"One thing I've always been scared of is musicals," admits Nina Wadia. But now the former EastEnders star heads the cast in the hit show NOW That's What I Call A Musical. Here's how she crossed that particular Rubicon.
Written by award-winning comedian Pippa Evans and directed and choreographed by Craig Revel Horwood, NOW That's What I Call A Musical comes to Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in January 2025.
Celebrating 40 years of the iconic and chart-topping compilations brand NOW That's What I Call Music (see what they did there?), this fun-filled evening is bursting with hits from Whitney Houston, Wham!, Blondie, Tears For Fears, Spandau Ballet, and many more.
Renowned for her hit sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, as well as her role as Zainab Masood in BBC One's Eastenders, Nina Wadia stars as Gemma. And joining her on stage as special guest performer will be 80s icon Sinitta - singing her big hit So Macho!
The story begins in Birmingham in 1989. Two school friends, Gemma and April, are planning their lives based on Number One Magazine quizzes and dreaming of snogging Rick Astley.
Cut to Birmingham 2009 and it's the most dreaded event of their lives - the school reunion.
Drama, old flames, and receding hairlines come together as friends reunite and everything from the past starts to slot into place. The biggest question is: what was with all that hairspray?
John Byrne: Nina, you've been on TV, made movies, and performed on radio as well as taking to the stage. Would you agree that you just can't beat the immediacy of theatre?
Nina Wadia: Yep. I couldn't agree more. I think that's kind of why I came back to it. I started in theatre. My first seven years of work were all theatre. And then I got into television, film, and radio - all the other mediums.
And I love them too, but I kind of just wanted to go back to do something on stage, just to get that immediate audience impact. I just felt like I needed them to feel something I was doing. (Laughs) I know it sounds weird, but that's what I really wanted.
And I also wanted to challenge myself. I've done a lot of different things, but one thing I've always been scared of is musicals. I think they're the hardest thing to do. You know, you've really got to be a triple threat [sing, dance, act] to do them.
And so I thought: You know what, before I get too old to do it, I'm just going to say yes to this particular one. It's my genre, the 1980s was when I grew up, and I love the story, I love the character. They've all seemed to align at the same time.
The show revolves around a school reunion. Have you ever attended one in real life?
I have attended only one. That's because I grew up in Hong Kong and most of my reunions are back in Hong Kong.
We had one in the UK a couple of years ago, and I went to that. I absolutely loved it because I hadn't seen these people in so long, but we are all still very close.
Most of my closest friends are my school friends.
There was another kind of bonding thing about this show. Honestly, we are so lucky with this cast. There's not a bad bone in it and we just laugh a lot together. We look forward to seeing each other and that's really nice.
You must need a certain level of camaraderie to keep a show on the road . . .
It's very hard working this closely with people if you don't get on with them! And I'm a massive team player. I have been my whole career. If you work well together, it lifts everything to another level. It really does.
Would you have bought the NOW That’s What I Call Music albums back in the day?
In my time it was cassettes and then, very quickly, CDs. I remember CDs completely blowing my mind. How do these things work? And I remember saving up so much money so I could afford a portable CD player - the equivalent of a Walkman. My gosh, I remember it was so expensive. I saved up for probably a year. But I loved it.
I've always danced along to anything that I've bought and at that time I was very much into Madonna and George Michael - and so many other singers and groups.
And Sinitta's going to be involved in the show! She, of course, had some of her biggest hits in the 1980s.
We're working with her right now in Norwich and she's such a laugh, honestly. We have a real giggle together.
Until you actually meet people, you don't know what they're going to be like. What was lovely about her was that she mucked in straight away. She was one of the gang. And that's lovely.
Sinitta and myself are exactly the same age. We've both had lots of ups and downs in our careers. But what I love about her is that she's a fighter. And we both have that quality in us where we just keep going. And we know right from wrong.
We've both taken the blows, but we've come out fighting. It's great to meet someone who's like-minded that way. She's really lovely.
And you're a bit of a dancer, I believe?
I love to dance. To be honest, my first love was dancing. I trained in Bharatanatyam in India. It's the equivalent of ballet in the western world. I studied that in India until I was nine and I loved it.
Then when we moved to Hong Kong when I was nine, there was - of course - no Indian dancing out there, so I changed to tap, which is the exact opposite to this kind of dancing.
Bharatanatyam is very flat-footed and heavy, and tap is very light on your feet. So I had to change my entire dance style. But I loved every minute of it.
It was only in my last year of A-levels [that] I started to do sketch comedy writing. I used to write sketches to make my friends laugh in school and then realised quite quickly that I quite liked performing those sketches. So, at the last minute, I changed from dancing to acting.
Those two things I'm very confident in, it's the singing I'm not. I was thinking, okay, am I going to be brave enough to do this? But my confidence has grown since our first show and I really enjoy it.
I look forward to the singing moments now.
NOW That’s What I Call A Musical is at Bord Gáis Energy Theatre 21-25 January. Tickets priced from €21.50 are on sale now through Ticketmaster.
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