Bernadette Peters is an American singer and actor. Born in 1948 in Queens, New York, where her father worked as a delivery driver, she has appeared in numerous TV shows and films, including The Muppet Show, Ally McBeal, Silent Movie with Mel Brooks, The Jerk with Steve Martin, and Annie. But she is probably best known for her Tony award-winning work on Broadway, where she has starred in, among other musicals, Mack and Mabel, Annie Get Your Gun and Hello, Dolly! One of the foremost interpreters of the work of Stephen Sondheim, her association with the composer began in 1983 when she was cast as Dot in the first production of Sunday in the Park With George. Later this month, Peters will make her West End debut in Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, a celebration of the music of Sondheim devised by Cameron Mackintosh. She will co-star with Lea Salonga, alongside a cast that includes Janie Dee, Damian Humbley and Joanna Riding.
It’s amazing that only now are you making your West End debut. Are you excited?
Absolutely. I’ve never gotten [to London] before, but I’ve always had solid reasons for that: I’ve needed to be at home, or the material wasn’t right. But now I’ve moved here for four and half months, which has meant getting someone to live with my dogs while I’m away. Steve [Sondheim] loved England so much. He told me that any opportunity he had, he’d visit. So to make my debut here singing his music is very touching and important to me.
Which numbers will you be singing?
I’m doing Losing My Mind [from Follies], the Little Red Riding Hood song [I Know Things Now, from Into the Woods], and a few other things too.
What was it like to work with the famously exacting Sondheim for the first time?
Well, the first song they gave me to sing was Sunday in the Park With George, which is kind of a mouthful. I was nervous to learn it, and nervous doing it. But this was a workshop, and Steve was still writing bits of it. The other song he had ready was Color and Light, and I remember rehearsing that and thinking: this is just the most wonderful thing I’ve ever experienced. The artist [the musical is about the pointillist painter Georges Seurat] is painting in time, and the notes reflect that, each one a brushstroke. Dot is his muse and his model, and she’s waiting to go out, and she wants him to stop work, and she’s powdering up… It was all just so beautiful, and I knew in that moment it was something really remarkable and special.
What kind of regime do you follow when you’re in a big show?
The last one I did was Hello, Dolly! in 2018. I kind of like the routine. It’s all about the show. You can’t go to noisy restaurants, because you need to save your voice. You certainly don’t go out the night before a matinee. Basically, I vocalise early in the day, and again before the curtain, and I try to keep myself as healthy as possible, and to eat at the right time. Do I drink wine? Yes, I do every so often. I also meditate. That’s a good thing to do.
You got your Equity card when you were nine. Do you have good memories of being a child actor?
I guess the thing is that I went to a public [state] school, and that was very important to me: my friends, socialising. The career was kind of a hobby. At 13, I went out on the road [as one of the “Hollywood Blondes” in the musical Gypsy], but I went back to high school afterwards. I was about 17 when things reversed and it became a very important part of my life.
Your parents weren’t in show business. Did they worry about your future?
My father would just… observe. My mother had wanted to be an actor, but her mother was from Sicily, where being an actor was basically the same as being a prostitute. One thing my mother did say was that I had to take piano lessons. She thought I could fall back on being a cocktail pianist if the work dried up. I was, like, you’re kidding! I’d rather be a waitress.
And were there times early on when you were unemployed?
I certainly had dry spells. Even when you do a Broadway show, it’s boom, but then perhaps no one hires you afterwards. But there used to be a lot more [variety] shows on TV. In the 70s, Carol Burnett [the American comedian and host of The Carol Burnett Show on CBS] kept hiring me. Nowadays, if I’m not paying the rent, I do my concert work and then I can pick and choose a bit when it comes to the other things. It’s always terrible if you do something just for the money. Pick things that you love!
Are there any big parts you still dream of singing?
I’ve been so fortunate. I’ve done most of the big roles. I sang Rose in Gypsy, and Annie in Annie Get Your Gun, and Desiree in A Little Night Music. With Desiree, my singing teacher always used to say: “That’s your role!” But in some ways it’s only one song… everyone is always waiting for Send in the Clowns.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I’m with my dogs. I love my dogs. I have two, one for each hand: a pure Staffordshire terrier and some kind of shaggy mongrel. They’re rescue dogs. As you probably know, for the last 25 years I’ve done Broadway Barks [Peters founded the annual not-for-profit dog adoption event with her friend, the late Mary Tyler Moore]. During the pandemic, Elaine Paige, Bonnie Langford and a lot of other West End stars did West End Woofs. We did that virtually, but now I’m here we’re hoping we might get the chance to do it live. We want to show people how wonderful rescue dogs are, and how much they appreciate being rescued.
Would it be fair to say that you have no plans to retire?
I never think of my age, and I never think of myself not working. I love growing and learning, and that’s what happens when I work. It’s all about projects that make you think, and that’s why I love Sondheim. His music is about the big, important things. Nerves? Not really. I’m just in the moment, serving the material.
Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends is at the Gielgud theatre, London, 16 September to 6 January 2024
• This article was amended on 11 September 2023 to refer to Bernadette Peters’ “Tony award-winning”, rather than “Emmy award-winning”, work on Broadway.
