Sunday, 14 February 2010

My week: Mel C

My week: Mel C

An Olivier nomination has finally let the singer shake off her frothy pop image

SQUEALS ALL ROUND

I squealed a lot last week. The biggest squeal was when I heard I had been nominated for a Laurence Olivier award for my performance in Blood Brothers.

Bill Kenwright, the producer, called me and I couldn’t believe it. He said: “Don’t tell anyone, you can tell your mum but that’s it.” My mum was actually in my house with my stepdad and my one-year-old daughter Scarlet. I came in to them with the news and everyone squealed this time, not just me.

I feel that being nominated for the award is an acceptance into the theatre world after years of being, well, Sporty Spice of the Spice Girls. It was so unexpected I’m on cloud nine.

I play Mrs Johnson: she has seven children and she met her husband in the late 1950s and started popping children out. She was a good Catholic woman and that happened a lot — big families and no contraception. Blood Brothers is the story of her family.

The play is very much about class. Somebody recently said to me that Britain now is a classless society and I just don’t think that’s true. My dad was a coach driver and I come from a working-class background and it’s something I’ve always been very aware of. When you come from that background you have a lot to prove.

SPICE GIRLS THE MUSICAL

The Spice Girls have all been to see the show. Victoria Beckham is really pleased for me, she came to see it after Christmas. Being in the Spice Girls was such a whirlwind time for us. So much went on in those days that it is all a bit of a blur. We’ve been thinking about Spice Girls the Musical for a long time and six months ago we started putting things in motion. Geri [Halliwell] and Emma [Bunton] were introduced to Judy Craymer who made Mamma Mia!. Obviously, given her success there — it made £90m at the box office — she is the best person to take it forward. We thought it was very appropriate to have a strong, successful woman at the helm.

One thing that definitely won’t be in the show is the Thatcher episode. Back in the 1990s Geri created a huge media storm when she said Margaret Thatcher was the first Spice Girl. It wasn’t a sentiment I shared. It was quite a difficult time for me being from Liverpool, which had a very hard time through the Thatcher years. I was brought up in a Labour household and that was always the way I tended to vote.

GOOGLE GIRL

I sometimes Google myself, it’s irresistible. I have my own website and my fans discuss lots of things on the forum so when I look it’s like eavesdropping. They know more about me than I do. I’ve been reading about myself in the media for a long time, almost 14 years, and there have been so many awful, untrue things so you harden to it all. Over the years I’ve learnt not to let criticism affect me. My motto is: other people’s opinions of you are none of your business.

MUM’S THE WORD

Looking after children is the hardest thing you can ever do. I spend a lot of my time at home in Primrose Hill, north London, with Scarlet. When I have an evening performance I don’t leave the house until teatime so we have the day together. I want to be sensible about how much TV she watches but I don’t want to be too strict. I love cookery programmes. My mum taught me to cook. I do a mean risotto, curries and a lot of one pot stuff. It’s not presented very well, I call it “rustique” which means messy.

STARTLED RABBIT

Everyone who works in the theatre knows that moment when you have a blank, whether it be through dialogue or song. The lights are all on you, the audience is looking at you and the words pop out of your head. I had one of those moments recently. A few minutes felt like an eternity, my heart was pounding and I felt like a rabbit in the headlights.

I’ve done lots of live work over the years, mostly in music, but by working in a theatre six nights a week you really learn about audiences. Each has its own personality. You think you’ve seen it all, but no. We’ve had some drunken people shouting things out and commenting on the dialogue. Blood Brothers is a tragic story and at one emotional moment, when one of the cast members was brandishing a gun, somebody in the audience shouted out: “Shoot him.” Everyone was disgusted but it made the end of the show extremely dramatic. We gave such a powerful performance because we were so angry.

Mel C appears in Blood Brothers at the Phoenix theatre, London

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