Posted by Emily Exton on 02/23/2012 at 11:24 AM Videos

The Popdust Files: idina menzel, lady gaga, Poker Face

Like her character Shelby Corcoran on Glee did with her long lost abandoned daughter Rachel Berry, Idina Menzel performed “Poker Face” for the concert Idina Menzel Live: Barefoot at the Symphony, available on DVD March 6. The elaborate, symphony-backed rendition was stretched out thanks to multiple interruptions by Menzel, who packs just as much personality as she does vocal prowess. She first stopped conductor Marvin Hamlisch to reveal her initial reaction to being called for the part of 25-year-old Lea Michele’s mother, following the birth of her own child, Nathaniel Diggs. “So it wasn’t the best day of my life, but I figured glass half-full, glass half-full,” she said. Humility aside, the plan for recently reunited mother and daughter to perform Lady Gaga together caught her off guard. “I’m not that prissy of a person, but ‘Poker Face’? Because I always sort of associated that song with some other things,” she explained. So super fans take note: we’re not crazy for occasionally criticizing this show; cast members get confused, too! Still, Menzel was not stupid enough to overlook the power of the Glee Machine, particularly following her own maternity leave. “But I said, ‘glass half-full, glass half-full,’ going with it, I’m fat and I need a job!” Such blind optimism is probably what the rest of the cast has been forced to rely on when things like this are proposed.

[Broadway]