John Travolta
Spotlight by: Andrea Tuccillo
AndreaTuccillo@TheCinemaSource.com
Almost 30 years after he played leather-clad cool-guy Danny Zuko in the now-iconic
musical Grease, John Travolta
gets into the singing and dancing spirit again for the new big screen musical Hairspray. Only this time instead of playing a macho man, he’s playing a woman! A three-hundred pound Baltimore housewife to be exact. The role of Edna Turnblad took some getting used to, but Travolta was up for the challenge.
“I was like wait a minute, I’m 30 years a leading man and more than that a kind of macho leading man, it’s kind of like why me?” he says. “I was genuinely curious. What was it about my performances in Face Off or Broken Arrow that made you think I would look good as a 300 pound woman? I was really dead serious. I said, why? I’m not even going to look like me. They said well you can sing and you can dance and it’s because you’re so the opposite that it will be much more entertaining for people to watch because you’ll pull it off.”
And he did pull it off—but not before putting on the necessary costumes to fully transform himself into Edna. “The criteria was it had to be a woman,” he says. “It could not be a man dressed up as a woman. And that meant big breasts, big ass, little waist, and a full prosthetic where you really visually believed that there’s no man in there. And if I could do that then I can do the acting part of it. My ability to move and dance, I can round out a movement to be more feminine than masculine. So with the help of the visual I could add to it my character interpretation and my dance movements.”
Dancing in a fat suit and heels was no easy task. Not to mention he also had to get used to being
“What really helped me was the accent,” he says. “That Baltimore accent is so specific and if I had been asked to do a New York accent, which I wouldn’t have wanted to do, it’s more innately masculine. The Baltimore accent is very nasal, it lightens your lilt to the voice to begin with so that helped me.”
Instead of diving right in to playing a character so completely different from anything he has ever done, Travolta was able to think long and hard before deciding to join Hairspray.
“I’ve wanted to do a musical for 30 years,” he says. “It’s just that the four that were offered to me at the time they were offered—Phantom, A Chorus Line, Chicago—I didn’t see it. And Craig and Neil the producers of Hairspray led me to a year and two months of thought on it. They convinced me that all departments were full-throttle, all departments were A+, and we’re going to deliver a musical. Musicals are like westerns and other minority genres, they’re not a guarantee. So you really have to have your ducks in a row when you decide to do one.”
Set in the 1960′s, Hairspray deals with issues of discrimination and intolerance. They are issues that existed 40 years ago yet still present themselves today. “The ’60′s were filled with protests about war, racism, women’s liberation and it was a generation I watched with my own eyes,” Travolta says. “But there has been tremendous movement since then, we have to also admit. But ‘is there ever enough movement?’ is the question. And I think this reminds us that this was around 40 years ago and there [are] still issues here to pay attention. And yet [it reminds us] in a lighthearted way.”
Travolta has nothing but praise for his young co-star, Nikki Blonsky, who plays his spunky daughter Tracy in the film. It was the actress’ first starring role, but one Travolta feels she was born to play. “She’s a phenomenon!” he gushes. “She’s like ‘A Star is Born’ in the screen test even, in my opinion. I don’t think you’ve seen anything like her. I think she’s sensational and I grew very fond of her. I think it was like watching Barbra Streisand get born; it was that kind of impact.”
Another thing that impacted Travolta was having to literally walk in a woman’s shoes. The role gave him a newfound appreciation for the daily routine women go through.
“I don’t know how you do it!” he says.
