Now it's on Broadway, with a twist. What if Celine Dion was actually on the ship?
That's the premise of "Titanique," the brainchild of two best friends who bet everything on a wild idea.
Marla Mindelle and Constantine Rousouli, who also play Celine and Jack, have spent years bringing the show to life. They sat down with Entertainment Reporter Joelle Garguilo at Voco Rooftop in Midtown.
Rousouli sums it up simply: "We keep on saying, three bags, one dream."
"It's been a 10-year process to get here," Mindelle said.
The idea had humble, and humorous, beginnings.
"As great things do, drunk in a bar," Mindelle says. "We both had worked on Broadway before, and then we were like, we gave up on our Broadway dreams. We're going to make it in L.A. He's going to be an actor. I'm going to be a Hollywood writer. How hard can it be? And we both lost everything."
They eventually reconnected while working in dinner theater in Los Angeles.
"And we were doing movie-to-musical parody, and he was like, what if we did 'Titanic' with all Celine Dion songs?" Mindelle says. "And he was like, you're going to do it, Marla. You're going to be Celine. I'll be Jack, and we're just going to write it."
At first, she laughed it off. "I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Slap. Go to sleep. Go to sleep," she says, adding that they sat on the idea for two years.
When they finally put pen to paper, the show began in scrappy fashion in Los Angeles before making its way to New York.
"Off-Off-Broadway, where you first saw us, we were in the basement of a Gristedes," Mindelle said.
Beyond the humor, both credit each other for getting them to Broadway.
"I gave up on the Broadway dream, and Connie didn't," Mindelle said. "If not for Connie's tenacity and his delusion, he never had any doubt that we would be here, and I did."
Rousouli is just as effusive in return. "She's my muse, and I was just like, wow, the talent that this woman has, her pure genius, her comedic genius," he said.
Taking on Celine Dion was no small feat for Mindelle.
"She was one of the biggest vocal inspirations of my life," Mindelle said. "But when Connie said, you're going to play Celine, I was like, no, I'm not. I can't do that, she's the greatest singer in the world."
She approached the role through careful observation. "I started to notice that she has such a distinct language, how she looks at the camera, how she finds people, how she talks," Mindelle said. "So it's a love letter, after all, to Celine Dion."
Looking back, both say the journey itself is part of the message.
"Hard work really will pay off at the end of the day," Rousouli said.
"Mine would be: always trust a gay man," Mindelle said.
What keeps audiences coming back, they say, is the unexpected blend of nostalgia, comedy and spontaneity.
"People come into our show not knowing what to expect, 'Titanic' and Celine Dion," Mindelle said. "It's like these two incredible IPs. How will they mash together People come in and they're like, I can't even tell you how much I needed to laugh like that."
"She's my puppet. She drags me through the depths of hell and back," Rousouli said.
"The improv is one of the reasons people come back so much," Mindelle said. "You will never see the same show twice, so you never know what you're going to get, but people just love it."
Ten years, a hot glue gun and each other, that's how they got to Broadway.
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