While she may be best known as a pop sensation, Olivia Rodrigo has a solid list of acting credits too.
Though the Guts songwriter may have no interest in returning to the big screen anytime soon, she did confirm the one role that would tempt her back to acting. Rodrigo, who has headlined Glastonbury Festival and recently released Christmas-themed single, Take Me Home (4 Christmas), confirmed a William Shakespeare adaptation would be the role she comes out of acting retirement for. Rodrigo’s last role on-screen came as Nini Salazar-Roberts in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Whether Rodrigo makes a return to acting, four years after her last role as part of the High School Musical franchise is yet to be see, but when speaking to the BBC she made it clear that there’s one job she couldn’t turn down.
She said: “Juliet in Romeo and Juliet. Obvioulsy, the best love story of all time.” It’s unlikely that Rodrigo will be back on the big screen anytime soon though, with performances at The O2 in London next year, along with a rising profile as one of modern pop’s best performers. Rodrigo has used her star power to profile her influences too, appearing with The Cure’s Robert Smith, Talking Heads’ David Byrne, and Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo at various events in the last few years.
Despite her star power, Rodrigo confirmed that she had a near-panic attack before taking to the stage at Glastonbury Festival. She said: “I remember having like a near anxiety attack in the bathroom, like, ‘How am I going to do this? I don’t know if I’m ready.’
“But something overcame me the second I stepped on stage and started singing. I felt, like, totally calm and so in my element. I’m not very spiritual or religious, but it’s moments like that where I feel music is just so magical that you just can’t really describe it.”
Rodrigo went on to explain that she had three bowls of dessert before heading to Worthy Farm, where she put on a memorable show which featured two covers of The Cure and a four-song encore. She said: “I stayed at this [hotel] that had the best sticky toffee pudding, and I was like, ‘You know what? I gotta do it. If the toffee’s really hot and the ice cream melts on top, it’s really good.”
A full setlist for Rodrigo’s Glastonbury Festival show can be found below.
- Obsessed
- Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl
- Vampire
- Drivers License
- Traitor
- Bad Idea Right?
- Love is Embarrassing
- Pretty Isn’t Pretty
- Happier
- Enough for You
- Friday I’m in Love (The Cure cover with Robert Smith)
- Just Like Heaven (The Cure cover with Robert Smith)
- So American
- Jealousy, Jealousy
- Favourite Crime
- Deja Vu
- Brutal
- All-American Bitch
- Good 4 U
- Get Him Back!
Though Rodrigo would not play Maggots for Brains during her set, she confirmed the song had received a few changes before its release that only she seemed to notice. Rodrigo said: “I love that song musically, and there’s a lot going on – a lot of harmonies – and literally in the car, I was like, turn that backing vocal up just one decibel. I was getting kind of weird about it. Nobody else will notice.”
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