Scherzinger, Nicole

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    Tony Awards Unforgettable Looks: Cole Escola, Nicole Scherzinger, and More

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    On Sunday night, some of the biggest names in theater gathered at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan to celebrate the Tony Awards.From Hollywood royalty like George Clooney to Broadway legends like Audra McDonald — neither of whom won in their categories — there was no shortage of stars at this year’s awards.There was also no shortage of fashion. On the red carpet, there were sartorial references to past Tony winners and nods to current roles, all conveyed through cloth, beadwork and color.And, of course, it wouldn’t be live theater without at least a few costume changes.The event’s host, Cynthia Erivo, slipped in and out of at least a half-dozen outfits before the curtain closed as she belted out a parody version of a “Dreamgirls” song in a purple sequined number. That was another homage, lest you forget, as Ms. Erivo won a Tony in 2016 for her star turn in “The Color Purple.” Showbiz — it isn’t always subtle!Of all the stars who graced the seats of Radio City on Sunday, here are a dozen whose attire stood out among the ensemble cast.Cole Escola: Most ’90s Nostalgia!Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nicole Scherzinger Wins the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical

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      In “Sunset Boulevard,” Scherzinger plays Norma Desmond, a former screen star who descends into madness.Nicole Scherzinger won the Tony Award for best actress in a musical for her performance in a revival of “Sunset Boulevard,” a high-tech, minimal-scenery staging from Jamie Lloyd about a washed-up silent film star, Norma Desmond, who haunts a grand, ghostly Los Angeles mansion. This is Scherzinger’s first nomination and win.This latest run of “Sunset Boulevard” — based on the 1950 film by Billy Wilder — is dramatically scaled back compared to previous revivals of the Andrew Lloyd Webber show. Instead, the show relies on technology to modernize it for a new audience. It is the type of show that demands vocal and choreographic athleticism, something that Scherzinger — the former lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls — takes on with confidence.It first opened in London in 2023, winning Scherzinger praise and an Olivier. It then moved to Broadway last fall, and Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, wrote that Scherzinger delivered an “exciting yet exceptionally weird and counterintuitive performance.”Speaking to The Times in 2023, Scherzinger described her turn as Norma as “grueling.”“But for many years I have been saying I am using a fraction of my potential, and now I feel I have really tapped into that,” she said.Before joining the show and after the Pussycat Dolls disbanded in 2010, Scherzinger pursued a solo career with modest success — dropping two solo albums and working as a judge on “The X Factor” and “The Masked Singer.”She later performed “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” (from Lloyd Webber’s “Evita”) as part of a TV special celebrating Lloyd Webber, who, along with the director Trevor Nunn, asked her to join the cast of the 2014 revival of “Cats” in the West End. More

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      Kim Kardashian, Demi Moore and Others Flaunt Dramatic Trains on the Met Gala Carpet

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      Some gowns required small teams to manage vast amounts of fabric and help their wearers up the Met steps.They’re long, dramatic and a potential tripping hazard. More than a dozen guests at the Met Gala on Monday night wore looks with giant, appendage-like trains flowing behind them.The gala’s dress code, “Tailored for You,” was intended to spur creative interpretations of classic tailoring techniques and coincide with the Costume Institute’s new exhibit about the history of Black dandy fashion.While many stars chose suiting variations worn close to the body, others dragged behind them swathes of fabric so long that they blanketed large portions of the carpet. Demi Moore, Shakira, Megan Thee Stallion, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Taraji P. Henson and the K-pop star Rosé all arrived in the silhouette — many of them in the form of sweeping overcoats that could presumably be removed once inside the Metropolitan Museum for the gala’s dinner.The Met Gala has always been a venue for theatrical looks, but trains have a relatively recent history at the event. In 2015 when the Met’s Costume Institute staged an exhibit about the influence and ingenuity of Chinese design, Rihanna seemed to set the agenda with a yellow dress by the Chinese designer Guo Pei with a vast train that cascaded down the steps.This year, Rihanna’s fashion influence was felt even among musical artists who were famous before she was born. Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder both wore trains that swallowed whole sections of the Met’s famous steps. (Rihanna herself, who showed up at the event’s tail end, did not wear a train this year and instead opted for a suiting-inspired looked.)Ms. Ross wore a white feathered overcoat embroidered with the names of her children and eight grandchildren that reportedly included a 18-foot train, requiring several people to assist her up the stairs.Mr. Wonder’s black beaded suit included a heavily embellished train that also called for the help of multiple stewards as he moved about the carpet.Shakira’s monochromatic bubble-gum pink look was accessorized with a Gobstopper-size gem necklace. But the jewel paled in comparison to the size of her train, which, in images, appears to be the same length of about 15 photographers lined up on the gala’s carpet.Megan Thee Stallion’s billowing white furry coat also extended far behind her, much like the black train skirts worn by the actress Cynthia Erivo and the model Vittoria Ceretti.The burgundy overcoat worn by the singer and actor Teyana Taylor draped over the Met’s flower-speckled carpet as she posed for photographs, and Serena William’s sea foam look included a ruched top that also cut a dramatic, long shape.Other guests, including Lana del Rey, Nicole Scherzinger, Lauryn Hill, Charli XCX, Tyla and Amelia Gray Hamlin, also appeared in the silhouette — all before Rihanna even arrived. More

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      In ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ Nicole Scherzinger Is 23 Feet Tall

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      A fascinating Broadway revival of the bombastic 1994 musical blows it up even further.Despite Norma Desmond, who famously declares in the film “Sunset Boulevard” that it’s not her but “the pictures that got small,” the opposite is true on Broadway these days. In musicals especially, video and projections have grown ever more dominant. Perhaps it is not so much an irony as an inevitability, then, that at the St. James Theater, where a revival of the musical based on “Sunset Boulevard” opened on Sunday, the pictures — live video streamed onto an LCD screen more than 23 feet tall — are so big they almost blot out the show below.But alas, only almost.For despite many fascinating interventions by the director Jamie Lloyd and his technical team, and the fact that it is based on one of the greatest of movies, the musical remains too silly for words. In that sense, and others, Norma would have loved it.Which isn’t praise. You will recall that Norma (Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls) is deluded: a washed-up silent film star who, in her 50-ish dotage, haunts a grand, ghostly Los Angeles mansion with only her grim manservant and a recently dead chimpanzee for company. By 1949, when the musical starts, she has barely left the premises for decades, let alone made a movie; still, she believes that she, and the silents, could achieve a marvelous comeback if only Cecil B. DeMille would direct her in the epic version of “Salome” she has written.The rest is madness. She conscripts Joe Gillis, a hunky, seedy, unsuccessful screenwriter, to polish her draft and, soon enough, other things. Joe (Tom Francis) seesaws between his luxurious life as Norma’s kept man and the more idealistic promptings of Betty Schaefer, an ambitious studio underling he at first brushes off as “one of the message kids.” Still, when Betty (Grace Hodgett Young) urges Joe to adapt a story of his called “Dark Windows,” they fall in love, while the servant, Max von Mayerling (David Thaxton), offers a dark window of his own into Norma’s modus operandi with men. (Razor and gun included.) None of this ends well, or rather it does not begin well, as the tale is narrated postmortem by Joe’s corpse.The 1950 film, directed by Billy Wilder, stands at a wry remove from these tawdry proceedings, with a cool appreciation but no embrace for human pathos and the hysteria of Hollywood dreams. Norma is a drama queen, Joe a gigolo, Betty a simp and Max a goblin. We know nothing of their emotions beyond what their actions show us.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ Heading to Broadway, Wins Big at Olivier Awards

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      The musical, which stars Nicole Scherzinger, won seven awards at Britain’s version of the Tonys. And Sarah Snook won best actress for “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”A reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard,” starring Nicole Scherzinger as Norma Desmond, the long forgotten silent movie star who descends into madness, was the big winner at this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The musical, which will open at the St. James Theater on Broadway this fall, was honored Sunday during a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London with seven awards, including best musical revival, best actress in a musical for Scherzinger, best actor in a musical for Tom Francis, as the screenwriter who falls for Desmond’s charms, and best director for Jamie Lloyd.The number of awards was hardly a surprise. After the musical opened last fall, critics praised Lloyd’s stark production, especially highlighting its contemporary twists that included using cameras to zoom in on characters’ faces, then beam their emotions onto a screen at the back of the stage.Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, said that Lloyd’s production belonged firmly “to the here and now.” With this show, the director “takes an established musical by the scruff of the neck and sends it careering into the modern day,” Wolf added.Sarah Hemming, in The Financial Times, was among the critics to praise Scherzinger’s magnetic performance. “She’s not afraid to look scary or ridiculous,” Hemming said, “but there’s also a strung-out vulnerability about her. And when she sings, she pins you to your seat with the harrowing intensity of her delivery.”“Sunset Boulevard” beat several other acclaimed productions to the best musical revival award, including “Guys & Dolls” at the Bridge Theater and “Hadestown” at the Lyric Theater.Sarah Snook in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a solo version for which she won best actress at the Olivier Awards. Snook plays 26 roles in the show.Marc BrennerA host of musicals and plays shared the night’s other major prizes. “Operation Mincemeat,” a word-of-mouth hit about a bizarre World War II counterintelligence plot that is running at the Fortune Theater, won best new musical. While “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a prequel to the Netflix show, now at the Phoenix Theater, was chosen as best new entertainment or comedy play.The best new play award went to James Graham’s “Dear England,” about the English national soccer team, which transferred to the West End from the National Theater.In the hotly contested acting categories, Sarah Snook (“Succession”) was named best actress for “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” a solo show running through May 11 at the Theater Royal Haymarket. Snook plays all 26 roles, often interacting with recorded projections of her characters.Before Sunday’s ceremony, some critics had expected the best actor award to go to Andrew Scott for a similarly dazzling solo performance: a one-man “Vanya” at the Duke of York’s Theater. In the end, the prize went to Mark Gatiss for his role as the revered actor and director John Gielgud in “The Motive and the Cue,” a play by Jack Thorne that dramatizes the fraught backstage relationship between Gielgud and Richard Burton as they worked on a Broadway show. Like “Dear England,” that play ran at the National Theater before transferring to the West End. More

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      Nicole Scherzinger to Star in ‘Sunset Boulevard’ on Broadway in the Fall

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      The revival, birthed in London, is a radically reimagined version of the 1993 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on a 1950 Billy Wilder film.Jamie Lloyd’s radically reimagined revival of “Sunset Boulevard,” in which Nicole Scherzinger plays the faded film star Norma Desmond, will come to Broadway this fall after a rapturously received run in London.Earlier this month, the revival was nominated for 11 Olivier Awards, including best musical revival, best actress in a musical for Scherzinger and best director for Lloyd. The Broadway production is scheduled to begin previews Sept. 28 and then open on Oct. 20 at the St. James Theater.The musical, a dark thriller based on a 1950 film by Billy Wilder, features music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton; Glenn Close starred in both previous Broadway productions, in 1994 and 2017. (The stage role was originated by Patti LuPone in London; the film starred Gloria Swanson.)Lloyd, a British theatermaker, has carved out a distinctive niche by staging starkly spare productions of classics with a focus on psychological drama. The new production, which ended its London run in January, is stripped down in many ways — two songs have been cut, there is no grand staircase or turban and Scherzinger doesn’t even wear shoes.“It’s much more about the psychological and emotional journey as opposed to huge, elaborate sets,” Lloyd said in an interview. “It’s very much a kind of psychological chamber piece.”The show, set in midcentury Los Angeles, is about a forgotten star of the silent film era who latches onto an aspiring young screenwriter in the hopes of rebooting her career.Scherzinger, 45, has had a varied entertainment path — as a musician, an actress and a television talent show judge. The critic Matt Wolf, reviewing the London production for The New York Times, called this “a career-defining performance” for Scherzinger; the New York production will be her Broadway debut.“I guess I’ve been waiting for this my whole life,” Scherzinger, who studied theater in high school and college, said in an interview. “I can’t believe that it’s finally about to happen.”Scherzinger, who was born in Hawaii and raised in Kentucky, said she was eager to have another go at the role in the United States. She said she will set aside the script for a few months — she just spent three weeks visiting with her grandparents in Hawaii — before reimmersing herself in the character.“I’ll be back in America, my home, and I’m going to want to try and up my game even more,” she said. “There’s certain places I can make stronger choices, and I’m excited to play around with that to see where it can go — it’s great to be able to explore even more and go deeper.”Scherzinger, who said she has committed to nine months in the role, will be joined on Broadway by her three Olivier-nominated co-stars, Tom Francis, Grace Hodgett-Young and David Thaxton. More

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      A Broadway-Bound ‘Sunset Boulevard’ Leads Olivier Award Nominations

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      The musical, starring Nicole Scherzinger, secured 11 nominations at Britain’s equivalent of the Tony Awards.A revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard,” starring Nicole Scherzinger as a former screen idol descending into madness, received the most nominations on Tuesday for this year’s Olivier Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.The show, which ran at the Savoy Theater in London and will transfer to Broadway this year, is in the running for 11 awards — two more than any other play or musical — including best musical revival, best actress in a musical for Scherzinger and best director for Jamie Lloyd.When the production opened last fall, it impressed London’s often demanding theater critics. Matt Wolf, writing in The New York Times, said the production was, like its lead character, “a bit mad: reckless and daring, stretching its source material to the limit and beyond.”“I can’t imagine another London show generating comparable buzz this season,” Wolf added.Lloyd’s maverick production features hand-held cameras that are used to spotlight characters’ emotions at pivotal moments. Although critics appreciated the technique, Lloyd faces stiff competition in the best director category. The other nominees include Sam Mendes for “The Motive and the Cue,” which debuted last spring at the National Theater. The play, by Jack Thorne, dramatizes a fraught backstage relationship between Richard Burton and John Gielgud as they rehearse a Broadway production.Justin Martin, who directed “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” also received an Olivier nomination.Manuel HarlanRupert Goold is also nominated for best director, for “Dear England,” a play about the English national soccer team that also ran at the National Theater and transferred to the West End. That show secured nine nominations.Despite receiving mixed reviews, “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” a theatrical prequel to the Netflix show that is running at the Phoenix Theater, secured five nominations, including best new entertainment or comedy play. Houman Barekat, reviewing the production in The New York Times, said it was “exactly what you’d expect from a show co-produced by Netflix: Cheap thrills, expensively made.”This year’s nominations include a hint of TV glamour in many categories. Among the nominees for best actress in a play are Sarah Jessica Parker for “Plaza Suite,” which runs through April 13 at the Savoy Theater, and Sarah Snook (of “Succession”) for a one-woman “The Picture of Dorian Gray” at the Theater Royal Haymarket, through May 11.They will compete for that title against Laura Donnelly for “The Hills of California” at the Harold Pinter Theater, Sheridan Smith for “Shirley Valentine” at the Duke of York’s Theater, and Sophie Okonedo for “Medea” at @sohoplace.The best actor nominees include Andrew Scott for a one-man “Vanya” at the Duke of York’s Theater, and James Norton for his performance in “A Little Life” at the Harold Pinter Theater. The other nominees are Joseph Fiennes for “Dear England,” Mark Gatiss for “The Motive and the Cue,” and David Tennant for “Macbeth” at the Donmar Warehouse.The winners of this year’s awards are scheduled to be announced April 14 in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. More