‘Miss Saigon’ star in an intimate setting
Eva Noblezada recounts her quick rise to stardom in new cabaret show
There’s the fairy tale about making it on Broadway, and then there’s the reality of show business.
When Tony Award-nominated singer Eva Noblezada introduces herself to the Bay Area on Friday at Feinstein’s at the Nikko, she plans to share a story that strips away a good deal of the bright lights and tinsel. A born entertainer, she also wants to invite listeners into a program of songs she loves, exploring Adele, Amy Winehouse and signature Broadway numbers.
“The whole point is to talk about my story, to humanize actors and make it known that we go through all the same problems,” Noblezada said in a recent phone conversation from London. “It’s not all dramatic and sad. It’s quite real, with the spirit of a drink in hand.”
At 22, Noblezada is already an established star whose story provides the dream-fuel for thousands of aspiring young performers besotted with musical theater. She earned a Tony nomination last year for best actress in a musical playing Kim in the first Broadway revival of “Miss Saigon,” the role that changed her life.
As a high school senior at the Northwest School of the Arts in Charlotte, North Carolina, Noblezada made it to the finals of the 2013 National High School Musical Theatre Awards, better known as the Jimmy Awards.
She didn’t win, but her awards ceremony performance of the ballad “With You” from “Ghost” at Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre led casting director Tara Rubin to offer her an audition for the West End revival of “Miss Saigon.” Instead of graduating with her class, Noblezada found herself in London playing the doomed Vietnamese teenage prostitute Kim, a role that earned her the 2015 WhatsOnStage Award for best actress in a musical. “I did the second audition at the Majestic Theatre, where ‘Phantom of the Opera’ is playing, and producer Cameron Mackintosh asked if I wanted to move to London,” Noblezada said. “My dad happened to be there, and he was beside himself, just so proud. I was crying. It’s something that will stick in my head for the rest of my life.”
The triumphs make lasting memories, but sometimes so do slashing comments, intentional or otherwise. In her cabaret show, Noblezada talks about struggles with mental health and her dogged fight to recover from an eating disorder that she believes was precipitated by an interaction with a costume fitter.
With the success of a big-budget West End production resting on her 17-year-old shoulders, Noblezada also started taking the powerful drug Accutane when stress and the change in climate led to an outbreak of acne. She doesn’t hold a grudge about the fitter’s recommendation to lose weight, but the advice set her on a self-destructive course.
“It’s her job to measure things, not to sugarcoat things,” Noblezada said. “But I was only 17, still a child, and it stuck with me. I was just finding out who I was, and the pressure was all too much for me, and I didn’t tell anybody.”
Her mother had come to London with her and planned to stay for several weeks after the show started, but she left after Noblezada got settled because “she saw how ready I was to be independent,” she said. “I’ve always been older than my age.”
That push and pull between the need for nurturing and the desire for selfdefinition might sound uncannily familiar to any parent of a teenager. Noblezada was contending with the added scrutiny that comes with being a woman of color in a creative field that’s still predominantly white.
Born in San Diego to a Mexican-American mother and Filipino father, Noblezada found an ally in British tenor Leo Roberts, who was appearing in the West End production of “Les Misérables” when she was in “Miss Saigon.” They got married in November.
“I was lucky enough to have met my husband, and when things got really bad, he was one of the main reasons I decided to get help,” she said. “I realized it was not the best road to go down starting my career.”
With big plans afoot that she can’t disclose yet, Noblezada divides her time between New York and London. She’s living her dream but isn’t interested in selling an illusion.
“I don’t ever want to think my life is a fairy tale,” she said. “I’m not at all bitter about the situation. I had to grow up really quickly. People assume that people my age don’t know what being burdened feels like, and that pisses me off.”