Donny Osmond has more energy than ever ahead of Scotland stint

Donny Osmond through the years: As part of family singing group The Osmonds in 1973; In the Donny and Marie TV series which ran from 1976 to 1979 and the grandad of 14 in 2023.

From The Andy Williams Show in the 60s to his Las Vegas residency in the present day, Donny Osmond’s career has traversed seven decades. But when he decides it is time to step away from the spotlight, there will be no long goodbyes.

The former teen idol says when the moment is right, he plans to quietly step back from a showbiz career that began when he was five years old.

“I don’t want to be the type of entertainer where people say, ‘It’s time to give up please’. I’ll close on my watch,” said Donny, who will spend December performing in Scotland.

“There will be a day, but I won’t announce it. I won’t do a farewell tour, I hate those. There are some artists out there who have done their eighth or ninth farewell tour. I won’t announce it’s my final performance, I’ll slip away quietly and enjoy the rest of my life.”

Speaking from Las Vegas, where his award-winning residency is one of the hottest tickets on the strip, the 66-year-old assured fans that day is still a long way off.

“It’s not anywhere near yet, because I still have an amazing amount of energy. If you saw my show in Vegas, you would wonder where I was finding it all, but as soon as I can’t give that amount of energy, that’s the day the curtain will close.”

An incredible career

From his pop career in the 70s and Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in the 90s to an 11-year Vegas residency with little sister Marie, there have been plenty of high points, but the pleasure he is currently experiencing tops it all.

“I’m enjoying my career now more than at any time in my life,” he said. “Even thinking back to Osmondmania in the 70s, it was very exciting but I didn’t understand the extreme amount of adulation that was going on. I was isolated from some of it to an extent, although I saw it on stage of course. But I wasn’t at a point in my life where I could really understand and enjoy what was going on, whereas now when you get a standing ovation at the end of a show it means a lot.

“I don’t take drugs but showbiz is my drug of choice. Getting on stage and interacting with the audience – that live synergy – that is the magic of showbiz I’ve felt since I was five years old. Doing this for six decades, you can’t stay on top the whole time, but sometimes I appreciate the valleys because then the peaks mean more, and that’s what’s happening now.”

Donny and Marie on their mid-70s TV show.

Christmas in Scotland

Adhering to the mantra that he would rather be busy than bored, Donny is looking forward to swapping his Vegas residency for a month-long stay in Edinburgh in December.

He will celebrate not only Christmas in the capital, but his 67th birthday too, when he returns to Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Joseph. It is the only city where Donny will appear, as the musical begins a new UK tour. It marks his first time back in the show since his six-year run between 1992 and 1998, when he racked up 2,000 performances. This time, though, he will play Pharaoh rather than Joseph.

“Can you imagine how that is going to feel for me?” he said. “At first, I felt I couldn’t be anyone but Joseph, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised it would be crazy good if I could nail the part.

“Andrew Lloyd Webber came to see me doing panto with Julian Clary at the Palladium two years ago and he asked me then what I thought about playing Pharaoh one day. When the call came earlier this year about doing it in December, I said let’s go.”

The Pharaoh character is often portrayed as an Elvis-style figure. Having had first-hand experience of Presley, Donny is preparing to ramp up his performance.

“I can’t just play the role; I have to take it to another level. I was chatting on Zoom with my director, Laurence Connor, the other day and we were laughing our heads off coming up with ideas on how to approach the role. I want to give away a Pharaoh scarf in every show and create that excitement that was there in the 70s. I have an arsenal of lines up my sleeve that crack me up – every show could be different depending on what I might say, what the audience does, or what the cast might do.”

Donny recalls being a teenager when he met Elvis, who was fond of calling the Osmond house.

“He liked talking to my mother because she reminded him of his mom. One day he phoned the house and my brother Alan picked up. Elvis asked if his mother was there and Alan asked who was calling. When he was told it was Elvis, Alan didn’t put two and two together, and he yelled, ‘Hey mom, some guy called Elvis is on the phone for you!’”

The seventh of nine children, with five kids of his own with wife Debbie and 14 grandchildren, Donny is not used to a quiet Christmas, but that’s exactly what he will have this year in Edinburgh.

“The kids aren’t coming over – they’re at their in-laws this year – so it will just be Debbie and myself. It’ll be a first, and it’s a little strange. I’m sure we’ll be on FaceTime a lot, and then the two of us will go out for dinner and have a nice Christmas Day together. I’ll bring my kilt over with me but I don’t know if I’ll wear it outside. One of my great memories is doing a concert at Edinburgh Castle. We were filming it for a DVD and it was raining, so I thought it was going to be a disaster. Wouldn’t you know it, right before the show started the clouds parted and it was sunny, and as we did the last number it started raining. It was almost miraculous.”

Looking back on The Osmonds

Donny and his brothers recently contributed to a new Paramount+ documentary series about boy bands. Looking back at that time was like an out-of-body experience.

“When I see the pictures and videos, the hysteria, it’s almost like I’m looking at a different person. It was so long ago, and so much happened in such a short period of time. It’s been touted that The Osmonds were the first boy band.

The Osmonds before a show in Earl’s Court, London, in 1975.

“Fandom was so different then compared to now. Social media has made everyone so touchable, whereas in the 70s it was the teen mags like Jackie. You would read a story to see what people were doing, but there wasn’t that immediacy and reaction from a star you idolised. The dynamic will never be the same as it was in the Osmondmania days. The pedestal was higher.” He added: “I still love doing what I do. I’m one of the very fortunate few who is able to still do what I love six decades on, and not a lot of entertainers can say that.”

Donny Osmond is in Joseph And His Technicolor Dreamcoat at Edinburgh Playhouse from December 3-29