Four months after she won a Tony Award for leading actress in a musical for her blood-soaked portrayal of Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard,” Nicole Scherzinger is sitting in the room where she willed her triumph into being.
“I manifested it right here,” she says as she waves an arm around the cozy cabaret tucked inside the Sun Rose hotel on — where else? — Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood.
In 2022, the singer and actor best known as the leader of the Pussycat Dolls put on a series of intimate concerts at the Sun Rose designed to showcase the musical-theater skills she’d been honing since she was a kid growing up in Louisville, Ky. Word got around the entertainment industry, and soon Scherzinger was cast as the star of a radically stripped-down revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s early-’90s melodrama about a washed-up (and murderous) movie star.
The musical, directed by Jamie Lloyd as a kind of blunt-force digital nightmare, played London’s West End before moving last year to Broadway for a 10-month run that brought Scherzinger rave reviews along with theater’s highest honor. Ahead of a concert scheduled for Thursday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, the 47-year-old looked back on the experience as she sipped hot water and munched discs of raw ginger. She wore a Gucci sweatsuit and heels.
Your gig here was you saying, “Put me in, Coach.”Basically I was telling people, “Hey, can I audition for this movie musical? Can I audition for this live TV musical?” People wouldn’t even give me a shot — they only knew me from the pop side. So I was like, OK, let me educate everyone on who I am and what my real love language is, which is the stage.
Give me an example of something you weren’t allowed to audition for.They wouldn’t see me for “Cats.” But that ended up being a blessing.
You’re talking about the crummy movie version from 2019.That was God protecting me.
I recently talked to Josh Groban, who told me about the difference between the Grammys and the Tonys. He said the Grammys are all about competition but that everyone at the Tonys is genuinely supportive of one another because they all know how hard live theater is.I couldn’t have said it any better. I’ll still try to. Broadway is not for the faint of heart. You’re not doing it for a camera or a post — you’re just working your ass off literally every night for the passion and the love and for those couple thousand people in the theater. The music industry is dog-eat-dog — you’re just trying to stay relevant. The Broadway community, they don’t give a s— about relevancy. They give a s— about art and about your work ethic.
Take me back to your final “Sunset” performance in July.Other than my mother’s two successful open-heart surgeries, that was the greatest day of my life.
Better than winning the Tony?Believe you me, I wanted that Tony. And I worked for it — I sacrificed everything for Norma Desmond in that production. But the Tony was out of my hands. Doing the show — I mean, what a blessing to be able to reveal all of you — your most vulnerable, your ugliest parts. Only in the theater can you do that. You can’t do that in the music industry.
Jamie Lloyd told Variety that you were “utterly without vanity” in the show. Accurate?My God, did you see what the hell I looked like? From Day 1, I was showing him what heels I wanted to wear, what specific leopard print I wanted for my bedazzling caftans. And when he introduced the cameras, I was like, “No, no, no — you have to only do this side. Do you want greatness or mediocrity?” But all that had to go out the door. I had to chip away at all of that vanity so that people could see the truth. That’s when art matters. And I loved it. There’s so much freedom in not giving a s— about what you look like.
Onstage, sure. But you’re also a famous person walking around the world. How do you preserve that mindset at Ralph’s?It’s called sunglasses and a hat.
Your success in “Sunset Boulevard” clearly vindicated that feeling you had when people weren’t taking you seriously for musicals. But what if you’d taken this role about a Hollywood has-been and the show flopped?It would never have flopped. That’s not how I work.
You can’t control everything.Say it didn’t go over. It doesn’t matter because we knew — Jamie and I and that company — we knew what we had uncovered. I knew when Jamie said, “Just read the script — read the lines on the page.” As out-there and as character-y as Norma seemed to everyone else, she made complete sense to me. And I felt like her story hadn’t been told in the way that I could tell it. I wanted to bring a real human aspect whereas maybe in the past, especially with Gloria Swanson, it had been told from someone else’s perspective: “Oh, she’s crazy, bewildered, far-fetched.” I was like, “No, she’s misunderstood.”
“Sunset Boulevard” thinks pretty deeply about celebrity and what it does to a person. Did it make you think about how celebrity has changed since you got in the game?It’s so different — there’s no mystery. And it feels like anybody can be a celebrity now. You don’t have to have real art or craft to be famous or even revered.
Is that good? Bad? Neither?I don’t think it’s great. The phone changed everything. There’s just too much noise out there — too many distractions.
The phone also changed the access people have to the famous.It’s an all-access pass. And you feel like you have to join that or else you’re not gonna be a part of it because somebody else next door is willing to give it all, show it all, tell it all.
The hubbub last year over the Russell Brand photo illustrates that, right? He posted a red Trump-style hat that said “Make Jesus First Again,” and you asked where you could get one. Backlash ensued.I think that’s just horrible. I’ve said it before: I wish you could cancel cancel culture. I’ve never been a political person, and boy, did that bite me in the butt. The only time I’ve been political is when I campaigned for Obama [in 2008].
That’s not nothing.But it’s not my forte. I’m not educated. It just feels so divisive to me.
Couple questions about the Pussycat Dolls. What’s the status of your legal dispute with Robin Antin, who founded the group, over a proposed reunion?Our lawsuit is settled. That should have never happened. That was an unfortunate mistake on someone’s part — not mine. However, time heals things, and grace is always beautiful in life. I’m very positive and, dare I say, excited for the possibilities to come on the horizon.
In some ways, the group strikes me as the epitome of early-2000s pop. I don’t know that you could have the Dolls today.You couldn’t and you shouldn’t. People have evolved, and there’s so much more freedom and inclusion and acceptance. The original conception of the Dolls, it came from a time when women would dress up and be pretty for the men. That’s what was sexy, right? Today, sexiness is to be sexy for yourself. Strength means accepting yourself, not pretending you’re strong for someone else.
If I was gonna do the Dolls again, it would have to make sense to me now, and I can’t go back to what things were before. I actually wrote a song about it called “Never Going Back.” I’ve come way too far to go backwards, and I’m not just a puppet anymore. I’m 87 years old now, and I know my f— s—, OK?
Sounds like a reunion would mean a total overhaul. In that case, why bother?Because the songs are too good. That’s what’s so great about nostalgia. If I had the time, I’d be the first one to go to a New Kids on the Block concert. “The Right Stuff,” “Please Don’t Go Girl” — those songs!
What was the Pussycat Dolls’ finest musical moment?“Stickwitu.” That gave us a Grammy nomination.
Best pop performance by a duo or group with vocals. This was the 2007 Grammys. You lost to the Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps.”Which was written for me.
Will.i.am has said he offered you a spot in the group.Will is my brother in this industry. He was there when I auditioned for the Pussycat Dolls, and before the Dolls he asked me to be a part of the group. It just didn’t feel right, and it wasn’t meant to be because Fergie was the perfect Pea and I was meant to lead the Pussycat Dolls. But he wrote that song for the Dolls.
You’ve put in a lot of time as a judge on singing shows: “The Sing-Off,” “The X Factor,” “The Masked Singer.”Even now: “Building the Band.”
You ever worry that work might dull your skills as a performer?Jamie Lloyd, when he got me in the studio the very first week, he said, “You are one of the greats, and I never want to see you on one of those shows again.” I was like, “Well, honey, I take care of my family, and I ain’t come from no money.” They pay the bills.
If you were to make a Nicole Scherzinger album right now, what kind of record would it be?I’d love to do a musical theater album because of these concerts that I’ve been doing — just songs that I love, songs that have always spoken to me, roles that I never had the opportunity to play. But I’ve also been writing a lot, and so I pretty much have that album.
And?It’s pop, but it’s pop with edge. Some of it’s more dance, some of it’s more singer-songwriter. If I were to call it right now, I’d call it “Warrior.” It’s a lot of empowering anthems.
Do you sense an audience for that?The entire world! Who doesn’t want music that makes a change? Who doesn’t want music that’s gonna inspire you through the dark times? One of the biggest things in the world right now is “KPop Demon Hunters.” Listen to the lyrics of those songs and what they’re saying — it’s all uplifting. It’s not cheesy.
I’d say “KPop Demon Hunters” is a little cheesy.No, that is cheesy — that’s full-on global-phenomenon Swiss cheese. We all want a slice of that. What I’m saying is that my music isn’t cheesy. It’s not preachy — it’s real s—.
You don’t need me to tell you that pop is not an industry built for a 47-year-old woman.It wasn’t an industry built for when I turned 30.
Is that daunting?No, because I’m smart — I’m not stupid. Meaning that I would never put a record out to try to compete with the 5-year-olds out here. You know what my dream is? With the music that I’m writing, my dream is to create my own musical. My superpower is being able to tell stories through songs — stories that grab your heart and your soul and your balls. I’m not trying to chase what I had years ago. I want to have a baby. And I want to keep creating singular moments like “Sunset Boulevard.”
We are in something of a theater-kid moment. You think of Ariana Grande in “Wicked” or Lady Gaga in “A Star Is Born.”I’ll never forget when Gaga was opening for the Pussycat Dolls on tour. She didn’t have a set or anything, so sometimes she would do her transitions and just fall to the floor as if we didn’t see her. We’re like, “You’re laying on the floor — we see you.” Then she’d come up as if we were in a new world. It didn’t make any sense, but it made complete sense to her. And it actually made sense to me.
I used to say to my team, “I want the Dolls to be more theatrical because this is where I come from.” Gaga’s telling a story — she’s taking people on a journey. And they would be like, “We don’t do skits.” Robin said that: “You’re not gonna do skits.” But I was coming from a youth performing arts school where I was in a French play and then “A Cambodian Odyssey,” about the Khmer Rouge. I was 14, and that was my introduction into the arts. Bringing these worlds together, it’s what I’m here for.
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