LEADING LADY

Nicole Scherzinger is the toast of Broadway after triumphing at the Tony Awards. Here, she tells us what it's like to achieve her lifetime dream - and how she plans to top it

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In front of an A-list audience that included George Clooney, and in a glittering custom red Rodarte gown with jewellery by Fred Leighton that, she said, “immediately made me feel like Elizabeth Taylor”, Nicole Scherzinger was the dazzling image of a Broadway leading lady as she won her first Tony Award at New York’s Radio City Music Hall last week.

The pop star turned musical-theatre powerhouse was named Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her performance as Norma Desmond, which she described as her “dream role”, in the reboot of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Sunset Boulevard.

The win is the culmination of a glittering trajectory that began when the former Pussycat Doll took on the role at the Savoy Theatre in London’s West End in 2023, winning rave reviews and scooping an Olivier Award the following year.

In 2024, the production opened in New York, where the show was described as “the most coveted ticket on Broadway”. Now, Nicole has the entertainment world at her feet.

REACHING A PEAK

The Tony Award is the “pinnacle of her career”, she said after the ceremony. “This is a dream role come true – a dream role that I never knew was coming until [director] Jamie Lloyd had this vision of me as Norma Desmond,” said the actress, who was born in Hawaii and grew up in Kentucky with parents of Filipino, Ukrainian and native Hawaiian heritage.

“It just felt so right, as if everything that had happened in my life – all of the pain, struggle, confusion, emptiness and loneliness – led to this moment.

“I put all those emotions into Norma, into every performance. As Norma says: ‘I feel like I'm back where I was born to be.’ I really do feel like I was born for this.”