BERT NEWTON: I’d like you to see some footage of a show which I’m very happy to be cast in, The Sound of Music, and there it is. Now the most important thing in The Sound of Music, or certainly one of the most important things, is the casting of the kids, and we’ve been very lucky so far. We’ve had some wonderful groups in each of the cities we’re playing in, including Perth right now, but we have special memories of Sydney, possibly because that’s where the show opened. But also, we had a very talented bunch of kids. There’s one particularly that I know that you will know already. Just have a look at the shot there, of the Von Trapp children, and right slap bang in the middle, is somebody who has been seen by 138 billion people right around the world. The only thing that I’m grateful for is the fact that I was nice to her during The Sound of Music. [audience laughs]
Nikki Webster, we love her, I know you feel exactly the same way. We welcome her to the show.
Hi Nikki.
NIKKI WEBSTER: Hi.
BERT NEWTON: It’s good to see you, it is good to see you. With everything which has been happening for you in recent times do you still have some memories of The Sound of Music?
NIKKI WEBSTER: Oh yes definitely. Actually on the opening of the opening ceremony I got a fax from them just before I went on and everyone had left their little message, and it was just so great to hear from them.
BERT NEWTON: Well as I mentioned to you off-air, everybody in the show that worked with you in Sydney, they all send their love. In actual fact when we moved to Melbourne you came down and saw us.
NIKKI WEBSTER: Yes, that’s right, yeah.
BERT NEWTON: Which is just terrific. Is it hard to explain – I was talking to Lauren Burns before about winning gold – even though you don’t have a medal as such around you, you won gold too. From the inside, looking out, what sort of an experience was it for you? Is it hard to describe?
NIKKI WEBSTER: Oh definitely. It was just such a great experience. I was given such a great experience just to be there as part of the opening and closing ceremony. It’s just so hard to explain it.
BERT NEWTON: So how were you chosen, what was the process? Just like a theater show?
NIKKI WEBSTER: Yeah, yeah. Well my first audition was on March the 10th, and I didn’t hear for a couple of months, so I didn’t think I got the role, but I thought it was good to go and try. So in about June they phoned up and said I was down to about the last 20 or something, and that was the first time they took us flying. So that was pretty exciting, and they only took us up like five meters or something just to see if we were scared and I was going, “Can’t we go higher?” [laughs]
BERT NEWTON: Were you scared? Not at all?
NIKKI WEBSTER: Not at all! But then it just kept eliminating people and then I got the part in August.
BERT NEWTON: How many originally, would you know, went for it?
NIKKI WEBSTER: I don’t know.
BERT NEWTON: Hundreds, I would think.
NIKKI WEBSTER: Hundreds, yeah. I’ve been told that I was one of the only girls that went for all of the auditions.
BERT NEWTON: It’s an extraordinary thing, because it’s one of those things, Nikki, that only you will know what it was like, because it won’t happen again in that particular guise. Did you find, on the night itself, could you make any comparison to say the opening night of The Sound of Music? I know it’s so much bigger, and the audience was so much bigger too, but was it a similar sort of feeling?
NIKKI WEBSTER: It was. Because I love performing, just like when I walked into the middle of that stadium, the whole audience just applauded me which gave me a boost, the same as when you’re doing a stage show – when you come on, people applaud you – like having the experience from the musicals that I’ve done has actually given me a bigger boost and it’s been great.
BERT NEWTON: What have you done apart from The Sound of Music?
NIKKI WEBSTER: Um, I did Les Mis, I played Cosette in Les Mis.
BERT NEWTON: Of Course, that’s right.
NIKKI WEBSTER: And Cinderella and Aladdin.
BERT NEWTON: What about the chance you had of working and I know that it wasn’t just press talk because I know in little conversations with you, that two of your idols are Kylie Minogue and Olivia Newton-John. All of a sudden, those dreams have come true for you.
NIKKI WEBSTER: Oh, that’s right. Just meeting, well meeting Olivia in the opening and just seeing, like she’s such an amazing performer, and then not knowing that I was gonna be in the closing, and then meeting Kylie! And her spending so much time with me, like we did the bridge climb together, she took me out for lunch and dinner, she was just so nice. They were just such great role models for me.
BERT NEWTON: When did you know that she was going to become an older you?
NIKKI WEBSTER: Um… Probably in one of the rehearsals for the closing, that we had out somewhere, and she just told me what she was doing and the role she was playing, so that was really, really exciting!
BERT NEWTON: Do you know life has really moved on pretty quickly for you, 60 Minutes story which is some sort of an ultimate in television coverage, but you seem to have handled everything terrifically. I know that you come from a great family, and your feet are right on the ground, but would it be easy for someone in your age group to have this huge chance, to allow it to affect you? How do you control it, I guess that’s what I’m saying.
NIKKI WEBSTER: Well I just basically try and keep my feet on the ground and like, walking down the street people recognize me – and everyone’s really nice, so I get compliments back, which while I was there, in the stadium, that’s what I was trying to do: make people happy and enjoy the story I was telling.
BERT NEWTON: Now the interesting thing is that if you did nothing else in show business you’ve achieved so much, but you will do much more because everyone who should know, around The Sound of Music company, always pinpointed the fact that you were gonna do great things. We didn’t realize quite as quickly as you did them.
It’s now released, the song that you did in the opening ceremony, We’ll Be One. You’re gonna sing it for us this morning which is just terriffic, and you’re also doing some appearances which I’ll mention just before the song. But you know, the thing that stays in my mind, everyone’s got a favourite moment with Nikki Webster but when you said in one of the press stories that you knew that what had just happened to you – that was after the opening ceremony – was going to change your life, but you said it wasn’t going to change you…
NIKKI WEBSTER: [smiles and shakes her head]
BERT NEWTON: And that was just… I know that you would feel that, that wouldn’t just be a throwaway line.
NIKKI WEBSTER: No.
BERT NEWTON: And you’ve got so much ahead of you and I know that apart from your talent shining through, the sort of person you are will shine through, too. Little present here from GMA, this is the one that we gave Lauren, too. Press it and it sings Advance Australia Fair.
NIKKI WEBSTER: Oh, thank-you! Thank you very much!
BERT NEWTON: Great to see you Nikki.
NIKKI WEBSTER: You too.
BERT NEWTON: Nikki Webster, who’s back to sing for us very soon!
Screencaps: Click here.