Idina Menzel on why Glee role ‘wasn’t great for the ego’

From Wicked to Frozen, she’s a bona fide musical theatre icon, but Idina Menzel reveals being hired to star opposite Lea Michele on TV hit Glee bruised her confidence, admitting it stung “to be someone’s mother when you probably should be their older sister”

US actress-singer Idina Menzel discussed her recurring role on the hit TV show Glee, in which she played the mother of Lea Michele’s character from 2010-2013, despite only being 15 years older than Michele. Picture: AFP

On this week’s episode of Stellar’s podcast Something To Talk About, Tony Award-winning performer Idina Menzel reflects on being part of not one, not two, but three era-defining cultural phenomenons (Broadway musicals Rent and Wicked and animated film Frozen), talks about the TV role that “wasn’t great for the ego” when she landed it, and looks ahead with excitement to her latest incarnation as a disco diva.

On the lessons she learnt from starring in the landmark Broadway musical Rent, whose creator Jonathan Larson died the night before its off-Broadway debut in 1996: “One of the themes and messages throughout Rent is ‘no day but today’, and it’s one of my favourite songs. Every night that I go onstage when I have a concert, I have my own arrangement of it, and I do it to remind myself of several things.

One, it’s a way of saying thank you to Jonathan for seeing me and inviting me into his show and his story and his world and changing my life. The other is to remind myself not to take things for granted... Knowing and losing him set a precedent – I can probably speak for my friends in the cast’s lives, as well – of making sure we are a conduit for the creative people in our lives to help put forth the message that they want to be heard and in this world.”

Listen to the full interview with Idina Menzel on Something To Talk About: From Rent to Wicked to Frozen: How Idina Menzel pulled off a pop culture hat trick

On originating the role of Elphaba in Wicked when it was first staged in 2003, and whether she knew it would become another Broadway phenomenon: “The time between Rent and Wicked was about eight years, and in that time I got dropped from a record label and rejected on many auditions. I needed to sort of climb my way out of obscurity – so when it comes again, it’s just the job. You’re not focused on this idea that it’s going to be some iconic moment. All I can speak to is that feeling I had when I heard the music and decided I wanted to audition, and then telling myself, if you don’t get it, you don’t get it. Just like I tell myself all the time. But for some reason I left that audition, like, in tears, because there’s something about it that I knew I wanted so badly. I identified with this character in such a profound way, so that’s the only, you know, clairvoyance that I had.”

Discussing her recurring role on the hit TV show Glee, in which she played the mother of Lea Michele’s character from 2010-2013, despite only being 15 years older than Michele: “When you’re an actor and you get pregnant, you worry you’re not going to work again. So I had my son Walker, and then three months later, I got the call [to be on Glee] and so I said yes. But I was still breastfeeding and storing breast milk in refrigerators and little frozen lunch boxes, and I couldn’t fit into any of the costumes. You know, you’re worried you’re not going to work again, and then people hire you to be someone’s mother when you probably should be their older sister. It just wasn’t great for the ego. But I sucked it up and sucked myself into my clothes, and was excited to work with [creator] Ryan Murphy and be a part of that hit show.”

Idina Menzel’s interview features inside this weekend’s edition of Stellar with The Real Housewives of Sydney on the cover.

How she felt when she once again found herself at the centre of another era-defining hit with Frozen, the 2013 animated film for which she voices the character of Elsa and sings ‘Let It Go’, which won an Oscar and became one of the bestselling songs of 2014: “To get the job of being in a Disney movie, being a lead character, and it being a musical, that was enough right there – quite the coup and very exciting. I had no idea it would take on the magnitude that it still does. I learnt so much but again, like I said: trying to enjoy the process, not the result; understanding that things are fleeting. You never know when something’s going to have success. When it came out, I was going through a divorce, so I wasn’t focused on it that way. I didn’t see the momentum and the chart topping, if you will, of the song because I was opening a new musical and going through personal stuff, so it kind of saved me in that way. It gave me something new to sing about, to put my energy on, and it made me feel better about myself at a time where I was being hard on myself.”

On where she gleaned inspiration for her new album Drama Queen: “I wanted to do music where people didn’t have to be as behaved and polite when they came to see me, in whatever venue that was, and they would get up and dance and move. I had some of my most favourite shows at 1am at Heaven and G-A-Y [clubs] in London because nobody’s sitting down. They’re all pressed up against the stage, we’re singing together, laughing, crying, sweating, reminiscing – and I just get off the stage feeling completely invigorated and inspired. I wanted to make music I knew I could take back to those arenas. I gave myself permission to go down that road because I also was thinking, well, someone like Barbra Streisand, who was a huge idol of mine growing up, she had a disco phase. Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor. Cher came around to her dance side and had some of her biggest songs with that. Big personalities, strong women – it has behoved them to live and dance in this place, and it’s paid off. I’m so excited that I did it.”

Idina Menzel’s album Drama Queen is out this Friday, August 18.

Originally published as Idina Menzel on why Glee role ‘wasn’t great for the ego’