Once she was a pussycat, a doll, a Pussycat Doll. Now Nicole Scherzinger, after four months at the Savoy Theatre in London at the end of last year, is and may for ever remain Norma Desmond. Her incarnation of the crazed, tragic, fallen movie star at the unstable centre of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1991 musical Sunset Boulevard has all but obliterated memories of those who played her before, from Faith Brown in Plymouth to Glenn Close on Broadway. With a best actress Olivier award packed in her actual or mental luggage, this autumn she will head for Broadway herself and spend nine months doing it all again.
And I mean “all”. Director Jamie Lloyd’s apparently bizarre decision to cast a beautiful 46-year-old pop icon as a decrepit former silent film star proved unexpectedly insightful, not only into what Desmond represents as a woman in showbusiness but into Scherzinger herself.
True, the American singer was far from a forgotten recluse haunting her own Los Angeles mansion/luxurious London rental. But Scherzinger’s career did appear to be on a one-way trajectory, from raunchy pop idol whose hits, including Don’t Cha (“…wish your girlfriend was hot like me”), became part of the soundtrack to the Noughties, to talent show panellist. Before seeing her in Sunset, audiences would not have been likely to make the comparison, but Scherzinger did as soon as she read the script. So loudly did Norma speak to her, so obviously did their demons pelt from the same regions of hell, that the role became her therapy.
“It’s changed me in so many ways,” she says one lunch hour in an east London photo studio. “It’s grown me. It’s evolved me. I’ve had to let go of a lot of insecurities and any comforts that I had. And in a lot of ways, it’s healed me. It’s been an amazing healing process.”
What were those insecurities?
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“Norma has insecurities like we all have: fears of being alone, feeling emptiness, feeling misunderstood, feeling dismissed.”
And she, Scherzinger, had those too?
“Oh, for sure. That’s why I was able to connect with the character so much. The reason it is a healing process is that I got to bring all that to the forefront on stage, night after night, seven shows a week. That was exhausting, but through that process I got to heal some old wounds and some of my issues.”
The problem, I suggest, is that having played this diva to such acclamation, she may be mistaken for a diva herself. The audience at the Henley Festival, where she will be appearing for one night only next month, may be half-expecting her to sing not only Salome from Sunset (“If she can’t have him living/ She’ll take him dead”) but Aretha Franklin’s Respect (“I got to have/ A little respect”). And in fact, among the anthems and Pussycat Dolls numbers, she will be singing Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ terrifying I Put a Spell on You (“Because you’re mine”).
But this is a musing too far for her.
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“I can tell you haven’t watched it [the musical’s revival],” Scherzinger scolds me. “Norma’s not a diva. That’s the old perception — her being this deranged, crazy, grasping woman. Our take on this story is a lot different. She’s not a diva. She knows what she wants and she works very hard for what she wants and she has so much left to give — her career was just cut short and she was dismissed and that’s difficult for her. Rejection and loneliness and emptiness are what she battles with, and not being able to fulfil her dream. So that doesn’t sound like a diva to me.”
Although I get that her reinterpreted Norma is not past it or deluded, merely angry that while still in her powers she has been faddishly neglected, my not having caught the new Sunset is not a problem we easily surmount in this interview. Scherzinger is full of regret and I am full of remorse.
As to whether Scherzinger might turn out to be a diva herself, having interviewed Lauren Bacall, Anita Ekberg and Dame Joan Collins, I am prepared for the possibility. Before I get to the studio I receive messages that she is late, but she soon turns up so I reckon we are just dealing with standard celebrity deviation. When I arrive, the shoot is still going on. To be frank, I have heard more laughter at such sessions. This one ends cordially with a handshake.
What does not discourage me, however, is that she has prepped for our interview. Sometimes publicists ask for examples of the questions we intend to ask their client, but in practice, I doubt the client even looks at them. Not so Scherzinger, who has thought through her replies and made notes and, when we get going, asks me to excuse her if she occasionally refers to them on her phone, which she does. She is taking this seriously, which I suspect is the way she treats everything. As a panellist on the American version of The Masked Singer, for instance, she was known as Sherlock Scherzy for her forensic interrogations of the stars hiding behind fantastical disguises. Her only dip in professionalism during our chat is when, midway through, she asks me my name — but that’s fine too. It’s not as if it’s ever up in lights.
We are sitting on sofas in a quiet space next to the studio. I start by quoting from an old interview in which she recalled studying acting — including Stanislavski and Shakespeare — at Wright State University in Ohio. She would upset her more realistic peers by telling professors her ambition was to get to Broadway. And now, I say, here she comes.
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“Yes, many years later. I would have been probably 19, 18, 17 when I said that.”
And the ambition was to perform musical theatre rather than anything else?
“Well, from the time I was six I loved Whitney Houston, so part of me wanted to be like Whitney, right? But then the other part of me… I’ve just always felt really at home on stage and in a theatre.”
It’s interesting, I say. Introverted actors I have spoken to have also talked about being “at home” on stage.
“I think I was always an introvert. I still am in a lot of ways,” she says. “I couldn’t care less to go on a red carpet or to an after-party. I feel more comfortable in my skin when I’m on stage. It’s kind of weird.”
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She felt uncomfortable as a child because she felt different. Although from the age of six she was brought up in Kentucky, she had been born in Hawaii to a Hawaiian mother of Ukrainian descent. Her father, Alfonso Valiente, was Filipino. “So I didn’t really look like the other kids in Louisville, in the south. They were more fair skin and blue eyes, blonde hair, and I looked a little like a brownie, you know? I was always a bit awkward and shy.”
Her father left the family when she was tiny, after which her mother, Rosemary, a clerk, married Gary Scherzinger, a German-American welder. I wonder whether that early separation from her father has affected her.
“I don’t know. I was so young. Obviously I’ve had lots of different outlets of help and therapy. They say, ‘Oh my gosh, your years from three to eight really shape you.’ And I guess he did leave me and my mum when I was three. I’m sure psychologically it contributed to my abandonment issues. But I grew up with my mother, who got pregnant with me when she was 17 and had me when she was 18. Nobody comes from a perfect household, but I grew up in a lot of love, so I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
Despite her Broadway fixation and early appearances in local musicals, her career was quickly hijacked by pop. First, she dropped out of Wright to tour with a rock group called Days of the New. Then, during a successful run on the talent show Popstars USA, she became part of a constructed girl band, Eden’s Crush, who had a hit single but then disbanded. In 2003, the choreographer Robin Antin recruited her to spearhead a revamped version of a burlesque troupe called the Pussycat Dolls. In the following years the new-style Dolls released two albums and sold more than 55 million records.
“So the Dolls, it was a profoundly overwhelming experience, right?” she says. “I’m really proud of the music that the Dolls made, and I’m very proud of the little mark that we made with our group. But it was very difficult, because I was really learning about myself along the way.
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“It was such a difficult time, struggling and battling your own demons and issues and always being on the road, and they never allowed sleep in our schedule. I mean, it was just a recipe for disaster, to be honest with you. It’s a lot different now. They have rules set in place and, you know, it’s more of a woke community now. But it wasn’t like that when we were doing it. It was just kind of like, ‘Work them to the bone until they’re passed out.’ It was just hard for me to sleep. I always had sleeping issues.”
Like many young women, Scherzinger already had body dysmorphia. But her new career in the Dolls accelerated these insecurities into bulimia because of the “spotlight” on her body, a body flaunted in bras that advertised both her bosom and her tiny midriff.
“In the beginning, that was my biggest issue. The other girls were dancers first. So as dancers, you dance modern, and when you’re in class you’re pretty much dressed in underwear. A dancer’s body is the instrument; it’s beautiful. That’s the art. But I was a singer first. It was difficult for me in the beginning because I didn’t feel comfortable in my skin.”
Did she ever feel that the Pussycat look exploited her?
“No. I didn’t feel exploited at all because I was in control of what I was doing. Maybe I didn’t love some of the clothes I was wearing, but I got to create a lot of the clothes and say, ‘No, I want to wear trousers.’ I wanted to look like will.i.am and Gwen Stefani. So I got to wear clothes that I felt empowered in and then the girls got to choose what they wanted too.”
Although not very many clothes…
“But I tell you we wore a lot more, I think, than people are wearing today. The artists, I mean. Like, boy! We’d always say, ‘We keep it sassy but classy.’ ”
Does she still have body image issues?
“I own me. I’m not in my head now about my distorted vision of what I look like or what people will think. I think that’s the great thing about getting older — you don’t give a shit as much. I wish I gave a shit a little more. It would inspire me to work out a little more.”
She looks as if she works out a lot.
“I’m on and I’m off. I take breaks.”
In 2009 the Dolls undertook a final tour and then announced a “hiatus” that would end up lasting a decade. But surely there was always a tension between Scherzinger the putative solo artist, who had delivered 95 per cent of the troupe’s vocals, and the Dolls’ group ethos?
“I think everybody is an individual in the group and, actually, the first person to leave was Kimberly Wyatt. Everybody had their own desires and wants, as individuals do. It’s natural that people want to take that course. I wanted to do my music. I was still figuring myself out as an artist. I still am sometimes.
“But now I really want the music that I do to make a difference in people’s lives. I’m not interested in doing music any more about how tight my jeans are. I’m too old for that shit. It’s fun and all, but I’m in a place where everything I do now, I want it to have meaning and purpose.”
She calls the “authentic” and “honest” songs she has written more recently her “warrior music”. So I ask whom this warrior was fighting. She immediately concedes a frequent enemy was herself, because “you get what you tolerate”.
She won’t talk about her past boyfriends, who have included the singer Nick Hexum, to whom she was briefly engaged, and the Swiss footballer Pajtim Kasami. She was also once linked, perhaps fancifully, to Harry Styles. Her most famous former boyfriend, however, was Lewis Hamilton, seven years her junior, whom she met in 2007 when he was 22. During that time she was sometimes referred to in newspaper captions simply as the Formula One champion’s “girlfriend”. Their romance was frequently described as on again/off again, owing to their conflicting work commitments, and ended in 2015. This was reportedly followed by a relationship with the Bulgarian tennis player Grigor Dimitrov.
“I’ve taken many risks in relationships. I’m quite a co-dependent type and I’m still learning the meaning of setting boundaries, and taking the risk of leaving unhealthy relationships that weren’t serving me because I wanted better for myself.”
Because leaving a relationship, even a bad one, can be terrifying?
“Yes. Like Norma, there’s your fear of loneliness. You just want to be wanted and you want to be loved. Who doesn’t want to be wanted and want to be loved and cherished?”
Professionally, the 2010s were years too often lost to reality TV shows such as The X Factor (on which she was instrumental in the formation of One Direction), Australia’s Got Talent and, latterly, The Masked Singer, the panel of which she left to risk Sunset in London. She still recorded, but her solo career never reached Pussycat heights. Her first album in 2011 made some waves but the second, three years later, was a commercial if not entirely critical flop. But we did not get to hear everything. She says she has probably 15 albums written or recorded but never released. Some of the songs, she lets slip, are likely to appear in a musical she is working on “loosely based on my life”.
Where she did score was at the London Palladium in 2014 playing Grizabella in Lloyd Webber’s Cats. She was nominated for an Olivier award but the Broadway transfer was not to be. The New York Post reported that she had become entangled in a row about the prominence of her name in publicity material. A week before rehearsals began, she quit for London and The X Factor. Furious, Lloyd Webber said she had made him look like “an absolute twot”. They have, obviously, more than made up now.
“I think that’s just time, you know? Andrew has done so much for me and he’s a friend. He and his family, they’re dear friends of mine. And you know, he really did put a lot on the line and wanted to bring Cats to Broadway. But it wasn’t in the cards, I guess. It wasn’t in the stars.
“It’s beautiful how things work themselves out. I’m honestly a big believer in just letting things go that don’t serve you, in growth and forgiveness. I don’t like to hold on to things, because you’re the only person that suffers. I think it also brings people closer, you know? Because we’ve gone through so much it’s a real relationship and we can be real with one another.”
He must have said, “Wow!” when he saw her as Norma.
“Oh yes, I think he’s said more than that.”
After a brief television reunion of the Dolls on The X Factor: Celebrity five years ago a new tour was planned, but in 2022 it was “put on hold”. Again Scherzinger got the blame, with two of the Dolls, Jessica Sutta and Carmit Bachar, claiming she had pulled out without telling them. The Dolls’ prime mover, Robin Antin, is presently suing her in what appears to be a row over money. And she is suing back. The main problem, Scherzinger maintains, was Covid. But also, she is not the Doll of two decades ago.
“I’ve changed. If you change, the world is going to embrace you differently. And it stems from you. I had at least ten years apart from the Dolls. I had done the work and I had grown and evolved. I thought, well, you know, in this industry everything had been on everyone else’s terms and never on my terms. And now I’m understanding my value.
“So we were in negotiations and everything was going well and, honestly, the lawsuit came out of nowhere. It was a complete shock and disappointment and heartbreak for me. But I’m not a victim; I’m a victor. And I stood my ground. I knew where I stood, which is why I responded with eight counter-claims. But, you know, I’m hopeful for the future. I’m very hopeful.”
In her decades in showbusiness, has the status of women changed for the better?
“It’s pretty obvious that women are always fighting for equality, right? But my name, Nicole, means ‘victory’. So I don’t ever like to be a victim. I like to focus the light on being a victor. I think that women have come a long way and I also think maybe it’s not the industry that has allowed women to come a long way, but the women themselves who have done that. I’m in control of my career. I do things on my terms now. My team supports me in my decisions. People don’t tell me what to do.”
Since the beginning of 2020, Scherzinger has been in a relationship with Thom Evans, a former Scottish international rugby player six years her junior. She met him when he was competing on The X Factor: Celebrity. Apparently, at home he sings more than she does. “It’s nice, because he likes a system — he’s extremely organised and he’s extremely on time, which is the opposite of me, so he makes me so much better in that way. I don’t know if all rugby players are like this but he’s the cleanest. He’s OCD like me and I just love it. It’s great.”
The other great thing about Evans is that he likes his sleep. “He’s kind of reprogramming my mind and helping me try to sleep more. I’m loving sleep now.”
Would she like babies?
“Oh my gosh, I would love to. I’ve never shied away from that. I can’t wait. It’s like the clock is ticking. I want to have a baby but work calls. But I’m going to have to make time because, yes, I cannot wait to have children.”
Has her mother been pressing her to get on with it?
“No, because my mother knows how hard I work and how passionate I am about what I do. She is a faithful woman and she just knows, everything in God’s timing.”
Also in abeyance is a wedding date, although the engagement was announced a summer ago. Broadway is in the way right now, “but the year after that”. There have been stories that she would not be inviting the Dolls to the wedding, but when I ask Scherzinger’s publicist about the rumours — I forget to put them to Scherzinger — she says the wedding is “not even planned”.
Our interview ends, surprisingly, touchingly, with a hug, but not before I hear a paean to God, whom the good Catholic Scherzinger gracefully thanked at the head of her Oliviers acceptance speech in April. She also wants to tell readers about the power of good therapists. Hers include her grandfather, who is an archbishop, a pastor, and an “intuitive coach” who has been with her for 20 years and is her “spiritual compass” and a great help with her “business stuff”. To achieve our fullest potential and best life, we should all have such people on hand.
So the psychic healing of Nicole Scherzinger is not just down to a West End musical, but it is surely a big part. No, I did not see her Sunset but YouTube has videos of her taking a bow on its first night and on its last. In the first she looks mostly relieved, but in the last she is triumphant, commanding and utterly spent. In both her hair is awry and her black nightie drenched in blood.
“It’s great when you do the work,” she says. “You have to do the work and you’ve got to look ugly in the face and sometimes you’ve got to look ugly while you’re doing it, which is what I’ve done in this character. There were tears, blood and lots of snot. Never did I think I’d get to that moment.”
But she did and there she was: bloodied, bowing, victorious.
Henley Festival presented by Westcoast runs July 10-14. Nicole Scherzinger performs on July 10 at 9pm. For ticket information, go to henley-festival.co.uk
