Carrie Underwood interview on live Sound of Music event

You couldn’t have picked a more iconic movie to attempt what truly will be an unprecedented television event, but NBC, Carrie Underwood and True Blood’s Stephen Moyer are up for the challenge in the live, three-hour event The Sound of Music Live! airing Thursday, Dec. 5 at 8pm ET. The live Sound of Music special is certainly turning into one of the most anticipated programs this holiday season, and Underwood looks and sounds amazing in NBC’s most recent teasers.

“I remember hearing about it and thinking, ‘Wow that’s ambitious. I wonder who they are going to get?’” Underwood tells us. “And then the next thing you know, probably a few months later, I’m sitting down having lunch with people talking about actually maybe doing this.”

For Underwood it was the perfect creative outlet to fulfill her desires of doing things far from the norm. “The fact that it’s all live, it’s all real and true was probably the most appealing thing anybody could offer me to be a part of because it seemed like such a difficult and amazing task,” she says.

The task wasn’t to remake the movie but rather to bring a fresh take to the famed musical. “Obviously, you would never remake something as beloved as The Sound of Music — Julie Andrews — you just wouldn’t ever attempt to do that. It doesn’t need to be remade but just the fact that this is all themed on live, it’s its own thing, its own organism and we’re all doing what we can to bring musical theater into people’s homes and hopefully reach a whole new audience. I never got to see any kind of musical theater growing up because I lived in such a small place — we didn’t have that really available to us. So it’s so cool to think of all the little Carrie Underwoods that are going to be sitting in small-town USA watching this, that they would never have been exposed to anything like it before.”

Carrie Underwood talks about the live Sound of Music three-hour eventOf all the iconic songs in the movie, from the title track to “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” “Do-Re-Mi” or “My Favorite Things,” Underwood surprises by sharing her personal favorite.

“Probably my favorite song — and it would probably be anybody else’s least favorite because it would probably be anybody else’s most difficult song, but for me it’s the easiest — is “The Lonely Goatherd.” I kind of grew up yodeling so it’s fun to actually get to do something that requires me to. It’s so much fun in the musical — it’s the bedroom thunder/lightning scene with the kids; it’s us running around having fun and being silly.”

As for any butterflies in having the event televised live — where millions are watching — the former American Idol star isn’t overly worried. “Well I always think that in my shows it’s just me. It’s just me and I do an hour and a half of that so this is going to be more people, which is good,” she laughs. “I’m not worried about stamina or anything like that — my own concerts are crazy long.”