All you wannabe Cinderellas out there, take a tip from Carly Rae Jepsen.
“If you want your dreams to come true, don’t just wish for them, work for them.”
The lady knows what she’s talking about. She’s speaking from backstage at the Broadway Theatre, where she’s been playing the title role in Cinderella since Feb. 4.
The Canadian Idol veteran who became a pop star with her hit song “Call Me Maybe” may not have seemed like a logical choice to step into a hit New York musical, but it’s what Jepsen had been hoping, dreaming and — yes — working for ever since her childhood.
“I grew up in Mission, B.C., and if you were a kid there, musical theatre was the only real outlet you had. I remember the stuff my parents played on the stereo, like My Fair Lady, and I’d sing along and want to be just like that.”
If Jepsen had known that the woman who played the lead in the original My Fair Lady, Julie Andrews, also created the role of Cinderella in its original TV incarnation in 1957, she wouldn’t have been surprised because she believes that “every piece of music I’ve ever listened to and loved has been there for a reason.”
That belief has sustained and nurtured Jepsen through her rise to the top. It’s not the ski-lift to success that some people like to paint it as but a zigzag progression through various stages of show business during which she was supported by “a lot of wonderful people who believed in me.”
Her family, of course, was on her side from the start. “My parents knew my No. 1 dream was to be on the musical theatre stage and they supported me every way they could.”
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But every Cinderella needs a Fairy Godmother and, for Jepsen, it was her high school drama teacher, Beverly Holmes. Together with David Fryer, Holmes produced a series of musicals at Heritage Park Secondary School that helped launch Jepsen into the world she so very much wanted to be a part of.
They did shows like The Wiz, Grease and Annie, with a young Jepsen in the title role belting out that all-time show tune standard “Tomorrow.” It’s a time she recalls with love.
“We all worked so hard and tried to be so professional, and I thought they were just wonderful. It’s funny, but when I started working here in New York, a lot of the work habits they had taught me all came back and really helped me.”
But high school ends, as it always does, leaving Jepsen to make a choice.
“I honestly didn’t know if I had the nerve to go for my dream. My parents were both teachers and I respected them so much, I thought, ‘I could be a music teacher and be happy doing that,’ but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was a second choice.”
So she applied for and got into the Canadian College of Performing Arts in Victoria, a school founded by Jacques Lemay, a former Royal Winnipeg Ballet dancer turned choreographer, and his wife, Janice Dunning, a musical theatre performer turned kids’ TV star.
“The minute I started there I knew it was the place for me. I’d never worked so hard in my life! Tap dancing, acting, vocal lessons, trips to New York, where we’d see 11 Broadway shows and meet people who’d been to the school who were now singing and dancing in New York. That was the most exciting part to me.
“This spring the current class of the school is going to come to New York and I’ll get to see them and talk to them and tell them to keep working as hard as they can.”
But once she graduated, there was no clear path to follow, no jobs in musical theatre waiting for her and, for the first time in her life, Jepsen was at a loss for what to do.
“My parents had given me a guitar and when I came back from Victoria, I would sit around with it and write my little tunes. I’d be inspired by everyone from Sinead O’Connor to John Denver and the more I played and wrote and sang, the more I realized it was music that I loved rather than any particular way of performing it.
“But I still didn’t know if I wanted to fight for it all my life or just settle into a 9-to-5 job and give up on it. I had some tough times back then, a monthly struggle to pay the bills.”
When asked what kind of joe-jobs she’d survived upon in those days, she laughs: “Every minimum-wage kind of employment I could find.”
She rattles off the list. “I was a pastry shop assistant, a barista, a bartender at the Media Club in Vancouver. I was trying to put together a jazz band that could play at events like weddings and birthdays and every day I’d wonder if it was ever going to turn into anything.
“I’m grateful for those days now in hindsight,” she says. “And I realize that those are struggles everybody goes through. The only difference is if you give up or not.”
She may or may not have been ready to give up herself, but her high school teacher, Holmes, came to the rescue again in true Fairy Godmother style.
“She told me about Canadian Idol and convinced me it was the right thing for me to do next. She drove me to the audition and when they gave me the ticket I think she was even happier than me.”
Jepsen placed third in the fifth season of the series in 2007, went off on a concert tour afterwards, started releasing some recordings and finally, thanks to Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez flipping out over her single “Call Me Maybe,” was taken under the wing of manager Scooter Braun and signed to a big international recording deal.
“The night that all got finalized, we were staying in a hotel and I was so nervous,” she recalls. “I just went off by myself to the pool and did a running cannonball to release the tension. I thought, ‘Oh wow, it’s finally, finally happening.’ ”
It also gave Jepsen a chance to remember her original dreams of making it in musical theatre and when, about 18 months later, she was asked if she’d consider taking over the role of Cinderella on Broadway, she didn’t hesitate.
“That part was always near the top of my bucket list and when they called to ask if I’d be interested, I was on the next flight out.”
When Jepsen’s casting was announced, a lot of people who weren’t familiar with her lifelong musical theatre dreams or her earlier training scoffed at her taking on the role but — if she was the type to go in for that kind of thing — she’d have the last laugh, because audiences are loving her.
But Jepsen is not one to go in for “I told you so.” Quite the opposite.
“My mother’s mantra has always been that kindness is the most important thing and I’m trying to practise that every day. After every performance I try to meet all the girls who line up outside the stage door and do pictures with them. It could be me standing there instead of here.”
For the moment, she’s loving being in Manhattan, which she finds “amazingly peaceful. I can go for a walk anywhere in the city and get lost in my thoughts. It’s a challenge to keep myself in that childlike headspace I need to be in. I don’t need to knock any of my ideas when they’re young. I’ve got to let them grow.”
Now that Jepsen has arrived at the ball, she’s not in a hurry to find Prince Charming or race off before the stroke of midnight.
“I want to take my time with my life as well as with my career. I want longevity rather than a flash in the pan. I’m all about the quality rather than the speed.”
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