Set to open officially on 13 January, Legally Blonde is preparing for a high-profile run in the West End. However, leading lady Sheridan Smith has spoken out about the pressures of live theatre. In a frank interview with the Times, Smith confessed: "I usually play slappers and chavs but this is a real monster of a part. There's singing, dancing, comedy, pathos... I'm scared I'm out of my depth."
Smith is no stranger to musical theatre, having survived a successful run with the NYMT's revival of Bugsy Mallone as a teenager. After she was given the part of Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, Smith told the Stage: "I’m a real perfectionist and, if I can’t get something right, I get very frustrated and full of self-doubt. I need a lot of support and encouragement." However, on the cast, Sheridan has been nothing but grateful, commenting: This company’s been amazing—they’ve believed in me all the way.”
Discussing the part, Sheridan said she is impressed by Elle: "She is that naive, vulnerable girl. Everyone looks down their nose at her and she steps up." Her main problem with playing the part, she confesses, is the character's privileged upbringing: "The thing I'm finding difficult is that she's so rich. That's so not me—in fact, I keep forgetting to cross my legs all the time. All these long gorgeous locks and pink dresses and they're going, 'Sheridan, you're sitting like a boy'."
Currently in preview, Legally Blonde: The Musical opens officially at the Savoy Theatre next month.
Tuesday 29 December 2009
Sunday 27 December 2009
Sheridan Smith drops the chav act for Legally Blonde
There’s something odd happening outside the Savoy Theatre, which nestles just south of the Strand.
A new, little-known musical, still in preview (it officially opens on January 13), has £2m advance ticket sales and 250-strong crowds mobbing its star each night. The producers have had to hire six security guards, put up rope barriers and create a new stage door. The star creating this chaos? Jennifer Aniston? Whitney Houston? No, Sheridan Smith.
To be fair, Smith is the closest thing to Aniston we’ve got. Even if you haven’t seen her hogging the limelight as Tamsin Greig’s sex-mad colleague in Love Soup, or playing pat-a-cake with James Corden in Gavin & Stacey, you may have spottted her unerring instinct with a comic line in The Royle Family, or seen her charm Alan Davies off the screen in Jonathan Creek. If you are from the generation that grew up with Two Pints of Lager, you don’t need reminding. Yet unlike Aniston, with her role-by-numbers acting, Sheridan seems to inspire writers — her role in Creek was created for her by David Renwick, and the Two Pints creator, Susan Nickson, wrote her the lead in the twentysomething comedy Grownups. If much of this output has been squirrelled away on BBC3, 2010 is the year she’s coming out, in full high-kicking style.
In October, the 28-year-old started as a regular in Benidorm, ITV’s most successful sitcom in living memory, and spring sees her as Davies’s sidekick for the second time. The big break, though, is her role as Elle in Legally Blonde: The Musical, opposite the former boyband heart-throb Duncan James, from Blue. This is, as you have possibly already worked out, a musical version of Reese Witherspoon’s 2001 breakthrough film about an LA airhead who follows her ex to Harvard Law School and, obviously, aces it in Act III after climbing more mountains than Maria von Trapp.
“I usually play slappers and chavs,” Smith says with a self-deprecating grin. “But this is a real monster of a part. There’s singing, dancing, comedy, pathos...” She pauses. “I’m scared I’m out of my depth.”
This is a constant refrain with her, and a really strange fear to hear her admit to. We meet in the back room of a south London rehearsal studio. Outside the door, the cast are warming up for a full technical run-through. I’m there first, and she bursts in like an explosion of blonde shock-and-awe, bubbling greetings and apologies with a lightly worn Yorkshire accent. For the first few minutes, she can barely keep still, leaping to her feet to get me tea and pointing out props for the show’s five performing dogs. Then she curls up on the sofa, uncoiling every time she laughs — and she laughs a lot, usually at herself — as she romps through a bright, clever and funny chat with a curious lack of self-confidence.
“I love musical theatre, but I haven’t got a soprano voice like all these gorgeous women who can sing,” she says of her audition. “I didn’t actually believe I could get the part, and I lost my bottle a bit. The director kept saying ‘Breathe!’, because my legs were shaking and it looked like I was going to pass out. But I got it together, and they called me 20 minutes after I left the room and said I’d got it. I was gobsmacked — there must be a million girls who could have done the part better than me.”
Her CV suggests otherwise. Caroline Aherne, who cast her as Emma in The Royle Family, is not known for backing the talentless. Meaty roles in Eyes Down, Gavin & Stacey, Lark Rise to Candleford and Mile High don’t tend to go to chancers. But Smith isn’t convinced: “Coming from my little village, I have to keep pinching myself that I’m still doing it. I keep thinking I’m going to be found out and have the rug pulled from under my feet.” Certainly, her life story would make a pretty good Busby Berkeley movie. Her parents are a country duo, the Daltons — mum on bass, dad on lead guitar, banjo and Hawaiian steel guitar. “I think it’s so lovely how they met.” She hugs herself. “They were in different double acts and met at a summer season and fell in love. They did a panto together when my mum was playing Dandini and my dad was playing the court jester. He got down on one knee and proposed on stage. She thought he’d fallen over, and was like, ‘Get up, what are you doing?’ I remember, at school, thinking it was embarrassing having parents who were a country and western duo, but now I’m so proud.”
Smith grew up in Epworth, a small village near Doncaster. “I’ve got an older brother, Damian — I had two older brothers, but one passed away when he was 18...” Her voice fades into silence as she decides not to go into detail, adding simply: “It was tough.” Damian is in an indie band called the Torn. (“I’ll send you a CD, they’re really good.”) Music clearly runs all the way through, as Sheridan started ballet classes aged five, then won a place at the National Youth Music Theatre, which ended with a three-month run as Tallulah in Bugsy Malone, in the West End. “There were six of us who were 16 and counted as adults, so we all got a flat together in London.” She laughs at the memory. “It was madness. We were too young to be living down here, really, living on jam sandwiches. But we had a great time.” She was spotted by an agent, put her college plans on hold and decided to see where the ride would take her. It hasn’t stopped yet, although she can’t see why — “It’s blagging, all blagging...”
Isn’t that the point about Legally Blonde’s Elle?
At Harvard, she’s a ditz out of water, who lucks into victory when she decides to relax and be herself. “She is that naive, vulnerable girl — everyone looks down their nose at her, and she steps up. So yeah, I’d like to think I am doing that,” she smiles. “The thing I’m finding difficult is that she’s so rich. That’s so not me — in fact, I keep forgetting to cross my legs all the time. All these long gorgeous locks and pink dresses, and they’re going, ‘Sheridan, you’re sitting like a boy.’”
Also, like Elle, she has recently split from her beau of two years — Gavin & Stacey’s creator and star, James Corden. “We had a great time for two years on and off, but I think it’s difficult in this industry. And I’m a great believer that if it’s right, then maybe it shouldn’t be too much hard work. So it’s sad. But I love him to bits. And the guy is a genius. I’m really proud of how he’s done.”
A little later, though, when I ask how her hip indie brother will find the pinkness of Legally Blonde, she smiles and says: “He wrote a song for me when he was a kid that he plays at gigs, called Wild Girl.” She sings the first couple of lines in a soft, throaty whisper: “Oh, she’s a wild girl and she’s looking out for love,/But all she can find is that this love thing’s very tough...”
She stops and puts her head on one side, looking at the arm of the sofa. “It’s really sweet. Whenever I go to his gigs, he says ‘This one’s for my sister’, and it always makes me really teary.”
Then our time is up and she walks me across the cavernous rehearsal studio to the door. All the while, around her, dancers and singers are warming up, so it feels just like Broadway. She says goodbye, looking up from beneath a shock of blonde fringe, and she suddenly seems very fragile and small. And you think: I hope she’s going to be okay on that vast stage, as the inflexible machine of a transatlantic blockbuster musical grinds relentlessly on.
A few days later, at a paying-audience preview, the high-tech set swings into place, the chorus line kicks its way down the stairs and the feeling is the same. Smith gets a few hearty cheers when she steps on stage, but the audience seems to be reserving its initial desire for Duncan from Blue. When he steps through a door in shades, with a pout, he’s met by a wall of screaming girls. But she manages to flip the mood in seconds during the scene where Duncan dumps her, delivering a witty pantomime of backing vocals and affection-craving dance with such skill and charm that the loyal Blue babies are won over on the spot. They are rooting for her from then on, as she stumbles helplessly through Harvard, struggling to heal her heartbreak.
And as she powers through the show, she’s suddenly huge, mining the quips, kicks and campery with effortless confidence. Sometimes, for a few seconds, she’s alone on stage, holding us as rapt as when she’s supported by the full chorus. She constantly finds unscripted humanity in Elle’s desires.
At the curtain call, the cheers build as each new actor takes a bow, reaching fever pitch when Duncan strides jauntily forth. For a second, you hold your breath, but when Smith appears, the crowd sweeps to its feet in a fully fledged, next-day-on-your-dressing-room-they’ve-hung-a-star standing ovation that, briefly, brings tears to her eyes. It’s a Sally Field moment and, while it may not be the kind she’s looking for, this crowd clearly has love to spare.
A new, little-known musical, still in preview (it officially opens on January 13), has £2m advance ticket sales and 250-strong crowds mobbing its star each night. The producers have had to hire six security guards, put up rope barriers and create a new stage door. The star creating this chaos? Jennifer Aniston? Whitney Houston? No, Sheridan Smith.
To be fair, Smith is the closest thing to Aniston we’ve got. Even if you haven’t seen her hogging the limelight as Tamsin Greig’s sex-mad colleague in Love Soup, or playing pat-a-cake with James Corden in Gavin & Stacey, you may have spottted her unerring instinct with a comic line in The Royle Family, or seen her charm Alan Davies off the screen in Jonathan Creek. If you are from the generation that grew up with Two Pints of Lager, you don’t need reminding. Yet unlike Aniston, with her role-by-numbers acting, Sheridan seems to inspire writers — her role in Creek was created for her by David Renwick, and the Two Pints creator, Susan Nickson, wrote her the lead in the twentysomething comedy Grownups. If much of this output has been squirrelled away on BBC3, 2010 is the year she’s coming out, in full high-kicking style.
In October, the 28-year-old started as a regular in Benidorm, ITV’s most successful sitcom in living memory, and spring sees her as Davies’s sidekick for the second time. The big break, though, is her role as Elle in Legally Blonde: The Musical, opposite the former boyband heart-throb Duncan James, from Blue. This is, as you have possibly already worked out, a musical version of Reese Witherspoon’s 2001 breakthrough film about an LA airhead who follows her ex to Harvard Law School and, obviously, aces it in Act III after climbing more mountains than Maria von Trapp.
“I usually play slappers and chavs,” Smith says with a self-deprecating grin. “But this is a real monster of a part. There’s singing, dancing, comedy, pathos...” She pauses. “I’m scared I’m out of my depth.”
This is a constant refrain with her, and a really strange fear to hear her admit to. We meet in the back room of a south London rehearsal studio. Outside the door, the cast are warming up for a full technical run-through. I’m there first, and she bursts in like an explosion of blonde shock-and-awe, bubbling greetings and apologies with a lightly worn Yorkshire accent. For the first few minutes, she can barely keep still, leaping to her feet to get me tea and pointing out props for the show’s five performing dogs. Then she curls up on the sofa, uncoiling every time she laughs — and she laughs a lot, usually at herself — as she romps through a bright, clever and funny chat with a curious lack of self-confidence.
“I love musical theatre, but I haven’t got a soprano voice like all these gorgeous women who can sing,” she says of her audition. “I didn’t actually believe I could get the part, and I lost my bottle a bit. The director kept saying ‘Breathe!’, because my legs were shaking and it looked like I was going to pass out. But I got it together, and they called me 20 minutes after I left the room and said I’d got it. I was gobsmacked — there must be a million girls who could have done the part better than me.”
Her CV suggests otherwise. Caroline Aherne, who cast her as Emma in The Royle Family, is not known for backing the talentless. Meaty roles in Eyes Down, Gavin & Stacey, Lark Rise to Candleford and Mile High don’t tend to go to chancers. But Smith isn’t convinced: “Coming from my little village, I have to keep pinching myself that I’m still doing it. I keep thinking I’m going to be found out and have the rug pulled from under my feet.” Certainly, her life story would make a pretty good Busby Berkeley movie. Her parents are a country duo, the Daltons — mum on bass, dad on lead guitar, banjo and Hawaiian steel guitar. “I think it’s so lovely how they met.” She hugs herself. “They were in different double acts and met at a summer season and fell in love. They did a panto together when my mum was playing Dandini and my dad was playing the court jester. He got down on one knee and proposed on stage. She thought he’d fallen over, and was like, ‘Get up, what are you doing?’ I remember, at school, thinking it was embarrassing having parents who were a country and western duo, but now I’m so proud.”
Smith grew up in Epworth, a small village near Doncaster. “I’ve got an older brother, Damian — I had two older brothers, but one passed away when he was 18...” Her voice fades into silence as she decides not to go into detail, adding simply: “It was tough.” Damian is in an indie band called the Torn. (“I’ll send you a CD, they’re really good.”) Music clearly runs all the way through, as Sheridan started ballet classes aged five, then won a place at the National Youth Music Theatre, which ended with a three-month run as Tallulah in Bugsy Malone, in the West End. “There were six of us who were 16 and counted as adults, so we all got a flat together in London.” She laughs at the memory. “It was madness. We were too young to be living down here, really, living on jam sandwiches. But we had a great time.” She was spotted by an agent, put her college plans on hold and decided to see where the ride would take her. It hasn’t stopped yet, although she can’t see why — “It’s blagging, all blagging...”
Isn’t that the point about Legally Blonde’s Elle?
At Harvard, she’s a ditz out of water, who lucks into victory when she decides to relax and be herself. “She is that naive, vulnerable girl — everyone looks down their nose at her, and she steps up. So yeah, I’d like to think I am doing that,” she smiles. “The thing I’m finding difficult is that she’s so rich. That’s so not me — in fact, I keep forgetting to cross my legs all the time. All these long gorgeous locks and pink dresses, and they’re going, ‘Sheridan, you’re sitting like a boy.’”
Also, like Elle, she has recently split from her beau of two years — Gavin & Stacey’s creator and star, James Corden. “We had a great time for two years on and off, but I think it’s difficult in this industry. And I’m a great believer that if it’s right, then maybe it shouldn’t be too much hard work. So it’s sad. But I love him to bits. And the guy is a genius. I’m really proud of how he’s done.”
A little later, though, when I ask how her hip indie brother will find the pinkness of Legally Blonde, she smiles and says: “He wrote a song for me when he was a kid that he plays at gigs, called Wild Girl.” She sings the first couple of lines in a soft, throaty whisper: “Oh, she’s a wild girl and she’s looking out for love,/But all she can find is that this love thing’s very tough...”
She stops and puts her head on one side, looking at the arm of the sofa. “It’s really sweet. Whenever I go to his gigs, he says ‘This one’s for my sister’, and it always makes me really teary.”
Then our time is up and she walks me across the cavernous rehearsal studio to the door. All the while, around her, dancers and singers are warming up, so it feels just like Broadway. She says goodbye, looking up from beneath a shock of blonde fringe, and she suddenly seems very fragile and small. And you think: I hope she’s going to be okay on that vast stage, as the inflexible machine of a transatlantic blockbuster musical grinds relentlessly on.
A few days later, at a paying-audience preview, the high-tech set swings into place, the chorus line kicks its way down the stairs and the feeling is the same. Smith gets a few hearty cheers when she steps on stage, but the audience seems to be reserving its initial desire for Duncan from Blue. When he steps through a door in shades, with a pout, he’s met by a wall of screaming girls. But she manages to flip the mood in seconds during the scene where Duncan dumps her, delivering a witty pantomime of backing vocals and affection-craving dance with such skill and charm that the loyal Blue babies are won over on the spot. They are rooting for her from then on, as she stumbles helplessly through Harvard, struggling to heal her heartbreak.
And as she powers through the show, she’s suddenly huge, mining the quips, kicks and campery with effortless confidence. Sometimes, for a few seconds, she’s alone on stage, holding us as rapt as when she’s supported by the full chorus. She constantly finds unscripted humanity in Elle’s desires.
At the curtain call, the cheers build as each new actor takes a bow, reaching fever pitch when Duncan strides jauntily forth. For a second, you hold your breath, but when Smith appears, the crowd sweeps to its feet in a fully fledged, next-day-on-your-dressing-room-they’ve-hung-a-star standing ovation that, briefly, brings tears to her eyes. It’s a Sally Field moment and, while it may not be the kind she’s looking for, this crowd clearly has love to spare.
Tuesday 15 December 2009
Sheridan Smith is ‘Giving it some Elle’
Oh My God you guys! It’s going to be, like, totally, awesome! Come on everybody, snaps for Elle Woods! Writes Josh Boyd-Rochford.
The mercurial young actress Sheridan Smith, star of Gavin & Stacey, The Royle Family, and Two Pints of Lager and A Packet of Crisps, is returning to the West End in 2010 to play the most sought after role in modern musical theatre – Elle Woods in the film-to-musical adaptation of Legally Blonde. If Elaine Paige is the current First Lady of British Musical Theatre, then, with roles in Into the Woods and an Olivier nominated turn as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors under her belt, the similarly diminutive Smith must surely be well on her way to becoming the First Princess.
Actually, most musical theatre performers would long for the kind of diverse and eclectic career that Smith has enjoyed. A seasoned old pro at the age of just 28, she has notched up credits in film, theatre, on TV, in Shakespeare, in drama, in comedy and in musical theatre. With her range and versatility she is, rightly, one of the UK’s best loved young actors.
But stuck-up she is not. Within a few minutes of chatting to her, Smith has me giggling along with her stories and feeling like I’m catching up with a dearly loved old friend. Perhaps the key to her success is that she is so eminently likeable, so down to earth, and so very, very humile. Those, surely, are qualities that she will bring to the role of Elle Woods, but following Reese Witherspoon on film and Laura Bell Bundy on Broadway, Smith has some big shoes to fill.
“Well, Reese was just brilliant wasn’t she?” exclaims Smith. “I mean she was just made for that part, she did it so cute and vulnerable but so ballsy, confident and intelligent as well. She just got the part nailed I think. Obviously the show’s different with the singing and the dancing, and Laura Bell Bundy was unbelievable on Broadway so yeah, I have got big shoes to fill, I’m pretty nervous, but I just can’t wait to get my teeth into it really and see what we come up with in rehearsals and in performance.”
From the moment Legally Blonde – The Musical opened on Broadway, every musical theatre actress in the UK was itching to get into the audition room and ‘give it some Elle’ for Casting Director Pippa Ailion. Not since Marilyn Monroe pouted her way through Gentlemen Prefer Blondes has it ever been so much fun to be blonde.
The mercurial young actress Sheridan Smith, star of Gavin & Stacey, The Royle Family, and Two Pints of Lager and A Packet of Crisps, is returning to the West End in 2010 to play the most sought after role in modern musical theatre – Elle Woods in the film-to-musical adaptation of Legally Blonde. If Elaine Paige is the current First Lady of British Musical Theatre, then, with roles in Into the Woods and an Olivier nominated turn as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors under her belt, the similarly diminutive Smith must surely be well on her way to becoming the First Princess.
Actually, most musical theatre performers would long for the kind of diverse and eclectic career that Smith has enjoyed. A seasoned old pro at the age of just 28, she has notched up credits in film, theatre, on TV, in Shakespeare, in drama, in comedy and in musical theatre. With her range and versatility she is, rightly, one of the UK’s best loved young actors.
But stuck-up she is not. Within a few minutes of chatting to her, Smith has me giggling along with her stories and feeling like I’m catching up with a dearly loved old friend. Perhaps the key to her success is that she is so eminently likeable, so down to earth, and so very, very humile. Those, surely, are qualities that she will bring to the role of Elle Woods, but following Reese Witherspoon on film and Laura Bell Bundy on Broadway, Smith has some big shoes to fill.
“Well, Reese was just brilliant wasn’t she?” exclaims Smith. “I mean she was just made for that part, she did it so cute and vulnerable but so ballsy, confident and intelligent as well. She just got the part nailed I think. Obviously the show’s different with the singing and the dancing, and Laura Bell Bundy was unbelievable on Broadway so yeah, I have got big shoes to fill, I’m pretty nervous, but I just can’t wait to get my teeth into it really and see what we come up with in rehearsals and in performance.”
From the moment Legally Blonde – The Musical opened on Broadway, every musical theatre actress in the UK was itching to get into the audition room and ‘give it some Elle’ for Casting Director Pippa Ailion. Not since Marilyn Monroe pouted her way through Gentlemen Prefer Blondes has it ever been so much fun to be blonde.
Monday 14 December 2009
Sheridan attends the Grey Goose Character & Cocktails
Sheridan attended the Grey Goose Character & Cocktails winter fundraiser in aid of the Elton John AIDS Foundation at The Grosvenor House Hotel on December 13, 2009 in London, England. Pictured with Duncan James.
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