Et tu, Nicole Scherzinger?

Sunset Blvd. Review, Trump, &. Patti LuPone

Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Blvd.

The first rule of pandering to gays in theatre is: you do not talk about voting for Donald Trump. Sure, you can vote for Trump. Your ballot is between you and God. As long as you haven’t donated to Republicans, then no one will know. Katharine McPhee, professional panderer to gays via her 2018 promo video for Waitress (which begins with “Hi, my gay boys!”), learned this the hard way in 2020 when her donations to Trump’s re-election campaign and other Republicans were made public. The extremely online pop singer turned legitimate Broadway performer quickly disappeared from public life. This was incredibly easy to do, given she is married to the very rich music composer David Foster. For another pop singer turned legitimate Broadway performer, disappearing from public life may be a bit harder… because she’s performing every night at the St. James Theatre as Norma Desmond in the revival of Sunset Blvd.

Nicole Scherzinger — famously known as the lead member of the Pussycat Dolls, infamously known as the only vocalist of the Pussycat Dolls if you’ve seen that one episode of VH1’s Behind the Music (“I finished the album, and Ron and I brought the girls into the studio and played it for them. It was the first time they’d ever heard the music. Do you understand what I’m saying? We played the album for the Pussycat Dolls. It was the first time they’d ever heard the songs.”), and nichely known as a member of Eden’s Crush (a girl group formed on the WB reality series Popstars) — became respected for her vocal ability in 2011 when Andrew Lloyd Webber tapped her to sing “Phantom of the Opera” on Royal Variety Performance.

Webber and Scherzinger’s relationship blossomed. She performed “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” in 2013 for the tribute show Andrew Lloyd Weber: 40 Musical Years.

She made her West End debut in 2014 as Grizabella in Cats to rave reviews an an Olivier nomination. After a contracted 12-week run, she quit the production before it was set to transfer to Broadway because she wanted top billing and producers wouldn’t give it to her. She wasn’t a “name” in the United States. Her relationship with Webber ended and the role went to Leona Lewis instead.

Over time, their relationship healed. Scherzinger took on the role of Norma Desmond in Webber’s not-particularly-great musical Sunset Boulevard, which originally starred Patti LuPone in its West End debut. The musical transferred to Los Angeles, where it initially starred Glenn Close. When Close left the production, Faye Dunaway replaced her, until the production shut down because she allegedly “couldn’t sing it.” Dunaway sued the producers and settled out of court. The production moved to Broadway and starred Close again. LuPone sued Webber because she had been promised the Broadway run. The musical was a hit, but it lost a shit ton of money.

The Scherzinger revival opened Sunday, October 20 and Scherzinger was once again met with rave reviews. This production, directed by Jamie Lloyd, incorporates cameras, minimalist staging, and modern costuming and choreography. It all ends in one large, bloody mess that you’ve probably seen in your Instagram feed this year already. Scherzinger takes her final bow covered in blood and remains in it when she signs autographs at the stage door. The musical had enough buzz that even LuPone, begrudgingly so, announced on The View that she would attend the “lumbering” musical on Wednesday evening.

But of course, that was in a much different America. It was Friday, November 1 and we were still days away from the election that would send Donald Trump back to the White House. There was an air of hope in the New York air again. It felt similar to the air in 2016 when New Yorkers believed that Hillary Clinton would take the presidency over Trump. And yet, something felt different. Maybe it’s because I’m Black and knew that the idea of America electing a Black woman to be President felt like a fantasy. Maybe it’s because the destruction in Gaza continued to play out in the news and the political leanings of people I knew began to surprise me again. Either way, Kamala Harris lost the election and Trump won. Again. Only this time, 1 in 3 people in Brooklyn voted for Trump. 4 in 10 people in Queens voted for Trump. This election made it very clear that there were Trump voters amongst us and they weren’t just rich assholes in Manhattan or working-class racists in the middle of the country.

In 2016 when Trump won, I felt devastated. I couldn’t stop crying. The city felt quiet. This time, though I felt that devastation, the tears didn’t come. And the city didn’t feel particularly quiet. New York seemed to carry on just as it had the day before the election. I met two friends, Paul and Brad, for drinks at b’artusi in the West Village and gave them solemn hugs. In 2016, it seemed as if everyone was consoling one another. This time, it felt as if very few people around me needed consoling.

We’d gathered to attend Sunset Blvd. Paul and I had plans to attend from the moment LuPone announced she’d attend. How could we miss witnessing her reactions to the musical in real-time? It felt like the Broadway event of the year. After Harris lost, we decided to keep our tickets. Brad bought one two hours before the show to join us. We needed the show more than ever. A bit of frivolity to forget about our country’s impending nightmare. Plus, Patti LuPone!

I saw several friends at the theater and greeted each of them with a similar consoling hug. But we’d all been through this before and the excitement of seeing Scherzinger’s performance had already put smiles on our faces. At just a couple minutes past 8 PM, the show had yet to start. All eyes were on empty seats in the orchestra. Was LuPone running late? Was she set to arrive as soon as the show began to avoid a scene? Who was I kidding? LuPone loves a scene!

And yet, when the house lights went down and the show began, there was not a single sighting of LuPone. During intermission, I checked Twitter (or X, or I guess it doesn’t matter since I quit Elon Musk’s hell site the day after the election) to see if anyone else had spotted her. But no, it appeared LuPone had skipped the performance altogether. Maybe sitting in a theatre and watching a show she was famously fired from three decades ago didn’t seem like fun to her after Harris’ loss. I have no idea why LuPone didn’t attend Sunset Blvd., but she and Mia Farrow, her co-star in The Roommate, were also slated to appear on Watch What Happens Live last night and didn’t attend. They were replaced by Jackie Hoffman and Connie Chung.

The next day, I was disappointed that I hadn’t seen LuPone at Sunset Blvd. and also disappointed that equally buzzed-about star Tom Francis missed the performance as well. His understudy, Diego Andres Rodriguez, went on instead. The performance was fine, but my Instagram was flooded with comments telling me I had to see Francis in the role. I didn’t particularly love this production of Sunset Blvd. outside of Scherzinger’s performance, so I wasn’t clamoring to see it again. To me, the post-modern presentation of the show doesn’t feel revelatory in a post-Ivo van Hove world and it also strips most of the emotion out of Webber’s music. Like most Webber romances, the show involves a love triangle. The minimal staging and the fact that every actor besides Norma Desmond seems to be directed to convey as little emotion on stage as possible makes the show seem like an un-emotive concert performance. A problem when the music itself sounds like Webber is mostly cribbing from better melodies in The Phantom of the Opera and its staccato operatic speak-singing.

Scherzinger is extraordinary and mesmerizing, but I had no interest in the show when she wasn’t on stage. Would I see it again just for Francis? Maybe. That was… until Scherzinger left an Instagram comment that shocked the theatre gay community.

She left a comment on general-piece-of-garbage Russell Brand’s Instagram account yesterday, where he posed with a parody MAGA hat that read “Make Jesus First Again.” Scherzinger commented: “Where do I get this hat??? 🙏🏽❤️” I was taking a midday nap when this comment became public. When I awoke around 5 PM yesterday, I had a flurry of text messages from my boyfriend, group chats, and even DMs from podcast listeners who rushed to be the first to let me know that Scherzinger was a Trump supporter. Just like with McPhee, gays were betrayed and now it was time to cancel another diva. Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with that. One, the show has sold a record amount of tickets and I doubt that people are going to let their money go to waste just because of this Instagram comment. Case in point, several people I know attended the show last night but made sure to acknowledge Scherzinger’s potential MAGA-ness in their posts, just for safety! You know, because of the woke mob and all.

The other problem is that I’m not entirely sure this confirms Scherzinger as MAGA. I just think she really loves Jesus. And she’s stupid. (Girl, just Google the hat, for one…) I’ve already mentioned how she dropped out of Cats a decade ago because she didn’t receive top billing. As if anyone in a pre-Masked Singer world knew who she was outside of gay men with “When I Grow Up” downloaded on Spotify. Then there’s the fact that she almost dropped out of a 2016 TV production of Dirty Dancing due to the show’s abortion plot. Speaking to The Daily Mail, Scherzinger said, “My family’s really hardcore against abortion. So I got the role and I almost didn’t take it because I didn’t want to promote abortion, because my character has an abortion. But I was like, hopefully they can learn from her ways and I can be a positive influence. I just want to, you know, encourage everybody to keep your babies.”

Scherzinger loves god and hates abortions. But she also follows Harris on Instagram, so what is the truth? She’s remained silent so far, which is exactly what a good PR team would tell her to do because chances are this story will die by next week. Or maybe not. There are currently a lot of angry liberals on social media who are upset about her Instagram comment. The irony of expressing this anger on X, a platform run by Elon Musk, seems to be lost on them.

The main thing this election has revealed is that we don’t really know why a lot of people abstained from voting this year or why Democrats lost on so many key issues. It’s too soon to tell, even though there are countless essays on “what went wrong” all over the internet today. But that’s because those people are being paid to come up with theories, not because they know anything.

One thing I do know is that perhaps it’s time to retire giving a fuck what any celebrity thinks about politics. You can be disappointed that Scherzinger loves Jesus, but should that detract you from seeing Sunset Blvd.? Should the other members of the Broadway community involved in the production suffer because of it? And conversely, what does it even mean when a celebrity endorses the candidate you like? Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and more all publicly supported Harris. In an election that seems like it was won on the economy and “bread and butter issues” as Bernie Sanders calls it, I can’t fathom why anyone would look to billionaire pop stars and celebrities for advice on who to vote for.

During this election cycle, demanding to know who a celebrity voted for seemed like it had to do with justifying your continued fandom, more than it had anything to do with convincing people to vote. It’s another way to not only continue a parasocial relationship with a celebrity, but a small way to exert some form of control over them. If you don’t vote the way I want you to, then I’ll stop listening to you. Except, no one ever really stops listening, do they? Like Sunset Blvd. says: no one leaves a star.