Legally Blonde Fans - Q&A with Laura Bell Bundy

Laura Bell Bundy	by Kathy Henderson (8/13/2007) Don't let the blonde hair and sorority-rush smile fool you: Laura Bell Bundy is one smart cookie, an actress and singer who gives fresh meaning to the word "multitasking." As if eight shows a week headlining the high-energy Broadway musical Legally Blonde (as fictional smart cookie Elle Woods) wasn't enough, Bundy is moonlighting as a country singer/songwriter in support of her new CD Longing for a Place Already Gone. Self-released under the name "Laura Bell," the recording mixes torch songs, novelty songs (including one about loving chocolate set to the tune of "Making Whoopee"), and girl power anthems sung with a twang reminiscent of Bundy's hometown of Lexington, Kentucky. Having spent 17 of her 26 years as a theater pro, Bundy remains committed to stage acting and is still savoring her 2007 Best Actress Tony nomination for Legally Blonde. On a week in which she sandwiched in a country concert on her day off, the always quotable actress chatted about her life and career with Broadway.com. Let's talk about your new solo CD first, which has an "old-time" country feeling. You were born in 1981. Did you really grow up listening to Pasty Cline and Merle Haggard? I did. I've always been fascinated with music from generations before I was born, which is why I titled the album Longing for a Place Already Gone. My grandfather was a radio DJ in the '50s and '60s, and growing up, I was always listening to Rosemary Clooney, Patsy Cline, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. My mother listened to Dolly Parton. As I got older, I loved Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin and also Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash. I like the clarity of the sound, and I like that it felt honest. I was drawn to that as opposed to somebody who is trying to make a hit on the radio. I'm very attracted to a sound that doesn't sound over-produced.
Why did you drop Bundy and bill yourself simply as Laura Bell on the country CD? Is it like a role you're playing? I think so. I thought about going with just "Bell," but my producer was like, "Well, Laura Bell sounds so southern, you should go with that because that's who you are and everybody calls you that." Honestly, it took a long time to make the decision. Bundy is so attached to me being in the theater and in film, and I decided that Laura Bell felt more like a friend that you're listening to. It's different from my acting career, and that's what I wanted. Two different worlds. So you can have fans of your singing who don't even know about your Broadway career? Probably. I mean, that may not be the best for me in terms of getting noticed, but I just wanted to keep them separate. They're not separate as a part of me, but because country is so very different from musical theater, it makes sense to be two different people. And my voices are different. I recently listened to the [country] album and I didn't recognize my voice [laughs].
Laura Bell Bundy in concert	Your hair and style of dress certainly look different in the concerts you've done of this material. I was sort of trying to emulate the older country artists like Loretta Lynn or Dolly Parton—that look. I was thinking Tammy Wynette. Oh, you know what? Somebody said Tammy Wynette too! Are you trying to roll out the CD in a way that will attract attention from traditional Nashville audiences? I did it on my own label, Lab Records, and it's available on amazon.com and my website and the digital music download places. I would love to be able to get it out there in a major way, but I did it myself so that it could be what I wanted it to be. I wanted to do something that felt truthful and honest without someone pushing me in a direction to sell records.
It almost sounds like you did this CD to please yourself. Totally. Absolutely. I'm at the point where singing my own music is necessary for me. I can't live without it. I'm always going to come home at night and feel the need to write a song, whether or not people buy it. If it touches somebody, that's all the better, but it's something I have to do. I was in a band a couple years ago with one of my best friends and it was a lot of fun, but it got to that point where the main goal was to get a record deal. As great as that is, when you start to sell yourself and sing music you're not connected to, your heart starts disappearing from it. My heart is in this. Carrie Underwood has a song with an old-time sound, "Before He Cheats," getting airplay on Z100. Wouldn't you love a commercial hit? I actually think there are a couple songs that could connect with a wide audience, and I would love that. "Designated Drunk" is a really funny song. "I'll Make the Money, You Make the Love," is an anthem about being true to yourself. How long have you been writing songs? I think I was 17 when I started, and I wasn't very good then [laughs]. How did you learn? Who were your mentors? I didn't really have any at a young age. I was always writing poetry or journaling, things like that. It became a more serious when I was 18 or 19, with my [performing] partner Amber [Rhodes], who was kind of a mentor. I've worked with different songwriters over the last six to eight years. Great people have come into my life, and I learn a little bit from everybody. Willie Nelson is a huge influence because he has a style that is almost jazz-meets-country. I write that sort of jazzy, lounge-y, big-band sound too. But what's interesting is that when I first started writing music, it all came out country. Even the most successful Broadway stars have had trouble crossing over into other areas of the record business. Any theories about the reason for that? As a Broadway performer I hate saying this, but I do think there is a stigma. In some ways it's harder to take someone who's been on Broadway seriously [as a pop musician]. You get on stage to play characters, and your voice has this quality where every consonant, every lyric is heard clearly. With rock stars, you don't understand half of what they're saying. They get up and play themselves, and they look half drunk or comatose. Those are the people that teenagers idolize. Let's be honest: Broadway isn't cool. A hipster going to see a rock show is like, "Uh, I don't like musical theater," even though when they actually sit down in those seats, they love seeing a story. On my day off, I make it a point to go to concerts, and a lot of the time it isn't as interesting to me as listening to the CD while I clean my house. The art of what we do onstage is to take a song and make everybody in the audience feel it. Country music is actually similar to Broadway because it's about telling stories.
Laura Bell Bundy in Legally Blonde	*In addition to your solo CD, the Legally Blonde* cast recording has just come out. Are you happy with it? I'm actually really happy with it. I haven't listened to it all the way through; I hear the show every night, so the last thing I want to do is spend an hour and a half listening to myself sing! How is the Broadway run going? Jerry Mitchell's production seems like an enormous workout. I feel like I do a half marathon every night! I really, really love it, and I love being on stage for the whole time. I feel it keeps me connected as an actress, and it's really, really fun. The cast is great; they're such beautiful people, and I love the way the writers have written Elle. She's a full character with a great big heart and sense of humor and quirkiness. I'm discovering new things about her every night, and I'm having a great time. Don't you love looking out at all the young girls in the audience?** It's like seeing Mini-Mes—little girls who remind me of myself when I was going to see shows for the first time. I still remember the people I saw in shows and looked up to when I was little.
Your Best Actress Tony nomination must have been especially meaningful given the fact that female leads from four major shows got left out! It was a big year for women in musicals. I wasn't expecting it, honestly. I have to say that I worked really, really hard on this role and this show, and the creative team was open to my ideas. But in terms of the Tonys, I thought, "Well, I'll be doing this forever and I'll get my chance one day." I was alone in my house watching [the nominations on] TV, and I started running around and screaming [laughs]. I was in shock. I wish there had been a camera videotaping me, because the memory of it makes me laugh. What's unfortunate is that you have to be compared with other people, because everybody's work is so different. I saw a lot of great work this year by women I truly admire and thought were deserving of a nomination.
Laura Bell Bundy in a scene with the original Broadway cast of Hairspray	*The Hairspray* movie was great, but you and Kerry Butler made a much stronger and funnier impression as Amber and Penny on Broadway than the actresses who played the parts in the film.** Thank you. Well, I can't comment on that, because [film Amber] Brittany Snow and I did Guiding Light together for two years. She played my niece, even though "niece" in soap opera terms is only five years apart because you're related to everybody. With her doing the role, it took away [the feeling of] "I wanted to do that" and made it "Oh my god, it's like my little sister doing it!" I actually thought that she did a really good job. *You had moved to Los Angeles before getting the role in Legally Blonde. Was it difficult to decide to come back to New York for a year?* It was a no-brainer. Since the first reading in July of 2005, I had such a feeling about this show and such a desire to do it. I actually turned down a lot of stuff in TV for the possibility of doing Legally Blonde. It was almost like "I have to do this show!" I knew how great the story was, how great the role was and what a great opportunity it would be for me to originate a leading role on Broadway. Performing on stage is my passion, whether it's my music or Broadway; I'm sure I'll grow to love other things the more I do them, but I just feel so alive doing theater. It also helps all the other aspects of your career. I'm in a different level in terms of TV and film now than I was before Legally Blonde.
Let's go back to the very beginning of your career. Were you a singer first, an actress or a dancer? I started out doing dance classes when I was two-and-a-half or three years old. I started to develop as a singer when I was 5 or 6, impersonating people like Judy Garland and Julie Andrews. By the time I came to New York, I was a nine-year-old who could dance like a 12-year-old, but singing was definitely the thing. At a very young age, I was doing voices and accents and imitating people I saw on the streets of New York, so I became more of a comedian. How did you decide to move to New York in the first place? Well, when I was six, I got a modeling contract with Ford Model Agency and my mom brought me to New York for the summers, then I'd go back to Kentucky and go to school.
Child model Laura Bell Bundy	Your mom sent the modeling agency your picture from Kentucky? I don't know; maybe she walked in there and was like, "I've sent a picture, we're only here for two days and I want to see if you can sit down with us." She's very ballsy, my mother [laughs]. They gave us a contract on the spot. I literally looked like JonBenet [Ramsey]. I am not joking. It was 1986, '87, and I had the big hair, the big polka dot outfit—everything was big. I remember saying to my mom, "I don't want to go back to Kentucky! I want to stay in New York!" I also remember missing home and missing my dog and all of those things. Finally, when I was nine, I got the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City, and we had no choice but to stay in New York. Marvin Laird, the musical director of the Christmas Spectacular, was writing a new musical based on The Bad Seed. That began the whole reading and workshop process of Ruthless, and I did the show the following the year. I was also what's called a size 10 in modeling, which means I got a lot more work. I went to Professional Children's School, and I guess we ended up staying in New York for five years.
How would you describe your relationship with your mother, Lorna Bell? Co-dependent? [Laughs] I don't know. We're very close. My mom is the reason that I am here today. Her belief in me is so solid and so strong that it made me believe in myself. To her, the sky wasn't the limit; it was outer space. My mom is a very driven woman. She lives her life with passion and enthusiasm, and I get that from her. I couldn't have made it through the last couple of years without her support. As actors, we are always waiting for the next big gig and we sometimes turn down other gigs because of our passion for something we think would be great for us, which [in my case] was Legally Blonde. After I did Wicked, there were two years where I did episodic TV and other work here and there, and I produced and funded my own album. I couldn't have done it without the support of my mom and dad and my whole family. *You've played June in Gypsy, but your mom is not a Mama Rose, right? The two of you moved back to Kentucky so you could go to a regular high school.* My mom is not Mama Rose, but there is a stage mom in her. She's very knowledgeable when it comes to the business; she gets it. But she's not quite the extreme of Mama Rose. She'd be like Mama Rose meets Dolly Parton! Can you believe she has her own MySpace page? There's no stopping her! [Laughs.] More power to her—I don't care. *Your Ruthless* understudy Britney Spears has gone off the rails in recent years. Were you ever tempted to rebel after so much hard work at such a young age?** I'm not going to judge anybody for quote unquote "rebelling," because sometimes it's necessary to take the reins of your own life. When everybody else is controlling you—whether that's your parents or your agents or whoever is in the mix of your life—you will do anything to be in control again. And if that means rebelling in a sense of drugs and partying, that's what you're going to do. I was always considered the good girl—you know, "She doesn't drink, she doesn't do this or that." I don't really drink, but if I want to go out and have a drink, I'm going to have a drink! I'm not going to keep myself in a cage because I'm concerned about what people think. It's my life to live, and life is about learning from your experiences. I have made mistakes. I've gone out to bars at 1 o'clock in the morning by myself and struck up conversations with strangers, or spent an entire day on a park bench writing poetry or reading obscure things or going into porn shops. I want to experience my life. *On the opposite extreme, your other Ruthless* understudy, Natalie Portman, went to Harvard. You chose to come back to New York and relaunch your career.** Everybody has their own path and journey, and the one constant is that everything changes. I'll probably change, too. It's funny to say this in an interview, but I've been misquoted almost all the time in interviews; I have heard rumors about myself that weren't true. I can't be concerned about that. I just have to live my life. That's the only thing anybody can do.
Laura & Lorna Bell Bundy	Do you have a five-year plan for your career? Oh my gosh, if I could stay and work from New York, that would be the greatest. I would love to produce Broadway; that's something I'm working on. I have a passion for the business of theater. I'm coming up with my five-year plan now. Do you still have a long-distance relationship going on? I do! [Boyfriend Austin Peck] just left yesterday. He's a molecular biologist at the University of Santa Barbara. How did you happen to meet a molecular biologist? I met him at the Bowery Bar. He challenged me to a dance-off [laughs]. He's a really creative person. He does an indie-rock radio show; he's got an understanding of music that's way beyond my understanding in a lot of ways. He has the utmost taste in music and art. He's just a really smart guy and he's also fun and cute. I'm crazy about him. How long have you been together? Five years. I met him during tech rehearsal of Hairspray. Good grief! I know.
Nobody's rushing for an engagement, I assume. No. I don't know if that's for me, honestly. We've done so well with living in the moment that I would hate to make a decision about the rest of my life. I'm more concerned about living in the now. I don't want to be pessimistic about marriage in general, but I do feel that a lot of people go into marriage thinking they're going to feel the same way or be the same person forever, and we're not. When I see him next, I want to be able to ask him, "Who have you become in the last couple of months?" Because I know I've changed in the past year. A lot of stuff has happened to me. I'll say. I don't know how you juggle it all. One day at a time. Source: http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=551592&pn=3

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Q & A with Laura Bell Bundy