httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi6Dh624cH0
NEW YORK – Brendon Urie is best known as the singer from Panic! at the Disco, but the musician is proving to be very versatile: He’s about to make his Broadway stage debut in “Kinky Boots.”
Urie joked that he offered to build sets, but will settle on singing.
“It’s a familiar thing, I guess, but it’s such a different world. I’m so excited to jump in,” Urie tells The Associated Press.
The Tony Award-winning “Kinky Boots,” which recently celebrated its fourth anniversary on Broadway, is based on a 2005 British film about a staid British shoe factory on the brink of ruin that retrofits itself into a maker of footwear for drag queens.
Urie will play the role originated by Stark Sands, who earned a Tony nomination in it.
Urie, who helped build theater sets in high school, said he’s feeling a jumble of emotions as he gets closer to his May 26 debut at the Hirschfeld Theatre.
Panic! at the Disco formed in 2004 and its 2005 debut, “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out,” went platinum thanks to the band’s smash hit single, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies.” Urie is the sole remaining and only full-time member of the original group.
Urie is just the latest in a wave of musicians jumping to Broadway, including Sara Bareilles in “Waitress,” Josh Groban in “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812,” Sting in “The Last Ship” and Green Day’s frontman Billie Joe Armstrong in “American Idiot.”
Urie said he spoke with singer Carly Rae Jepsen, who starred in “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella” on Broadway in 2014, who told him it was the best time she’s ever had. “I want to give it a 110 percent. As much as I can,” he said.