In an exclusive interview, the singer discusses his new leading role in ‘Cabaret,’ the ‘American Idol’ Season 8 group chat and how Berlin nightclubs inspired his performance.
Standing in a Broadway dressing room, backstage at the August Wilson Theatre, I feel like I’m starring in a musical theater version of Room Raiders.
In the classic MTV dating show, a contestant visits the empty rooms of three potential suitors each episode and after snooping around chooses which to date based solely on the items they find stashed in the apartments. In my case, I’m peering around a tiny dressing room while I wait for my interview subject to arrive.
The items I spot include a pair of tights with eyes embroidered on them, a small turquoise party hat, Hall’s cough drops, an unopened bottle of champagne, Emergen-C packets, a TheraGun mini, Vicks Sinex saline nasal spray, a giant brown leather bow, a humidifier pumping full blast, dozens of makeup brushes, a large Elmer’s glue stick and a mirror with false eyelashes pasted all over it.
It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to quickly piece together that the dressing room belongs to a vocalist with a penchant for makeup—in this case, the newest star of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, Adam Lambert.
The Grammy-nominated singer and runner-up of American Idol Season 8 is now over a month deep into his run in Broadway’s latest revival of Cabaret. This summer, Lambert was announced to replace Eddie Redmayne in the show’s iconic Emcee role at the same time Moana‘s Auli’i Cravalho would take over the Sally Bowles role from Gayle Rankin. On Sept. 16, the pair made their Broadway debuts to rave reviews.
Adam Lambert and Auli’i Cravalho in Cabaret
When Lambert arrives a few minutes later, he gives me a quick tour of the space. “I’m a full hypochondriac,” he says regarding the health products. “I’m a singer. This is par for the course. We have cough drops, tea, lozenges, nasal sprays. It’s basically a CVS over here.”
Lambert is the latest in a long line of greats to play the Master of Ceremonies at Berlin’s famed Kit Kat Klub, a ghoulish, androgynous and flamboyant role often played by queer people. The Emcee role was originated by Joel Gray, who won a Tony for the 1966 Broadway run and an Oscar for the 1972 film. Alan Cumming then won a Tony for his Emcee in the 1998 revival, with Neil Patrick Harris, Michael C. Hall and John Stamos later taking over the role. Redmayne debuted his version on the West End in 2021, with Lambert now taking over the part with a few tweaks.
“I asked the costume designers if I could make this leather bow bigger,” he says pointing out a piece of his opening costume that Redmayne also wore. “At one point it was smaller. They said, ‘You can have a big bow,’ so I got an oversized bow.”
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Now Lambert is performing eight shows a week in the newly renovated theater, completely reconstructed to put seats where the stage previously stood, allowing the cast to perform in the round. Lambert not only welcomes audiences to the Kit Kat with the iconic “Willkommen” number, but also presides over the show from start to finish, popping in for songs like “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” and “Money” along the way.
Of course, a rigorous performing schedule isn’t necessarily new to Lambert. Prior to American Idol, Lambert toured in Wicked. He’s since headlined five of his own tours, and since 2012 has been performing alongside Queen as one of very few vocalists who can hit the notes left behind by Freddie Mercury. In 2024 alone, he’s already served as a judge on The Voice: Australia, toured with Queen, voiced characters in both Megamind and Fraggle Rock, and released a new hedonistic dance EP titled AFTERS.
On a Tuesday night, before getting into hair and makeup, Lambert takes the time to sit down with Parade to discuss his Broadway debut and the long career leading up to it.
Read on for Parade‘s full interview with Adam Lambert:
Matthew Huff: You began your career performing in musicals, but this is your Broadway debut. How did the opportunity to perform in Cabaret come about, and why did you decide this was the time to return to theater?
Adam Lambert: [Theater] is definitely a big part of who I am. It reminds me of being younger. It reminds me of my childhood, my formative years, and I missed theater people. I missed working in a team to put something on for an audience.
I actually don’t even know how Cabaret came up. I went to go see [the 2021 West End Revival] in London, and we started talking with the people that put it together. It became a ongoing conversation, and it was like, “Okay, what about New York?” and I thought that would be amazing. I leapt at it the minute they offered it.
The Emcee is such an iconically queer role. What does it mean to you to be making your Broadway debut with this role?
This role feels like it’s in my wheelhouse. It’s always been on the short list of parts I would love to play. There’s so much room for interpretation with him, and he’s so enigmatic and abstract, which creates a completely open playing field. This production, in particular, took some amazing liberties with how they interpret who he is and what he is to the story. Seeing it in London, I thought, “It’s so cool what they did. They’ve made me think about other ways in which he is part of the story.”
Eddie [Redmayne] was a big part of that. Eddie created this role in this production and created this puppet master energy. That is a big part of what I’m doing here. I put in my own ridiculous camp, queer, flamboyant energy as much as I possibly could.
What pieces of Eddie Redmayne’s Emcee did you keep and which parts did you change when you took over the role?
I brought my lived experience to the part. I’ve definitely been at a lot of parties and hung out with a lot of crazy, wild people. I’ve been a part of environments that are very … what’s the word … liberal, is the way I would put it, adventurous. I tried to bring some of that into the part.
Back in my early 20s, I traveled to Germany to do another musical Hair, but I lived in Berlin for about six months. That was such a formative time for me, and I saw some things in nightlife I had never seen before. Berlin was very wild. It still is, but in 2003 I was seeing things there that I did not see in the United States. In a way, it’s a love letter to that experience as well as me taking the audience down this little, naughty, secretive little path.
Since you replaced Eddie Redmayne, your rehearsal process is different. I’ve heard it’s daunting, and you don’t get to practice much with the whole cast. What was that process like?
It’s definitely not the typical “start from scratch, start on day one with everybody, everyone gets their scripts, getting to know each other all at the same time” situation. It is different. Thankfully myself and the other new cast members were put in together. We were up for the challenge, but you had to imagine other bodies on stage. Then you don’t actually [practice with the full cast/props/costumes] until three days before you’re gonna be in front of an audience. I was up for the challenge. I was like, “I know theater. I love theater. I miss it. I can’t wait to get back to it. This is an opportunity to challenge myself.”
