The hills are finally alive tonight with the premiere of NBC s much anticipated adaptation of The Sound of Music Live EW was on set a few weeks ago to watch rehearsals for this live version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein 1959 Broadway musical which stars Carrie Underwood as Maria and Stephen Moyer as Capt. Von Trapp. The production will be broadcast live from a warehouse in Long Island that houses Music s seven working sets including the Von Trapp house and the abbey. There will be no second takes no audience except for the ones watching at home. In between scenes leading lady Underwood talked to us about tackling such an iconic character and the challenges of her biggest acting role to date.
Related 'The Sound of Music Live ' Take a peek at dress rehearsal PHOTOSENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY What was it like getting the call for this Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron tell me you were their first choice.CARRIE UNDERWOOD Well I mean first I remembered hearing about it cause they announced they were going to do this before they had any idea where or how or who. I remember reading that press release and thinking Wow like that s ambitious like wow how I had questions even before I knew they were interested in me. And then we got a phone call so I sat down with Neil and Craig and it all started coming together.Are you getting nervous This is different. I m not nervous yet. Anytime someone says It s only such and such days away I m like Uhhh don t say that yet Shhhhhh we have all the time in the world But of course we ll all be excited and nervous cause we want more of this just in general. Hopefully it s a step in the right direction in just having more live things happening on TV.
They were telling me as soon as you got this role you just immediately started working on this. I did. I m not stupid I know I have the farthest to go in terms of acting. I feel like nobody has ever done anything like this so we re all newbies at this particular project. But we all kind of have our fortes you know what I mean I m used to live television that s what I do and being in the studio for the soundtrack. And then we have all these incredible Broadway veterans that s their forte. Then you have Stephen who of course has done musical theater but you know hasn t really been in the studio that much and doing that on live TV I mean that s newer for him and so we re all bringin what we got to this. But I knew I had the furthest to go and I ve never tried to memorize lines like that before so I was like I better get started early.
Did you have an acting coach I have since I ve been on set. In the beginning it was more about just making sure I knew all my lines all the music. And then over the past couple of weeks I ve been working with somebody just trying to go deeper into myself and every day I feel like it gets easier to go there.
I heard too that you did a lot of vocal lessons to get this sort of Broadway this different kind of singing. When I m at home it s so hard for me to work. I will never have a studio in my home because that s home. So I needed to leave and go somewhere else and have monitored rehearsal where somebody s playing the piano and I got to know the material. That was important and also Rodgers and Hammerstein they were always very particular about doing things the way they re supposed to be done so I wanted to pay the ultimate respect to that.
You went to Salzburg and did the Sound of Music tour I did We were going to Italy my husband and I for our anniversary and we had to fly back through Munich anyway and I was like Let s just go to Salzburg. Let s stay for an extra couple of days. It was such a beautiful town and then we went to the lake district and our tour guide took us everywhere. We would have totally hiked up the mountainside but we didn t have much time there so we took the ski lift to the tops of these gorgeous mountains where you could just see everything. It was beautiful.
Did you go up and twirl around Maria style I didn t twirl because I thought people would be like What s the crazy lady doing twirling at the top of a mountain But it really is so spiritual and we saw Nonnberg Abbey. We saw the real Von Trapp house and we saw where they filmed everything and it was nice to take in the vibe.
Has this been fun What s this whole experience been like for you It has definitely been fun. There s not a day that I don t look forward to coming to work. But it definitely is a challenge. I mean this is completely out of my comfort zone.
Does it make you want to do more acting Well I should first say that I will never take great performances in acting for granted again. I feel like we are so spoiled and we go to the movie theater and we just see these incredible performances or we go to a Broadway show and we see these incredible performances and we just expect them to be wonderful. I will never take that for granted again because it s hard. And I m so glad I ve realized that not that I ever thought it was easy but you know it s definitely a challenge.
Were you a fan of the movie Oh my gosh yeah. My husband is the only person I know who hasn t seen the movie. Laughs But he knows all the songs and that s the cool thing too you do have the movie and then you have the music and the music even transcends the movie. Everybody s seen the movie and the music goes even farther than that.
Any trepidation of entering something that s such hallowed material I think so many people out there still don t understand what we re doing and therefore they do have this incredible ownership over the movie like You can t remake that movie I get hate tweets and stuff like that and like You re not Julie Andrews I know I m not nobody is and I would never pretend that I was. I know my place you know
That does seem difficult. What s been the most challenging for you is it the acting element Yeah. Cause I mean the music that s my life that s what I do. I even feel like so much about the character Maria and myself I feel like we have so much in common. I didn t grow up on a mountain but I grew up outside you know And she just had this love for nature and this love for the things that God made the beautiful outside the mountains the music and I feel that. I grew up in a pasture but I was singing everywhere And I was outside and I was climbing trees and scrapin my knees and I was just a free child.
Have you heard from Julie Andrews at all Not personally. I do fully intend to write her a very nice letter because she s been very publicly supportive of this which has meant the world.
What will you be feeling on Dec. 5 at 7 59 p.m. I ll probably be praying at that point. I don t want to lessen what we re doing but hopefully it ll feel like another rehearsal. Laughs Like we re just gonna rehearse it one last time this is the final time so give it your all
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