I know Audra McDonald from her role on Private Practice but I had no idea that she could sing! Her voice is so powerful and moving, as you will hear when you see her in her role as Garderobe, an opera singer who is transformed into a wardrobe in the new Disney’s live-action film, Beauty And The Beast. In addition to being an extremely talented actress and singer, she is also incredibly nice.

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Audra McDonald Shares 8 Beauty And The Beast Fun Facts

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  • Audra auditioned for Beauty and the Beast on Broadway but wasn’t cast, so on the night before they started filming she mentioned that to Alan who said “I know, I know, I know. Is this okay?” to which she responded “yes. [LAUGHS] Thank you, this, this fixes it, thank you.”
  • She was a really hyperactive child, so when her parents put her into theater it set her on her path.
  • Although her kids were happy that she got the role of, the fact that she was working with Emma Watson was what they were really excited about.
  • Found doing the voice of Garderobe to be “incredibly liberating”

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  • The shoes that she wore under her dress were also the feet of the wardrobe, “so if you’d actually seen my shoes, they curled up into the exact sort of way that the legs of the wardrobe and all of that. I mean and even within the design of like our make up and all of it is echoed our objects”
  • Because her dress was so big and because her wig was literally two feet off of her head and so heavy the set carpenters built something to lean on between takes. “it was a like a humungous, about three feet taller than that thing of wood, slab of wood that had a bicycle seat.
  • While she normally hates watching herself on film or on screen, as she watched Beauty And The Beast at the London premiere she “felt completely removed from it. I didn’t really see myself up there, I was just in the world and I was weeping at the end and I was like, ‘I was there, I was in the scene. Why am I crying so much?’ but…you get swept up, you get absolutely swept up.”
  • Hopes that the audience sees this film and that they take away that “…love conquers all, love wins and it’s not about just giving the love but loving yourself too. I think that’s what’s so important. And realizing that what you have inside of you is most important and not the outside doesn’t necessarily matter.”

Want more Beauty And The Beast? Check out:

On March 17th, rediscover a tale as old as time!

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