Pop star Nicole Scherzinger, known as the former lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls, appears to be elevating her career on the Broadway stage.
The Filipina and Native Hawaiian performer recently made her Broadway debut as Norma Desmond in a revival of famed composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Blvd.” and has reportedly been receiving standing ovations midshow. As Desmond, Scherzinger plays a Hollywood movie star whose career has declined with time, desperately trying to reclaim her fame.
And it’s not just audiences who are praising Scherzinger, who originated the role with equal praise last year in London’s West End and won a Laurence Olivier award for best actress in a musical.
People magazine lauded her performance as “so commanding, so seductive and so magnificent,” adding that she received multiple standing ovations throughout the show. The longest, at six minutes, came just after Scherzinger opened the musical.
In a review by the New York Post, critic Johnny Oleksinski wrote: “She’s otherworldly … And when the former Pussycat Doll belts Lloyd Webber’s stirring ballads, ‘With One Look’ and ‘As If We Never Said Goodbye,’ as haze dreamily swirls behind her, the audience all but levitates.”
Nicole Scherzinger performs “Sunset Blvd.” in New York on Sept. 27.
Scherzinger told Variety that “Sunset Blvd.” is her way of telling the world that she’s more than just a Pussycat Doll.
“My whole life, everybody has put me in a box. They think they know me, that I’m just this Pussycat Doll. But now I’m a part of something,” she told the outlet.
The New York Times added on to the praise by designating the show as a critic’s pick and describing Scherzinger’s singing as “poised, aimed and detonated syllable by syllable, fiercely drilled and smartly deployed.”
After her time with the Pussycat Dolls, an early 2000s girl group known for international radio hits like “Don’t ‘Cha,” and “Stickwitu,” Scherzinger made several attempts at pursuing a solo career but faced commercial failure. She released her debut, “Killer Love,” in 2011, but the album did not chart in the United States.
From her time as a Pussycat Doll to her new role as a Broadway star, Scherzinger has celebrated her Asian American and Pacific Islander roots. Earlier this month, on Indigenous People’s Day, Scherzinger brought a Hawaiian cultural practitioner to the St. James Theatre, where “Sunset Blvd.” is being performed, to share her culture with her cast and crew.
In 2009, Scherzinger became a judge on “The Sing-Off” and remained a fixture of reality singing shows for several years. She later took on roles judging “The X Factor” (both the U.S. and U.K. versions), “Australia’s Got Talent” and, most recently, “The Masked Singer.” In 2010, she won Season 10 of the celebrity dance competition show “Dancing With the Stars.” Scherzinger left “The Masked Singer” in 2023 to begin working on “Sunset Blvd.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com