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Post by Danni on May 1, 2007 21:45:28 GMT
i wasnt sure where to stick it. so i shoved it here.
yes lots of praise for kimmmmmmmmm
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Post by Susan on May 8, 2007 10:28:43 GMT
Article from Now magazine
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Post by Danni on May 8, 2007 14:35:05 GMT
awwwwww 'extremely proud', aint steve sweet lol! And woooooo for kim.
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Post by Susan on May 9, 2007 8:47:55 GMT
What made me laugh was 'Charlie, in a Topshop smock, went for late-night sushi after the party with her sister' I just thought, erm, ok then Thank you for that non-relevant random piece of information! Could of filled the space with a bit of Kim going's on!
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Post by Danni on May 9, 2007 14:30:53 GMT
lol i did wonder what they were on about. was a bit random
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Post by Danni on May 25, 2007 13:16:54 GMT
Ok ive come across this! Its a good interview, *claps*
Kim Medcalf is currently enticing West End audiences with the nightly invitation to come to the cabaret, old chum, which, as Sally Bowles, she extends in Rufus Norris’ vivid re-imagining of the John Kander and Fred Ebb classic Cabaret at the Lyric Theatre. But things might have been very different for the vivacious 33-year-old actress: she could have been stuck behind a desk, working in corporate business, instead. After graduating with a law degree from Bristol University and then working in marketing and sales, she suddenly ditched it all to do what she really wanted to do—act. After undertaking a year of postgraduate drama training, she took to the theatrical boards, but her initial tenure as a stage actress was short-lived. After just one theatre job, she won a key role on the TV soap EastEnders, taking over as Sam Mitchell from Daniella Westbrook. Her four years on the show made her a household name—or at least, a household face. Now, however, things have come full circle, and she’s back on the musical stage that she trained for. Theatre.com caught up with her backstage in her dressing room, several hours before the evening performance.
You’re finally doing what you set out to do, aren’t you? I am too—I also read law at University, but left it behind me. Can you imagine what we’d be feeling like right now if we hadn’t? I’d be the most miserable lawyer and probably awful as well, stuck in an office.
Was acting something you always wanted to do? Acting was something that I was always very comfortable doing, from the time I went to school. I lived in Bromley in southeast London, and went to a girls’ grammar school there. There was a boys’ grammar school down the road, and we all mixed together to do a production of The Pajama Game. I got to play Babe Williams, and we had a massive orchestra—the whole borough got together for it, and it was fantastic. I’d also done two pantos at the Churchill [the local producing theatre in Bromley]—Barbara Windsor was in one of them—though when I came to do EastEnders, she didn’t remember me. I was one of the little dancing girls and I was about 13 when I did it, so I’m not surprised. Though I wanted to continue in the theatre, I just didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t come from a family where anyone else had done it. I remember I bought The Stage, and though I didn’t know how to do this, I felt I just had to do something. So I went to an open audition for Starlight Express. I turned up with my friend, who is now a doctor. Everyone else had their proper resumé and everything, and I only had a little passport photograph on me. But I got through the singing, from about 400 to the last 40 but then had to go upstairs to learn the dance routine. I had only brought cycling shorts and a swimming costume. I was that naïve.
How did you finally make the switch to do proper drama training, and learn how to actually negotiate the way auditions worked? It wasn’t until I was 25 or 26, on holiday with a group of friends, that I woke up to doing something about it. There were four of us, doing law or management consultancy jobs. We were all having a bit of a mid-twenties crisis, sitting around a table in France and quite drunk, and wondering what we were doing with our lives. We literally went around the table; it came to me and they all said to me, “You say you want to act, and you say that you know it is what you should be doing, but you’ve done nothing about it.” I said, that wasn’t fair—I just didn’t know how. They said, “But you’re not looking—you must go and talk to someone, ring a drama school, be brave.” They made me cry. But I remember getting home that Monday morning and thinking, “You buggers, I’ll show you.” So I rang about four drama schools, but it was the end of August and they weren’t auditioning, except Central who told me they had started this new musical post-grad training. They were having final auditions that Wednesday, so they told me to bring along a song and just turn up. They offered me a place, but I asked them if I could defer it a year. I was so flummoxed, as it was due to start the next week and I hadn’t told my work or anything. So I saved up for a year and then went there.
So you were a bit older by the time you did it. There’s no room for regrets, but I do think when I look back that maybe I could have gone to drama school instead of the three years I was working. In some ways that would have been wonderful, but in others I love my life now and the fact that I’ve got a very separate world as a result. I have a lot of friends who are not in this business. And coming into it a bit later was ideal for me—I’m quite sensitive, and having to be a bit tougher away from it all and then walking into this has grounded me more. Making the change was quite a hard thing to get my head around—I had a paid job and a company car, but I was also terribly bored and I just knew I was in the wrong profession. It must be like being in the wrong relationship. You just know it’s wrong. When people ask me now how I do whatever it is I do, I say there is nothing in my mind that has ever been more stressful than walking into a sales meeting and talking about profit margins and percentages. I’m intelligent enough so I can do it I suppose, but it never felt right. I would much rather this stress than that, because ever since I was a kid I have loved this. So, when people ask me why I did acting after I’d done law, it was never about that; but rather why I did law at all.
Were there any benefits? I was probably a bit saturated before and needed a bit of breathing space before I entered the acting profession. If I’d gone into the business at 15 or even 18, I don’t think I would have coped very well. I was just a kid. It took me going around the world with my best friends on my gap year between school and university to grow up a bit. It was something I needed to do, and I think that going to Bristol and having those three years out there where I wasn’t doing something that was all about me, me, me, was great, too.
On leaving drama school you got a job almost immediately at the King’s Head. I’d got an agent from my drama school showcase—I was the only one from my whole year to do so—and she sent me for a job at the King’s Head, in the musical One Touch of Venus. I had to go for about five auditions for it. It was being done by a great, bossy, American director called Tim Childs, who had been trying to find someone for ages. I came along, terribly naïve, but five auditions later, I got it. It was such a good experience because you’re out there in that small space, and you can see everybody in the room, and you’ve just got to do it.
So you put your musical training to good use. But you’ve not really had to use it again until now. No. I came out of Venus and it was a month later that I got EastEnders, so my feet didn’t really touch the ground.
How did you deal with suddenly being public property? I didn’t ever really get a huge buzz out of being the girl from the telly that people would recognise on the streets. Some actors really like that, and I used to envy people who would carry pens around to do autographs. But I like the fact that now I can get on the tube and don’t get any hassle when I come in to work. People recognise me less and less now. They have short memories, and that’s quite nice—it was a bit mad at times. I had no problem with it, but it was never something I’d aspired to. It was a lovely opportunity. I probably wouldn’t have been doing this otherwise.
There obviously is life after EastEnders. I always knew I wanted to do more theatre and see what I was capable of.
You had a great job last year, playing Judi Dench’s daughter in Hay Fever, directed by Peter Hall. Yes, I couldn’t really believe it. I was concerned that making the transition from telly to theatre can be very difficult, and people sometimes won’t accept it. But working with Judi was fantastic. Her mantra is always to have fun, and rehearsals were always such fun. She was constantly coming up with pranks and wind-ups. She’s so brilliant onstage because she’s such a minx with all of us. Everybody falls in love with her. And I was so lucky to be playing her daughter in it because we had a lot of scenes together and it was just great.
And now taking over in Cabaret is another great job, this time working with director Rufus Norris. It doesn’t get any better. I was really nervous about meeting him. We all have our own anxieties: my shit was about how I am perceived, and I met him for a coffee and found myself saying I’d not done much theatre recently as I’d been working in television. But Rufus has been great, too.
Were you intimidated by the legacy of Liza Minnelli in the screen Cabaret, or that of your stage predecessor Anna Maxwell Martin? I watched the movie a while back, but I’ve not watched it since because I don’t want to get sucked into it. You shouldn’t even think of recreating what she does. But the thing I did take from it is the essence that whatever Sally is, she’s a pro—she loves being up on that stage. Everything’s about that for her, and that’s something I want to capture. Of course, you have to love it, or you wouldn’t do it. I saw Anna do the show, and she was lovely to watch—she played the whole damaged part of Sally fantastically. But we’re very different people, and I suppose we bring something different to it. What’s been wonderful is that from day one of rehearsals is it has never been about, “This is where you stand and this is what you do.” Everything has been up for grabs and open for new interpretation. The costume is completely different and my whole look is different.
What was it like joining an existing company, many of whom have been with the show from the beginning? James [Dreyfus, who plays the Emcee] has been very supportive of me. He’s a really beautiful person. He’s been so generous. I see him grinning for me when I get it, and he grabs my hand and says well done. Honor [Blackman, who plays Fraulein Schneider] and Francis [Matthews, who plays Herr Schultz] as well as some of the ensemble are new, too, but what we have is a fantastic foundation of stability and support from the others, especially, in my case, from Michael [Hayden, who plays Clifford Bradshaw], because I’m working with him so much.
What changes have been made? We’ve changed “Mein Herr’” quite a lot and “Cabaret” as well. Javier [de Frutos, the choreographer] gave me a note on “Cabaret,” which was not to put anything on me but leave me to just come out and do whatever I feel. At first I thought, I can’t do that. But there’s something incredibly liberating about it—you just go out, and do whatever feels right there and then—within the framework of where you go with the lights and all that.
What’s your own take on Sally now? I want to make her ballsy but vulnerable as well. Rufus gave me a fantastic note, which I think is very true to the character: any time you start feeling pity for yourself or sorry for yourself, he said, that’s wrong. Sally doesn’t do that—she can’t do that. She’s such a strong character. Rufus has encouraged me to be edgy and push that a bit more.
Is being back in the theatre pushing you, too? I do love it, yes; although the hours are anti-social, and with the summer coming all my friends are going on holiday and I can’t. With EastEnders, you generally get your weekends—and you’re allowed to book your four weeks’ holidays. But this is the best job, and I’m raring to go with it.
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Post by Danni on May 25, 2007 15:48:09 GMT
Ok now ive read again id like to say that kim is not 33, She's 32!! Tut mr/mrs interviewer! But its really good. It's funny how from these little things you can still learn things about kim and like how she thinks about things. And from what she's done to achieve want she wanted to is like inspirational. Love it!
Its weird how people reckonise her less and less. I know its different for us because we're her supporting her but you would have thought alot of people would still reconise her, well i'd of though they would anyway. But i suppose its good because like she said she doesnt get any hassle.
Well id have never of thought of The Dame as a 'minx' lmao!
Erm well i dont think they was meant to put the word 'Sh*t' in it but i cant think of what the word should of been 'cos thats got to have been a typo. If anyone can tell me what it should be i'll edit it.
The 'Cabaret' cast seem so nice from what she said. She seems to work with the best and nicest cast in alot of things she does. James just seems so lovely. Bless him! And its good they've changed things in the show because change is good sometimes and I think it gives the show more recognition for both the the cast and how they portray the characters compared to how the actor before them. I think it just generally gives the show more recognition and i think from the reviews its got its paying off. It's deffinately a big success.
And lastly poor kim not getting a holiday. I hope she does go ona long holiday after she's finished Cabaret. She deserves it.
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Post by Susan on May 25, 2007 21:53:40 GMT
Ooooooh I loooove it, I love the big meaty interviews like this it's quite empowering! And oh so cute I love it, i'm having a moment they're all nice to her and awww, I can't quite form the words right now. Also one thing, the thing that she's been given like a free-reign for 'Cabaret' just makes me think WOW even more, because it is so good, and I go on about it all the time, and she created that like with little help, amazing. Haha yes Kim gets peace on the streets now.....except for us being there pestering her outside the stage door
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Post by Danni on May 25, 2007 22:16:08 GMT
yes i like big interviews i find them really interesting even if we know alot of it already.
Lol i know ain't it sweet. Yeah i know i did think like wow it must be good because everyone has aid that when she does 'cabaret' its just amazing and yeah to think she did alot of the stuff from how she thinks it shud be performed. That's quite something if im honest and i haven't even seen it.
HAAAA yes i did think that but i didnt say it! But we're allowed cos we're her fans.
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Post by Susan on May 30, 2007 23:48:47 GMT
Another rather nice interview they've just done with Kim
The Big Interview: Kim Medcalf She has a degree in Law, she used to work in sales and marketing, and until embarking on a one-year postgraduate course at the Central School of Speech and Drama, she had never had a singing lesson in her life. Yet Kim Medcalf now finds herself on the West End stage playing the lead in Cabaret at the Lyric. It has been quite a journey for the 32-year-old, as she tells Caroline Bishop…
“It’s a big journey. I think essentially she’s a showgirl and she’s compelled to get up there on stage every night, and her driving force is that she wants to be this star. But actually when you look at her life, in reality, it’s not really going to happen.” Kim Medcalf is talking about Sally Bowles, her role in Rufus Norris’s production of Cabaret. “It’s quite a tragic character I think, but hopefully quite loveable as well. Someone said that she’s adorable but repellent at the same time.”
The erratic, melodramatic, selfish and needy character of Bowles, as Medcalf portrays her on stage, couldn’t be further from the calm, friendly and level-headed actress herself, as she comes across this afternoon, sitting in a Soho café. Also unlike the path trodden by her character, Medcalf’s journey has turned out well; she has achieved her long-held aim of being an actress and her working life couldn’t be better at the moment. “It’s the first time that I’ve really done anything as big as this… so it’s been quite a challenge, but I’m really loving it,” she says.
Two months ago Medcalf took over the part of Bowles from Anna Maxwell Martin, who opened in the show last October. Being her first West End musical – and only her second role on a West End stage – Medcalf freely admits that director Norris and the team were “taking a bit of a risk with me because I’m not a fully fledged musical theatre star”. However, with the help of the “fantastic” Norris, Medcalf has learnt on the job. “What I love about Rufus is that… I’ve always worried that it’s all about the singing and getting the notes perfect. He was like ‘well forget that, I mean yeah obviously the notes have got to be there, but I’m not worried about that, I’m worried about what you’re doing when you’re singing’. It sounds obvious, but you have to really tell the story when you’re singing. So in the audition at the end of it I was actually shouting and the notes have gone out of synch, and he was physically pushing me around the room to show me. It was almost liberating,” she says.
"She’s adorable but repellent at the same time" Given this inexperience, it seems surprising that Norris would even consider her for the role of Sally. Until starting a one-year postgraduate degree at the Central School of Speech and Drama when she was 25, she says she “hadn’t ever really sung; I mean I had at school and stuff but for me it was literally like walking in cold. So much of that for me was just basic technique, using my voice in any sort of way, but I didn’t ever really get beyond that.”
After leaving Central, Medcalf had a few small musical roles, then a four-year stint in the distinctly non-musical TV soap EastEnders, followed by one high-profile, but non-musical West End role in Hay Fever last year. Her singing talents have been displayed on various occasions – an EastEnders Christmas Party, the 2005 series of Comic Relief Does Fame Academy (she came second) – but the difference between her precise, slightly inhibited performances on Fame Academy and her ballsy, dramatic interpretation of the title song in Cabaret is evidence of Norris’s expert tuition. “I’ve been really lucky to go into this and have a director who is just really amazing,” Medcalf acknowledges. “I have so much respect for him, he has brought that out of me and I’ve managed to take that on stage and it seems to be ok, but you know, it was a bit risky.”
People seem willing to take risks on Medcalf. Her first television job out of drama school was playing Sam Mitchell in EastEnders, which, over the four years she occupied the role, gave her some pretty juicy storylines. She is honest – as seems typical of her – about the fact that it took her a while to perfect her craft: “I would be the first to say it took me time to get used to telly, not being too big. At the beginning I was quite over the top and I had to really learn the hard way, with 12 million people watching me!”
She feels joining the soap was a good baptism into the world of television. “If you want to learn about television then go on that. In a way you’re self directing because there’s so much material to get through. You don’t have rehearsal time, it’s very rare to sit down and say ‘what’s my motivation in this scene?’, you haven’t got the time. So it’s in the deep end really, but I think that’s the best way to learn.”
About a week after finishing work on the soap, someone else took a risk on her. Her agent – who, she says, was “just not accepting that I should be pigeonholed” – got her an audition for Sir Peter Hall, who was casting Noel Coward’s Hay Fever for the West End, starring the theatrical royalty that is Dame Judi Dench. Despite Medcalf's limited professional stage experience, Hall cast her as Sorel Bliss, the daughter of Dench’s Judith. “I don’t think Peter had ever watched EastEnders, he didn’t care, he just saw me as someone who was an actress, maybe a bit raw as far as professional theatre goes, but he was willing to take a risk and I was really, really grateful for that.”
It was a huge production for her West End debut. Having spent the last four years in television, finding herself being directed by Hall in the West End with Dench playing her mother was, she says, “wonderful, but terrifying”. Not least due to the presence of Dench, the four-month run sold out and Medcalf’s lack of previous experience in these matters led to co-star Peter Bowles saying to her when the curtain rose on a packed house night after night “This is special, this is not normal, you’ll learn.”
The fact people have taken risks on her is sweet recompense for the considerable gamble Medcalf took on herself by leaving a well-paid, secure job at the age of 25 to go back and retrain as an actor.
As a child, she had always loved performing and had overdosed on amateur dramatics at school, to the point that when she reached the age of 18, she wanted “to be a bit normal again.” Consequently, she decided to go to Bristol University to study Law. “I thought the whole time I was there, look I really want to do [acting], I think that’s what I’m going to end up doing, but I want to have this time to do something completely different and go to normal university.” After finishing her degree she fell into a job at a blue chip company doing sales and marketing. She knew it wasn’t the right job for her, but it took her friends to point out that she kept harping on about wanting to act for her to actually make the decision to do something about it. She finally did, and “blagged my way in” to the Central School.
"He was willing to take a risk and I was really grateful for that" “I was going to be losing a lot,” Medcalf says of what was certainly a brave decision. “I had a big car and a well paid salary and all that, but I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t fulfilled at all. It doesn’t matter what you earn, if you’re not happy you always resent it, so I’d just spend my money on going out all the time and had nothing to show for working at this place for three years. So I thought, I’m not going to lose anything really, if it doesn’t work I’ll go back to doing sales and marketing again.”
Taking a business-like attitude to it, Medcalf finished the course and put a date in her diary, some eight months ahead, which would be her “D-Day”, the date by which, if she hadn’t got any significant acting work, she would return to her “former life”, as she jokingly refers to it. “I was quite hard on myself and I only gave myself that time. And when I got to D-day I think I was in EastEnders.” Her delayed route into the profession has left her with a mature, sensible attitude and a sense of normality that those who started in the industry younger than her must find harder to attain. “I love the fact that I have very normal friends who are not in the industry,” she says. “I have a very strong group of friends from university. I feel very proud that I come from a very down-to-earth family and sometimes when things get a bit out of control, especially with the press, or mad hours, having that and being a little bit older just made me sit back and be a bit sensible about it.”
This was particularly valuable in keeping her grounded during her time on EastEnders. “You can feel like that defines you, you are just that girl on the telly. What’s so nice is when you have those friends… They’re interested in you as a person, and that kept me going. Sometimes it was a bit too much you know.”
It certainly became a bit much when, in her first year in the soap, Medcalf was badly injured in a car accident in France. The press interest “made me realise what a weird job it was. I was in France and there was a group of journalists that had flown over, they were outside the hospital. Having been older and having had a really separate life before, having suddenly now this interest on that level was strange.” She adds: “But it did make me realise that I was just very lucky to be doing it. I love my job.”
That she can now say she loves her job is proof that Medcalf has won her gamble. Unlike her on stage alter-ego Sally, who cuts a sad figure at the end of the show, left alone, with no support and no career prospects, Medcalf has fashioned a successful and varied performing career which is as much a reflection of her willingness to take a risk on herself as it is about other people’s faith in her. But if D-Day had arrived and she hadn’t got an acting job, would she really have given up her dream? Medcalf pauses. “If I was getting nothing I think I would have…” she trails off, “I don’t know…” Thankfully, she didn’t have to make the decision.
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Post by Danni on Jun 3, 2007 13:42:07 GMT
Awwww love it. Took me ages to read that, im such a slow reader nowadays!
Bless her being so tough on herself with the D-Day thing. I think its a good idea tho because i suppose it motivates you more towards what you want to do.
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Post by Susan on Jun 7, 2007 11:27:53 GMT
So delayed only just found it but they've put about Kim being in Cabaret on Curtis Brown
Kim Medcalf has just taken over the role of 'Sally Bowles' in Bill Kenwright's production of Cabaret at the Lyric Shaftesbury Avenue directed by Rufus Norris.
Then it's just got the review from What's on Stage
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Post by Susan on Jun 7, 2007 11:34:25 GMT
Potentially the smallest article going
Honor Blackman and Kim Medcalf have joined the cast of Rufus Norris's wild, imaginative staging.
If there is more, it wont let me see it
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Post by Susan on Jun 7, 2007 12:03:35 GMT
;D
Although it has lost the wonderful Sheila Hancock and Geoffrey Hutchings as the doomed ageing lovers (Honor Blackman and Francis Matthews are sweet, touching replacements but lack the charm and heartbreak of their predecessors), I still think this remarkable, poisonous, thrilling new vision of Kander&Ebb's masterpiece has got better as the run has gone on. Rufus Norris' dark, dynamic staging has a confidence and power now that it lacked originally. Partly this is because James Dreyfus' Emcee has evolved into a truly menacing, ambiguous presence...a terrific performance. Even more though it is because, finally, in Kim Medcalf has it got the Sally Bowles it really needs and deserves: this is a blazingly impressive reading of the role. Her singing is wonderful (such a shame she isn't on the cast album) but also her characterisation of this troubled and troubling character is just spot-on: she is adorable and repellent simultaneously, with a magnetic stage presence and gorgeous physicality. Her emotionally overwrought, drug-addled rendering of the title song gave me goose bumps...both dramatically and musically true. Worth going again just to see her.
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Second visit just to see Kim Metcalf was for Kim's performance well worth it. A great shame Kim did not open the show as she is one hell of a Sally Bowles. Unlike AMM her numbers actually ended to cheers - especially the title song as she clearly surpassed herself with a very exciting and effective delivery. Where the musical fails second time around is the casting of Honor Blackman. Sadly Honor fails to make the role work. Though she looks elegant, the years are obvious and the accent well her attempt at sounding German was almost laughable as she clearly sounded more suited to the role of Mrs Higgins in MFL. I really did not believe in the charactor the way I did with Sheila Hancock and sadly those wonderful songs were all but thrown away.
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HAAAAAAAAAAAA this made me laugh
"Looking like a cross between a penguin and Count Dracula" - talking about James!
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Post by Susan on Jun 7, 2007 12:34:39 GMT
Kim Medcalf as Sally, while never topping the jaw-dropping performance of Liza, really holds her own with the part. Her vulnerability is key here - the whole little-girl-lost thing works very well for her. It’s like a little girl playing dress up, and dealing with things she can’t handle, but she puts on a big act like it’s all nothing to her. Nice re-design of the character. Excellent during her 11th hour, final Cabaret performance - I was moved to tears. Powerful actress for someone so young and tiny. LMAO that bit cracks me up
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