Last year at this time, Carly Rae Jepsen was fresh off her opening gig on Justin Bieber's Believe Tour, after her ubiquitous pop hit "Call Me Maybe" broke Billboard records and inspired hundreds of internet memes. Everyone from Bieber and Selena Gomez to Harvard's baseball team made videos of themselves singing, "Here's my number, so call me maybe!"
But this year the two Canadian singers, who share the manager Scooter Braun, are in much different places. While Bieber's laying low after he was arrested for a DUI last month, Jepsen's making her Broadway debut as Cinderella. "It's always been on my bucket list," says Jepsen of performing on the Great White Way. "My family is more excited about this than anything. I was like, 'I'm going on tour with Justin Bieber and I'm going to be at the Grammys,' and they're like, 'OK great,' and then I'm like, 'I'm going to be on Broadway,' and they're like, 'What!? We're going to book our tickets!' It's just such a funny reaction, but I think it's because I grew up being in musicals. It was something I was always involved in and had a passion for at a young age, so it made sense to them. I think they always thought that was the direction I would take and it was a bit of a surprise that I got kind of addicted to pop."

Image: Diggy Lloyd

Though she says that she might never have gotten to Broadway if not for her pop star pedigree, her goal is not to "popify" the classic tale. Stepping into the role originated by Broadway sweetheart Laura Osnes, Jepsen has been learning to sing like a musical theater star again after so many years singing her own tunes. "It's all a brave new world for me to take on not just the songs but to do them as much musical theater justice as I can," the 28-year-old says. "But I think we've all been figuring out the happy balance between sounding like me and still making it sound like a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical." After she wraps up her limited-time-only engagement, she'll head back to L.A. to work on the follow-up to her American debut album Kiss, but for now she's enjoying being someone else for a while. "It was a little scary the first day or two trying on the dresses, but once it was all together with the makeup and the hair and the dress and the slippers I didn't feel like myself, but in a very confident way. I was like, I'm a princess—let's just be this for a minute."
This article originally published at PAPER Mag here
On the front lines of cultural chaos since 1984.