Welcome, my friend. Welcome to another episode of Love Someone with Delilah, my podcast that I am so so proud of. This podcast is dedicated to sharing stories, to sharing conversations with people who are doing their part to.
Impact our world for the better.
And don't we need that now more than ever to impact the world for good.
There is a.
Lot to love about my guest today. She's a great singer. She's a dancer, an actress, a beauty queen. Speaking of beauty, she is beautiful inside and out.
Her soul is beautiful.
She's been in a multitude of plays, including some of my favorites. She's been in Phantom of the Opera. She's been in The King and I and my all time favorite. I know her best for the role she made famous in the play Wicked. She played gu Linda with a GA. Yeah, I'm talking about actress singer Kristin chiniwith Kristin is an operatically trained singer. She has one of the broadest ranges of any recording artist today. She's produced several albums, singing
everything from opera to country to gospel. She's able to hit a note the F six, also known as the F above high se I have like a three note range, So the fact that she's able to hit a note that there's not even like an actual key for because.
It's above high.
See as you'll see in a moment, her speaking voice is adorable, brings a richness to the character she plays on stage as well as on TV and in movies. We actually appeared in a movie together last year's Christmas Sensation, the animated movie the star Kristen was Gabby the Mouse. She has a new album mount that is dedicated to all the female singers that have inspired her both past and present. But before we start this conversation with the adorable Kristin Chenwick, I want to take a moment to
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Hi, honey, how are you?
Is this really you, Kristen?
I am so honored and so thrilled to be talking to somebody that is in my life, in my heart, such a legend.
I'm so happy to be talking to you too, because you're quite the inspiration man. Just pretty cool to be talking to you as well.
Thank you, thank you, Thank Youesome.
I mean it.
You know, I can't hear your voice without like wanting to say something like, you know, a line from Wicked.
If that's all right. I'm glad that my voice is distinctive and makes people remember certain parts and stuff. I think that's cool.
Do you know how many times I came to see you in Wicked?
No tell me, I.
Think I saw you in it three times. I've seen it three or four more times since, but you I think you were you were in it the first three times I saw.
Oh, Mike, I'm so glad. Did you love it? Do you think I will tell you something? A little Bertie told me that you snuck in some really nice fancy popcorn to Wicked and got caught away and pretended to go to a car that doesn't experience in front of the acuter you don't put your porn away, and then came back and still sew it in it, brought it in again, and then you both started chopping because you were hungry. And I just want to say that at my show, I welcomed the popcorn. Bring it.
Oh did they tell you that that?
In order to get in, I found a really handsome man and I went and looped my arm through his so I could hide the bag, and his girlfriend or his wife that was on the other side did not appreciate that.
Actually, that part of the story was left out. But my favorite is that your friend when you said, okay, i'll take it out, I'll take it to the car, and you both neither one of you brought your car, and you went.
We don't have a car. I'm like, shut up, you shutting up.
Go with me, here, go with me. I think it's hilarious that she also when you were eating it in the show she couldn't help herself and how to eat it too. I think that's funny. I'm sorry, that's one of my favorite theater stories.
I'm going to kill her. I'm so going to kill her.
Oh. I wasn't going to let you get away with it, baby, I was not going to let you get away with it.
All right, we'll have popcorn together. It was the calmely corn. Oh my gosh, it was so good. When I see you, I will bring you some.
You know what, Bring it to me and give it me while I'm a stage. I think that'd be a really big hit.
Don't dare me, Kristen, because I will.
I dare you, I dare you? Friend along I love it.
Okay, Well, we'll be there with bells on.
Okay, good, good, good.
Kristin chinawith hold that thought. We need to hear from a sponsor, and we'll be right back with me on this episode of love. Someone is the lovely, beautiful and oh so talented Kristin Chinawi. First off, we I have to say here the new album is for the girls, and we're going to be playing some of the songs for the girls, but also for the guys who are listening because they could be an honorary girl. All they have to do is get in touch with their sappy side.
That's right, and they love us, so you know, so.
There you go.
It works, It works. I want to know how you how you chose the particular songs that that you chose the way we were. Oh my gosh, that was the theme of our high school prom, by the way, was it really?
It was?
It was our senior high school prom and we decorated with evergreens all over the gymnasium.
Yeah was it?
Yeah? Cool?
It was super cool.
Our proms were not like you spend five thousand dollars to have a limo and a corsage and sit down dinner. We'd go get pizza at Pizza Rays and then go to the grade school gymnasium and dance.
Yeah. Same here. Yeah.
But I especially, I especially want you to share the story of Desperado because that is my dedication to somebody I love dearly.
So tell me about that when.
It makes me. It makes me so happy. Well, I was a little kid. I remember hearing this beautiful woman's voice sing in this song Desperado. I went, I understand that, and I just get it because when I heard it and Linda sang it, I thought, well, yeah, I feel like that sometimes, believe it or not. And this is a little known fact about me. I can be kind of a loner. And sometimes our friends are like, u U up, she's going there, she's going to Mia, She's
going Mia. It's just I can get like scared commitment and I can be alone and I can battle those kinds of feelings. And not that I'm like, oh, I'm such a I'm such a recruit, but I do have to be with music, and I do have to be the doing the art of it and understanding the voice always and understanding the changes of my voice and DEA's the deepening that's happening. And I have to I have to learn music all the time, and if I don't, I'm just not myself. And and some may call that selfish.
I call that being true to living out your truth. You are living out your truth and you're doing it beautifully and you get more beautiful every day.
That is so lovely. Thank you, Julilah. Thank you. You know, as women we age and we go oh look at that there, sat wrinkle. Oh no, thanks for falling.
But here's the thing.
Don't you feel that as you grow, as you mature, as you learn to accept yourself. I feel, at least for myself, I feel more beautiful than I did when I was modeling and weighed fifty pounds less in my twenties.
Oh yeah, I feel more confident. I feel like I care more about what I think of myself than I do about what others.
Amen.
Well, thank you for spending all this time with us and for sharing your heart.
I want to talk.
About your before we go your charity, because the whole reason I do love someone with Delilah this podcast is to encourage people, even if they're Broadway stars, even if they haven't been in TV shows, even if they weren't nominated for Tony's and Grammys and awards, even if they haven't had the level of success that you have enjoyed. Everybody can change the world for good.
That's right.
And I know you have an organization, a foundation.
That changes the world for good so that other people who were gifted with the talents and the passions to be in the arts can pursue that. Tell me a little bit about that and how people can find out more.
First of alf, thank you for what you do. I want to do the same. Ten years ago in my hometown of Broken Arrow, they opened a theater. We never had anything like a performing arts center, and we have the state of the art theater, and they contacted me and told me that they were going to name the theater the Christian CHANNELI theater, and I always had a heart attack because I thought, I'm not old enough to have anything that named after me, and they think you are.
I have people send me pictures of their pet pigs named after me, so you know, I would take a theater, but I'm happy with the little pet pigs.
Absolutely absolutely. And then when I finally got over myself, I was like, what am I going to do with that name on that building something. I'm not going to just let it sit there. I'm going to back it. I'm going to do something. So it started out with I gave a yearly masterclass to high school and college students that would I would pick five each and I
would give master classes. And then it evolved into the Christian Channel with Broadway boot Camp and many kids all over the nation audition and I can only choose fifty. But it happens every year. We just had our fifth year Broadway boot Camp at the Tony Awards week, we watched the Tonys on television with pizza in my theater.
We bring down the big screen, we watch it, and then the next day we start a very intensive singing, acting, dancing, improv writing week with these kids, with teachers that I bring in that are much more talented than I am, a lot of them famous, a lot of them the cohorts of mine. And they then at the end of the week we put on a show. And what I love more than anything is this week out of the whole year, because I see these kids bond, I see
them find each other, I see them grow. I see that I have lots of time for them to bond as well. We have lots of advance parties. We have Karaoke Night, we have dresses your favorite Broadway star Knight. And what's happening now is it's growing so big that eventually and this is happening center rather than later. I'm currently fundraising for it. I would like to have a school.
We're building a building next to it which will be a creative arts center for the kids in the state of Oklahoma, which we'll be able to learn arts and crafts, draw, graphic design, writing, and it will be obviously geared towards kids in my home state that can't afford it, and that will also be fed dinner. So that is something that is a sidebar to the foundation, the Christian Channel with Arts and Education Foundation, which I encourage people to look up. You can also look up the Broken Era
Performing Arts Center. You can look up Christon Child at Broadway boot Camp, and you can find all the information on my website as well. And if there's anybody out there listening that as a child or a relative that wants to audition, auditions are in February and they can be done in person in Broken Era, Oklahoma, or they can be done by video. And I promise, I swear that they will leave life. I have had a life changing experience.
Kristin.
Thank you for spending time with us today. Thank you for loving and blessing kids who have a dream to pursue the arts. Thank you for all you're doing to make that possible. That you are pouring your talent, your time, your energy into young people who have that gift, that passion for the stage. I wish you the very best this holiday season, and I am so blessed, so grateful to get to know you