By Andrew Gans
21 Jan 2011

	Menzel and Lea Michele on "Glee"
	photo by Adam Rose/FOX

Question: Has there been any talk of you returning to "Glee?"
Menzel: Yeah, there's always talk, and I guess we'll see what happens. I'd love to go back. They kind of call you last minute. They kind of keep their storylines close to their vest.

Question: What's it like filming that series? It seems like they pack so much into one week's show. Is the rehearsal time crazy?
Menzel: Not as much for me as it would be for the kids, but even my experience, of course, was busy, and I'm not in every scene like the other guys are. But it was just great to be on set, and to be a New Yorker, to be a theatre person, and to be in a show surrounded by those kind of people and that kind of mentality, it felt comfortable. It felt like I belonged, and that's a good feeling when you're in L.A., because a lot of times, you feel like a fish out of water here.

Question: What are your thoughts about the "Wicked" miniseries?
Menzel: I know, I just heard about that! I'm a huge fan of Salma Hayek's anyway. I think she's brilliant. I know her personally, and she's a cool lady, so I'm sure it's in really good hands. And I'm a huge fan of the book, the novel "Wicked," separate from the musical, so to me, it sounds like a beautiful thing.

Question: Has there been any more talk about the "Wicked" film?
Menzel: I think there's always talk, but I don't know. I'm lucky enough [that] I was in the "Rent" movie ten years after the fact [laughs], so I count my blessings.

Question: After the London concerts of Chess, was there any discussion of bringing that here?
Menzel: A little bit, yeah, but that show has been through a lot of incarnations and needs book work, and if it's just a concert version, what does that mean? I don't know where they're at with that right now, but I had a great time with Josh [Groban] and with Adam Pascal. That was just fun, and London is a favorite city. I couldn't have asked for a better experience working with them, so who knows what'll happen, but I haven't been in touch with that project lately.

	Menzel in Chess
	photo by Tristram Kenton

Question: Are there any possible theatre projects on your horizon?
Menzel: Yes. ... They're original things, and those, as you know, can take years, and that's the stuff that I love to be a part of anyway, and so while I'm in Los Angeles and I have the baby and my husband's on a TV show out here, it's okay to be workshopping these things and be nurturing them in their early stages because I can't move to New York, really, right now anyway. It's a couple original pieces that I'm a part of developing, but nothing that I can really talk about yet.

Question: Any chance of another CD?
Menzel: Yes. It's a matter of time because I would also like to document the concerts that I've been doing and maybe get PBS to do a special or something like that. So, would it be a live CD or would I go in and do a studio one? That's what I'm just trying to figure out, and we'll see. The other thing that I'm really proud of that I'm doing right now is, I've started a foundation that we call A Broader Way, my husband and I. Its first initiative is a camp for the arts up in the Berkshires for fifth grade girls from underserved communities. Jeanine Tesori [and I] – our goal is to write an original piece that's sort of co-written and inspired by the girls, and after ten days, bring it into New York [and to a] Broadway stage and perform it. I grew up going to summer camp, so it was always a dream of mine to do something like this.

Question: Will it start this summer?
Menzel: Yeah, it's in the calendar. We've rented the property, which is up in the Berkshires, and I'll be in towards the end of August, and we're doing our fundraising and the whole thing, and it's really exciting. I've been talking about it for years, and then one of my good friends from college finally galvanized the project for me. [Laughs.] … And so, I'm excited, and I have to get a bunch of our theatre friends to come up and hopefully donate some of their time, and we'll see what happens. … We're just trying to get our website set up so that then, if people want to make donations or whatever, they can do that, but right now, we don't have a place for it. We're almost there. We almost have all of our print [ads] and all of our brochures and the whole thing done. … We're starting small, and we're starting with just girls, 30 of them. And then, each year, it will expand exponentially because I want the girls to come back and I want to keep tabs on them for years to come and start scholarship projects and stuff like that for them to have college. So maybe the next year, we'll add boys, and then those girls will come back a second year, something like that. But [for the] first [year], we didn't want to bite off more than we could chew.

Tickets for Idina Menzel's New York Philharmonic concert may be purchased online at nyphil.org or by calling (212) 875-5656. Tickets may also be purchased at the Avery Fisher Hall Box Office or the Alice Tully Hall Box Office at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 65th Street.

Happy diva-watching! E-mail questions or comments to agans@playbill.com.