What’s the most insane thing a celebrity has ever said in an interview? This question, posed on X (formerly Twitter) this week, prompted the sharing of some truly wild celebrity interview moments. Largely, they came from a pre-social media age, when the stars were far less wary of their words being misinterpreted. But one of the best moments ever came from Nicole Scherzinger, the de facto lead singer of The Pussycat Dolls.
Over the years, Nicole has had plenty of viral moments. Back in her days with the girl group, she was never best pleased about being outsung by her bandmates, while she admitted in another much-memed interview with The Guardian in 2023 to loving a British Sunday roast so much she’d sometimes eat two.
This clip, however, was taken from a 2012 Behind the Music interview for VH1. During the career-spanning interview, Nicole talked about her time as a member of manufactured girl group The Pussycat Dolls. During the interview, she made some seriously wild allegations about the vocals on the girl group’s 2005 debut album PCD. The record was released in 2005 off the back of the band’s debut single “Don’t Cha” and featured hits “Buttons”, “Beep” and “Stickwitu”.
In the clip, Nicole threw major shade at her fellow band members. Opening with ‘Oh man, I hope that I don’t get in trouble for the stuff that I say, because I’ve never really talked about it,' she confessed, ‘I’ll never forget, I finished the album PCD, and [executive producer Ron Fair] and I brought the girls into the studio and we played it for them. It was the first time they’d ever heard the music.' Nicole then gave the camera a knowing look, saying, ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? We played the album for the Pussycat Dolls. It was the first time they’d ever heard the songs.’
Elsewhere in the interview, Nicole clarified, ‘I love those girls. They're like my sisters, but people don't even know the story. They have no idea. I was in the centre because I was the one singing… I probably did 95 percent of the album on my own.’ Fair echoed this, adding, ‘The other girls worked just as hard. They travelled just as hard. They showed up. They rehearsed. They were all part of it. It was just a group, but Nicole was the singer. The girls should have been gracious all along and said that the whole time.’
It seems that for The Pussycat Dolls, there were always tensions within the band. The group was originally created as a burlesque-style group in the 1990s, turned into a singing group in the early 2000s. While producer Fair said that there were ‘some adequate voices in the original group’, they needed serious singing talent, and selected Nicole and Melody Thornton from 500 prospective band members to ‘bring the ability’ in 2003. Nicole was certainly a musical talent of another level, with musical theatre training predating her experience in girl groups.
Early reviews of PCD pointed this out too, with one reviewer writing of the first album commenting that ‘lead singer Nicole Scherzinger and at least a couple of her fellow Dolls have supple voices’. In viral clips often shared on social media from the time, Nicole is seen ‘visibly raging’ whenever Melody started ad-libbing and singing over her.
The group split in 2009, with Nicole going on to a successful solo career (with hit songs like ‘Poison’ and ‘Don’t Hold Your Breath’) and as a TV talent show judge. While the band did plan to reunite, it was put on hold and eventually cancelled in 2022.
Still, it worked out well for Nicole. The only band member with any songwriting credits on PCD, she would go on to become a musical theatre star in her own right, performing in the West End and this year picking up an Olivier Award nomination for the role of Norma Desmond in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard. Later this year, she’ll reprise the role on Broadway. Not bad really, is it?