BAZ BAMIGBOYE: Over The Rainbow winner Danielle Hope is so happy that she's Miserables
By Baz Bamigboye|
Cameron Mackintosh has picked Danielle Brown (pictured) to play Eponine in Les Miserables
Often, when an unknown is hurled into the spotlight, they underwhelm. They lose their voice, and play the provinces. Sometimes for ever.
Not Danielle. Her voice can do anything she wants it to, which is why another impresario now has her under contract.
Cameron Mackintosh has picked her to play Eponine in Les Miserables at the Queen’s Theatre from June 18.
Danielle did four auditions. ‘It was nice to do a real audition and earn the part. Eponine is in love with Marius, but she’s helping him to be with Cossette. Unrequited love is the most painful thing — and the most interesting — to play,’ she tells me as we drink tea at the Union club in Soho.
She’s eager to get back to work and feels uncomfortable when she’s not labouring away. While still at school she took a part-time waitressing job.
‘My mum’s a waitress; my dad’s always had building contracts. I don’t come from a particularly special background, but I’ve got a lovely family.
They work hard, I work hard. I didn’t have things done for me at home. I knew how to put on washing, make my bed and get something to eat.’
It put her in good stead for when she moved to London. She lived alone until this week, but is now sharing a flat in Chelsea.
Danielle says she’s pleased to be getting the experience of working in another West End show.
The Wizard Of Oz was her first professional acting job and she was lucky that Lloyd Webber showed her the ropes and Michael Crawford — and Hannah Waddingham, who played the Wicked Witch — took her under their wing, and gave her a nightly master class in stagecraft.
If you want to understand a sense of the enormity of what she went through, then check out the hit U.S. backstage TV drama Smash that starts on Sky Atlantic on April 21.
It shows how an actress with no experience of big time theatre goes up for the title role in a musical about Marilyn Monroe.
Danielle said she learned a lot about comic timing from Crawford, and how to establish a relationship with an audience.
Their friendship has continued after their Wizard contracts ended. Crawford has returned to his home in New Zealand, but they still email and have hopes of meeting up in California when Crawford and his partner go there later this month.
Big break: Danielle Hope was thrown in the deep end of fame when she won that Over The Rainbow TV show and found herself playing Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz
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