Kristin Chenoweth released her new album For The Girls in Sept. 2019 and now she’s taking it to the Broadway stage for a live concert event that begins Nov. 8 at the Nederlander Theater and runs through Nov. 17. HollywoodLife sat down EXCLUSIVELY with Kristin and talked about preparing for the concerts. “We’re putting the puzzle pieces together in a different way than I would for a record because it’s not the same,” Kristin told HollywoodLife. “A lot of these songs, I’ve never sung live. Meaning live in front of an audience. The night will be entertaining and sometimes you have to take songs that are not on the record. I want people to walk out of the theater and I want them to know me better. And that’s through music.”
For The Girls is about honoring the women who have come before us and is a personal tribute by Kristin to the female artists who inspire her. HollywoodLife asked Kristin what advice she’d give to young women who want to pursue music. “Well, it used to be, if you can’t see yourself doing anything else, then you’re doing the right thing. I still stand by that. However, what I want to say now is different. At this point in my journey of life, you don’t have to look a certain way. You don’t have to sound a certain way. You have to do you.”
In addition to her limited Broadway engagement, Kristin is starring in the all-new Hallmark Christmas movie, A Christmas Love Story, which will premiere on Dec. 7. This isn’t just any role for Kristin. She has a deep connection to this story. “It is a love story, but there’s a big part of it that is a big part of my life,” Kristin said. My producer, Jennifer Aspen, and I went to Hallmark with the idea and they said, ‘We’ve never tackled that subject.’ And that’s what made me want to do it. Nobody does Christmas better than Hallmark. It is a Christmas movie, but it has a lot of layers to it. I play a choir teacher who gave up being a Broadway star because she wants to become a teacher. I’m a choral director, but it’s who enters her life and why that is so cool. I wrote one of the songs, the main title song ‘When Angels Land’ with my friend Chely Wright for the film. I’ve never had that before. It’s a first.”
Last December, Kristin performed with the legendary Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra in their annual Christmas concert. The concert will air on PBS and BYUtv this December. “I had been asked twice before to do that special, which is what I grew up watching because I’m from Oklahoma,” Kristin explained. “For a long time, I was like, well, we don’t believe the same and I don’t know how I feel about that. Now I’ve come to the point in my life where I’ve come to understand that we should work and sing and make music with people that we don’t believe the same. I work with people every day who don’t think like me that I love. Being an LGBTQ rights activist, it was important for me to be up there with them and also for them to know who I am. We can still make music together. It was more classical in nature, which my voice was trained to do. But I also hadn’t been living there for a while, so I had to get in shape again. That’s the thing that, people. You must sing every day. You must dance every day if you’re going to be a dancer. But if you want to be a singer, you must sing every day. You have to work out. I work out all the time and I got a great workout with The Tabernacle Choir.”