Don’t forget to check out some BTS from Dianna Agron’s photo shoot HERE!
By Moonah Ellison
Photography by Tony Gale
We all know Dianna Agron can sing. We saw her on six seasons of the FOX hit show, Glee, where she played mean-girl cheerleader and teen mom, Quinn Fabray, and, well, she’s nothing short of fantastic. But what you probably didn’t know is that she can really sing. Really good. So much so that she is played the Café Carlyle—the same Café Carlyle that has Woody Allen in-residence every week—this January. She paid tribute to female-fronted acts of the ‘60s and ‘70s. This is her second run at the Carlyle and we’re happy that she got to sit down with us before her run started.
“My first run here was a little over a year ago and this has kind of been a dream venue to play,” gushes Agron. “I love the hotel—they have so much history here—and I think the Café is the perfect space to do a show like this. You have 90 people and you can see everybody in the room which is an incredible feeling. It’s just like this cozy, womb-like experience and everybody’s really with you which is kind of so fantastic. I’m so happy to be back and to have it be a bit longer.”
This year the show has been tailored a little bit more playful and lively, and with a full band—seven musicians will be joining Agron—it allows for so much more depth to the performance, which will also add strings and the horns.
For Agron, it’s always been about the music; it was always playing in the house when she was a child growing up in San Francisco. By the age of three she was dancing and all the movies she was watching were musicals so when she made her way to LA, she was desperately seeking, you guessed it, musicals. “I remember saying to an agent I had in L.A., I said ‘I’m very excited to audition for musicals by the way’ and he said, ‘What year do you think this is?’ And I said, ‘The year that I audition for many musicals.’”
When selecting a playlist for her show, Agron found music that suits her voice and that is music from the 60s and 70s. She wanted there to be a playfulness and so some songs like “Oh You Beautiful Doll,” “Peggy Lee Is There All There Is?,” or Eartha Kitt’s “I Want to Be Evil,” those songs can be theatrical.
There’s an interesting side to Agron, aside from the lights and the cameras and the flashing bulbs. It’s a gift of giving, being concerned with the world around her. Agron has been involved in numerous charitable organizations and has always wanted to understand how people are living in other parts of the world. “Going to Jordan was an unbelievable experience. Right before it I had spent some time with refugees in Germany. It was very helpful to see the camps there and kind of understand their daily life, wanting to experience something firsthand and if I can be helpful, that’s what I strive to be and just understand the situation a little bit better.
With her next film project, Berlin, I Love You, releasing in March, Agron got to direct her segment in which she stars with Luke Wilson. The film is ten segments, each directed and written by a different artist. The cast also includes Helen Mirren, Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Diego Luna and Jim Sturgess. “I do think artistically I feel lucky that I’m able to do things other than acting and I guess maybe because I grew up watching actors who were doing three things at once: they were acting, they were dancing, they were singing. So I guess when I was formulating my ideas about storytelling I didn’t see one specifically. I saw it much more broad.
“I’m certainly not the first actor to get behind the lens. There are so many previous to me. I understand the want and the itch that you want to scratch jumping behind the camera…. When they came to me to act in a piece, I asked to direct it because they didn’t have a director attached.
But for now, it’s the Carlyle and this city. New York is home and she wouldn’t have it any other way. “I came to New York when I was 13 for the first time and I was absolutely obsessed and I knew that I would live here at some point,” Agron insists. “Throughout my 20s whenever I had a moment off I was always coming here and I knew the day would come. Everything I love is built into this city. I love going to the theater, I love seeing live shows, I love stumbling upon things and walking everywhere and just observing people around you doing all kinds of things. You build into your day these kind of magic moments of seeing a building you’ve never seen before or witnessing something that’s very unusual or a woman singing at the top of her lungs while on her headphones, just enjoying her day. I just really appreciate all of those things.”