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Jackman steps into the ring as ‘Greatest Showman’
NEW YORK — Hugh Jackman has scored with hit musicals on Broadway and onscreen, but as with Wednesday's “The Greatest Showman,” he knows how ridiculously difficult they are to do.
“Any new musical is hard. You have to write 10 new songs, write the story and convince a studio to do an original musical for the first time in 23 years.”
Jackson and “The Greatest Showman” are Golden Globe nominees for best actor and best picture musical or comedy, as is the film's stand-out anthem, “This Is Me.”
That song is by the Oscar and Tony winning duo Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, Oscar winners for “La La Land” and Tony winners for Broadway's current hit “Dear Evan Hansen.”
“We had them maybe two years before `La La Land,' ” Jackman said.
“The music probably took us three years. When we started we didn't know where we were going to get it from.
“And then these young guys pretty much straight out of college somehow slipped in one song we loved, and more and more songs came. And then the dances took another year.”
A showman never bothered by the truth, P.T. Barnum took a little person who became “General Tom Thumb,” then he transformed European singer Jenny Lind into a box-office sensation as The Swedish Nightingale.
“I read 37 books about Barnum, and there are 37 different versions about that man's life,” Jackman said at the Whitby Hotel.
“He actually wrote his own biography three times. Once he got onto the second, he bought up every copy of the first and burnt the entire edition.”
“Showman” sees Barnum married to Charity (Michelle Williams) with two young daughters and a irresistible drive to succeed.
“My kids really loved it,” Jackman said of Ava, 12, and Oscar, 17.
“My daughter said, `This is by far the best movie you've ever done.' She's tall and would love to be a singer-dancer and a chef. I told her, `Chef is good.'
“My son never gives up anything but he loves Zendaya,” who plays Barnum's trapeze star.
While “Showman” has remarkable-looking elephants, ponies and lions, Jackman revealed, “It's all CGI. Animals don't belong on a film set. That's a bygone era, but you have to have the animals because it's history, right?” (“The Greatest Showman” opens Wednesday.)