Nicole Scherzinger is officially a Tony Award nominee, earning a first nod for her Broadway debut in Jamie Lloyd's production of Sunset Boulevard (stylized as "Sunset Blvd." or "SUNSET BLVD.").
The singer and actress, 46, is now part of Tonys history with her nomination, and spoke with People about her time with the show, from the West End to Broadway.
One of the most difficult aspects of the show, she recalls, is laying her "deepest, darkest insecurities" bare, especially given the heavy emphasis on close-up cameras projecting the actors on a 65-foot large screen behind them for a majority of the performance in lieu of grand set pieces.
Jamie also spoke with the publication, and remembered the initial hesitance he felt from Nicole over it. "We use these close-range cameras in the production. And early on Nicole told me, 'You can't put the camera on my right side, because the right side of my face is mediocre.'"
He called her take a "ridiculous statement," and recalled telling her to abandon herself for the role, one that has been described as raw and often grotesquely beautiful.
"I said, 'Look, there can be no ego here. There can be none of this nonsense at all,'" he noted. "'This is not about making sure that you look beautiful. In fact, sometimes you're going to have to look really deliberately monstrous and get into the viscera and the dark side of humanity — blood and bodily fluids and all.'"
The show even ends with a final bow from a Nicole dressed in nothing but a black dress, covered in blood. "She's incredibly beautiful from all angles," Jamie gushed. "I even told her, 'As if there's a mediocre side of Nicole Scherzinger.'"
Nicole addressed laying herself bare for the part, and why it ended up being the best thing that could've happened to her. "I've had to just chip away at my insecurities, at my ego, at my fears."
"You can't have any vanity when you're just pretty much laying it all out on the line, with the worst lighting and snot laying down your face. I'm obviously not wearing any costumes, I'm barefoot, I've got a camera on me with a 65-ft. screen. It's a bit scary."
The show is an adaptation of Billy Wilder's legendary Oscar-winning 1950 film of the same name, starring Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a faded silent film star living in delusions of grandeur about her status in Hollywood and engineering her comeback.
The newest production began on the West End in 2023, a much more stripped back and raw revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's original conception of the musical, and won Nicole a Laurence Olivier Award for her work.
With the nominations for the 78th Tony Awards announced on May 1, she earned a nod in the category of Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical, alongside both the leading ladies from Death Becomes Her, Audra McDonald for Gypsy, and Jasmine Amy Rogers for Boop! The Musical. Sunset Blvd. runs until July 13 at the St. James Theatre.