Interview with Lea Salonga
Thursday / October 1, 2026
About Lea Salonga
Filipino singer and actress who won a Tony for Miss Saigon, provided the singing voices of Jasmine in Aladdin and Mulan, and coaches on The Voice in the Philippines.
Source: BUILD Series on YouTube
These answers are taken from Lea Salonga Discusses Her Musical Theatre Career on BUILD Series's YouTube channel. You! Backstage did not conduct this interview.
What was your very first experience with singing?
The discovery happened by one of my cousins, who was very active in Repertory Philippines, which is a theater group back home. I was singing at family parties, and so she tells my mom, can you please get her to this audition? They're looking for kids. I was six. I auditioned and had a very smart-a** mouth already, and so was not intimidated at all by the director who was sitting in front of me, and she can intimidate just about anybody. After I was done, I shouted to my mom, who was sitting at the back of the house trying to hide, "Mom, how did I do?" And so the director is like, "You did fine, now get off the stage." And I got into the show. It was The King and I. I was the kid with a big speech at the end of the show, Princess Ying Yaowalak.
What do you enjoy most about singing?
Coming back to Broadway is always a special thing. There's really nothing like it. It's the knowledge that every guy in the tech crew, every stagehand, every prop master, they have your back all the time, and they always do it with so much calm. It's ridiculous how calm these guys are. You can see them working really hard, but it's so that you don't panic. And dressers and all of that backstage stuff, that's what makes it fun.
Performing on stage is always fun, and getting to perform in front of great audiences that come to Broadway shows. But a lot of it is coming back to that backstage camaraderie and family, and forming a family with a new cast of people. That's the attraction. The performing is great, but there's all the other stuff too that people don't always get to see.
What advice do you have for new singers?
You have to be in the moment. But here's the funny thing about doing live theater. You have to be in the moment and totally immersed in this reality that you've created, but you kind of still have to have a toehold on actual reality in case anything goes wrong. You need to have another eye or ear tuned in to what's happening backstage in case somebody gets injured, so you start thinking of what to do, either to help cover it up or to make transitions seamless.
Somebody gave me this analogy: it's like watching a duck on a lake, swimming very serene above the water, but underneath it's crazy. That's what doing theater is like. It's the serenity and not wanting to break focus for the sake of the audiences that are there to escape their own reality.
Has your career as a singer progressed the way you expected?
I'm just glad to be working. I'm in my mid 40s now, I'm 46, and I'm just glad to be working and happy and grateful. And I'm constantly reminded. I have a husband who's extremely grateful on my behalf as well, and he always says, you know what, opportunities don't always come, so let's just be happy and grateful for the ones that do. Whether it's a Broadway musical or a show in Manila or concerts or The Voice. The Voice has been just an incredible gift. So I'm just happy that it's still coming, because there's going to be that time when all I'll hear are crickets around me. So I'm trying to appreciate all of this as much as I can while I can.
How do you keep communication clear with directors, music directors and the people you perform with?
When I do a cast recording, for any country, I have to remain faithful to a character. People will know my voice anyway, but I have to do it not as me, and I have to stay true to the character I'm playing, which means I really have to be watchful of anything extraneous that might creep in, which would not be right for Kim, for example. I think there was one performance in London where I went a little far to the left, and boy, did that creative team just let me have it. When things like ad-libs happen, or you do stuff that's not really true to the character you're playing, they will rein you back in, and they will let you know they're not happy. Which I actually appreciate, because sometimes you need that.
Describe your style.
As a singer, you take something and you turn it into something else and you reinterpret it and you give it a different spin, and it means something totally different from what it was originally, which is a fun thing to do. When I do my own album I have a lot more freedom, so I can interpret one song one way today, and I'll interpret it in the show another way the next day. As long as you get to the essence of the song and your intent is exactly what you want it to be, there's a lot of wiggle room for interpretation.
I tend to belt more. So I just do. If [Judy Kuhn] decides to shift into a head tone, I'm like, oh, I can still belt there. I guess I'll belt up there. And I figured, as long as what I'm doing is true to the character I'm playing, then it's good.
Tell me about a song or a role that was hard to get right. What was it and why was it challenging?
Days and Days is one of those songs where it works in context. You kind of need to see the rest of the show happen before we get to the point where she's sitting at the table with her daughter. We took the scene from the actual graphic novel, where we just sit at the table and she just lays everything out to her daughter, and we're not moving. I'm singing the entire thing sitting down at the table. And so the challenge is, how do you make this an emotional experience without moving?
Tell me something I may not know from reading your credits.
I think that the Disney Princess phenomenon is a much more recent thing, because I don't remember having my life's desire to be a Disney princess. I was a kid living in the Philippines. It's not something you necessarily aspire to, because it's not something that's on your radar. It wasn't something that I was thinking about. And then I get to voice two of them. So that's a wild thing for that to happen.
What are some of your professional goals for the future?
There are other roles in musicals I'd like to do that, the older I'm getting, I'm starting to eye now. I've done Kim in Miss Saigon, and there's now a 21-year-old playing Kim, and I'm like, oh, I do not envy you right now. I'm starting to look at things like Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, or Joanne in Company, and being able to tackle Sondheim more, just because of how smart and urbane and erudite the lyrics are, and how much life experience you can have to dig into in order to interpret those things just right.
The older I'm getting, the roles that I'm looking forward to playing are older women, women that have lived life. I'm not really interested anymore in playing these pretty young things, because you've not lived yet. It's much more interesting to play somebody that's had a life and has seen a lot. It's just a much more varied and deep and rich playground to immerse oneself in.
Lea Salonga's Full Biography
Lea Salonga began her singing career at the age of ten, when she recorded her first album, Small Voice. She also hosted her own musical TV show, "Love, Lea". She starred in "Miss Saigon" and was then offered the role of the singing voice of Jasmine in the Disney film Aladdin (1992). She has continued to record albums. Lea has performed for Queen Elizabeth II, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.