A Dinner Date with Idina Menzel

Over a meal at one of her old NYC haunts, the Broadway superstar chats about pop music, her youthful education as a wedding singer, and what it’s like to have one of the world’s most recognizable voices. 

When asked where she'd like to meet for lunch, Idina Menzel wastes no time choosing Union Square Cafe in Manhattan. This restaurant in particular has special meaning for Menzel, who once worked there as a reservationist, way before she had cemented her status as a Broadway star, celebrated actress, and dynamo recording artist. “I was really bad at the job,” she fondly recalls, “but I loved the people and the tuna burger they used to serve. Still, you can’t believe the vitriol that was thrown in your direction when you said, ‘I'm sorry, I don't have a reservation at 8:30 on a Saturday night for another six weeks.’” 

This was, Menzel recounts, just one of her many unglamorous pre-Broadway jobs., “I was a wedding singer for many years and also worked on the Spirit of New York, a cruise ship that took people around Manhattan I would take an order but at any given moment you might be ‘on’, which meant turning your vest inside-out — it was black on the outside, red satin on the inside — so it became a showtime vest. You’d drop your tray and go sing a song with the house band, like “Saving All My Love For You” by Whitney Houston or a medley from “All That Jazz.” I was a terrible waitress, but hopefully I’d sing well enough to win them over.” 

These days, of course, Menzel is living a much different kind of life. Her star-making turns in “Rent” and “Wicked” (where she originated the role of Elphaba, garnering a Tony) have made her an important fixture on the Great White Way, which she says, in turn, has provided her with sanity in an industry and career filled with peaks and valleys. She is also a recording artist (this summer she released “Drama Queen,” a pop album, featuring collabs with the likes of Jake Shears and Nile Rogers) and a bonafide movie star, recently popping up opposite Adam Sandler (playing his wife in both “Uncut Gems” and “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah”). But it is her turn as the voice of Elsa in Disney’s “Frozen” – and the unstoppable ubiquity of “Let it Go” — that cemented her status as a true cultural phenomenon. When I posit the idea that there will now be an entire generation of kids growing up with her voice as their first remembered example of what it means to be a singer, she simultaneously beams and shrugs. 

“It’s so wild. I really don't take that lightly. Even though I like to be versatile and tackle different styles, I still think I sound like myself, whatever I'm doing. The most important thing is that when you hear my voice you know, ‘Oh, that's Idina.’ There have been moms who have told me that their kids know me from one thing and then a song from my album will come on and they go: Is that Elsa? Is that Elphaba? All I ever wanted was to have a voice that had its own unique sound.” 

We are here at Union Square Cafe, which is not only an institution among NYC restaurants, but was once your place of employment. What was your job here? 

I was a reservationist, which I’m sure is a job that even exists anymore. Maybe AI takes everyone’s reservations now? But back then there were three of us that would be working the phones. We were all upstairs, squeezed in this tiny room where nobody could see us. This was the most popular restaurant at that time and it could take months to get a reservation. I remember we were talking to say, ‘Union Square Cafe, may I ask you to hold?’ You couldn’t say ‘Please Hold’ — you had to ask them, which I always thought was funny. ‘May I ask you to hold? May I ask you to hold?’ Over and over. Also, the vitriol that was thrown in your direction when you said, ‘I'm sorry, I don't have an open reservation at 8:30 on a Saturday night for another six weeks.’ People would flip out. 

Did you have any other kind of service industry jobs?

Well, I've always talked about being a wedding singer and a bar mitzvah singer. I was definitely doing that on the weekends. To me, that's a service industry job. But other than using my voice to make some money, I did this. And when I was really young, the first job I had was working at Tony Romas out in Long Island as a hostess for serving ribs.

I also worked at a deli near my house growing up. I got fired from that job because my drawer was always coming up short because I wasn't good at making change. It wasn’t automated or anything, so you just had to do the math in your head, which made me nervous. So I screwed the money up and got fired. I also worked at Bergdorf Goodman during the holidays as a floater, so you were only there for the holiday rush. You are only there for a month. They put me on the cosmetics floor with all the very expensive lines. I just remember selling really expensive hair follicle products from La Prairie to older women telling them it was good for them. I had no idea what I was selling, but I did really well those four weeks. You made a little commission.

That's fun. I was a bartender in New York for 15 years while I was freelance writing. I always say it was the best and the worst of times, but it was also the most profoundly illuminating in terms of what you learned about people.

Absolutely. I also worked on the Spirit of New York, which was a cruise ship that would sail people around Manhattan. All the waiters were singers and actors and we had these reversible vests. It was wild, about 300 people would get on the boat at once and demand service. That was the only real waitressing job I ever had and I was horrible at it. 

When did the performance aspect come into play? 

So I would take an order — prime rib, chicken, fish, whatever — and then get that going. But at a certain time you would reverse your vest —it was black on the outside for waitressing, but it had red satin on the inside, which was the ‘showtime’ version of your vest — and you would stop what you were doing and perform a Broadway review or go sing a song with the house band. And so I'd have all these people's drinks and this big tray and then a voice would say, ‘Idina, you’re up!’ I’d say sorry to everyone, put the tray down, tell people to fend for themselves for a while, and then run up and sing a song, hoping they would forgive my bad service. 

That's amazing. What kind of things would you sing? 

Specifically, there were four tracks and a little Broadway review. If you were in track one, you were doing a little bit from All That Jazz, A Chorus Line and Phantom of the Opera.

“One singular sensation”…and here’s your fish. 

Yes! There was a house band and we each had two or three songs that we could choose from that they knew. One of mine was “Saving All My Love For You” by Whitney Houston. You know, I’d be really behind on my service and people would be getting impatient with me and I’d hear the intro to that song start and have to be like, ‘I’m so sorry! But if you listen, maybe I’ll win you over with this song!’ I also remember doing a Luther Vandross song. 

How long did that gig last?

I want to say it was around six months… and then my attitude got me fired. But that's why I'm here. I sort of bring it full circle, pay my respects.

You’ve done so many things. Broadway, movies, albums, a fashion line. I was just looking at the children’s book you did, “Proud Mouse”

My sister and I do that together. And we have another that just came out. 

When you were growing up, was your goal always to be a singer?

Yes, but it went through many different evolutions. My parents introduced me to Broadway and would bring my sister and myself from Long Island into Manhattan and take us to see shows at an early age. I can still remember how it felt to be sitting in our seats as the house lights went down and the overture began. I had already started singing and I had the sense that people were paying attention to me, that maybe I had something special. Then I remember seeing Peter Pan and Annie and Dream Girls — that was a big one for me — and I remember having the disappointing realization that I could never be in that show because it wouldn’t be appropriate. 

Then I started studying. A lot of people don't realize that I studied classically. I was singing arias and learning how to use my voice in that way. When my parents divorced, my mom started dating this other guy who was pretty cool at the time and he knew someone that had a band out in Long Island that played every night at some catering hall or Masonic temple. So we lied about my age and I went to sing with the band. At that point, I only knew three contemporary songs. I didn't know the classics. I didn't know the old jazz standards. I had to quickly learn a vast amount of material.

That's a pretty great education.

Yeah, it was. I think that in doing other people's music, you eventually find your own way. If you don't overwhelm yourself with trying to copy someone directly, but allow yourself to just emulate. You infuse it with your own personality and then it comes out of your body, which is different from anyone else's instrument, and it becomes your own. I was trying to learn everything. I would listen to Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald and just try to learn their entire catalog. You also had to know what key was good for you and how to figure that out. I would write down cheat sheets for the lyrics. There were no phones or iPads. I had a little recipe box with index cards in it. 

Somebody might ask for “Our Love Is Here To Stay” and I’d go grab the lyrics from the recipe box and secretly tape it to the microphone. I loved it, I have to say. I just felt so grown up. I loved when the band would actually go on a break and it would just be the keyboard player. People would be eating their salad and we'd have to just keep dinner music going, which meant maybe singing some of these jazz standards. The players were really good and they would teach me to listen and improvise. And the more I gotta do it, I'd hear my way through it. Like, oh, this is Billie Holiday, but this is my version of that. Or some days I’d choose to copy exactly the way she sang it as a melody and other days allow myself to see how I would interpret it differently. I was so young. But I think that's what's so fascinating about singing in general. But yes, those were my stomping grounds. I still think of that time as some of my most valuable education.

I went to school to study poetry and I teach a poetry writing workshop. I always tell people, if you read a ton of poems, when you eventually start writing them, you will have absorbed all of those forms without even realizing it, so when you start making your own poems, whatever should come out of you will just naturally come out. That must be true for songwriting as well. 

Exactly. That's what I mean. I don’t necessarily consider myself a great songwriter. I consider myself a great collaborator when working with a great songwriter. I just don't enjoy songwriting on my own. I'm not very discretionary and I'm not good at choosing. I like to just throw the kitchen sink out there and have someone else tell me, ‘oh, in what you just did, that was the chorus. The rest can go.’ I like collaboration. I just find that much more rewarding. Making songs can be a very solitary experience, especially making an album in the studio. Coming from theater or even from movie sets, from playing concerts, just being with either a community of a cast or a band or a crew — all of that is just so connected. I much prefer that, rather than hunkering down in the studio by myself.

{waiter comes to take order}

If you sort of come up in the theater world or Broadway world, does it make it so that film and TV people look at you differently?

I think that there's always been a real respect for New York actors, even out in Hollywood. There's a real respect for the work ethic, training, everything, the quality of the work. So I don't feel that way. I just think it's when you're versatile and can do a lot of things, it just makes people's jobs more difficult. Everybody wants an angle. Sometimes people struggle to know what to do with you.

I want to ask you about the rigors of being a Broadway actor. When you are doing an extended run of a show — like when you were in the middle of “Wicked” — how do you organize your life around that? How do you have a life?

That was before I was a mom, so it's funny to think about.  I want to say that after being a mom, it's harder because you have a child and you're trying to juggle and all that. And it is hard. But you have a better perspective in a way, and you're better at managing your time and it forces you to get your priorities in order. I can't be as self-absorbed now. My anxiety about performing went down instead of up because I understand that I'm doing the best that I can. If I can't get that really high note tonight the way I normally would because I'm tired or I'm getting the cold that I got from my son the night before, what am I supposed to do? At least I'm doing the best that I can. And usually when I take the pressure off myself, when I give myself a break, it actually makes the performance better and I enjoy myself more. And I probably hit that note because of that.

In the “Wicked” days, all I did was worry about getting fired. When you're doing a brand new musical, often you're in it for several years, through the workshop phases, and they have the opportunity after every workshop to say, ‘Hmm, maybe we'll try somebody else in the role.’ So I had a lot more going on in my head, to contend with. I was always scared of being replaced. 

Do you have a strict routine when it comes to performing? 

I spend a lot of time in a steamy shower. It helps my voice. So my dressing room is like my office. I think in a business where everything's so chaotic, I love the theater because I feel like it gives me consistency and stability. This is my office. I arrive at a set time.I get in the shower, I warm up 35 minutes every time, the same vocal, same exercises. I put on my makeup, which is a ritual I find to be sort of meditative. I go over my notes, my lines, and then you go out and do the thing.  Sometimes It feels like you become a monk. You try to protect yourself from people, you go out the back door when you can. Sometimes you can’t, and you have to go and see people. I don't ever want to complain, but it's hard to enjoy working eight shows a week. It's hard. It's a job. I don't want it to come out sounding like I'm not appreciative because I truly am, but it takes a lot of work to do it.

I had a friend who was doing play while he lived in Brooklyn. So every day leaving his apartment in Brooklyn, taking the subway at a certain time so he'd make sure he would be there in time. And one day when he was on his way to the theater, he saw someone on a bike get hit by a car and badly injured. He stopped to call an ambulance and give a statement to the police, then he had to literally run  into the theater, change clothes and forget that he had just witnessed something really traumatic and do this very slapstick comedic play. 

Oh yes. However, the theater can be your sanctuary as well. It may be a place you escape to where you can remove yourself and hide away from reality or it can uplift you and erase when something bad happens. That's when I know it is what I should be doing because I’ll just feel transported sometimes. When I was going through my divorce and I was doing “If/Then” it was truly art imitating life. It's all about a woman at a crossroads. It was so healing for me. The cast were my best friends and that show was my sanctuary — the theater, my friends, the material itself. I could figure stuff out in it or I could just sort of escape and just live inside of the music that was written for me and react off of my friend Anthony Rapp, my longtime friend who was also in “Rent.” Sometimes it's such a relief to just listen to somebody else and take them in and just react off of that. Especially if you're someone like me who constantly exhausts herself by listening to her inner saboteur too much.

I had a theory that there's certain songs that are so popular and so ubiquitous that at any point somewhere in the world, a drag queen is performing them. Right now somewhere on planet Earth there is someone in drag doing “Finally” by CeCe Peniston. That there are certain things that are so ubiquitous that they will live in the popular consciousness forever. I was thinking about that with “Frozen” obviously, that at any point somewhere someone is listening to that song or singing it or performing it or practicing it. There's going to be a whole generation of kids who came of age, the first sort of how to phrase this, that came of age with your literal voice in their ears. That will be what they think of as how-What singing is, which is such a powerful thing. 

It's wild. Yeah, I don't take that lightly. The cool thing is that I still think I sound like myself. Whatever I'm doing, you still know it is me, which to me is the most important thing. No matter what it is, you hear my voice and think, ‘That’s Idina.”  There's been some moms that have told me that their kids know me from one thing and then all of a sudden the “Drama Queen” song will come on and they go, is that Elphaba from Wicked? Is that Elsa? And that's all I ever wanted was to have a voice that people recognized, that had its own unique sound. When kids meet me and their parents are like, ‘This is Elsa!’ and I'm this 50 year old woman with dark hair, I always fear it’s going to traumatize them. So, then I have them close their eyes, and I say, does this sound like somebody you know? And they totally light up.

This is really going to sound like a dumb question, but how do you take care of your voice?

I'm all or nothing. So I kind of like to think of myself as an athlete. So when I'm gearing up for a big race, I start to train. I start to sing a certain amount of minutes a day. I work on the material from different angles, whether it's technically from a vocal standpoint, from a storytelling aspect, breath support, whatever it is. And I believe that all that rehearsal and all that work allows me to be more free on stage. But you have to go through all of that in order to be able to really surrender.

So if you know that you've done all of that sort of preliminary work, then when you're actually on stage, you don't have to think about it and you can just let it rip.

Yeah. Also, one of the biggest things I refer to comes from my voice teacher, who I've been with for 25 years. We have this thing called the A, the B and the C show. And the C show is still a great show. It's just, maybe you don't hold a note as long, maybe a change of melody a little to make it easier for yourself. So that on a day where you're not sleeping or you feel like you're getting sore throat or had a fight with your husband, crying all night, whatever it is, you do your best version of the B, the C show, so that you don't feel like you're letting yourself down in real time on stage in front of everyone. And most of the time, nobody but you knows the difference.

So it’s another way you can kind of give yourself a break if you know you aren’t feeling 100% for some reason. 

Yes. Also, I've often had the directors come back and give me notes and I think, ‘Oh God, they're going to be so annoyed’ and then they’ll say it was one of the best shows. Also, in a Broadway show, I have to be careful not to get carried away in acrobatic stuff and impressive things and make sure I'm always staying true to what the composer wanted to hear and the storytelling. As for my voice, I don't drink and I don't smoke when I'm in training. It's pretty boring stuff, but I have to do it because when I'm not performing for a little while, I kind of disappear. I just need a break. And then it takes me that much longer to get it back. It's kind of like you're running a marathon. You wouldn't just get up and run 26 miles after not running for a year. You have to work up to it again.

You are probably one of the few people in the world that knows what it's like to both sing at the Oscars and sing at a Super Bowl.

Maybe one of a few.

Which is scarier?

I don't know, they were pretty close. However, singing in the national anthem is just the scariest thing because you will be a laughing stock if you mess that up. Although I will say at the Super Bowl now, they have the words going by for you way up there on a teleprompter. So that took a lot of pressure off. I didn't know at the time that they would be there.

Yeah, that's a true nightmare scenario. Thinking about singing at the Super Bowl and then somehow forgetting the words.

Yeah, but that was so much fun for me, the Super Bowl, because my father's a football fan and you get to go early and go out on the field when it's empty and throw the football around. For some reason in my head, I'm sure they both were equally terrifying, but I think I probably had more fun with the Super Bowl than the Oscars. The Oscars are way more complicated for lots of other reasons.

Are you missing the theater right now? 

Yes, I am missing it. But I'm working on something new that's starting to take shape — something we've been working on for years — so that is exciting. It’s just hard to figure out how to juggle my life in LA these days with doing theater work in New York. My son is entrenched in school, so I don’t want to interrupt that. It’s got to be the right thing.

Do you miss New York?

Yeah, but not as much as I thought I would have. Is that bad to say?

No, it's fair. A lot of my friends have moved to LA and they were like, "Oh it’s not New York," and then after they're there for six months, they're like, "Oh my God, LA is amazing. How did I ever live in that terrible New York City?” I get it.

I know, but I swore it off for years. I lived there before. It wasn’t until I had my son that I saw the city in a different light. I associated the city with flying out there for auditions, trying to get jobs, driving around in a rented car trying to memorize lines for a git that I knew I wasn’t going to get. Writing music that never came to fruition, getting dropped from a record deal. I associated LA with all of that stuff. Also, I was married then to Taye, who was a big movie star, and I was just dropping off the radar and nobody gave a shit what I was doing. 

But things change. You have a kid and then you get to appreciate how nice it is to have a yard and to not have to bring your stroller up the stairs on the subway. I was this hardcore New York girl, like Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, and suddenly I'm here with my newborn and a stroller and I'm terrified I'm over bundling him in the cold. And my best friends are moving and grooving with their kids and now I’m this fish out of water mother in a city that used to be mine, which almost made it worse. But now I like to come back with my husband. You know, have a sexy weekend, see some movies, eat some good food. I kept my apartment here. I bought it with my ex, and then when we divorced, I renovated it. 

Are there any iconic Broadway roles that would still be a dream to play? You must get crazy offers. 

Not really, honestly. I really like originating growth. I'll be honest. It makes my life easier. It's very hard to walk in someone else's footsteps. Why do I need to do something Patty LuPone did or Barbra Streisand? I mean, I'm never going to be able to compete with that. Why would you want to? It would make me insane. 

Do you get recognized in a different way in New York City? I feel like this is one of the few cities in the world where you can truly be recognized on the street from. Your work in the theater. Like, if you were to pop by a piano bar in the West Village, like Marie’s Crisis, would you be safe? Would people go crazy? 

Yeah, at Marie's Crisis I would be a hit, or if I go to see a play and get a Starbucks in Midtown somewhere, someone might recognize me. If I'm having a bad day and I want to stroke my ego, then I can go to one of those places and I forget about myself. Take me, the same woman, the same clothes, the same thing, and just put me somewhere in Hollywood somewhere, nobody gives a shit. Most everywhere else I'm fine, but to go see a show in Manhattan and I feel like Madonna. Wait, can I ask you something? 

Of course.

Do I have caviar — or any other sorts of food — in my teeth?

No, you don't.

Ok, good. I was on an instagram live thing the other day and was answering people’s questions and one woman logged in to tell me I had a poppyseed stuck in my teeth. I was like, how can you see that?

“People will often ask me, ‘What do you think makes you a gay icon?’ I'm always like, I don't know? What is it? I've asked my gay friends what I should say when I'm asked this and I've received many different and very funny answers.”

That's the downside of high technology phones. I want to talk about your new album a little bit. Aside from working with all of these amazing people, I know you’ve been playing shows and doing these big Pride events. Are you going to be be doing more of that? People must lose their minds when you sing these songs. 

Oh yes. Actually, I would say the impetus for the “Drama Queen” album really came from my complete love affair with playing at 1:00 in the morning at GAY in London. I’ve done it several times at this point. And anytime I'm there for a project, I go and I do a couple songs. And the place, I don't know, it’s a big gay club and I guess it can have a couple of thousand people there, all packed up against the stage, lots of skin, screaming, singing, tears — myself included — dancing, jumping, whatever. And I can literally reach out and grab somebody's hand. No disrespect to the theater or the many of the very classy joints that I have played at, but people are much more behaved and  also, they're further away. This place, I can stage dive if I wanted to and there would be a bunch of muscular men or hot women that would catch me. I love those shows so, so much. During COVID, at the beginning when I was in quarantine, I was just like, ‘I want to make music that I can bring back to that environment —where people are dancing and grooving and really living.’

Obviously I am biased as a gay person, but there is something so powerful about that — being in these packed, euphoric spaces with lots of queer people. It’s a kind of joy that is impossible to replicate. 

Ok, this feels like a safe space so I’ll turn this back on you. People will often ask me, ‘What do you think makes you a gay icon?’ I'm always like, I don't know? What is it? I've asked my gay friends what I should say when I'm asked this and I've received many different and very funny answers. What do you think makes one though?

I don't know. It's very complicated. There are different kinds of gay icons — there are tragic gay icons and also powerful gay icons. I think it depends on the icon in question. I think about the reasons why gay men love Judy Garland, for example. She was an incredible performer, but there was something about her that they related to, and she also related to them. She was misunderstood and taken for granted. There was something tragic about her that made her deeply relatable. Also, she was brilliant. 

I can understand that, of course.

But I think it's different for everybody. It's often a very intangible quality that can't really be faked. I think queer people naturally feel a certain kinship with people who feel connected to our community. It’s a reciprocal relationship. We're like, ‘Oh, this is a person who gets us, who we love. They love us, we love them.’ It's very real. I don't know if that really answers the question. I mean, I can’t speak on behalf of all gay people, but if you are a powerful woman with a big voice, lots of style, and a big personality? Chances are good. Also, you were in “Rent” AND “Wicked”, I mean….

Yes! (Laughs) It's a huge compliment, obviously. I’m just never sure how I'm supposed to answer it. So now I just say, "Because they have good taste."

We’re coming up on the holidays soon…

Yes. And I do happen to be a Jewish girl with Christmas albums.

What are your favorite holiday songs? 

I like “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.”

That’s a great Christmas song, but it's also so melancholy.

It is. I mean, I find the holidays to be pretty melancholy. Another thing to blame my parents for — just kidding! — but when you come from divorced parents the holidays are all about ‘Whose house are we going to go to this year?  Will we be at home? Will we be with dad and his girlfriend?

I had the same experience. I went back and forth between my parents. Do you have a favorite go-to gift? 

I like to collect ornaments. I find really pretty ones wherever I go. So, I will often buy something really special like that when I’m traveling, either for myself or to give as a gift. 

Do you have any weird ones?

Yes, well I had one that was a witch on a broom with their ass hanging out. I loved that one, but I think the dog might have eaten that one last year when the tree came down. 

Is one of the perils of having played a very famous witch that people want to give you witch ephemera all the time? 

Yeah, all the time. But it's cool. The best was when I met Margaret Hamilton's nephew. She played the wicked witch in the “Wizard of Oz,” of course. He brought me some gloves of hers that she wore in the movie. A prized possession. I had them framed.