Singer and Pussycat Dolls star Scherzinger is in the running for her starring role in the revival of Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s musical Sunset Boulevard, which leads the Olivier Awards charge with 11 nominations in total.
Image: Nicole Scherzinger in Sunset Boulevard. Pic: Marc Brenner
Dear England, which tells the story of Southgate and the men’s football team’s journey through the 2022 World Cup, follows with nine nods – including best new play and best actor for Joseph Fiennes’s portrayal of the manager.
The sports drama, which is a fictionalised account of the struggles and successes of the team, also received nods for Gina McKee’s portrayal of team psychologist Pippa Grange and Will Close’s turn as Harry Kane in the supporting actress and actor categories respectively.
Fiennes, star of TV series The Handmaid’s Tale, faces competition for the best actor prize from Sherlock star Mark Gatiss in The Motive And The Cue, Happy Valley’s Norton for his role in A Little Life, Doctor Who star David Tennant in Macbeth and All Of Us Strangers actor Andrew Scott in Vanya.
Image: Joseph Fiennes as Gareth Southgate in Dear England. Pic: Marc Brenner/ National Theatre
Sex And The City star Parker is nominated for Plaza Suite, in which she performs alongside her husband Matthew Broderick, and leads a star-studded line-up in the best actress nominations.
The other hopefuls for the award are Cilla star Sheridan Smith in Shirley Valentine, The Fall actress Laura Donnelly in The Hills Of California and Hotel Rwanda actress Sophie Okonedo in Medea.
US singer Scherzinger, who plays a famed Hollywood star fading and spiralling into mental illness in Sunset Boulevard, is up for best actress in a musical.
She faces competition from Natasha Hodgson in Operation Mincemeat, Caissie Levy in Next To Normal and Celebrity Big Brother star Marisha Wallace in Guys & Dolls.
Scherzinger’s Sunset Boulevard co-star Tom Francis is up for the male prize, which also features nominations for David Cumming in Operation Mincemeat, Daniel Mays in Guys & Dolls, and Charlie Stemp in Crazy For You.
The production is up against Tim Minchin’s Groundhog Day, Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown, and Frank Loesser’s Guys & Dolls in the best musical revival category.
Image: Sarah Snook stars in Dorian Gray. Pic: Marc Brenner
The late Haydn Gwynne has also received a posthumous nomination for best actress in a supporting role for her performance in When Winston Went To War With The Wireless.
Across all the nominations, the National Theatre garnered the most nods through several of its productions, with Dear England, The Motive And The Cue, Till The Stars Come Down and The Effect all recognised across multiple categories.
Organisers said the competition for nominations had been “fierce during an outstanding year for theatre, with significantly more productions than last year”.
The annual awards ceremony takes place on Sunday 14 April at the Royal Albert Hall.
It is “pretty surreal”, Academy Award winner Reese Witherspoon admits, finding herself at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list.
When I meet the actress alongside her co-writer, best-selling author Harlan Coben, overnight the pair have learned that their thriller is now at number one.
He jokes: “I was texting her last night and saying you’ll now have to call yourself number one bestselling novelist, forget about Oscar winner!”
Image: Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben told Katie Spencer about their novel Gone Before Goodbye
As one of the most successful authors in the world, Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground.
Not content with running a hugely successful production company responsible for a string of hits, as well as one of the most successful book clubs in the world, she explains she felt compelled to give writing a try.
“People want you to stay in your lane… as a creative person I think it’s impossible to just choose one kind of life.
“Creativity is infinite and who I was as a creative person when I was 20 is very different from the person I am now at 49.”
More on Reese Witherspoon
Related Topics:
Gone Before Goodbye, a thriller about a talented surgeon who finds herself caught up in a deadly conspiracy, is the result of Witherspoon daring to put her head above the parapet.
Image: Witherspoon says she felt compelled to give writing a try
Coben admits he was “a little wary” at first.
“I don’t co-write novels but when she made the pitch and started talking about it, I was like ‘dang that’s good, we can do something with that’.”
While countless celebrities work with ghostwriters, Coben says: “I said to her from day one ‘it’s only going to be you and me in here… no third person in here, I don’t do that’. So every word you [read] comes from Reese and me.”
Image: Coben has sold over 80 million books to date, while for Witherspoon this is new ground
Witherspoon explains: “He was like ‘if we’re going to do this, it’s going to have to be at a really high level because people going to expect a lot, so our bar was really high.”
“I said to her, in the beginning, novels are like a sausage,” Coben laughs. “You might like the final taste, but you don’t want to see how it was made and Reese got to see the full sausage getting made here.”
When it came to writing, Coben says they “fell into a rhythm right away”, working together in three-hour stints, “back and forth with a yellow legal pad – what about this? What about that?”
Image: Coben says they ‘fell into a rhythm right away’
Witherspoon says it “feels really deeply personal” to have their work now in print.
“Usually, as an actor, I walk into other people’s worlds and it’s already set up… but this was creating the whole world with Harlan and just from beginning to end feels very personal.”
While the story seems an obvious fit for being adapted to the screen, perhaps with a certain blonde actress in the leading role, Coben says that was never their intention.
“The biggest, biggest mistake novelists make when you write a book is to say ‘this would make a really great movie’. A book is a book, a movie is a movie, and we both focused on wanting this to be just a great reading experience.”
Given that their collaboration is already selling in big numbers, will the pair team up again to write a second?
Witherspoon says: “Let’s just see what people think of this one first.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:43
May: Eight found guilty over Kim Kardashian Paris heist
Associate professor of neurology Dr Laura Stein told Sky’s US partner NBC News: ” The most well-described risk factors include a predisposition [family history of aneurysm], high blood pressure, cigarette smoking and inflammation.”
She went on to explain that most fatal ruptured aneurysms are in the brain, killing about one in three patients.
“When it’s a blood vessel that’s in the head and it bleeds, there’s a much higher risk of having a very bad problem just because the brain is enclosed in a fixed space,” Dr Stein added.
Low-risk aneurysms are monitored by doctors for growth or abnormalities, and there are a series of potential treatment options for those considered dangerous.
Elsewhere in The Kardashians clip, Kim admitted that her ex-husband Kanye West will be in her life “no matter what” because of the four kids they share together.