\u2019s plans. \u201cI\u2019d like to figure out what we can do two years from now, but that\u2019s cool!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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