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Idina Menzel 'got chills' when asked to sing national anthem at Super Bowl

Oh! Say, can you see ... Idina Menzel? Well, you will be able to on Super Bowl Sunday, when the Broadway superstar who voiced the megahit "Let It Go" will be singing the "Star-Spangled Banner" before her largest live audience ever: 110 million people.Is she excited? You bet. Is she nervous? Oh, yeah. But as she told TODAY's Savannah Guthrie, there's one person who might be more worked up than she

Oh! Say, can you see ... Idina Menzel? Well, you will be able to on Super Bowl Sunday, when the Broadway superstar who voiced the megahit "Let It Go" will be singing the "Star-Spangled Banner" before her largest live audience ever: 110 million people.

Is she excited? You bet. Is she nervous? Oh, yeah. But as she told TODAY's Savannah Guthrie, there's one person who might be more worked up than she is: Her dad.

"He's a big sports fan," she chuckled. "He brought me up on football ... every Sunday we'd watch games and ... he just texted me before you got here and was just like, 'This is a big gig, honey.'"

Idina Menzel lets it go at Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2015 on December 31, 2014 in New York City.
Idina Menzel lets it go at Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2015 on December 31, 2014 in New York City.Mike Coppola/DCNYRE2015 / Today

Menzel is very aware of that. When she got the call inviting her to sing before the game, "I got chills," she said, and noted that "watching Whitney Houston do it years and years ago ... she was my idol. ... And then when she did that actual rendition of the anthem, I'll never forget it."

Hopefully, all will go smoothly. But Menzel, who says she tries to imagine singing to her 5-year-old son when she's performing, can handle any situation. Just last week, she said she was singing onstage and got overemotional and nearly had an incident: "I almost choked on my own snot," she said. "Isn't that beautiful? But yeah, so then I came in a beat late, swallowed it."

At least she wasn't inspired to let it go.

That said, this coolheaded football fan is not going to comment on the whole Deflate-gate issue. "I've given it much thought, actually, and I've decided that I'm not really qualified to comment on the weight of anyone's balls."

"You've been practicing that line along with the national anthem, haven't you!" laughed Guthrie.

Good luck to Menzel!

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