Hugh Jackman Reveals Details About Brand New Les Miserables Song ‘Suddenly'

When the movie musical adaptation of Les Miserables hits theaters this Christmas, there will be at least one new tune joining the familiar, sweeping score.

As Broadway.com reported back in March, Les Miz composers Claude-Michel Schonberg, Alain Boublil and Herbert Kretzmer wrote a new song called “Suddenly,” written specifically for Hugh Jackman’s Jean Valjean. In an interview with the U.K.'s The Telegraph, Jackman spilled the details on the soon-to-be-famous number.

“Suddenly” will be sung during Valjean’s political years, when he has risen to become the generous mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. Valjean will sing the song after he first rescues Cosette from the wicked Thenardiers.

“Meeting Cosette is the first time he’s ever experienced love,” Jackman told The Telegraph. “It’s the most beautiful passage, because he says he never knew the love of a mother, a father, of brothers or sisters and vice versa, never loved anyone. So he meets this little girl who’s in his care, he experiences this flood of emotion that for a 50-year-old man has never occurred.”

“It’s a pretty amazing invention of Victor Hugo and it’s never really been dealt with in the stage musical,” he added.

Composer Schonberg and the rest of the musical creative team wrote the song for Jackman only after they watched his one-man show, Hugh Jackman, Back on Broadway, in 2011.

“It’s kind of an amazing honor they came to see the show and I was singing for two and a half hours, so they saw every possible color of my voice and they said, ‘Right, now we’re going to write it for you,’” said Jackman. “I’ll do my best not to screw it up.”