‘It’ll be Christmas on steroids’
Katherine jenKins tells SIMON GAGE why she’s on a mission to fill the royal albert hall with festive magic
WE WANTED to make it Christmas on steroids,’ laughs Katherine Jenkins, talking about her all new Christmas extravaganza, coming soon to a cinema (or at the very least, a TV screen) near you. She’s already wearing a Christmas sweater and ordered her turkey weeks ago, that’s how infused with the Christmas spirit she is. Her daughter’s letter went off to Santa… she can’t even remember when.
‘I wanted traditional music, Christmas carols, contemporary Christmas, Christmas readings, dancers, aerialists, The Nutcracker… And we have Bill Nighy and Vanessa Redgrave,’ she tells us with an energy we’re not used to during lockdown.
‘Vanessa reads the Maya Angelou Christmas Poem, which is really beautiful and poignant within that empty space. Bill is just hilarious and everyone’s going to love him: he chose something really comical and fun and so appropriate for the time. And then we’ve got Sir Bryn Terfel singing a beautiful carol and Alberto Urso, who’s like the new up-and-coming Italian tenor – they’re calling him the new Andrea Bocelli – and Marisha Wallace, who has a massive Broadway voice, and we sang a duet on the roof...’
And all of it is pulled together at the Royal Albert Hall, scene of her annual Christmas concerts and the building she has – with this show – performed in no fewer than 50 times.
‘Because I know the Hall so well, I know every nook and cranny, I was able to say, “Can we film on the roof? Can we film in the basement? That corridor’s amazing...” So actually the Royal Albert Hall plays a character in the movie.’
Basically, it’s like the glitziest Christmas show you ever saw with a narrative that makes it feel like A Night In The Museum, with Katherine’s own children running around, exploring. ‘The viewer sees this Christmas story but gets a magical mystery tour through the Albert Hall like they’ve never had before at the same time. The Hall comes alive in magical ways.’
The idea – eventually shot by one of the directors on The Crown – came to her through lockdown when she was doing her at-home performances to cheer everyone up. ‘My mum had just slipped into that over-seventies bracket,’ explains Katherine from her front room, just down the hall from the piano room, where these performances were filmed on an iPhone.
‘She was on her own and I thought there’d be a lot of other people who would be lonely and scared so why don’t I do a concert on Facebook? Obviously I can’t do what they do on the front line, but I can sing a few songs. I did that with no expectations and we had hundreds of thousands of people watching with us live – so I made a promise there and then: I said, “I’ll keep you company every Saturday night through lockdown.”’
At that point she didn’t realise that would mean four months of back-toback concerts, with the original format of uplifting songs evolving into was Broadway and Disney nights and a bunch of other specials.
‘My family got involved so it was me singing into my iPhone and my husband pressing play on the backing track and I realised that people were watching this who may be separated from their family but hooking up and it was bringing people together.’
It also gave Katherine the opportunity to get out of her pyjamas and into some make-up, something her daughter was happy to jjoin her in. ‘I think I may have createdreated a minimonster there,’ Katherineerine laughs.
But then public servicervice performing is part of who Katherinene is: she’s performed for the Chelsea
Pensioners, supported the British Legion and, after an encounter with Dame Vera Lynn at the celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of VE Day, was persuaded to fly to Basra to entertain the troops. But don’t you wonder if those troops really just want to see a girl in a bikini rather than an opera star with a beautiful face and voice to match?
She laughs. ‘They’re always very respectful. I’d be in army fatigues and I’d take a dress rolled up in my bag to add a bit of glamour and put a bit of perfume on and they’d go, “Oh, you smell really nice.” The manners and the courtesy they show you makes you really proud to be part of that.’
So, true to form, Katherine is bringing an uplifting close to a very strange year, one that has seen her doing Disney songs from her own home, dressed up as an Octopus on The Masked Singer (‘I did it for my daughter but then she couldn’t watch it because she would have recognised my voice and spread it around at school’) and now running around a practically empty, socially distanced Royal Albert Hall in some very big dresses.
‘It was when we heard they might have to cancel Christmas concerts that I thought, I’m going to create the ultimate Christmas experience, whatever happens.’
Katherine Jenkins: Christmas Spectacular is in cinemas and available to own and stream in December. The soundtrack will be released Dec 11. katherinejenkins.film