‘She won an Oscar.. but two years later she can’t get a job’
IF DEBBIE Kurup could turn back time, she would go back to when she was seven years old and dancing around her bedroom belting out hits from Cher’s Heart of Stone album. She said: “Growing up I shared a bedroom with my sister who’d bought the album on cassette and used to play it all the time. I remember singing Just Like Jesse James at the top of my lungs. “Now I’m singing that same song, and so many others, every night on stage.” Debbie, 43, says since being cast as Cher she has fallen in love with not just her music but the artist herself. As the eldest of the three Chers in the production, Debbie plays modern-day Cher and also the storyteller. She said: “My character starts the show, almost narrating. She asks for the help of the two younger versions of herself to tell the story. “I get some incredible songs to sing – like If I Could Turn Back Time and Believe – but more importantly for me as an actor I get some amazing moments from her life to re-enact.” Debbie’s period in Cher’s shoes sees her portray the singer’s marriage and subsequent divorce from her second husband, Greg Allman.
It also covers the death of her first husband, Sonny Bono, and some of the highest and lowest points Cher faced in her working life.
Debbie, who is originally from Sunderland, said: “Sonny was a tricky character, but she had huge affection for him and was devastated by his death in the 90s.
“Career-wise, she wins an Oscar – which is incredible. Then we find that two years later she can’t get a job. She got to such a pinnacle in her career, then no one would hire her.
“It’s incredibly humbling as a story.
“Even though she is a global mega-star, her story is about her being a woman, a mother and a jobbing actor.
“She has had incredible moments in her career, but also those moments when she’s stuck and in that respect people can relate to her.”