Tony winner plays evil with a twinkle in her eye
Actress Kristin Chenoweth is over-the-top enthused about dark turn as Malificent in Disney’s live musical Descendants
If you tune into the Family Channel this Friday night at 8 p.m. for the world premiere of the live Disney musical Descendants, you’ll see something that’s familiar and different at the same time.
There’s a striking woman dressed in black, with a headdress capped with two horns and eye makeup that goes on for days.
You’d be right in guessing it’s the magnificently malicious Malificent, but look closely and you’ll see a twinkle in the eye that doesn’t belong to Angelina Jolie. It’s Kristin Chenoweth. Yes, everybody’s favourite blond explosion of energy, beloved for her turns in Wicked, Glee and Pushing Daisies, is back to raise hell once more. OK, maybe she’s only raising heck, since this is Disney, after all, but it is Kristin.
Descendantsis, in Chenoweth’s own words, “A wild mixture of old school and new style musicals.” Directed by Kenny Ortega, the man who made High School Musical such a solidgold franchise, it asks what would happen if the great Disney villains (The Wicked Queen, Malificent, Cruella De Vil and Jafar) had been exiled to a remote island where they festered and fumed and — most importantly — had offspring of their own.
The well-meaning son of Belle and the Beast decides to bring these evil offspring back to prep school in the “good” land and all hell breaks loose.
“It’s the best story and I just loved doing it. This is so the darkest I’ve ever been!” enthuses Chenoweth over the phone from Los Angeles, where she just passed an exciting week, turning 47, marking the closing of her Broadway hit On the Twentieth Century and being enshrined on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
“I’m in a fantastic place right now. There’s options and fun and excitement.”
But those things have been circling the woman from Broken Arrow, Okla., ever since she broke big time onto the New York scene in1999 with a Tony Award-winning performance in You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.
Her iconic turn as Glinda in the 2003 megahit Wicked sealed the deal and although she’s had her ups and downs (a falling lighting instrument nearly killed her on the set of The Good Wife in 2012) she remains upbeat, although it’s something she’s trying to fight with this role.
“I know everybody out there has this vision of bright, shiny Kristin, but there’s a lot more to me than that. I believe in finding levels in everyone: yourself, your friends, the characters you play. That’s why Malificent excites me. What made her evil? Was she born that way? Or is it something she picked up from the people who raised her? She keeps telling her daughter, Mal, that she can’t trust love. You can see she’s been hurt in the past.”
Those words might easily apply to Chenoweth herself, who has had a series of love affairs go south over the years, most famously with Aaron Sorkin, who later used it for fodder on his series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Chenoweth also ended a relationship with producer Dana Bruneti in 2014, but seems to have landed on her feet again with advertising exec Andrew Pruett.
“Yes, I’m happy now in every department,” she laughs. “Counting my blessings these days for sure.
“And Descendants is special for me. I was raised on Sunday nights, watching The Wonderful World of Disney. I remember Tinker Bell coming across the screen with her wand and waiting for the magic to start. Life is truly coming around full circle for me.”