[Music] since opening in 1985 lay miserabl has become something of an institution here in nor West and not only is it the world's longest running musical it's been seen by more than 60 million people in 42 countries and in 21 different languages if somebody had told you that way back when would you have believed it I'd have laughed absolutely no way you say you knew you were working on something good though yes I absolutely I loved it but there was no way that anyone can imagine something runnin
g this long it's crazy isn't it and it's probably going to long they probably out me I think it's one of the great stories of the Triumph of the human spirit and it's got um because it's got so many characters it's got so many ways in you know you've got uh the story of valon which involves the discovery of virtue and the discovery of Faith the discovery of love for a child and and what it's like to be a parent what it's let to what it's like to let a child go out into the world then you've got
a kind of more teenage you know love triangle story the story of unrequited love with eponine kids will you know enjoy gav Ros and little cazette stories uh and um any obsessive policeman could enjoy your there je valon's crime was stealing a loaf of [Music] bread it was the beginning of a lifelong confrontation L is miraculously is the longest running musical in the world and um it's I mean I'm as surprised as anybody you know I mean I you know I I always thought it was a a a very terrific musi
cal but I never had any thought that a show of such a serious note would actually run as long but it seems to touch every generation everywhere in the world I mean Victor Hugo's story um you know is about contemporary people even though it's set in a period setting and every country in the world seems to react to it and of course Alan and cl Michelle music CLA Michelle Shen's music I just is those songs are absolutely fantastic and they're Timeless uh and it speaks to an audience of any age let'
s not forget though that Victor Yugo was uh already an International Celebrity by the time he got to age 30 he was known as the prince of poets uh and was uh shall we say massive within the Romantic Movement more importantly of course he was what you would uh as supp assumed today just a huge celebrity end of who would have thought though that so many years later his name would still be synomous uh really with the world of musical theater not just really uh in his home country or even indeed in
Britain but worldwide take him off a duel of Wills with the fanatic Police Inspector jav continue the hope of Escape was his only reason for living hold I'll shoot it is the decision of the Military Tribunal that 5 Years be added to your sentence you must have been asked many times but can you in any way put your finger on what it is that has made it the longest running show ever um well I personally think it's the the story Victor Hugo's Masterpiece Le Miser you mustn't cry you must be very bra
ve with all the power and spectacle of those turbulent years leading to the French Revolution it is a story of incredible courage and Relentless Pursuit join us an exciting Panorama that captures the spirit of a rebellious generation it's the most um interesting Universal story and it it touches everybody and I remember watching um some of the scenes that I wasn't in way back before it went on you know during rehearsals and I was sobbing my heart out and then I had I thought oh my God it's my sc
ene coming up next and I had to pull myself together I mean this show um well uh it makes men cry put it that way it's a beautiful Story I mean whether you're into musicals or not it's one of the great stories Ever Told crowning Point really for Victor Hugo's Masterpiece Li misera uh really started way back in June 1832 he was sat in a park relaxing heard a rather strange noise at first found out that it was gunfire which then led him into the June Revolution which of course then formed the basi
s of possibly his best and most famous idea you join us today together we will lay our hand on the sword hilt of garden shout down with the Bor bons down with the monarchy it was the first lesson I learned is that doesn't matter how good the songs are if the book isn't really um strong and that the songs don't grow out of the book um you don't have a good musical Victor's first fulllength novel uh was one that we know by a better title now but when it first came out it was known as nraam de par
which then in turn became of course more famous as the Hunchback of NRA Ram uh being remade so many times most famously of course by Hollywood in the late 30s with Charles laon uh but that really did open many doors for Victor uh and he became even more celebrated if that were possible now just to put this in sort of a a bracket if you like uh Paris and France in particular were already in the grip of something rather dramatic themselves there've been a a massive outbreak of chera with over 19,0
00 parisians dying now some people thought that this was um really set up by the government as one of those mad theories you know uh because they were trying to poison off for one of a better word uh some of the Lesser uh desirable residents of Parisian Society The Underdogs uh and this of course then fascinated Yugo himself giving him even more spark to an already dramatic story now not many people will know that Victor Hugo wrote lisara uh in his long years of Exile in the Channel Islands and
to get inspiration for this um he would write naked at his desk every day uh shocking some people who would actually turn up uh to take tea with him and things like that I think what's interesting to note as well he didn't really Rush this particular Masterpiece he he went through many many different rewrites and uh for a while it sat around by himself you know he changed plot decided to pick it up go back to it again uh he was known as a perfectionist uh and I think of course like anybody who'
enjoyed huge success it would be like today releasing a Bond movie you know everybody's going to criticize everybody's going to say whether they like it or not and he was under immense pressure to make sure what he came up with next was of course an international Smash and of course when it first came out that wasn't necessarily the case Victor Yugo Lera really was the most anticipated publication Years and New York Society was a gag waiting to know how it would be done and to give you just an I
nsight really as to how even back then they were very clever uh they decided to mount this massive PR campaign and so they would drop in little teasers rather like what they do say with a Harry Potter movie in in today's decade so they just drop a little bit in and then they came up with the first sort of take the second take and by the time of course that the final volume was released it was a momentum everybody wanted a copy everybody needed to be seen with a copy of their book it was the coff
ee table equivalent of gold dust if you like and once again of course he was looking at a mega Smash Hit Cameron Macintosh was sent a demo tap based on Victor Hugo's novel lerab The two French composers Claude Michelle sherberg and alen buil worked closely with him developing the score we never go ahead with anything unless all three of us absolutely agree um on every step of the way I think that whole I canot do without the first part oh because you can do it's like a a safety break that if if
two if two like something and the others doesn't it means that actually we haven't got the right solution and we then carry on until we find a third solution when Victor Hugo passed away in May 1885 he was considered a national hero over 2 million people mourned at his funeral but this is the interesting thing uh the theme of course throughout Li miserab is all about social injustice and he'd requested that he wanted a Popa funeral sadly though for him that wish was not carried out and he became
if possible an even bigger cultural literally and of course celebrity icon when I first heard it was called lame as Rob I thought H so I don't know if that name's going to work and um and so he called it the gums and um now you know larab is a is the name that everybody knows worldwide and even if you don't speak French you know the name since the publication of L misera there's been no less than 48 operatic versions but the version really that we know and love today actually started out way ba
ck in 1980 as just a simple concept album can you not actually get that with a different slightly different Rhythm because that's got that's got the Menace that you're I think a producer shouldn't write for writers I don't think directors should do that the writers and lyricists of the wonderful concept album were allegedly inspired by another British phenomenon that of Lionel Barts Oliver the record-breaking musical apparently they were sat down watching it in a theater and particularly taking
interest in The Artful Dodger and as they were watching Oliver unfold on stage they decided how they could almost see L misera taking shape in their own musical Opera themselves simply by just watching Oliver now who would have thought that a simple project like Lionel Barts Oliver which also had its own problems just like Li misera would explode from just an afternoon maty we are there to complement the The Writer's imagination and to uh bring bring that writing to its best fruition what I'm ve
ry good at is saying say this bit's dull this song does not sort of come to a proper Climax and I'm I'm just fascinated about how uh how WR how the writing develops um and how that you take a basically good story and you make sure that that the the graph of emotion throughout the evening is hit exactly right 3 months after the concept album had topped the charts in France someone decided to take the rather risky Venture of taking it to the stage once again the critics were less than nice about t
his particular new musical but Word of Mouth took off once again making the three-month run a sellout of course by this point other people were taking notice not just in France but around the world that's the thing that I always aim for for my Productions that once the audience settles down first thing you've got to do is in the first 5 minutes is to tell them the language of the evening uh that you're going to use way back in 1980 the first original concept album of liiz was released it topped
the charts without really much promotion and three months later they decided to Stage the very first musical version based on the concept album this just broke box office records with over a million plus people wanting to see the production then of course this was brought to the attention of who we know now to be the Super producer none other than our very own Cameron McIntosh but it would take him quite some time before he could turn it into the British phenomenon that we know and love and take
it around the world but when he first heard the concept album he thought there could be something in it of course he had no idea just that something would make him very very rich indeed okay one two 2 three whoo I knew from the beginning I I wanted to do the singing live and it I was so passionate about it I wasn't winning to make the film unless I could do the singing right um and this is because I I I always find singing to to to play back to pre to lip singing to pre-record however what it's
done has an artifice and it's worse it makes you embarrassed at the best you have to just forgive it and and a lighter comedic film it's easy to it's easier to forgive but I I I wanted there to be no barrier between the audience and the experience of his emotions um in terms of how it was made it was a truly British production the internationalism was you know really in the cast was I one of the best people in the world who would do this um that doesn't mean the British are the best singers but
you I need to look a little I think what's personally interesting to take note of is the fact that when this show launched in Octo October 1985 nobody really could have for seen just how big it was going to be and and you know the critics as I say loathed it and were rather cruel in fact not really just about the length of the musical you know the fact that they were getting a free ticket and the fact that you know they had to sit in inur it but they didn't really understand even when it starte
d to take off and become a huge box office phenomena they couldn't understand why the public liked it the Posh papers said that we had trivialized a one of the greatest works of Western literature the tabloids agreed between themselves that we had um perpetrated a gloomy dull endless evening which wasn't what musicals were about at all musicals should be light and frothy and frivolous evenings that sent everybody away happy and humming the tunes it took two years for Cameron Mackintosh and his t
eam to make the English language version of what we know as liisa today but but in October 1985 it opened at the less than glamorous location off West End in the barberan although his father is Scottish Macintosh himself was brought up in the home counties his mother is males and his parents met in answerer during the war when he was young he was always standing on chairs with a stick in his hand as if he had a great Orchestra in front of him and uh I thought he was going to be a sort of ban Mas
ter band leader or something like that then he started uh with a puppet show I know a lot of people do puppet shows but uh they don't normally Drive the family entirely batty all year the first thing he used to tell us if you're late you won't come in so to say well we don't come in you'll have no audience he said never mind every show you must be on time I just finished playing a performance a mat performance of salad days and the stage doorkeeper came to my dressing room and said uh excuse me
sir I'm sorry to bother you but uh there's a lady at the stage door with a little boy and she says that he absolutely insists upon seeing you so uh in you came Cameron and um was it your aunt that was with you I think it was my aunt my mother and my Kilt I yes I remember your kilt very well and Julian instead of sort of patting me on the head and giving me some candy floss actually took me terribly seriously and showed me backstage of how the um he mimed with mini the magic piano from the pit an
d how the flying sorcer worked and was attached to wires and I just remember sitting on this stage or standing on this stage looking around and thinking yes I'd like to do this when I grow up my nickname at school was darl F Macintosh after darl F xanic who was having lots of successful films then and again I used to start um the first day of the Autumn term preparing for the Christmas review if people booked in advance they could get the tickets for a shilling and if they got them nearer the da
te they had to pay two Shillings I was like a Hoover I I sucked up any information about the theater um I got magazines from America from and every newspaper and article I could about anything about the theater so I was sort of walking encyclopedia at school and drove everybody mad who much more interested in the football results when he left school Cameron McIntosh decided to try the stage management course at the Central School of speech and drama but he left after only a year to get proper ba
ckstage experience at the theater Royal Drury line in the mornings he also cleaned the theater to earn extra money I took great pride cleaning that theater the dress Circle bar was my domain and I used to very carefully polish all the brass and wash the glass so it must be rather nice for you to be back in Drury L with Miss I got it's oh it's it's like coming home i' I I've always had that's the one dream I've had was to have a show on a Drury Lane he did a variety of jobs backstage including a
spell up in the Flies hauling scenery up and down and as I undid the ropes they caught around my hand and I was flown the weight of this huge piece of scenery took me right up to the grid and it stopped literally 6 in from the grid I would have only because it was a very tall piece of scenery that had landed on the stage and they had to cut me down you know people think it's pretty easy to be an impressario believe me it ain't it ain't easy at all choreographers and directors always argue uh the
book writer tends to argue with the composer and Lyricist and it's very important to have a strong producer at the top because in a sense he is the one who has to balance all the elements and control all the elements I knew the moment I started to talk to Cameron in detail that there was a man after my own heart he had just the same enthusias just the same care that it must be glamorous and beautifully done that you don't save Pennies on the costumes or save Pennies on the on the scenery or som
ething you do it properly you don't try and scrape into a smaller Orchestra I'm not a great musician though I can tell When the Music's right or wrong I can overlap into his area by sort of prodding him here and there and thinking don't we need something like that or is that mood right or whatever in in in his scoring Cameron is really much more of an old-fashioned producer in the sense that he does have strong creative views and sometimes the team who he works with don't share them but he has a
a very strong view on practically everything in fact one of his qualities is that I mean you could be two minutes into a song and he'll come up and say I don't like that well it doesn't work doesn't you take a camera and just wait a minute we just let's get through to the end and we'll work it out well I can't help myself I mean I'm one of these people that just says my says what I feel even if it isn't right I just have to get out of my system but I've got a sort I I sort of like a sort of ter
minable truffle Hound sort of smelling um spots in the show which aren't which I don't think are right and I just keep on and on and on until they just to shut me up they'll go away and at least think about it he had one complete set of orchestrations made and then he decided that he didn't like them it wasn't right for the show he got rid of that orchestrator and hired another orchestrator who then did two more dummy runs of orchestrations I had to scrap an an entire concept album which cost ov
er £300,000 which went down the swanny but it was worth it in the end have you ever seen a zebra and a Gerard in the jungle I mean that they W but I have last year and I can tell you to a certain extent now we live in a world that's divided into two Steven Sim gets all the critical Acclaim and the shows that Cameron MacIntosh and Andrew Lloyd Weber do are derided as tourist schlock producers Reigns as as as kings of the theater coincide for the amount of time that the Public's taste also happens
to be the producer's taste and when that changes then no matter how successful you are you you go out the window as has happened to David Merrick as has happened to Harold fielding and which one day will happen to Cameron Macintosh too one thing when I started off I was given a book about Cochran called the showman looks on it's aut biography and one thing stuck early on in my life it it was his advice to aspiring young producers he said never put a show on for the audiences always put it on fo
r yourself and do it as best as you can and then maybe an audience will come and see it and I think that's pretty good advice it's not just a West End phenomenon it continues to be a box office hit around the globe a staggering 56 million people have now seen lemis that's almost the equivalent of every man woman and child living in this country Michael Ball sings with Leia Salonga but this is not a scene from their hit shows Phantom of the Opera or Miss Saigon it's another hit both have sha in s
eparately Le miserab but everyone here has been very jolly because it's Le's 10th birthday and hundreds of the cast from its Productions around the world are giving a gara concert on Sunday but without props or costumes and new cast members it can get confusing which way to go off stage but everything should be smooth out by Sunday when thousands of adoring fans descend on the Albert Hall the Seal of making this successful was the fact that it won best musical at the Lawrence Olivier Awards in 1
985 for them that suddenly really had a bit of a clout and suddenly people decided to take notice it shot out of the barbacan and into the West end where it's basically remained for the last 25 years and when you think about it you you know it just goes to show that even though you know people would say oh no you know the theme is not very good and it's not a warm sort of topic of course it's not Victor Hugo wanted to get social injustice out there and that's what he did but the songs are so mem
orable and they've been recorded from everyone from the likes of Dame Shirley Bassie right through to some of our more celebrated opera stars including of course luchiano Pavarotti but I think what really cemented it in the end was the fact that the public pushed this through and as someone who attends many sort of opening nights and theaters Liss fans are nothing like I've ever met before they're very loyal some people in fact actually book the same seat every maty and turn up week after week a
fter week they know the show backwards they know everything about you know when the lights should come on the scene changes if somebody's feeling ill in the cast they become like friends and one of the connecting factors that I think Victor go would really love is the fact that of course the cast Then connect with their fans Their audience and that actually brings some sort of social connection I'd like to think of something that he really would admire well it started at the raw Shakespeare comp
any and the uh the first performance was 5 hours long and so they had to condense this amazing story into 3 hours and um in fact they they cut out a lot of fantastic things they should be it should be another show lame is the outcome or whatever you call it um so the RO shakes company we did it there for8 weeks and we had no idea it was going to transfer to the west end it's back to its roots the baracan theater where it started two and a half decades ago to some bad reviews and was just about t
o go to the West End of course we were all a bit depressed having seen such a fantastic reception the night before and so I thought I'll get rid of all the bad news at once and ring through the box office and took me several gos and that was where the story came from that they said how did you get through we've taken we've had 5,000 calls it's a record at the barbecue I mean I knew it was going to be a big hit years ago but I didn't know it was going to last 21 years it's fantastic it's overwhel
ming absolutely overwhelming and I and I don't necessarily know that any of us truly understand the significance of it and and ultimately and hopefully the impact it's actually quite fantastic though because the the piece is really about age and youth and um to think that I did it 21 years ago when I was the youngest adult and um now people are playing my role that weren't even born back then but it's it was really interesting because of Nick to see so many young people who probably have never s
een a musical ever you know coming inight and being completely enthralled I mean you could hear a pin drop through the story you know and they and they just reacted the show and the fact that he was incredibly good at it as was Camila you know on their baptism fire tonight but um I was really very happy uh it is nice being back on stage um I was gash when I was in at last back in 2003 and about 7even years later I've come back to play marus it's been a dream of mine for a long time and to see it
coming true is an amazing thing Nick's done a couple of shows on Broadway uh I think he was in Beauty and the Beast but um the first time I met Nick was when he was the last gav Ros um which is the little kid in in lame zarab on Broadway when I closed the show the first time after 18 years and he did the last nine months of the run and I was reminded by his father um that at the after show party I'd gone up to him and I obviously had a few drinks because I didn't remember um saying you know to
Nick you know you are really terrific and I hope when you're older you'll come back and see us for Mar us well even though I didn't remember it he did and um and out of the blue I mean I'd heard that he was interested in going to the theater so through another way I actually approached him and then I spoke to his father and he said no this is something they would really like to try and make happen and um it's a great credit to the family that they have moved Heaven and Earth to allow him to come
and be here and he's having a great time you know I actually wasn't as nervous as I thought I would be um I don't think I was nervous at all I think that I really comfortable and and um just happy to be on that stage and and really trying to become the character well what's interesting is that he's actually got a very mature voice for somebody who's still 17 you know he's not quite 18 yet and yet the voice sounds much older than you'd expect and he's also got I mean a tremendous Focus all the w
ay through rehearsals and when I first met him I mean he really really knows what to go after um and he's and he just does it with no problem great ease and the whole cast adore him the crowd was great tonight um so incredible to be back on on the lay M stage obviously a bit of a different role this time but um still that that same energy and that same excitement tickets for the concert sold out in 2 and 1 half hours they'll have 17 different versions of the main character valon to choose from a
nd the comic relief of Alan Armstrong and Jenny Galloway how many thousands of people about five 5,000 people and uh are you no no no know talking I think once you see all the people and know that everybody's rooting for you and know that there's not a hostile soul in the Stalls or in the or or anywhere it's just going to be fun you know here and there I'm picking up the accent I sing with one now in the show which is kind of funny but um it's very very interesting to uh be here and and pick up
the lingo along the way and make some new friends as well which has been great and I'm really enjoying my stay they can come and see the show here in the morning at 10:00 they can go to the maty at the queens and then the following day turn up with the other thousands and tens of thousands of people um at the O2 for that extraordinary concert which now has a cast of over 500 recently they've started doing celebrity casting in uh lim Miz in London and we've been lucky enough to see possibly some
of our better greats the the what I call the greats that are going to come forward in the next 10 years um the Lancashire tenner Alfie Bo has undertaken not just one but three stints in liiz and claims it's his very favorite role I've done the lay Miser I'm going going to go back into lay misera um next this year in June to do a a six-month run um but I'm wanting to really break the genres a little bit you know um people call it crossover people call it all sorts of things but I I want to just b
reak the genre and cross over to a new audience not to not the repertoire so much or or or sing different repertoire but make it make sure it's legitimate for my voice you know yeah that I'm that I'm legitimate enough to sing it you know um and still sing it in the same quality and the same standard that I would an operatic are in a way the comedian Matt Lucas is possibly better known uh for shows like Little Britain and come fly with me and he actually begged The Producers uh Cameron mcintosh's
come for a part in the musical which of course did nothing to Dent the box office it shot it through the roof and it was like a new injection if you like of Vitality and once again of course making it one of the biggest take musicals of all time um Cameron himself said that while he's had many many hits he never thought that he would be known as the man who brought liiz to the British and Broadway public but how lucky we are that he took that chance I mean I was very lucky because um they took
me to Broadway as well and and every sort of musical performer wants to go to Broadway so my dream came true when I was 21 which is amazing um and also my daughter Eliza also played cazette at some point and I went back into the show and I played the same role eponine with her so um it's emotional for me it's like my it's my whole life I mean I I think I have to be honest you know it's the best Ro I've ever played and it did you know it gave me an incredible um well people still know me today fr
om it and um the album is still selling that I made 21 years ago so you know I for me it's in the heart it's really personal for me now amongst many of the awards that Li misera has picked up this to me would be the biggest compliment in 2004 uh her majesty the queen asked the cast and everyone connected to the show to Stage a very special version at winds a castle for then president president Jack Shirak now can you imagine how nerve-wracking that must be first of all but apparently the queen t
hought this was a great idea it was an official visit lots of people were going to be invited and apparently sadly there's no record there's no recording of this particular night I think that this really should have been recorded and taped because you know just to see how our Queen enjoyed this musical uh and she's already been we can tell you unofficially many times to see this it's one of her personal favorites you don't expect to win Antonio when you're that age you've seen it on the TV and s
uddenly you're you're told you're going to be up for one and then you win it it's just bizarre I mean I just thought this is ridiculous I'm here with all these stars that I've heard about and you know it it's just amazing and um I used to sort of go oh no Wars don't mean anything but now I look at it and I'm quite proud every year it picks up more and more Awards there was a special 10th anniversary show at the Royal Albert Hall in a recent BBC Radio poll it was picked out as the best musical of
all time and it's hard to imagine that you know when he wrote it uh whether he would have thought that his celebrity would have carried on I think Victor Hugo would have thought he would have been known in his time but his name is now plastered across uh the world it's been seen in over 30 countries it ran for over 10 years on Broadway you know when you think about it in those terms uh you know it is something of a phenomenon I'm just about to start on the film we're we're we're now uh working
on some somebody is working on the screenplay and I'm doing it with working title which is you know the Great British company that's one of our best film company and uh I'm really looking forward to finally getting lame Arab out on the big screen L Miser of course is now a new Smash Hit Mega Movie uh looking at all sorts of gold dust from bafs to Globes to Oscars but it's not the first time there are already 10 silent versions made of this particular story there's been a radio version there's be
en a television version with Anthony Perkins no l which was kind of warmly [Music] received [Music] [Music] [Music] it's one of those stories that time and time again people relook at and think they can retell but nobody really could have even predicted or had the slightest hint that the stage and Broadway version the West End should I say Broadway version would be so phenomenal uh and of course you know when people said first of all when it opened in London how could you possibly think you're g
oing to have a smash hit with a title which is basically all about being miserable the miserabl how wrong they were the film will actually use the music the wonderful music from the show but tell the story in cinematic terms I mean what we have here is a wonderfully the a wonderful theatrical version but you know the cinema we will reinvent it yet again to tell it for the cinema what was fantastic on this was the chance to reunite the original creative team uh that that created the musical um so
you know I wanted to create a a new song for the film that talked that was inspired by the novel uh which talks about the extraordinary epiphany of what jeon has where he when he feels this incredible love uh for this this child that's come into his life and so I asked Claude Michelle sherberg and Alan buil if they could come up with a with a new song and I and I had Claude Michelle all and Herby cretz from The Lyricist uh you know writing a new piece for me and that was incredibly exciting to
to to to get to work with the original composer on the musical what a pleasure to meet you cheers what's your name poppy hi Poppy how are you ah I mean the film was truly beautiful I cried all it all the way through it I loved it so much now um I would GL to know what was your first experience of lamees I saw it here in London um but I didn't see it until Cameron and Tom were already making the movie and they uh talked to me about it and so I was on my way to Italy actually for a friend's weddin
g and so I stopped in to see it and we had a couple of meetings about it and what was the biggest challenge going into well I think the challenges actually unfolded as we went along you know it wasn't quite clear how challenging it was going to be at the beginning cuz it's very easy to say oh and by the way you're going to sing every take but then the actual reality of doing that and the discipline that has to come into your life to keep yourself available every day and your voice available you
know and Tom as a director is is greedy you know he'll shoot and he'll shoot and he'll shoot you know and uh every take we was the full length of the song as well so yeah I mean you know ultimately though this was an incredibly enjoyable experience I grew up with the my mom performing uh in the show in the first national tour she understudied fontine so actually one of my first memories of seeing the show is seeing my mother play the part that I play in the film I saw it when I was beginning to
think about making the film uh then I saw it four or five times and what was extraordinary is after the second time the Melodies were just in my head and that was was it I mean for the for the for the last year and a half they've just been going round and round and round I mean they were extraordinarily addictive Isabelle Allan a year ago she was performing on stage at school she's just so gorgeous it was her first movie she has no idea how brilliant she is she's just so natural it may be a lot
for a 10-year-old to take in but Isabelle looks set to walk many more red carpets in the future we did everything in one take Tom Tom left a few of the of the um the songs especially the solos kind of in in one one long continuous take did very very few Cuts in it but what he did was he filmed um most everything from a multi- camera uh approach which meant that you could do a whole take knowing that the entire performance was captured because it would have been very hard I think especially with
the singing being live to go from one take to another like an hour can change your voice you know it's the time of day the barometer there's so many factors so Tom needed to be able to capture all of the performance es live in order to to edit in a way that wouldn't become distracting I didn't want to make the film if I didn't have my Jean B and and Hugh came in and made me realize that uh I could make this film I mean you because my short list was one person I mean who else can sing at that lev
el act in such an extraordinary way is a Bonafide film star in the old sense could carry a film has the requisite strength to play a famously strong man but also has the the grace and kind of uh spiritual gentleness um that the character needs it's huge act Tom Hooper first day rehearsal said I need you actually before then he said I need you unrecognizable he said if people recognize you I want them to think you're sick in real life so uh I did my best he went he went on a really hardcore journ
ey to try to physically capture what it' be like to be a a convict of 20 years standing he lost 30 lb of weight uh uh you know we shaved his head I mean we talk a lot about shaving sort of cutting Annie's Hair but Hugh Jackman's head was shaved very brutally and and and then in the opening scene I mean this is where he's kind of quite eccentric he he went on a 36h hour water fast which means no water for 36 hours uh and and then was willing to stand up to his chest in seawater putting a massive
shiping on a rope so that his skin kind of went back against his cheeks and you know a lot of people don't recognize him in the opening scene I mean he he's he's so kind of uh broken looking by this thing I mean and and and then and then he and then when his character kind of flourishes he then put on weight and changed again and I mean like his commitment to this was was was total yeah my trainer on this movie Incredible guy David Kingsbury um has at one point in his life was a bodybuilder and
he knew of this water restriction thing which is what bodybuilders do before a show and you can lose up to 10 lbs of body weight and right off the surface do not do this at home trust me and so it really sinks in your chair I was already quite skinny but it makes it quite drastic your eyes get sunken I look like hell basically and trust me the headache after about 20 hours is something I don't want to repeat I was in Stratford uh doing uh coras and I received a phone call from my agent telling m
e that I would be playing the apotamus hero tardia singing M of the house just like the singing all the tears were done live um they were they weren't mine I mean I was definitely in a fragile uh place that day because my hair was going to be gone but uh but no I really did try to kind of stay with fontine and Victor Hugo has this wonderful passage in the book where he talks about fontine really didn't want to cut her hair and how she receives a letter from the tarity saying that kette doesn't h
ave a skirt for winter she's going to be cold and she sat there crumbling the letter in her hand for an entire day and then just like R Sunset goes down to the wig maker and says take it how much for it he said 10 Franks and she says cut it off then and she sat there and trying to be stoic thinking I'm clothing my hair with I'm clothing my child with my hair and I just kind of tried to bring some of that Grace into it and not just have it all be about me for me like you know any any physical tra
nsformation that you undergo is obviously going to be difficult but I couldn't take it too seriously because it was my idea to lose my hair and it was my idea to go to the extreme physical place that I did for this and I did it for my job and a lot of people don't have a choice about it a lot of people get sick and they lose weight they get sick and they have to lose their hair Tom Hooper who was not a musical theater uh director before he went to see the show and really fell in love with it and
he said how do I recreate that feeling that you get in the theater and so he wanted to sing live and what he does actually is enhance the theatrical experience for example Anne haway her song I Dreamed a Dream which of course everybody feels they know is a single shot without cutting for 3 minutes of her in closeup it's one of the great performances ever given and I think and you never cut away from it so it's like being in the theater but the best seat you've you couldn't even get that seat in
the theater it's like sitting in her lap and listening to it you know um there wasn't anything about this job that wasn't daunting I mean it we were all just kind of this mixture of of of anxiety and gratitude and and and excitement and nerves and um but you know and then of course you show up on set and you're just like because we'd all been kind of working in our own lives on the music and you show up and you hear Hugh Jackman and of course we kind of all knew that you could sing but not like
this and then Eddie redm with the most gorgeous voice just coming out of nowhere so I mean so it was it was exciting to work with everybody here what they were doing but I think you know hearing how how talented everyone else was kind of pushed us all on to me on at least so many auditions um six in total three on tape three in person two flights to [Music] London you know 60 million people have seen it around the world londoners taken it to their hearts from the very beginning I wanted to uh p
rotect what it is people love about it and somehow take that and intensify it on the big screen and I think it's how it makes people feel and how people you go back and back to re-experience these strong emotions I wanted to make the emotions they feel even more intense on the big screen I don't think I I think about it in terms of hard or easy it's um it's just my it's my job so you know it's not it's not like it all kind of feeling comes to you in one great moment you're like oh I'm I'm quite
good at this or oh I'm terrible at this it's you're so far removed from it and at that point i' done so much preparation that I was so into it it wasn't really about performing it was more about just honoring what I had learned in the research that I had done and just trying to open myself wide enough to let all that come out um really amazing to to to be up there it's so cool well it's John bjan for actors it's a bit like a hamlet or something it it is a kind of role you dream of playing and al
so secretly terrified at playing because uh it requires everything of you and with Jean Von emotionally physically and vocally every day it requires it usually all at the same time so it was an incredible opportunity and I'm just so lucky to have been working with Tom Hooper and these other great actors you know you know I used to go to the Empire Leicester Square and the uran leester square as a kid uh and and dream of one day having a film maybe in those Cinemas I remember the ritual as I as I
left I'd always turn back and watch the end credits role and make a kind of commitment to myself to try to get a film on one of those screens and to have both screens of the premiere last night with 3,000 people was a kind of great I don't know homecoming for me as Londoner to to to to to have that opportunity you know he he would have everyone over when we were in London and it was great cuz he had a very very great you know State over there and uh it was a lot a lot of fun and it was a lot it
was nice after long weeks for everyone to come together and do that and and he's just a great [Music] guy at the beginning it's a very embarrassing thing to actually sing to people it's a very exposing thing to be like hey you know on set and so when you get you we're allowed to get so relaxed around each other and and learned to and you didn't feel awkward there have been subsequently some wild singing parties we were down in a pub in in New York the other day and Russell and Russell's made wi
th a guitar and we were all singing singing songs it's uh it's I've never quite got over the fear factor of it but it is quite entertaining do you know what I feel so proud to be a part of this I it was so odd last night we had the premiere and we ended up driving back to there was a party afterwards and we sort of drove through ler square and up sha spr Avenue and past where lame is is on and there in the Palace Theater where it used to play I have so many memories as a kid of walking up and do
wn those wanting to you know maybe be an actor but but he never was in my world as dreams I get to be a part of it so yeah I feel very privileged dreamed a dream and it came true oh so cheesy yeah was but it was uh it may not have been the first place to say you see Russell loves a sing along uh and if you ever get invited to his play for a party luia yeah I'm sure right after you do David Letterman uh then make sure you take a song cuz he gets everyone singing really yeah but it was a great way
to let off them I mean we were all you were not allowed to sing any of your songs from your uh repertoire in the musical that was the Only Rule it's you know it's easy to see why eponine loves Marius when he when he looks like Eddie redm you know but then equally it's easy to see why he loves cuz when it's Amanda SE freed to be fair yeah I know there was a lot for thing about this film is embarrassed admit it but we're all such sort of aggressive lame fans that it's the first film I've seen whe
n people would come in to set on their days off to kind of see how everyone was doing no no one wanted to miss out so yeah there was we were all very supportive well I think it's you know when you I've always admired Hugh Jackman I've always respected his career in his work I think he's just got F fantastic range in what he does he's a I just think the world of of him professionally and so then you know I was thinking well no you know when you meet someone who's almost like an idol and you think
well they're never going to match that expectation well here's the thing with Hugh Jackman he didn't match it he raised it I just didn't think somebody could be so cool with all the success he's had to be this the most levelheaded person he is so calm onet he's like hi and he's lovely and then it's like action and it's like car bursts out of his soul and it's like wow and for me that's inspiring at the beginning of my career to meet somebody like that who's got that perfect balance I I look you
know he's he's inspiring to me definitely I spent the most time with Eddie I think yes and who did you bond with the most what do you say um that's I guess Eddie I guess I Bond no I don't know yeah I guess Eddie for the most part I bonded with Eddie and Samantha um but we all kind of had I mean we we all had scenes together and throughout rehearsal we were able to kind of get to know each other and bond through like the the terror of singing live and also the fact that we were all major major l
amees fans and the fact that we all worked like our asses off to get the roles so but I guess I spent the most time with Eddie and Samantha and um it was a nice little group I think it was it was just the difference in in how you convey this emotion I think in a theater you're projecting to 2,000 seats and and everything's heightened because there's no point having a little private Moment On Stage you need people to connect with that story and and to sort of feel feel what your character's feeli
ng and and on screen the camera is so close to you that you feel you know it's so intimate you can be more truthful and that that realism is amazing but then you can't beat that live Buzz of theater so what I feel is exciting about this this project certainly from an acting point of view is combining those two together so it's kind of that utter realism of film but with that kind of live buzz you get in theater it's combining the two to create something that feels unique um I had a sing just had
to sing I was completely completely out of my comfort zone and you know very very insecure about my voice I definitely wish I had had more time to prepare this soprano um technique but you know I I did my best and I feel like you know this is the kind of it's just a unique experience and and I'm not it's not going to the opportunity is not going to come around very often so I definitely think this is you know the coolest thing I've ever been well I didn't get a call that was the first step basi
cally I was performing as Nancy and Oliver on stage and Cameron Macintosh the producer walked on and announced to live audience yeah that I was going to be playing eponine L that was my face right there that was my reaction and it's on YouTube I i' I've watched it since cuz I can't remember it I just remember hearing epine and I remember my heart nearly falling out of my chest and again cuz I've never wanted anything more I never want this it's been a part of my life for four years it's a charac
ter that I feel so passionate about and oh gosh and and to get that news in that way it that was my reaction right there you did a really good impression of me it was like my in a you know teenager who grew up with Alig and you know all those things was I had I was properly Star Struck by by saser and and he arrived on set at the point that he and Helen botom Carter arrived at a point in which we've been going through this rigorous quite sort of intense process forever and um and they arrived an
d this sort of likeness arrived and it made me um very happy it was just that was a bit of a sort of Lifetime aspiration was to I never thought I'd get the opportunity to work with him but it was pretty wonderful to do I think I was excited about although it was a world I knew nothing about at least I kind of I knew this girl I knew this this this piece I knew I felt so passionately about it so to be that was the one comforting thing I think about entering I wanted to to work with these actors t
hat IID you know admired for years people like Hugh Jackman you know and Eddie redm I knew had been cast as Marius and when I was auditioning for epine there was posters everywhere with My Week with Marilyn and I was like remember just like positive thinking he could be my marus and working with people like that that was such a highlight I was lucky enough to attend many of these Garin nightes of limes and they've always been magical um you know any Musical that celebrates a particular Milestone
is always sort of like one of those moments where you think it's been going so long can they really inject something into that and um it does have that magical touch I think what's also interesting is the fact that is somebody who's seen it as a say quite a few times now you go along and each time there's always something that you don't quite remember from the first time or the second time and you do come away it's what they call one of those musicals it's what they call a memorable musical not
just because of the story but particularly with the songs you do go out and Days Later you've got this fantastic melody in your head and you're thinking to yourself what is that what is that because with a lot of songs from musicals you don't always know the title but you only have to hear the you know the sort of the words of on my own and it strikes the cord to any generation and I do kind of think that that's why it's been covered by so many people so many people resonate with the lyrics and
the Beautiful Melody of many of the songs from uh the the score of limes and I think it will go on for many many years in people's minds [Music]
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