Camila Cabello and Idina Menzel take on the roles of Cinderella and her stepmother Vivian in Kay Cannon\u2019s fresh musical take on the timeless fairy tale for Amazon \u2013 and they are here for the movie\u2019s empowering message for women.<\/p>\n
Writer and director Cannon, who is also the brains behind the popular Pitch Perfect films, has rewritten the narrative to have Cinderella focus on her dream of trying to open her own shop, where she can sell the gowns she designs. In her kingdom and time (non-specific but Ye Olden Days) though, women don\u2019t run businesses.<\/p>\n
Talking to Metro.co.uk<\/strong> alongside her co-star Menzel, Cabello, who makes her acting debut in Cinderella, was all in when she found out about Cannon\u2019s vision.<\/p>\n Describing herself as \u2018excited and scared at the same time\u2019 when the opportunity came along, during the recording of her second album, Romance, she explains: \u2018Just reading the script and the values that this film represents and everything about it, I was kind of like I can\u2019t let this pass me by because it\u2019s such a dream role for me.\u2019<\/p>\n The Havana singer was also struck by the similarities between writer and director Cannon\u2019s journey and that of her heroine, calling her \u2018like a Cinderella herself\u2019.<\/p>\n \u2018I feel like Kay represents it. She\u2019s like almost like the character, she\u2019s a woman who is in the kind of male-dominated industry of comedy and writing. And she\u2019s just paved the way for herself with a lot of ambition.<\/p>\n \u2018She has a young daughter, and I feel like this movie is almost like a gift to her daughter and to young girls \u2013 this kind of whole new value system. Growing up with fairy tales, where it\u2019s like, the princess is waiting for this prince to save her, and then with this one, everything is so different. There\u2019s no good and evil people. It\u2019s like this more complex message of people having their own emotional identity and trauma.\u2019<\/p>\n Menzel chimes in to agree, adding: \u2018And people being allowed to be seen for what they want in this life.\u2019<\/p>\n The musicals veteran certainly seems well placed to talk about misunderstood characters, having been Broadway\u2019s Elphaba in Wicked, original villain from The Wizard of Oz, and voiced Elsa in Disney\u2019s Frozen films, a far more complex princess than the studio\u2019s past offerings.<\/p>\n In her role as Cinderella\u2019s stepmother, Vivian, Menzel, 50, has injected nuance and empathy into the traditionally \u2018evil\u2019 character, making her drive far more about just pushing Cinderella to see her married, as that\u2019s the only way she believes women can advance in life.<\/p>\n Addressing the balance needed for a sympathetic villain, Menzel explains: \u2018I was trying to navigate that all the time, figuring out that tone and wanting to have fun with her and give people what they wanted, but also shed light on the complexities of her character and her soul and who she is, and I think that\u2019s how we are as women.<\/p>\n \u2018I mean, our power is what\u2019s so beautiful about us. And the one thing that we\u2019re always so afraid of is to kind of let rip for fear that we\u2019re going to alienate people in our lives or be too scary or too strong or too bitchy. So, I think being in a movie with so many powerful women was liberating for all of us.\u2019<\/p>\n Both Cabello and Menzel are powerhouse singers who have released their own albums, which include songs they have co-written or written themselves. Cabello, 24, has notched up two UK number one singles and three Grammy nominations too, during a successful solo career she embarked upon after leaving girl group Fifth Harmony in 2016. Meanwhile, Menzel has a Tony award and two further nominations to her name.<\/p>\n However, with Cinderella, both stars also got to write songs for their respective character to sing, which are slotted in among a mix of hits from Madonna, Ed Sheeran and Janet Jackson \u2013 to name a few.<\/p>\n Cabello reveals how the team were keen for her to write a song for Cinderella from the get-go.<\/p>\n \u2018When I got presented with the opportunity to be in the film, they were very much like, it would be so sick if you wrote an original song. So I wrote it [Million to One] with Scott Harris in like a couple of days, which never happens! So many times, you\u2019re striving to write a cool song and you have maybe a week or two to do it, and it maybe happens on the last couple of days \u2013 but [here] I think it just kind of happened like magic.\u2019<\/p>\n Cabello hadn\u2019t worked with songwriter and producer Harris before but ended up recruiting him for her album afterwards as they had \u2018such good chemistry\u2019.<\/p>\n Menzel pitched her and Laura Veltz\u2019s song, Dream Girl, to the team, knowing it was in no way guaranteed to be accepted, let alone make the final cut.<\/p>\n \u2018I did ask to have an opportunity to have an original song, but I knew how these things work and many films going in where you try to lobby for that, and it doesn\u2019t happen.\u2019<\/p>\n Joking that she didn\u2019t think Cannon would agree to use her song \u2018just to be nice\u2019, Menzel describes herself as \u2018honoured\u2019 that the song was picked, a song that Cabello praises as \u2018a banger\u2019.<\/p>\n Chatting about the experience of penning a song for the character you play, and tapping into their journey and emotions, Menzel continues: \u2018There\u2019s something to it, because only we know the characters the way we know them. I mean, great song writers are great because they can get in the head of the artists and understand our experiences, but there\u2019s something about this, when you\u2019re singing as the character.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s such an opportunity, and the day you get to shoot a song that you\u2019re part of writing, in the film, is really a milestone.\u2019<\/p>\n Cinderella is available on Amazon Prime Video from Friday September 3.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Camila Cabello and Idina Menzel take on the roles of Cinderella and her stepmother Vivian in Kay Cannon\u2019s fresh musical take on the timeless fairy tale for Amazon \u2013 and they are here for the movie\u2019s empowering message for women. Writer and director Cannon, who is also the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":995,"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":[],"class_list":["post-994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/PRC_197225052.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Srnq-g2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994","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=994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":996,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions\/996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idina-here.com\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}