“Finishing the Hat” (Nicole’s Version)
Nicole Scherzinger wanted a hat. Instead, she got the boot.
In the 1970 Stephen Sondheim musical Company, Joanne, a role originated on Broadway by Elaine Stritch, sings:
“Here's to the ladies who lunch/Everybody laugh/Lounging in their caftans and planning a brunch/On their own behalf/Off to the gym, then to a fitting/Claiming they're fat/And looking grim 'cause they've been sitting/Choosing a hat.”
She then turns her head to the audience and asks: “Does anyone still wear a hat?” Turns out, Broadway’s newest leading lady, Nicole Scherzinger, does… or at least wants to, with a specific hat — a Make Jesus First Again hat, a riff on the Make America Great Again hat — in mind.
Scherzinger seemed to have pulled off the impossible. She was long relegated to being something of an industry punching bag: Wendy Williams, who brought up Scherzinger often on her show, never even bothered to learn to correctly pronounce her name; even a recent Deadline review reduced her honorarium to “one-time Dancing With The Stars competitor” as opposed to her proper accreditation as the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls, one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. Now, she’s flipped the script by proving talent is king, earning rave reviews for her role as Norma Desmond in the first Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard.
Since there’s no Rotten Tomatoes for theater (there ought to be!), I rounded up some of the reviews. “Scherzinger’s singing is likewise gestural: poised, aimed and detonated syllable by syllable, fiercely drilled and smartly deployed,” wrote the New York Times of the performance. Vulture seemed equally enthralled, writing:
“The pop singer in Scherzinger can also do a thrilling range of things with her voice. There’s nothing classical in the way she bites into the songs — she simply devours them, ricocheting between vulnerable tremblings and voracious howls.”
Until the pendulum, as it is wont to do, swung back. On November 5th, election day, Russell Brand, who is facing accusations of rape and sexual assault by multiple women, posted a photo on Instagram of himself proudly waving the aforementioned hat, a riff on Donald Tr*mp’s Make America Great Again hat. “Where do I get this hat!!!?” Scherzinger wrote in a now-deleted comment. Brand has made recent headlines after a spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution Service (the British equivalent of a District Attorney) confirmed earlier this month that they had been passed a file by the police to consider a charging decision in his assault case.
The fallout was swift, with many outraged by her engaging with someone like Brand and others jumping to the conclusion that her comment indicated that she, like Brand, was a Tr*mp supporter. Social media, of course, seized on the opportunity to memeify the moment into oblivion and offer viral commentary. “Patti LuPone is going to wait outside the stage door for her with a tire iron,” read one particularly funny response. To give a sense of the scope of impact, there’s this: “Starting my Nicole Scherzinger Tony campaign,” wrote one Twitter user to the tune of 60 likes. The next day, he quote tweeted his own post with the update, “Ending it,” to the tune of 68K “likes.” This then gave it enough gas to power a mainstream news cycle. “Did Nicole Scherzinger Just Out Herself As a Trump Supporter?” The Cut asked. “Nicole Scherzinger’s Apparent Trump Support Sours ‘Sunset Boulevard’ Fans: ‘Full-Blown Conservative Pick-Me Girlie,’” read a headline from The Wrap.
But it wasn’t just the chronically online set. “Coming to Broadway to play the ultimate gay icon role in the ultimate gay guy movie and then randomly being MAGA is like Jenna Maroney level goofballism,” Variety chief correspondent Daniel D’Addario (who recently dubbed me “the social-media-age Cindy Adams,” tyvm) lamented after just two weeks earlier writing “Scherzinger and the stage she inhabits push each other to grand extremes, the result is something like magic,” in his review of the musical. Other critics were even implying that Scherzinger had torpedoed her own chances of picking up a Best Actress win at the Tonys, an award she was favored among many to potentially win, all due to a comment she likely saw as a fleeting thought that wouldn’t be seen. And then there was actress Mia Farrow, starring in The Roommate on Broadway with Patti LuPone, who tweeted:
Though she was speaking of the election, many facetiously interpreted this as being a reference to the Scherzinger brouhaha.
By Monday, the women of The View — my girls, as I like to say — were weighing in. “She liked a hat,” Whoopi Goldberg remarked. Like many topics with the current panel, all were in agreement. “She’s brilliant in the show,” Whoopi Goldberg said, noting that Scherzinger had voted for Obama in 2008. “She liked a hat. Relax. She liked a hat about Jesus. I would think that would be a unifying thing. It’s a hat. It’s just a hat.” Co-host Ana Navarro concluded that Scherzinger “shouldn’t have apologized,” but “don’t go on social media if you can’t take the heat because people are crazy.” Co-host Sara Haines said the reaction seemed related to social media’s “mob mentality” and called the environment “poisonous and toxic.” Sunny Hostin said the situation seemed “ridiculous.”
For her part, Scherzinger issued a thoughtfully crafted statement via Instagram story that read, in full:
“I deeply apologize for the hurt caused by my recent engagement with some social media posts. When I commented on these posts, I made the mistake of not realizing that they could be easily interpreted as being politically related and I apologize to anyone who understandably reached that conclusion. Many presumptions are being drawn, which do not reflect who I am, what I stand for, or who I voted for. Many of the marginalized communities feeling hurt and concerned by the results of the presidential election are people I care about most. I stand with them, as I always have, throughout my life and career. If you know me, you know that. Like so many others, in times of adversity and uncertainty, I turn to my faith. I believed that the posts I engaged with were about encouraging people to choose love and faith — ‘putting Jesus first.’ For me, Christ embodies peace, compassion, hope, and above all — unconditional love, especially for those who may feel it the least right now. I come from a place of love, and I will always support values that bring us closer together. It’s so important we come together with compassion, and love one another more now than ever.”
What that post failed to mention was another recently screenshotted instance of Scherzinger liking a post from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. back in September that read:
“Yes, @russellbrand @tuckercarlson I will restore free speech, end the forever wars, and protect children’s health once we get @realdonaldtrump back in the White House.”
People also dug up a quote from Scherzinger dating back to 2017 when she revealed why she almost turned down a role in the Dirty Dancing remake because she didn’t want to “promote abortion.” And while the above apology notes that people are making presumptions that do not reflect who she voted for (which implies, but does not outright state, that she did not vote for Trump), she does not offer any clarifying statements.
So where do we go from here, to quote another Lloyd Webber musical, as Scherzinger has seemingly closed the loop on the news cycle with her statement? I have some thoughts. There are two tweets that have stood out for me in terms of their more measured analysis. This one:
And this one:
I think in the immediate aftermath of the election, many (myself among them) are sitting with a lot of anger, frustration and confusion about why our beliefs and values have somehow fallen out of favor. And while it’s surprising, yes, to see a Broadway leading lady making headlines for something of this nature (though there is precedent), I do wonder if there’s a better lesson to take away from this situation than [very Glenn Close in The Deliverance voice] “fuck you, bitch.” Perhaps this is an inflection point.
I first want to again say that we are making a leap in thinking that because Scherzinger co-signs a “Make Jesus First Again” hat or because her statement does not clarify who she voted for, that she is somehow a Tr*mper. Yes, the writing seems to be on the wall, but I think that space between implication and fact is imperative as we begin to mine a new era of information dissemination. Her friend Parson James weighed in on Twitter, writing that his friend “didn’t vote for or support Tr*mp,” explaining that she’s:
“Deeply religious and [a] genuine human being who also happens to actually be telling the truth in this situation.”
But let’s, for the sake of this conversation, say we know for certain that she is a Tr*mp supporter. That would put her in the majority of the American populus. Whereas the aforementioned canceled leading lady was amongst a fringe set of vaccine deniers, in Scherzinger’s case, she is quite literally, whether we like it or not, on the right side of the vote. (Yes, I saw this tweet.)
Now, if you know anything about Sunset Boulevard or the character of Norma Desmond, we must for a moment have a laugh at this very Norma Desmond-esque turn of events regardless of the outcome.
It’s wild, yes, that Scherzinger would choose to join the fold of the Broadway community, a community largely comprised of people who will be directly negatively affected by Tr*mp’s policies and play to sold out crowds of adoring LGBT+ individuals (the most vocal faction of her fandom). Wild! But it’s real. And she’s likely less of an outlier than it seems. The difference in this instance is that it was put on social media as opposed to being kept in a closed circuit. And I recognize that there’s a set of people who believe that voting for that man means you co-sign all that he stands for. And while some might feel that way, as RuPaul often tells us, feelings are not facts.
Please don’t interpret this as me cosigning Scherzinger or excusing her actions, but rather my attempt to highlight the ripple effect of the media ecosystem that propelled Scherzinger from Tony hopeful on Wednesday to being on the receiving end of tweets like this a day later:
“Fuck you, Nicole Scherzinger and I hope all the momentum you’ve gained from Sunset Boulevard exits the room like a wet fart.”
The pile-on that has happened as a result, in my humble estimation, is where we lose ground. Not the memes (I love the memes), but the way what begins as innocent fun devolves into tweets like the one above. This is what I think is at the root of so much right wing radicalism. They would argue that a person can’t even share their beliefs without getting ridiculed by the liberal elite. They would point to the nasty things some are writing about her online all because she wanted a hat. The fact that she could very likely lose out on a Tony Award (think about the demographic of the American Theatre Wing) over an innocuous comment on an Instagram post of a failed, irrelevant comedian is exactly what powers the “other side” in their arguments. We shut our doors, while they welcome “free thinkers” with open arms. It’s frustrating. It’s maddening. “What is this world we’ve devolved into?” I get it.
But we mustn’t be so naive to think that those who voted for Tr*mp or support enough of his policies (or even one) to tip their vote aren’t among us. They’re not all wearing MAGA hats or spouting off bile online. That’s the more radical among them. But just as we must not be painted by them as a monolith of liberal elites, we must not view them as a monolith either. They don’t look a certain way. Act a certain way. Even sound a certain way. If we want to truly reflect and learn from our mistakes (and I get it, the wound is still fresh), then this is a big inflection point. Because we’re going to have to learn to talk to each other more. The silos and echo chambers are not going to move us forward.
It’s disappointing when someone you love and want to uplift reveals themselves to you in a way that does not align with your beliefs. But that’s why there’s a difference between being a fan of someone for their talents and being a fan of someone for their beliefs. One can go and enjoy Nicole Scherzinger on Broadway while also recognizing that there might be polarities when it comes to your value systems. Above all, I think we have to be able to have these conversations in more civilized ways. While I don’t think The View properly conveyed and contextualized some folks’ outrage, I do think it added a necessary layer to the conversation that I wasn’t seeing elsewhere.
“I guess I don’t really get the outrage,” I texted my friend last night when we were discussing the whole thing. “I just don’t expect that most people I love are politically aligned with me,” I argued. “But what if Christina [Aguilera] did the exact same thing? You wouldn’t care?” he fired back. Great question, I thought. Then, almost reflexively: “I would be mad at her lol.” “Well there you go!” he responded.
Well, there you go!
Thank you Evan for bringing nuance to this conversation!!!