Carrie Underwood is currently gearing-up for her starring role as Maria in NBC’s three-hour live staging of The Sound of Music — and while the December 5th broadcast is based on the original musical and not the classic Julie Andrews film, Julie recently offered her vote of approval for Carrie as Maria, and Carrie said earlier this year that she’d be thrilled to meet the woman who brought the hills to life on film! (AUDIO INFO BELOW)

• The feeling is mutual! Back in February, Julie told The Wall Street Journal that she’d be delighted to meet Carrie, saying, “No, I don’t know her, and I would love to know her. And maybe I will.”
• Quoted from the red carpet at a September 30th event celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Julie said of Carrie, “I think she’s great,” and remarked, “It’s going to be the original show, I believe, and I think after 40 or 50 years it’s probably time somebody else had a crack at it.”
• Julie Andrews just celebrated a birthday this week, turning 78 on October 1st!
• Another person lending her vote of confidence to Carrie’s upcoming role as Maria is five-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald, who’ll play Mother Abbess alongside Carrie in The Sound of Music. Audra was quoted in the New York Daily News this week as saying, “It’s going to be a big thing. Carrie is going to surprise a lot of people.”
• In addition to getting ready for The Sound of Music on December 5th, Carrie will also be co-hosting The 47th Annual CMA Awards with Brad Paisley on November 6th. Carrie’s a three-time nominee this year, up for Female Vocalist of the Year, Music Video of the Year (for “Blown Away”), and Album of the Year for her Blown Away collection, home to four number-one hits in a row, including her recent smash, “See You Again.”
• Congratulations to Carrie, whose “See You Again” music video recently set a record when Carrie became the only artist to debut at number-one on GAC’s fan-voted Top 20 Country Countdown and hold that position for 15 consecutive weeks!

  Carrie Underwood talks about Julie Andrews and The Sound of Music. (:44)
“Well, of course, at some point I would love to meet her, just because she’s somebody that I grew up watching and listening to, and my mom and I would always watch The Sound of Music together every time it was on TV. So that always holds really special memories for me. But I think that the most important thing is to not…’cause we’re doing the musical version, not the movie version, and there are a few differences. So I think it might be more important for me to not, like, try to go too much in the route of Julie Andrews, ’cause no one can touch her. I am not her, I will never be her. She holds such an iconic place in so many people’s hearts, and I think it’s really important for me to kind of get into the whole musical space versus the movie space, which she was so wonderful in.”