Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
MERYL KICKS UP A STORM
Four old-school Broadway troupers, led by Meryl Streep, come to a schoolgirl’s rescue in Netflix musical The Prom
When Ryan Murphy went to see new musical The Prom on Broadway a year ago he had no great expectations. ‘I didn’t know a lot about it,’ he admits of the story of Emma, a young gay girl in smalltown Indiana, who’s forbidden to take her date, Alyssa, to the prom until she’s helped out by a flamboyant group of out-of-work actors from New York.
But within minutes he came faceto-face with his teenage self. ‘It’s my own story!’ exclaims the man behind Glee and Nip/tuck, who grew up gay in Indianapolis. ‘I was stunned. I’m from Indiana and when I went to my first prom I was dating somebody but I wasn’t allowed to bring him, so I went with a girlfriend.
‘It was painful to feel you weren’t accepted because of who you were. I felt like an outsider for a long time.’
The Prom is also the tale of the cavalry who ride to Emma’s rescue after reading about her plight on Twitter. There’s ostentatious Barry, pretentious Trent, cheerful Angie and gloriously narcissistic Dee Dee Allen.
Ryan knew who would be perfect as Dee Dee. ‘Two days after I saw the show I called Meryl Streep and said, “Will you go and see this?”
She went, and within three days she told me, “I’m in.” Then I got James Corden and Nicole Kidman to see it and they were in too.’
At 71, Meryl spends much of the film kicking up her heels with the verve of a 30-year-old. ‘Oh, my knees! They bothered me for five months!’ she says of her exuberant performance. ‘The lung capacity you exert on a musical is a lot too, so I swam a mile a day, five days a week.’ As for the character of Dee Dee, Meryl says, ‘She’s the kind of diva I wish I really were. I wish I could walk into the room and feel like I owned it.’
Backing up Dee Dee is her friend Barry, played by James Corden. ‘He hasn’t had Dee Dee’s success, so he doesn’t have her narcissism,’ chuckles James. ‘But it’s in there if he had the chance. I’ve had flops in my own career – oh my God, did you not see Cats? But I’ve got a wife and children who ground me, and people to tell me if I might be veering towards being an **** hole.’ Along with Broadway star Andrew Rannells as the selfinvolved Trent, Nicole Kidman makes up the foursome as Angie Dickinson, a chorus girl with endless legs and a heart of gold. ‘Meryl and I were working on Big Little Lies when we saw The Prom,’ she recalls. ‘We were giddy about doing a musical.’ Nevertheless, she admits the highkicking dancing was a challenge. ‘I was way out of my comfort zone, but I enjoy that.’
The glue holding the quartet together is Emma (newcomer Jo Ellen Pellman), who’s determined to follow her heart. ‘It’s incredible to find that talent early in someone’s career,’ says James Corden. ‘It was wonderful.’ ■
The Prom is on Netflix now.