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This may be basic, but Idina Menzel will always be Maureen Johnson to me. I was there in the beginning! However, most (non-Broadway) people had no idea who Idina was until her turn as Elsa in Frozen. Frozen put her on parents’ radar. And anyone who didn’t know who she was from hearing “Let It Go” playing everywhere became familiar with her after John Travolta’s whole “Adele Dazeem” intro mess at the Oscars. Because Idina had been kicking it around Broadway and Hollywood for years before she became a household name, she’s always recognized and appreciated just what Frozen has given to her.
On her new disco album: Broadway and Disney legend Idina Menzel is sitting onstage at Los Angeles’s Grammy Museum, chatting with Yahoo Entertainment music editor Lyndsey Parker about her cleverly titled new disco album, Drama Queen. The record is packed with bangers, not her usual ballads (“Hey, I can do ballads till I’m 90 — I’m going to be doing ‘Defying Gravity’ and ‘Let It Go’ when I’m in Vegas, when I’m in the B-lounge and nobody’s hiring me,” she quips), but it is not a total departure for Menzel. After all, the You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah star got her start covering hits by “amazing, huge, dynamic, big-personality” disco divas like Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor at actual bat mitzvahs, and she remembers those pre-Rent/Wicked days fondly, as “a great stomping ground for me to learn all kinds of genres of music, to practice while nobody was listening and make mistakes.”
Not giving an F: But now Menzel is really letting it go, so to speak. After years of trying to cross over to pop with only modest chart success, she’s finally “made the album I really wanted to make — for me, not caring about what a lot of people in the industry thought I should be doing, not overly strategizing and not overly thinking about it… just really not giving a f***, honestly!”
She’s an East Coast Gal: Menzel stops herself and chucklingly apologizes for her F-bomb, aware that several tweens — who of course mainly know and love her as Frozen’s Elsa — are sitting in the Grammy Museum’s Clive Davis Theater audience. She admits, “When you’re a Disney queen… it does cause problems for me, being a 52-year-old woman who finds my husband really hot and likes to have a drink once in a while and not just talk to 12-year-old girls. … So, sometimes I have to curse! I have to let it out. I mean, I’m an East Coast girl. It’s really f***ing hard to be a role model.”
Frozen was one of her proudest moments: Menzel knows such concerns are “champagne problems,” and stresses that Frozen has been “the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. I was a little girl that dreamt of this from the time I was 6 years old, and my dreams have come true. … I love performing and I couldn’t have even imagined all of these things. And to be able to connect with young people, especially since I’m a mom, to be able to see it from all sides of the spectrum, is just the greatest gift. But yes, if you’re singing about empowering little kids and you’re 52 and you can’t get up in the morning sometimes, there’s a little hypocrisy there. You’re forced to have these songs or scenes or things that make you better, walk the walk, talk the talk — or at least be a really good actress. It is hard to be a role model sometimes. But [“Let It Go”] is actually one of my proudest, proudest moments.”
That disastrous NYE performance: Menzel still ruefully remembers that time when she “completely botched notes” during her 2015 New Year’s Eve performance of “Let It Go,” when she sang the Oscar-winning Frozen smash in Times Square’s freezing elements and was bashed on the platform then known as Twitter. “Deciding not to lip-sync, to sing a song in its original key with little hand-warmers and extra layers so that I can sing at midnight. Zero-degree weather. And then I hit the last note and sounded like Bruce Springsteen or something,” she laughs.
Like most theater people, Idina has always struck me as someone who is a “performer” first and foremost. My family is from Idina’s hometown (which is also Natalie Portman’s, Judd Apatow’s, Crooked Media’s Jon Lovett’s, and Idina’s Rent co-star Adam Pascal’s hometown), so I actually completely get what she means when she says it’s “really f—cking hard to be a role model.” We grew up with a certain mentality and sometimes have a tough time turning the “TMI-swear-heavy-honesty” off and being more kid or tween friendly. But, Idina is right. Frozen opened so many doors to her that probably weren’t open beforehand.
Also, I’m not sure if this is a humble brag or not but I do have an Idina-on-Broadway story: Back on January 7, 2005, my friend and I took advantage of a NY snowstorm and got these really awesome, cheapish orchestra seats to see Wicked from the TKTS booth, which ended up being Idina’s last performance before she fell thru the trap door the next day. We didn’t get to meet her outside the stage door that night but we did meet Joey McIntyre. I’ve always wanted to see her on Broadway again, though. I bet she’s got dreams of playing Mama Rose in Gypsy, but I’ve always pictured her playing of the female leads in Chess, like fellow Broadway stars/Disney princesses (my all-time favorite) Lea Salonga and Jodi Benson. Idina really rocks those female duets.
Idina and Yahoo’s Lyndsey Parker, who conducted this interview
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