The musical love story ‘On Your Feet!’ about Gloria and Emilio Estefan thrills audiences around the country. Photograpy Johan Persson
How has it been bringing the show to the UK?
“It’s been fantastic. The cast is amazing. Christie Prades, who was in the original Broadway production, has been loving it because she has a whole different energy to play off. The book is brand new to the English cast and the acting choices they’ve made are spectacular. And Philippa Stefani, who is performing at certain shows in London and is headlining the UK tour, is just wonderful.”
Has any dramatic licence been taken with true-life events?
“It’s all true, although maybe not always at the moment you see it happening on stage, and some of the songs aren’t in chronological order – they’ve been moved around to suit the story. The only thing that’s not true is Emilio having a six-pack, as he does in the show. [Laughs] It’s in there somewhere but washboard abs he does not have.”
What are you most proud of about your career as it’s depicted in the show?
“That we stayed true to who we were. What I tell every young artist is ‘They’re gonna try and change you’. One time they even told Emilio ‘Lose the singer!’ because it was the time of bands with male leads. Yes, Fleetwood Mac had two female singers but they also had male singers and yes, there was Madonna and Cyndi Lauper but that was a new thing in music. The record company even told Emilio to get rid of the horns and the percussion section. But we said ‘This is who we are’ and we fought to stay true to that. I’m proud that we were able to manoeuvre our way into the business without compromising. I remember saying ‘I can deal with failure if it’s something you really believe in but dealing with success when you’re making music you don’t like or that’s not true to you is gonna be really hard’. We stuck to our guns and learned we’re our best cheerleaders.”
You have a huge LGBTQ following. Have you encountered any drag queen Glorias over the years?
“Of course! I love them. They’re far more fabulous than I ever could be and far more out-there. The other day in Miami a friend of mine had her bridal shower at a drag brunch. When we walked in the drag queen who was headlining went ‘Oh my God, the patron saint of drag queens has just walked through the door’. That’s one of my favourite introductions ever. We ended up doing the Conga with them and it was a blast.”
When did you first get hooked on music?
“I was just four or five years old. I was actually quite shy but music was my love and it would transport me. The old Cuban standards were always playing in our house and I sang as soon as I could talk. Music was big in our household. My mother performed in school shows and she won a contest to do the Spanish dubbing for Shirley Temple’s films, but her father wanted her to pursue an academic career instead. And my own father had two brothers who sang and played guitar. So I guess music was in the gene pool. Then I started listening to the British Invasion. I remember pulling into a laundromat parking lot with my mother and hearing Ferry Cross The Mersey. My hair stood on end and I didn’t want to get out of the car, I was so enraptured. That song really is like a Bolero in its rhythm. British bands were listening to a lot of Latin music and The Beatles recorded Besame Mucho. All that mixing of sounds had a huge impact on me and I had all this musical vocabulary to draw from.”
You met and began working with Emilio in 1975. Did you know back then you were on to a winning thing?
“I’m a bit psychic and early on I remember telling Emilio ‘I think we’re gonna be famous and I think we’re gonna be famous all over the world’. I believed so strongly in the music and I didn’t know how it was going to happen but I just knew something was gonna happen.”
How was it being hailed as a 1980s sex symbol?
“That was tough for me. I never hid the fact I was married and had a kid [son Nayib] and growing up I never felt sexy at all. But I learned to embrace what people felt was sexy and that seemed to stem from allowing people to see who I was and how music made me feel. I think that’s a sexy thing, when someone is confident and you can tell they believe in what they’re doing.”
When putting together On Your Feet! how tough was it for you to revisit the 1990 bus crash that could have ended your career?
“It’s strange because I remember more the aftermath than the actual crash. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who have also been involved in accidents and they agree there must be some mechanism in our brains or our spirits where you remember before and after but you don’t remember the actual moment of impact. I was awake for it and afterwards, as I lay on the floor, I was in so much pain I was praying I’d faint but I never did. I remember everything except the actual breaking of my back.”
What got you through the painful process of rehabilitation?
“I grew up taking care of my wheelchair-bound father so I knew what my family might have to face with me. I didn’t care about getting back on stage. I just wanted to be independent and walk again. I said ‘OK, if I end up in a chair I’ll figure out a way to deal with it but I am gonna fight my hardest for that not to happen’. Then I started getting all these letters from people. They kept throwing the song Get On Your Feet back in my face and I said to Emilio ‘I never did this for the fame so what if this is the sole reason I became famous? What if I have the opportunity through my perseverance to somehow inspire people?’ I rehabbed like six or seven hours a day, first in the pool because I couldn’t walk, and I had biofeedback – attaching electrodes to the muscles so they wouldn’t die.”
Now with your story being retold on stage, have people mentioned to you about how it has inspired them?
“They have and it’s wonderful. There was a man who ran a company with 20 employees. He told me: ‘My wife took me to your show on a Broadway weekend and I went along reluctantly because it was the fifth show and I was Broadway-ed out. But because of your show I now have a 60-person company because I’d given up on my dreams of making it bigger, then seeing it really inspired me.’ Another person wanted to start a swim programme for special needs students, but they’d never gotten around to it, thinking ‘This is never gonna happen’. Then they started it after seeing the show and it’s been incredibly successful.”
On Your Feet www.atgtickets.com
