Exclusive | Andrew Lloyd Webber is overjoyed he got Nicole Scherzinger to Broadway: The happiest person in history

Andrew Lloyd Webber never thought he’d get Nicole Scherzinger to Broadway.“I always remember when she did ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’ on a TV show some years ago,” Lloyd Webber told me during an hour-long sit-down. After her performance on that 2013 ITV special, “Cats” director Trevor Nunn excitedly rang him up and said, “That’s the best it’s ever been.” “He was right,” Lloyd Webber said.“And that was the moment where I thought we’ve got to get her into the theater.”A year later, the former Pussycat Doll was belting out “Memory” at the London Palladium as Grizabella in “Cats.” But her Broadway contract didn’t work out.

She was always being booked as a judge on TV singing contests.Nine lives, er, years, went by, and then the outre director Jamie Lloyd (known for Ibsen — not singin’ or dancin’) approached the composer with a strange idea — Scherzinger should play Norma Desmond, the has-been Hollywood star, in “Sunset Boulevard.”“And I said, ‘Well, good luck!’,” Lloyd Webber, 77, remembered.“‘If you get her to the altar, I’m going to be the happiest person in history.’ And he did.”She’s unforgettable in the show at the St.

James — bold, beautiful, petrifying and revelatory.  A week ago, the starkly reimagined production deservedly scored seven Tony Award nominations, including for Best Revival, the indomitable Scherzinger, her exciting leading man Tom Francis and director Lloyd.“It is darker and, I think, it’s also deeper,” Lloyd Webber said of his totally different 1994 musical.The composer of “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “The Phantom of  the Opera” is collaborating with Lloyd again this summer on a production of “Evita” in London at the Palladium starring Rachel Zegler. The director, who successfully uses live cameras and screens in “Sunset,” wants to pull a similar trick with “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina.” But so far, he’s faced backlash from local pol...