Congratulations on your pregnancy. Have you been singing to your bump?
Sort of inadvertently, because I’m back at Les Mis so by osmosis, she’s getting Boublil and Schönberg every night. I’m hoping she comes out waving a red flag and marching as soon as she walks. I haven’t sort of sat and sung to her, but I sing all the time and everything’s for her now.
You’re performing your biggest solo concert to date, at the London Palladium. How do you put a set list together?
It depends on whether you’re working for someone or for yourself. You have to do what other people want a lot of the time, which is totally fine – most of the stuff I’m asked to do is from my catalogue and I love it. Only one or two songs fill me with dread if I see them on a requests sheet. And to be honest, I always get to them and they’re fine anyway. But putting a show like this together is completely different because it’s about me and my life. The concert is based on ideas we had last year for my Glastonbury set where it was very much music to music, quick introductions, keep it moving. That was right for that gig but this time I am exploring what these songs mean and who I am now. I’m going to talk to the audience in a different way to how I have before. I’ve shied away from singing more than one song from the same show in the past. But I’m playing the London Palladium while carrying my daughter. And Jenna in Waitress goes through everything while carrying her child. I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to sing songs that really relate to what’s going on so there will definitely be more than one song from Waitress.
What does the Palladium itself mean to you?
I’ve always known that it was the pinnacle. The history that’s in the walls of that building! You walk in and you can almost hear its secrets being whispered. Growing up I listened to Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli’s double album Live at the London Palladium. I’ve performed there quite a lot with other artists. Every single time I’ve walked in through the stage door, my stomach’s flipped
It’s rare for a musical theatre star to play Glastonbury. Did you worry that the audience would be too cool for musicals?
Not at all. I don’t have that fear any more. Musicals are cool! And people who say that they’re not cool … well, they’re not our people anyway. I knew that there would be a lot of people who would feel very excited to belt out Defying Gravity in a field. We weren’t even breaking the mould, we were creating a new mould. And, yes, there may be hundreds of thousands of people on site, but there are hundreds and hundreds of things to do at any one moment. So I was slightly concerned that even though there were a lot of people that might have enjoyed it, there might have been something else that they would also enjoy going on elsewhere at the same time. On the first night, I was walking up towards the stage saying to my partner, George: “Fucking hell, what if no one comes?” It’s a total punt! But then instantly it’s like, no, I’m here with the best musical director there is, Jon Ranger, and the perfect musicians for this setting. And my partner and my parents will be there at least. And my makeup artist. So that’s four! But we went out and there was about 5,000 people trying to ram into a tent for 3,000. That’s a real testament to musicals being cool now.
How has it been returning to Les Misérables, which was your training ground for musical theatre?
I played Cosette in 2010. This is my sixth go at Les Mis and I’m playing Fantine, who fights until her last breath for what’s good and right for her child. To be doing it now with my daughter is bonkers. The company have been incredible. The costume department is making sure I’m comfortable. There are quite a lot of fights involved with Fantine. They have to look awful, the audience has to gasp. The fight direction team and the choreographers are constantly working and asking if things feel good and they do. The other night I was on stage at the end of the show for the Epilogue. It’s one of my favourite moments in musical theatre. I’m not a religious person, but we sing the line “To love another person / is to see the face of God”. It’s a three-part harmony and it always takes my breath away, which is not helpful when you’re singing, but it’s a beautiful moment. And my daughter started kicking in that moment. She was really going for it. Having her there with me, in the thick of it all, has changed the way that I do the role.
As a former Elphaba on stage, what did you make of the second Wicked film?
The first one was fantastic and the second one is still really magical. There are some incredible performances in it. I think once you’ve seen a world created so beautifully and it’s taken your breath away in such a way that the first movie did for us all, it’s a really difficult task to bring us back in and reboot that to a new level which I think is maybe what people expected. But you can’t – we already know, we’ve gone in and been blown away by it. Let that carry through and bring you into the second movie, I would say. I’ve seen it a couple of times and really enjoyed it.
Is there some kind of WhatsApp group for Elphabas?
I wouldn’t want to out anything but … there’s definitely communication between us! And it doesn’t just stay with London, you know, it’s worldwide. I was invited into that fold when I booked the job – and it’s continued which is lovely.
• Lucie Jones is at the London Palladium on 16 February. Les Misérables is at the Sondheim theatre, London.
