VIDEO: Idina Menzel Talks Singing Super Bowl National Anthem: 'This Is a Big Gig'

By: Jan. 30, 2015
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Tony winner and Broadway superstar Idina Menzel will perform the National Anthem and John Legend will sing "America The Beautiful" as part of SUPER BOWL XLIX pregame festivities at University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona on Sunday, February 1. The performances will be televised live on NBC prior to kickoff.

This morning, the talented star spoke to TODAY's Savannah Guthrie about her upcoming performance before an audience of 110 million people, and revealed that her dad may be more nervous than she is! Watch the appearance below!

"He's a big sports fan," she shared. "He brought me up on football ... every Sunday we'd watch games and ... he just texted me before you got here and was just like, 'This is a big gig, honey.'"

Menzel share that she hopes to live up to the iconic performance of one of her own idols. "Watching Whitney Houston do it years and years ago ... she was my idol. ... And then when she did that actual rendition of the anthem, I'll never forget it."

Asked to comment on the the recent Deflate-gate SCANDAL surrounding the big game, Menzel jokes, "I've given it much thought, actually, and I've decided that I'm not really qualified to comment on the weight of anyone's balls."

Menzel rose to prominence when she originated the role of Maureen Johnson in the hit Broadway musical Rent, a role which she reprised for the 2005 feature film adaptation of the musical. She received a Tony Award nomination in 1996 for her performance in Rent. In 2004, she won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for originating the role of Elphaba in the blockbuster Broadway musicalWicked. She made her return to Broadway in the 2014 musical If/Then. She is currently a nominee for the 2014 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her performance.

Menzel is also known for her recurring role of Shelby Corcoran on the musical comedy-drama television series Glee, the 2007 Disney movie Enchanted and as Elsa the Snow Queen in the 2013 Disney animated film Frozen, which is the highest-grossing animated film of all time, in which she sang the Academy Award-winning song "Let It Go". The song peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Solo albums include Barefoot At TheSymphony (a live recording of her PBS special by the same name), I Stand, Here, and Still I Can't Be Still.

Photo courtesy of TODAY/NBC



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