A Little Bit Wicked (17 page)

I
never wanted a manager. I wanted to do it all myself. But when I recorded
Let Yourself Go,
Sony Classical made me hire a publicist, and after a year or so the publicist begged me to hire a manager. Here’s another of those I-didn’t-know-what-I-didn’t-know situations. What did a manager actually do? I didn’t want to pay someone to boss me around. The PR wizardress assured me that’s not how it works. She narrowed the field to five. I met the first four, they all seemed fine, and I was ready to sign one and head home to New York. Frankly, I didn’t think I’d be giving this person much to do, so it didn’t seem like a critical decision. The publicist asked me to stay one more day and meet the last candidate.

Vibrating with energy and knockout, grape-stomping, raven-haired gorgeous, Dannielle Thomas walked in and said, “I’m Dannielle. And I’m going to change your life.”

“Oh. Hi. I’m…I’m Kristin. I’m not sure if I want my life changed.”

“You need to play Dolly Parton.”

Okay. I don’t know how she reached into my head and pulled out this secret dream. But I immediately knew with my whole heart that I was supposed to be here. When I called to tell her she was hired, she yelped. Gave a big ol’
“Yeeeooooow!”
as if she were at a football game, and I loved that. She didn’t bother to play it cool. She never does.

The following week, working out a game plan over coffee, she told me, “You need to be doing movies and television.”

“I never really saw myself in the movies,” I said. “I don’t think I’d get cast.”

“Well, stop thinking that. Just wait. When you get your Oscar—”

I coughed my latte across the sidewalk.

“Don’t think it’s impossible.” Dannielle set her hand on my arm. “I’m serious. Sissy Spacek in
Coal Miner’s Daughter
. Reese Witherspoon as June Carter. You as Dolly.”

She sent me to read for Steve Martin, who was doing
The Pink Panther
. (Oddly enough, as I was on my way out of that audition, Idina was on her way in.) They told me I was too young for the lead but called me back for a smaller part, and I got it.

“First movie.” Dannielle made a check mark in the air over her desk. “Now let’s get you on TV.” And about five seconds later, she’d hooked me up with
The West Wing
.

Things I love about Fireball Dannielle Thomas:

1. She’s unfairly good-looking.
   
2. She never stops for a moment.
   
3. She changed my life.
   

Things that drive me crazy about Fireball Dannielle Thomas:

1. She’s unfairly good-looking.
   
2. She never stops for a moment.
   
3. She sometimes has to be reminded whose life this is.
   

Right away she started scolding me for doing too many benefits, but she did encourage me to do one for the American Film Institute. They asked me to sing a song from a movie, and I chose “My White Knight” from
The Music Man
.

“The people and I talked,” Dannielle informed me. “We all agree. That song’s boring.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, not that it’s boring the way you do it,” she backpedaled. “They’re just looking for something more fun, you know? More of a movie song. Light, showy…do ‘Glitter and Be Gay.’ People love that one.”

Cue Sally Brown:
Oh, yeah? That’s what YOU think!

“I’m going to get in my car and drive away now,” I said. “I did ‘My White Night’ in a movie. I do it in concert. It is not boring. And if the ritzy, glitzy people of Los Angeles don’t understand what Meredith Wilson meant when he wrote that song, well,
words words words words words
.”

I went off on her about being tired of doing what other people want me to do, and I guess I know a good song when I sing it, and I’m going to sing that song because I feel like it, and then I went up there and I sang it.

It flatlined. There was not enough juice in the defibrillator to goose a response out of that crowd. I followed up with “Glitter and Be Gay,” and they went ape wild.

Oh, well. That’s okay. I have no problem with being proven wrong, and I have to be prepared to go down in flames once in a while. But I’ve learned that going down in flames for something you believe in is a lot less painful than going down in flames for something you got
talked into, so I have to make my own decisions, prepared to stand by them. In the years we’ve been together, Dannielle’s learned a lot from me about the theatre world, and I’ve learned a lot from her about the business end of show business. She knows her stuff. She has a lot of respect for theatre, and not everyone in L.A. does. She’s my biggest fan (other than the designer-handbag stalker), and her belief in me feels totally genuine. She does her job so well, it’s easy to love all her quirks. When Power Up named Dannielle one of the Ten Amazing Gay Women in Showbiz, I presented her with the award, gave her credit for changing my life, and sang “You’ll Never Know (Just How Much I Love You).”

Her particular brand of ball-busting honesty isn’t always appreciated. Sadly, she and my agents at Bauman, Redanty, & Shaul didn’t click, and after a lot of sleepless nights, I made a change in representation. It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. Mark Redanty was my champion from the beginning, and David Shaul held my hand through the whole
Kristin
of it all. They were unfailingly supporting and loving, and they negotiated like gladiators on my behalf. Leaving them felt like leaving home, but leaving home is part of life, and it was time for me to grow up. Since signing with my new agent, Tony Lipp, I’ve done half a dozen movies. Giggling offscreen with Nicole Kidman, horsing around in the heartland with Robin Williams, reading poetry and making out with Annette Bening, tackling scary, wonderful, so-juicy-you-gotta-eat-it-over-the-sink roles such as Linda in
Into Temptation
and Fern in
Running with Scissors
. And I’m developing projects on my own. I’m wearing the big-girl pants now, and I like it.

When Tony calls me on the phone, he always begins by asking, “How’s your life?” When he cuts to the car chase, I never know from his tone what to expect. “Li’l chicken?” he says. “You got the job.” Or “Li’l chicken? They went with someone else.” “Li’l chicken? You’re gonna sing on the Oscars.” “Li’l chicken? So-and-so died.” Trick or treat, the news is always delivered with the same it-is-what-it-is equa
nimity. It’s like that line in the Rudyard Kipling poem:
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / and treat those two impostors just the same
…Tony’s approach reminds me that first, there’s your life, and then there’s whatever blossoms or bombs.

Outside a Midtown rehearsal space, I wave good-bye to the backup dancers and head toward home. I opt to walk instead of flagging a taxi. To be in New York is to be in motion. But five or six blocks up the pike, I’m feeling the rehearsal from the back of my neck to my Achilles tendons. To be in concert is to be in motion, too, and preparing for that is a workout.

The ninety-minute set involves backup dancers, full orchestra, a rambunctious onstage homicide, and no rest for the
Wicked,
pardon the pun. Andrew Lippa always has my back. He had to chime in and rescue me in Chicago when I completely went up on the lyrics in “Popular.” I’m not sure how I managed to screw that up, as many times as I’ve sung that song, but it’s all good. I think those moments make it more fun. My Glitter Girls have heard the perfectly polished CD version a thousand times. This is
live
. Buckle those seat belts.

By the time I walk offstage, I’m spent, but I can’t bring myself to skimp on the afterglow. One of the first concerts I went to as kid was by Amy Grant, and I remember how much it meant to me that she took the time to greet people afterward. She made a moment for each person, as crunched as her time and energy were.

“What’s your name, cutie?” she asked.

“Kristi,” I said, barely able to exhale the two syllables.

“Let’s see. What should I say? How about
God bless you, Kristi…Love…Amy.
” She jotted it on a piece of paper and handed it to me. “How’s that?”

Utterly smitten and fairy-dusted, I managed to peep, “Good.”

And it was. It was just plain
good
of her. That’s what I aspire to.
World peace, one small, sweet moment at a time. I’ve come a long way from my Emily Dickinson song cycle, performed for as few as five people, and sold out Carnegie Hall. Low point: the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut. I delivered a heartfelt Jerome Kern number, there was a spatter of applause from the dozen or so folks in attendance, and then a drunk loudly said, “Geezes, yer
short.
” High point: that night at Carnegie in 2004.

That audience was alive, involved, and entirely willing to go for a ride. My parents, Ms. Birdwell, and many friends were there. The dressing room was crowded with love and flowers. After the show, as a huge crowd thronged the alley outside the stage door, it suddenly occurred to everyone inside that perhaps some security should have been arranged. Dad went out to do recon and came back in to report.

“Here’s whatcha got,” he said in full gatekeeper mode. “You got a lot of kids, you got some old folks, and a bunch of guys dressed like you.”

You gotta love my people. Glitter Girls, grandparents, and fansvestites.

We decided the best way to handle it would be for Denny to shepherd me through the bustle to a waiting limo while Dad did his best to bully the crowd back a bit. I hung on Denny’s arm as he plowed through the fray, he chucked me into the back of the car, and I rolled down the window to tell the people gathered outside how grateful I was for their kindness and enthusiasm.

“Thanks for coming,” I called. “You all are so sweet. Thank you so—what?—
Mom?
”

“Hi, honey!” She waved to me from the curb, where she stood wedged between two octogenarians and a Glindafied trannie.

“Mom! What are you doing?”

“I just wanted to see you exit.” She beamed and waved me off as if I were riding the short bus. Denny and I couldn’t stop laughing for thirty minutes.

The 3 Angels benefit concert will be scaled down somewhat from the usual song-and-dance extravaganza (though not an ounce less energy is involved). It’s going to be an intimate performance in a small venue, which is perfect for the theme—“This One’s Personal: A Concert to Stop ACD”—and the cause is good. A heartbreaker, like all good causes, but particularly close to home because the heart broken belonged to a good friend, my
West Wing
castmate NiCole Robinson, whose seven-week-old son, Lincoln, died a year earlier from alveolar capillary dysplaysia, a genetic disorder often mistaken for SIDS.

NiCole was like my big sis from my first day on the set. Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, meets Burley, Idaho. A recipe for reality-based girl talk if ever there was one. When people ask her what’s with the capital
C
in the middle of her name, NiCole replies, “It’s what poor people do to look fancy.” That’s NiCole. Funny, smart, real as rimrock. She took me in immediately and made sure I knew the scoop on everyone.

When she came to visit me on the set of
Pushing Daisies
after Lincoln died, I couldn’t hug her hard enough, couldn’t find words to tell her how sorry I was. But sorry isn’t what she was looking for. She was on a mission, galvanized by grief, needing to transform her terrible reality into a more hopeful possibility for someone else.

“It has to change,” she said. “But that takes money. I was thinking you could sing.”

“Tell me where to be. I’ll be there.”

I don’t think Aaron Sorkin set out to create a family when he created
The West Wing,
but that’s what he did. No one who worked on the show came in unchallenged or went away unchanged. When I was first offered the Ainsley Hayes role during the
Wicked
workshops, Marc Platt told me, “You have to do
Wicked
. It’s iconic. There’ll never be another show like it.” The same could actually be said for
The West Wing
. When Dannielle roped a second chance for me to join the cast,
I jumped in with both feet. I believe in that old saw “Run with the big dogs or stay on the porch with the puppies.” And these were some mighty big dogs.

The women of
The West Wing
could be a calendar if they felt like it. Raving beauties. And the brainiest coffee klatch since Gertrude Stein.

Allison Janney had a party where everybody had to wear a wig. Just to shake the snow globe a little. How great is that? Our first scene was a walk and talk, in which she looked down at me from her full five foot twelve and said, “I can’t believe we’re members of the same species.” She and I look like two people on an escalator, even with me in heels and her in flats. We decided it was her job to check me for dandruff, my job to check her for nose debris. I’ve never seen anyone else master complicated dialogue in such a short time, and she taught me a trick she got from Meryl Streep: “If you’ve got a string of words you just can’t get in your mouth, write the first letter of every word at the top of the page. It sets the words in your brain just a bit differently.” Works like gangbusters. (There you go, young actors. From Meryl Streep to you via the great Allison Janney.) She’s a great lady. I look up to her. Literally and figuratively.

My first scene with Stockard Channing was about NASCAR racing, and we laughed a lot. She’s such a mom, supportive and deeply kind. I’d been a fan of hers since
Grease,
of course, and the way she was able to shift so seamlessly between theatre, movies, and television set an example I hope to follow throughout my career. We go to the same voice coach in L.A., and sometimes she’s arriving as I leave.

“Oh, Lord,” she always groans. “Do I have to go
now
? After
her
?”

I love listening to her sing. She nails that speak-on-pitch dynamic Florence Birdwell talks about. Stockard is one of those rare women whose voice has—well, it’s got
balls
. She can do anything—plays, musicals, movies—I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see her NASCAR racing.