- Hi, I'm Jennifer Hudson, I'm from the film Cats.
- Hi, I'm Francesca Hayward, I play Victoria in Cats.
- Hey, what's up people?
I'm Jason Derulo, here with Cats, playing with kittens,
while answering fan questions.
(upbeat music)
- Oh my goodness, I'm gonna cry, I'm not joking! (gasps)
- Oh my God, come here!
It's okay, you are so precious.
Y'all want me to be your mama, I know you do.
My first reaction when I saw myself as a cat?
I couldn't identify myself.
I actually thought I was Jason Derulo. (laughs)
- You know, it's insane how the characters come to life.
A lot of things you have no idea what it'll look like.
I was just really excited, you know?
I remember watching it like three or four times
when I first seen it,
just because you know just visually
it's just so stimulating.
- The glamor in Grizabella,
I feel like I related to the most.
And then I feel like we have a similar story
to a certain extent.
She comes with a depth, she has the glamor,
but yeah, so I would say Grizabella.
(kitten meows) I'm not going to hurt you.
Can you give me a kiss?
- Oh (mumbles)
(gasps) No, she's not real.
I like my character Victoria a lot,
because I like her personality,
that she's curious but she's also--she's kind,
and goodhearted, and she's also pretty brave,
and she's kind of unpredictable.
- Where did you go? There you are.
I definitely relate to Rum Tum Tugger the most.
I don't know if it's because I played him,
but I think he's kind of like myself, you know,
sometimes we get so caught up in life
that we forget to stop and smell the roses,
you know what I'm saying?
And he's a playboy, much like myself, too.
- Playing on the set.
You should see the set,
everything is magnified from a cat's perspective.
Like imagine these kitties, this room is enormous,
as humans we don't see it that way,
so to go on the set everything is magnified,
like a kitchen sink would be a bathtub to a cat.
And all of us turned into children
playing on the set of Cats.
- I have a great memory of seeing
Judi Dench just snuggled up in a cat basket,
that was a pretty good memory. (laughs)
- James Corden is hilarious, Rebel Wilson is hilarious,
you know, you get them in a room,
and like you just can't stop laughing.
So like some of my favorite moments was my banter--
was my banter with Rebel probably.
A lot of the stuff we probably can't keep,
'cause it was so dirty, and it's a family movie.
But it was just hilarious, hilarious.
- I think the dancers were best at playing a cat.
I think Francesca was amazing as well.
Everybody!
Because the thing is we all got to create our own cats,
like us as humans, we're all individuals,
although we have similar characteristics and mannerisms,
but we use it in our own ways, but we did that as cats.
And it was helpful being with the ensemble of dancers,
and you mirror them because they specialize in movement,
so I feel like they were most inspiring
as to know how to move cat-like. (hisses)
- I think we all had our own way of being a cat,
so it was really interesting seeing
like everyone's different take on it.
- I'm definitely best at playing a cat, obviously.
The Les Twins I feel like, you know,
were really, really solid,
their movement is really crazy.
And like being a dancer, it helps out a ton,
and they're some of the most incredible dancers in the world
so I feel like they were really, really powerful.
- It was a process that when I first heard about, like,
"We got to go to cat school? Wait, how a human be a cat?
Wait, what?"
The key for me was--
(sniffs) Sniffing! (laughs)
Because it makes you more animalistic,
like you realize as humans we use our eyes
to enter a place or guide us.
Well, cats, they use their senses.
Did you know when they put their paws on your face,
they're laying their scent on you, and you become theirs?
Uh-huh, so I say what do we do as humans to do that?
I don't know what we would do,
but they have their own way to be social
and things like that.
Like right now, they're loving each other!
Did that make any sense?
- We kind of had to do like
the cat school was totally important,
'cause we had to do a lot of imagining of like, so--
we could imagine where our little ears would be
and our tail so that we could do all that.
Putting on the suit and being like
programmed into the computer,
we had to do like--what was it called?--calibrating,
we had to like calibrate ourselves twice a day
to the computer, so that was part of the process
of getting ready in the morning.
So I guess, yeah, all in all, it took me
about an hour to get ready.
- Every day we'd get in really early,
and then we'd have to put on our green suits,
but then we'd have to sit in make-up for like 30-40 minutes.
And it's not like getting made-up for camera,
it's more like CGI makeup, so there's a bunch of dots,
but there's also slight discoloration
by the way your cat looks.
So for me they would have to put white here
and a little white here, so you'd get the dots,
but then just for reference,
they kind of make your cat look like you kinda,
a little bit.
- So I recently just got two cats,
which is named Macavity and Grizabella,
and all they do is sleep all day, and relax.
They are my cuddle buddies, I feel like getting cats
was the best decision I made this year, and they relax me,
like they are chilling.
When I left them this morning, they were laid up, relaxing.
That's what I would do if I was a cat.
And then they look so good doing everything.
They're so elegant, they have such great presence
in the way they move, it's so commanding.
Maybe I do want to be a cat. (laughs)
- I would get everyone to give me lots of attention,
so I could get all my favorite food,
and I would probably spend a lot of time sleeping.
It would be like a great day off.
- I would be just like a cat.
I'd be lazy, give me some milk, you know what I'm saying?
A little cream--Oh, where you going?
Wait, where you going? Where you going? (laughs)
That was an interesting feeling.
You ever had a cat crawl up your jacket?
I don't want to feel that again.
- I almost feel like the musicals choose me,
versus me choosing them.
I have to say it was the same for Dreamgirls
as it is for Cats, like when Tom Hooper came to see me about
being Grizabella in Cats, he's like, "You know Cats."
And I'm like I feel like I've heard of Cats,
and then he's like, "You know Memory."
And I said hmm.
Then when he played the song, I'm like of course,
everyone knows Memory.
But I never saw the play, I never saw Dreamgirls either,
but I know And I'm Telling You, I knew I'm Changing,
well, I knew Memory as well.
- I actually love the musical Ragtime.
I don't know if it's that known,
if you're not a musical lover,
but I think it's a brilliant story, the music is fantastic.
It was definitely one that I could see myself
doing as a film.
- There's so many good people to perform a duet
with in this cast,
but the first name to come to mind is Taylor Swift.
- So many great singers in the Cats cast,
you have Taylor Swift, you have Jennifer Hudson,
even James Corden is a brilliant singer.
- I knew Sex and the City was like the hottest show around,
but I had never watched that show either,
until I started prepping for it,
and then I went like crazy watching Sex and the City,
and I fell in love with it from there.
And obviously now it's a part of my life. (laughs)
Working with the cast of Sex and the City
is like being one of the girls in Sex and the City,
it's like a dream.
Who wouldn't want to be a part of that?
And to be able to say, I'm Louise from St. Louis, catch it?
It's a badge of honor, I think.
- Already just being told I was singing
was pretty overwhelming, 'cause I obviously didn't train
in singing.
Hello, hello!
I didn't train as a singer, I trained as a dancer,
so just to be singing at all was pretty crazy for me.
And then to be told that I was doing it with...
Like to have the song written by Taylor Swift
was just like absolutely incredible,
and she sang it to me for the first time,
like a private concert in a room, just the two of us.
I heard about the part of Victoria,
and I really wanted to audition because when I was little,
I used to watch the video of the stage musical
in my living room, when I was about seven or eight.
And I would always--I would invite my friends around,
and I would play the part of Victoria,
and make them dance to all the other cats,
and I would always be Victoria and dance around.
So yeah, it was definitely a dream come true
to get a chance to audition and I just wanted to go for it.
- (laughs) So nah, there won't be no cat-themed songs
on the album unfortunately, or fortunately.
What the album really stands for is, you know,
when you walk out the door in the morning,
sometimes we paint that picture that we want people to see,
of ourselves, and this album will show both that
and the side that people don't see.
- Many thanks to Best Friends Animal Society
for bringing these adorable kittens today!
- To find out more about Best Friends work
to save homeless dogs and cats, and how you can help...
- Go to bestfriends.org to get more info.
Come here, little buddy!
(upbeat music)