Nick Jonas | Full Address & Q&A | Oxford Union

good evening good to see you all thank you for having me I am NOT a public speaker I am not a professor obviously I'm a peer tonight speaking to you about my experience my life hopefully it's an interesting story gives you some perspective on my main topic tonight which is resilience there are a lot of really talented people and there are a lot of people who work very hard I hope I can be one of those people that works hard puts the time and to succeed but without resilience without the attitude of never giving up failure is imminent it's the reality life throws you curveballs there's extreme highs is extreme lows and I think my story over the course of what now has been a 12-year career believe it or not can give you some perspective so I'll start at the beginning that's okay at the very beginning and go through it all and I want to keep it very light-hearted have it feel conversational so it takes the pressure off me otherwise I might start sweating and get some comfortable but I'll start the very beginning so I grew up in Wyckoff New Jersey which is a small town in Bergen County the northern part in New Jersey you have no idea it's fine but it's a very humble place to grow up especially if your dad is a minister which mine was believe it or not there's not a lot of money in ministry so you have to live a very humble life and it was actually good for my family and I and we learned a lot about music as a result because our passion at an early age was music my dad was a music minister at a college in Dallas which is where I was born and then we transitioned to New Jersey and he was the senior pastor so at around five six years old my love for singing which was just what I did as a child became more real when I want my mom to a hair salon someone heard me singing that was sitting next seated next my mom and they said my son is doing Broadway shows you should you should take your son to his manager and he might enjoy this as well so I went to go see this manager and all I knew was pop songs it's embarrassing but Celine Dion was my favorite yeah thank you but Celine Dion was my favorite but the manager said look there's there's not really a place for a six-year-old kid to walk into a room and sing a Celine Dion song expect to get cast anything so I went back and I learned a few Broadway tunes came back about six months later and she said okay you're ready we'll send you out of some stuff so I went out from her Lane is first which was the national tour around the same time my dad decided to get my mom pregnant again how dare he yeah so I actually got the part and it was this crazy casting call where they brought in about I'd say 250 kids all very ambitious and you know wide-eyed and excited about the opportunity to go on tour for lamia's and I got the part and I'm with my mom and my dad right after they said it's yours if you want it and my parents make the decision that it's right for us to stay back in New Jersey and not going the road because my mom is about two months away from having a child in the end is the right call but I'm devastated as you can imagine at seven years old thinking this is it I blew my only opportunity to ever be in a Broadway show about two months later audition for something else that was in New York City called the Christmas carol with Frank Langella who's a brilliant actor and just an amazing man in general showed me a lot of kindness and it was just a real leader for that cast of children that was about twelve of us and there was two casts of twelve children so the thing they did with this show is they had understudies for each role the main roles of the kids I was the understudy for Tiny Tim and in the nine years the show had run there had never been a tiny team that went on just so happened the year that I was in the show the kid got sick and I had to go on but the brilliant thing about the management of the show is that they decided we won't do any rehearsals because no kids ever go on so I went on Broadway with two hours rehearsal at 7 years old and the spotlight came on and it was this distinct moment I remember very clearly because the conductor was this frightening man who who had this frown on his face all the time he'd be up there and and we just all were in fear of him and especially in that moment when I popped up on the stage and supposed to be singing I forget what the tune was but I looked down at him and the spotlight on me in front of 6,000 people and blanked 16 bars of music nothing just me standing there no idea what was going on and it's funny now but in the moment again at seven eight years old I thought to myself I've ruined my life my career is over and that was the moment I said stage fright will never get me again it's not an option I did the show for about two more months I played Tiny Tim a few more times and after that I was in three other shows on Broadway Annie Get Your Gun with Reba McEntire very famous country music singer if he knows I did beating the beast played chip the teacup knew that would happen after I also was in laymen's again I got I got my chance to be in lamia's again this time I was give rush and I was the final Gavroche on Broadway an amazing show that would actually become a part of my journey later on so after that this gentleman who was actually a family friend went to the church my dad pastored was chiropractor and he would take our family in and adjust us and see us and he was just a great man he said look you know I know you recorded us a song because I recorded this song for a benefit CD that the Broadway community did every year I said I know you recorded this song I'm gonna give the demo to somebody that comes to me I'm you know he works at Sony Music didn't say what he did or didn't know what he did he could have been the janitor he could have been the head of the label no idea so he gives this demo to this guy that works at Sony Music turns out this guy is the head of Sony international business affairs his name is Bob Pollin he loves a song calls my dad in for a meeting and says look I think there's real potential here for your son I'm 11 years old at the time by the way I think there's real potential I want him to come in and meet this guy David Massey so I come in I meet Bob Boland and David Massey and I sing in the room I think I sang superstition which I would about seven years later go on to sing with Stevie Wonder at the Grammys with my brothers figure we were nominated but I sang the song in the room and the deal was done right there I signed with Columbia Records through cell and I began making a solo record and I was writing I was really getting into writing about things that were relevant to an 11 year old kid it's a lot of inspirational songs not a whole lot about love but you know inspirational things and one night randomly I decided to write a song with my brothers for this record they had started to show some interest in music because they fell in love with this Switchfoot record it's called beautiful let down it's a great album they fell in love with that my brother Joe had done a Broadway show La Boheme Baz Luhrmann's production and my brother Kevin had done some commercials some really embarrassing commercials so do yourself a favor go back online afterwards search Kevin Jonas he brain commercial it'll make your whole life but we wrote this song was called please be mine and as we were writing it I was fighting this feeling I had this feeling that this could actually be something amazing that there was some magic in it and I didn't quite know what it was about it that could be so great because I was fighting it because at 11 12 years old I was living in fear that this opportunity that I had would be taken away that the folks will become three instead of one selfish very selfish and so it did about two days later we went into the label and we played this song they were excited they flipped out or over the moon that's not one there's three and if we started making a record together and it was this incredible thing where immediately once I accepted that this was the right thing because there is that moment you have to grow up and accept and acknowledge that something is undeniable right that there's magic in something and I did and we started making this record and it felt great straightforward pop music a bit of inspirational tone to it none of us were quite old enough to be talking about love or other things that I think would have helped us progress in any way at that point but then some things started to change within the label that we were at some of the key players started to move out and new people came in and saw a different vision for us went from Jonas Brothers that was positive encouraging to we're going to be a punk band positive and encouraging two punk band all within about two months and I have no idea how it happened but it just happened so here we were in ripped jeans and band t-shirts we didn't know that any songs from people dance what your favorite songs like that one that you've heard once and and we were a punk band and it can happen very easily you know where there's other influences people come into the picture have a different vision for what you're doing and things change I don't hold any resentment towards anyone for that but it's a part of the process to get to where you need to be we got dropped because the wrecker didn't do well because it wasn't authentic and that was painful so here I am at 13 again one of those moments where I said to myself is it I've I've failed at 13 years old that's the that's the the caliber that I was placing my expectation at and and really in a lot of ways my self-worth so I had a choice I could keep writing music and keep doing that and hope that something would happen and again I'll give you you know that there was some some magic about what we had done in a little bit of success if we played a show a thousand people would show up so there was enough to have some interest but not enough to actually build a career on so I kept writing music my brothers and I kept writing music and at this point some things had changed with our family situation at the church we had left the church we were living in a two-bedroom home with six of us in the family plus our uncle so seven two bedrooms it's very tight and it was a lot a lot of pressure on all of us at that time because we were also financially in the hole from having placed a lot of belief in ourselves and setting up our career paying musicians and studio costs all these things that just add up over time so I started writing this music wrote a lot of songs in that small house $200,000 in the hole that would then become the record that was the first success for the Jonas Brothers self-titled album that we released some Hollywood Records which became our home for about seven years six seven years and the moment we signed with them things changed dramatically and our whole world kind of changed we moved out to LA the single started to pick up the song that I had written about my first real hardship in love called SOS became the game our first hit I guess you could say and was very very intense walking on broken glass this was like this was I get the peak of you know like alternative emo music pop which I'm sure you all like don't kid yourself I know I did but yeah we were having our emo pop moment and we succeeded we sold a couple million copies of that in the US and traveled around the world and sold more there and things just started rolling we wrote another record called a little bit longer which was the title track was a song that I wrote about diabetes and my life with diabetes so a big piece of this puzzle is that in the same two month span we were dropped from Columbia Records and we had moved from our first home and we were in this tiny house I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes we were on an anti drug school tour those actually exist I don't stay in school and I started to see a change in myself physically and my attitude and lots of things the symptoms with type 1 diabetes when you don't know you're diabetic are that you lose a lot of weight you drink a lot of water you're very irritable it's very complicated hormones are all out of whack I went to see the doctor my blood sugar was over 900 it's supposed to be between 70 to 120 so it was critical and I was in the hospital for a few days so this song I wrote for our second record was about that experience and I became more vocal about that and finding a way to raise my voice and raise awareness for diabetes and diabetes research became my passion as well as the music and some acting projects and other things so we released that record and it was our most successful to date we were nominated that year for Grammy won a couple of the rewards and it was an amazing moment we also had these movies called Camp Rock at Camp Rock - for these very intense movies about camp have you ever seen those movies I watched I watched them too great moment we also did a TV show with Disney called Jonas and Jonas la uh that's the big picture topic here right is life in front of people there's Facebook there's Twitter that is Instagram and and MySpace if you're ancient but living your life in front of people is incredibly uncomfortable for many reasons the first is this so you live through your awkward stage in front of people and everybody gets acne everybody's hair looks really dumb everybody decides that an Ed Hardy t-shirt is a good idea there's lots of things and for me the hardest part of all of it was the emphasis on sex and the sex life and how at 13 or 14 years old because of the detachment to seeing someone on TV or on a computer screen it was okay to comment on a 13 or 14 year old sex life that's inappropriate you wouldn't do that in a normal setting but public life and celebrity take that away so that was hard for me and became a big topic for the Jonas Brothers as a brand was that specifically and it was hard for us we all went through our own journey you know our faith started in one place as a family that was the first family of a church in a pastor and his family and transitioned to what's important to us what's our beliefs isn't system as individuals and the journey you have to go on to decide who you are and what's important to you and that was big for me was figuring out who I was and what was important you know with my upbringing at times could be judgmental towards lots of things I don't get specific but lots of things and my view is that were supposed to love and all people should love and it's about your relationship with God and not necessarily rules so that was that was my journey and it was important to me and I'm comfortable now at 22 to say I Know Who I am I know what my faith is and that's fine and everyone can love and do what they want to do and as it related to sex and of the things you're supposed to go on that journey on your own and that's I think the toughest part about living the public eye and then the other element was the whole dating thing which Wow Google Images is a painful it can't escape the people that you've been with just remember that even if you're not in the public life it's out there doll there but I had a few public romances and you know it was it was strange it was strange to have that be a priority for people to talk about bikina still is because I thought my life was pretty boring you know I didn't really think that much of my 13 14 year old relationships but apparently this was very interesting and I think it was also because I wrote my music I wrote my music my brothers and my myself so there was an element of who is this song about or or what is this journey about in this song or record which I actually found to be fun you know I'd find ways to place people's names and songs without them knowing I had a have a good friend Demi Lovato and we write a lot of songs together and that was like our goals let's find ways to like slag these references in that only the person listening will know and it was it was fun was entertaining for us but public life as a whole is strange and it's about balancing that with art and not giving too much away so that there's an element of mystery as well so back to the timeline a little bit longer as the album does very well we release a 3d movie lots of this lots of that it was like a compilation of shots of all of us just like looking in the camera and pointing apparently we couldn't get enough of that but we did the 3d movie and then we went on tour and then I made this side project called Nick Jonas the administration which was sort of a blue-eyed soul R&B tone record with guys that play with prints in the new power generation and someone to played with John Mayer and our producer and it was incredibly important for me because I think it started the ball rolling for me on discovering my musical identity and and dipping into some more my influences prints and Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5 and there was there was a lot of things that came out of that experience that helped me and shaped me as an artist so my brothers and I released him recorded and released another record called Lines Vines and trying times and then my brother Joe decided it was time for him to make a solo record so he went on this this journey promoting a solo record and doing all that and I decided I was going to dedicate my time to writing and recording for other people producing and it was fun I got to work with some really amazing people who even showed me some some more music that would help me and would help me grow and in this time there was lots of new faces and the thing about being a teen phenomenon is that the life span is short that's the reality and if you just accept that I think it helps and that's kind of the mentality I took I wasn't easy at first but there is that element of fear that comes into the picture when you realize that it's hard to keep up when there's a new face and new faces and so we came back together my brothers and I and we gave it another try after after all having gone and done some different projects I did some acting as well which I loved and I did a theater run over here and my name is as Marius this time not as Gavroche and then we came back together started writing and recording again and this is where some things change I'm going to talk about resilience this is where it comes in to all of this so very quickly that there was a loss of rhythm with each other and a real struggle to find our identity again as a group because we'd all gone and live such separate lives which which happens that's life you know you spend a lot of time with people and you need some separation but when a time come time comes time to come back together it's hard to find that rhythm so it was about a year and a half two years of really trying to make that work until I reached a point of saying I don't think this is working you know your family I love you but this is not right for us anymore and I want to raise my hand and say I don't think this works if we continue which is just about the hardest conversation ever have with your family and it was an incredibly tough two or three weeks there was a lot of media emphasis on the breakup and what was happening and some questions about drug use and other things which were all untrue but it people just ran with it and we struggled for a moment it became complicated but I knew within that that I needed to step out and do my own thing and discover who I really was as an artist so that chapter of my life closed so here I am at 21 years old feeling like a failure because the the music we'd release didn't connect and I looked at myself in the mirror after about three months of traveling this was like friends weddings and extended holiday vacations and it's just so much traveling I looked at myself and just thought what am i doing probably a question a lot of you have asked yourself and will ask yourself you know when you leave this place and you're 21 or 22 years old there's a lot of people out there and this is where all of us can relate it's a universal topic a lot of people out there that will suppress you and not want to see you succeed in the same way that I was fearful of new faces new people coming into the picture and taking me out but I will encourage you to stay on your course because I had that moment I thought about what I needed to do to succeed and that at 21 I was not going to be washed up that was not an option I made acting a priority first started there met with my management team and my agents and I said let's find a role that no one would ever expect me to be in and I'll fight harder than anybody else for it and this script came across my desk I don't have a desk but it sounds better that way the script came across my desk and I started reading it and and there was this roll in there about this this young mixed martial arts fighter named Nate Kulina and it was this incredible story about family and the complication of family which was a topic that was very real to me at this point in my life and I fell in love with it I went in to read for it and I heard later on it when I first went in the creative staff for the show said there's no way we're casting Nick Jonas we don't even want to see him which was what a lot of my life had become for about two years no no it's no we're good I called my manager and I was like I'm so mad so mad right now but it was you know there was there was a lot of passion in there few F words to but I just and he said to me stay under course don't lose focus use it was a guy so I went in read they did let me read they called me back they called me back again my grandfather who I was very close with my name is Nicholas and Jerry Jonas his name was Jerry my grandfather became very sick around this time and he passed on the day of my final audition for the show and this show is very heavy it's very heavy and the specific scene was about a father-son relationship being very complicated so I went into the audition knowing that I'd have to leave right after to go to his funeral and I poured my heart into this character with the guy that plays my father on the show now and I got the show so that was phase one of this rebuilding I came back from the funeral started recording music I wrote a song in the first week of recording called jealous which I just finished celebrating a number one song in the US peaks and valleys but there's a journey and then there's a journey here you know it's like playing ketchup different markets and it's talking to some people before I was saying you know the different territories make it more complicated because you have to separate your time and travel so I'm telling you all this now and I feel like I've succeeded to a certain degree but I know that there's incredible obstacles to overcome here as well perception to change and just an overall necessity to continue to build and so although I feel like I've succeeded that drive to continue succeed is still in me and although I feel like I've been resilient I know there will be more obstacles and there will be for you too there's a lot of really talented people in this room and I've experienced in my 12 to 13 years now a lot of really talented people but I've also seen a lot of them lose focus lose their ambition lose track of what is a priority and what's not and I'm still here I know that I'm still going to work harder than anybody else and then I'm also going to have a lot of fun I genuinely love what I do and feel like I'm really fortunate to get to do something that I love that's the the best feeling in the world and I hope that for all of you I really hope that after you've spent your time studying staying in school which I didn't do what after you do that that you're able to do what you love you're able to find happiness continue to stay hungry and stay resilient because you'll win you definitely will and I'll leave you with this last thought know that along the road you will meet a lot of people and you will impact their life in some way and they will impact yours in some way and just try to be a sponge and learn as much as you can I'm 22 I've seen a lot of life in a short amount of time met a lot of really amazing people and and have tried to do that I've tried to look at everyone and learn what I can from them so that I can give more continue to grow and be willing to be a student even at my moments of feeling like I'm at my best so thank you for your time thank you for having me I think I'm gonna answer some questions but it's been a real pleasure talking to you tonight thank you so now we have time for a QA so I'm just going to ask a couple of questions and then this microphone will come round so if you put your hand up clearly and I'll try and pick a few almost all of you and so you've just talked about your hugely successful career having sort of sold millions of albums worldwide I was wondering what's been your proudest moment so far I think there are different milestones for different moments you know I think that being nominated for a Grammy and performing with Stevie Wonder was a really incredible moment I've now performed for all the presidents since I've been alive I guess so that's amazing I needed Bill Clinton and I just performed in front of him so those moments are great but then also you know this success of this song jealous and but the overall campaign to get there you know was was incredibly thought-out and and was a process you know and and I feel like it was a team effort my and that's more meaningful than anything is when you can work people that you love to make something happen and so those moments I think all stick out and you talked about sort of being part of the Jonas Brothers for so long almost a decade how does it feel going solo now do you feel lonely sometimes or do you miss them when you're performing yeah I think the moments that are tough are more so the traveling and and interviews and things where you can rely on other people the performance aspect of it I think is an exciting moment because I'm singing music that I'm really passionate about and that I feel like comes from a really true and artistic place in me and so that feels great but it is just about really trying to not get like you said lonely or put too much pressure on myself and and now will open up to the audience and leave will pass the microphone around and so the lady in the middle of the UM question do you prefer stage acting or on-screen acting it's tough to say I think they're both very different you know the on-screen stuff you have to wait for reaction for months and some of the stuff you can say and do on TV is very different to some of the things you can do on the Broadway stage or the West End stage but I I do love both I feel like an even balance of both the next theater project I want to do for instance I'd love to write that's my next goal so hopefully that happens in the next couple of years but Kingdom as a starting place and then other projects that I have coming this year are a lot of fun and hopefully you're able to see them over here as well the first office is actually a question but it's just quick I just wanted to tell you because I'm I'm diabetic and I've been home for about ten years and just how sort of inspiration that was to have someone young like in sort of the public eye willing to talk about that and to kind of tell people that they were living with it just sort of because not people don't really do that and I think it's important so that was just sort of the first part and the second part is and you said earlier about sort of googling yourselves and the weird things he's feeling internet what's the strangest thing you'd like come across about yourself on on the internet reading weird things about Jonas Brothers out there on the Internet yes you know there was this whole story for a while that my brothers and I this was real like someone took the time to write a full two-page article about this that we had a mannequin that we traveled with that we would dress up in the clothes we were going to wear the next day and we got very specific we had wigs for the mannequins and this whole things to match our own hair I see myself that would be so self-obsessed and insane to have a mannequin that actually I bought my brother a mannequin for his birthday with the article attached to it I said I knew you wanted one of these yeah that was one of the weirdest things and then there's also you know regularly the rumors that I'm getting engaged or or that I'm I'm dead that's fine it's news to me okay so I'm big Broadway fan and I saw how to succeed back when it was on and after hearing your story and compared to the character you played which was Finch how much of your like life experience at that moment was going in because it's kind of like the story of not quitting and keeping going and trying to get to the top again yeah but that show taught me a lot that character for those of you don't know how to succeed in business that really trying is about a young man who finds a book that basically gives him all the tools he needs how to succeed in business and he sort of pulls one over all the old business men's head and succeeds and I think the similarities that I found in the character were his resilience like I said and his ability to stay humble and passionate and and although he had all the tools he needed you know it's still about getting out of your own way at times and not living in fear and not taking a step backwards for whatever reason and that's the thing I love about the character and that crucial piece to the journey for me in doing that show was a lot to do with the individuals I was working with to the director and the choreographer to push me I really showed up to rehearsals knowing that I'd have to dig in and and it was a great experience hi um you talked a lot about like figuring out what you want to do and how we kind of have to be faced with that is was there anything else you consider doing other than show business or have you always been pretty convinced that that's that's what you wanted to do yes there was something I really believed that I could walk on to a baseball team and be on the team that was I was like I'd definitely do this and I actually believed it so much that Joe Torre who was the coach of the Yankees for a long time which was my team then became the coach of the Los Angeles Dodgers he invited me to come to spring training with the Dodgers once and and I actually lived the life of a baseball player for a few days and saw pretty quickly that I had a lot of room to grow yeah and and you know I loved the game and actually considered going to Northwestern University in Chicago seeing if I could play there and study as well but my life just took a different turn I think if I did have to make a dramatic change at some point my life I would find a way to do something that I could could love you know and be happy with whatever that is but I you know I'm very thankful that I get to do what I love and you mentioned the interest in your sex life as a 1314 year old which is weird and I just I wondered whether you ever were aware of the media like sexualizing you and if not you particularly your famous girl friends separate words girlfriends and how that affected you as a young teenager until how how you how you saw that while you were going through it um you know I think it's about how much you want to see right and how much you let affect you as well so I always viewed it as you can't control what people are going to say about you or your friends or your girlfriends whatever it is so you have to live your life and know that you're on a journey you know others didn't see that see it that way and found it very hard and turned to other things and a different approach to progress and so I feel like for me I just tried to stay in my lane and you know once I was comfortable enough with who I am as a and how I feel about sex and sexuality and how much I want to talk about it I didn't speak about it too much and other people did media and and the public but I just knew I had to go on my own journey hi how would you do with like issues with privacy with like regards to fans and have you got any kind of crazy fan stories yes quite a few uh I had someone jump in the back of a car one time they we were in Germany and we were leaving the venue and it was one of those big bands and so there was a big trunk space and we got to the hotel we started walking into the hotel and our security went to grab our bags on the back and there was a fence towed away in the back she popped out he's grabbed her quick and it was actually kind of frightening more so because we were afraid she was gonna say we kidnapped her which we didn't but that was one and then there's I mean there were lots of experience and that sort of crazy you know couple years of fandemonium just of you know people mass amounts people rushing and doing crazy things like that that you know in the moment seems like it'd be really fun people with banging car windows or like rocking a bus but it's not it's really frightening from a fan donations to diabetes research I think were the best the most meaningful I you know that was such a blessing but then there were actual physical gifts I think I always really enjoyed like clothing items from the countries like you know a football jersey or you know anything we could take away that was like meaningful to the countries who were in because I literally have a drawer in my house that's full of like hockey jerseys and football jersey and all these things that you know I now have forever from my experiences there and if I wear them and I get like photographing them my Twitter timeline blows up like Brazil oh shoot so it works out it's always Brazil go crazy hi obviously we've seen a few child stars and like sometimes Disney stars go off the rails a bit and how did you and your brother's like handle the pressures of Fame all the money that you haven't self all the money we hand sir there's still time to lose my mind so I know that I don't know I really I really don't know the answer to that I mean I think it had something to do with the fact that that we felt very fortunate to be in a position we were in I think we reached a level of Fame before we had quite reached the time put in to actually be at that level you know I'm saying like our skill level may not have matched our level of Fame yet we had a lot of room to grow so we were very fortunate and felt really thankful for that but I think we also had parents who were around all the time and our management team was there from day one so everyone that was around us could keep us kind of in check and we had each other and we still do you know we're not in the band anymore but we're brothers and we see a lot of each other and you know there's definitely tough love there hi so I wanted to ask you about your highly successful recent calvin klein ask shoot yeah and which is subsequently gone viral so I was wondering where's the idea come from and how did you feel about doing that kind of I was waiting to be asked about that so basically for this TV show Kingdom that I'm on I play a fighter and there was a lot of physical training that wouldn't do that as well so I got pretty big muscular for that and font magazine came with the idea to do the shoot to kind of pay tribute to Mark Wahlberg and as we were doing and I really wasn't thinking about the fact that my pants were on the floor I just was kind of rolling with it and and then after I was like oh wow that's what the photo shoot is but it I think it was kind of important you know to sort of just showcase Who I am today what I'm comfortable with and I think even in maybe just this kind of conversational approach you can see I'm a pretty laid-back person and that shoot was you know something that I think drove people to the music as well and if it did become some sort of like an internet phenomenon at the moment you know I it did its part in getting people to music and that's what's important hi um you talked a bit about your faith and your journey like fruit and the fact that your dad was a minister I was wondering would you still identify as a Christian as a Christian yes I think so I think it's very tough for me to specify you know I think that I have a relationship with God and that's how I view it because I feel like some of my views may not fall directly in line with all people's views from the Christian faith but I do have a very solid relationship with God that's important to me and my journey with faith will continue to grow you know and will evolve over time and I think that's important for us to go in that journey and discover who we are and you know I'm not really living in a way to be stressed about it I think that I have to just go on my path and live my life and and sort of know that my time with God is important to me I am so in the past few years when you've been touring have you had time to go sightseeing when you're touring and where's the favorite place you've been ah I have not really been touring that much in the last couple years I've spent most my time in LA but just recently over the last few months I've been on the road quite a bit traveling I love Paris I think it's amazing city and love every time I go there I also love London having spent a couple months they're doing leaves and other things I feel like I have some friends there I can see and it's you know it's a great place but I'm also a sucker for some some of my American cities as well you know Chicago is one I love and San Francisco in New York is my favorite I lived there for two years and I'm very anxious to get back someday in the very again oh you talked about your Disney days with a sense of distaste do you not do you have regrets or did you not like that you did that or what what is that all about nothing I think was very important of a journey and I don't know if it was distaste as much as embarrassment at times just because you know you're 13 hairs like this and your nose is too big for your face you know there's lots of things that go into it and also you know I think in contrast to some of the material I'm doing now in the acting space camp rock is supposed to be more for a child audience you know and and so it is by nature more juvenile you know but I think it's great for what it is and was important to the overall journey but yeah there's it's more embarrassment yeah I'm sure if any of us look at our pictures from we were 13 or 14 or videos we made or whatever there's there's some embarrassment there I'm going to find pictures of all of you we talked about the transition going into acting and taking up some acts and roles and is that something you want to do more in the future or do you think a song music I have a couple acting projects lined up there's a new project called scream queens which I'm going to be a part of which is a Ryan Murphy show Glee an American Horror Story a normal heart and it's with a really great cast Emma Roberts Ariana Grande Jamie Lee Curtis Joe Manganiello I'm some really great actors and thrilled to be a part of that and the movie called goat which James Franco is producing which I'm thrilled to be a part of about college life actually but partying mostly nothing it's about that but it's it's gonna be a fun project and then yeah there's lots of things that I want to do oh and obviously another season of Kingdom we got picked up for two more seasons which is exciting so you know if I can be greedy and do both the singing in the acting I'd be very happy hi I was wondering I think that there are perks and consequences from everything in life so I was wondering do you have a favorite part about growing up and living under the spotlight a favorite part yeah or something that you like uh I think meeting so many amazing people it's probably one and looking back at my life already and you know my high school years I was doing some pretty incredible things and touring the world and meeting amazing people and and so there's an element of feeling like I was very very lucky to get to do that and knowing that I still had a lot of room to grow artistically is another aspect of gratitude that comes into the picture my question was about Disney because Disney in a sense creates these teenage role models that must that fit a certain category of people and once these once they evolve and naturally change then there can be some issues that are created both both for the fanbase who are like younger people and for the person themselves what are your thoughts about that I think you're right I think everyone has to grow you know and that happens naturally I don't know the Disney creates role models I think they create personalities and characters and then you know it just so happens that there are real people that are those characters and you know I don't know that everyone when they choose to be an actor chooses to be a role model that's that's an element that you have to decide for yourself and I think everybody's different and is is willing to do that and willing to hold that responsibility or not I respect if people look up to me and thank them for that but also I'm human and you know have my faults as well and and own that fully so I'm a role model to a certain degree knowing that I am human and and so I think those that put too much pressure on themselves figure out very quickly that it's impossible to be perfect and do you have a role model yourself or do you look up to your brother Zazu uh to my brothers please they look up to me no kidding I I do I have a lot of role models and it's continually changing as well you know I think that there are different people a part of your life for different reasons and there are different seasons as well you know and I'm sure all of you have people that have come into your life and maybe are no longer a part of your life but had real importance for you within that time they were there but I think that you know my dad and I have always been very close and he's been incredibly important to me and my management team and also my grandfather was really important to me that was a very important person in my life and still feel like I'm very close to him and we have our own connection now hi I'm sorry that was loud and as an artist you clearly gained inspiration from a lot of different sources I was wondering huger name is the top three or five you know musical influences on your work I think Prince is a big one I think Stevie Wonder I love the Beatles Paul McCartney specifically I had the chance to meet him and perform with him a few times now it's been great then there's some some recent influences to that that were really important for this record that I made people like Frank Ocean and even Drake is somebody that I feel like I can pull influence and from and jinae OCO lots currently that I like hi and I was just wondering you're talking a lot about all these famous people you've met you ever get starstruck yourself when you meet people I had a moment with I can't say who the artist is but I actually tweeted about it right after it happened but I remember the artists that I really respect I love their music and I went up to say hi to them and I was okay you know I just want to say your musics been really important to me recently I've been really inspired by some of the stuff you're doing and you know Elson he was just like oh great what have you been inspired by it's like that was I was not expecting to follow up like I just stood there like literally I just stood there for 30 seconds and just blank stare on my face and then one of the song titles came to my mind I just said it I was like he knows he knows like I'm gonna did but I was so I was so nervous to go up and say how much I respected in his music and all this that I just blanked and it was so embarrassing but normally I don't get I don't get starstruck mostly athletes or Daniel Craig Daniel Craig could make me start strong so in the talk you mentioned Demi Lovato and he's spoken quite publicly about her mental health issues specifically related to eating disorders and I was just wondering what you thought about the way that the entertainment industry treats women and whether those pressures are put on women are kind of equally leveled against men and how the gender dynamics work from your experience yeah I think I think there's pressures on all sides and I I think women have it incredibly hard at times and speaking to Demi you know I think that I've tried to be a friend to her in every way I can and our journey was complicated for a moment as she was in her time of recovery and just finding a balance in her life but she's given me a lot of insight as to some of those pressures and I felt them myself in my own way and so I I feel like it's incredibly hard and you have to have the right mental approach to it and the right people around you to keep you in the right mind frame and for women specifically you know I think they probably have it the hardest and and I feel for them in that way so you mentioned that you write your own songs and you talk about your own experiences and you kind of enjoyed that earlier so would you be willing to share about the new song jealous and explain if that relates to anything you've gone through yeah how bad would it be if like I didn't write jealous and be so embarrassing I did so I was out with my girl from one night and we're having a good night out having some drinks having some dinner clearly on a date if you looked at I should be like let's looks like a nice date they're having you'd say it just like that too but we were out yeah and and this I was in the middle of training for this TV show where I was kid mind I was about 15 pounds bigger muscle than I am right now which I'm currently putting that back on but I was also fight training all day every day so I was like hyped up you know ready to fight and he kept looking over at her and just staring at her and so I kind of noticed it once knows it twice by the third or fourth time it's bit like come on dude this is not appropriate you know and I found myself to get incredibly jealous and I went in the studio the next day started working on this one idea with these people I was collaborating with and was stuck on this experience from the night before I was telling him how about it they were like maybe we should write a song about that it sounds like you need to get it off your chest and I was like it's a great idea so we wrote this song and after it was done I feel like I was actually therapeutic in a way like after the song was written some of the jealous feelings that I had from time to time were eased by the feeling of knowing that when you really care about somebody you go to the worst-case scenario you know you fear the worst in that situation and that's where jealousy comes from because you know in a lot of cases it's in your head and I feel like that's what became so relatable about that song is that it becoming more personal in my own way and writing something that wasn't a real experience it actually became more Universal and more people can connect with it do you have any regrets and anything you've done either in your career or any personal regrets at all sorry I realized that I'm gonna finish on a high note here I guess I'm just kidding yes of course I think we all do you know and and I I think my biggest regret is living in fear for a period of my life where I was trying to as I was talking about before trying to be perfect and uphold a certain image and realizing at a certain point that that's impossible you know and and that everyone's entitled to their own opinion of who you are or who you should be and I was crippled by fear in a lot of ways artistically and as a person and that's my regret is just living that way for so long and stressing about things I should have been stressed about I take the approach now what happens happens and I just have a good time and it works out a lot better and I'm freed up emotionally and spiritually and creatively um if I could ask you all to remain in your seats whilst Nick and his team leave and if you'd all join me in thanking Nick Jonas

Channel: OxfordUnion

Views: 161,958

Rating: 4.9197779 out of 5

Keywords: Union, Society, University, Debates, Debating, Interview, Nick Jonas, Jonas Brothers, Oxford Union, Oxford Union Society, american singer, singer, camp rock, columbia records, kevin jonas, joe jonas

Id: k-qa_JAELjw

Length: 57min 59sec (3479 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 25 2015