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ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: Jenna, Emily . . . and Elle Woods
By Seth Rudetsky
02 Jun 2008
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Seth with "Elle Woods" hopefuls.
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| photo by © MTV | A week in the life of actor, musician and Chatterbox host Seth Rudetsky.
They came up with an amazing title: Legally Blonde The Musical: The Search for Elle Woods." What great word play! It's not literal at all. I must admit it's a little lengthy to say, but putting the colon in the middle of the title gives me plenty of time to rest and then finish the second half. After the show airs (10 PM ET on MTV), they're going to post a video of me deconstructing the show on IAmOnMTV.com. Hopefully, I'll be as amazing as those Hills girls were when they hosted the MTV airing of Legally Blonde.
Let me now discuss my first sentence. I was literally sick for a week. I haven't been sick that long since junior high. Remember what it was like staying home from school back then? You'd watch "I Love Lucy" then "The Price Is Right" and then nothing but devastatingly boring soap operas until 4 PM when "The Little Rascals" came on. Ah, Spanky. PS, how did we deal with having no television in the afternoon? And only three channels all the time?
Speaking of childhood, after I did "Broadway 101" (which, I just found out, raised $30,000 for The Actors Fund!), I got a call from a television production company. We set up a meeting, and I had delicious visions of filming "Broadway 101" for network TV. Well, turns out, the woman in charge of creative development for this company saw "Broadway 101" and was very interested in the sections where I talked about my childhood. She wound up contracting me to write and develop a sitcom about my (devastating) adolescent years! Sort of "Everybody Hates Chris" but more like "Everybody Hates Fat, Gay Seth". There's one classic story that happened to me in English class, but I don't know if I can re-enact it in a series. My whole class was supposed to have read "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," but even though it was an honors English class, essentially nobody read it. Mrs. Messner (who was always all smiles, and we therefore called her "Goody" Messner à la The Crucible) was our teacher and first asked my friend Whitney Malin what the theme of the book was. Whitney started flipping through the book like the theme was on a certain page and she just had to find it. After some aimless flipping, she muttered, "Call on someone else." But Mrs. Messner didn't hear, so Whitney essentially had to yell, "Call on someone else!" Then Mrs. Messner called on Julie Einhorn who said, "Ooh….you caught me at a bad time." Huh? Did she just get out of the shower and her hair was still wet? Weren't we in the middle of English class? What's a better time for a question relating to English? Finally, she called on my friend Terry Heyman by saying, "And Terry?," but because Mrs. Messner had a Midwestern accent, it sounded like "And Tirry?" Terry thought Mrs. Messner was asking about some obscure character from the book, so she looked miffed and asked, "Who the hell is Ann Tirry?" Nonetheless, we all somehow graduated.
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Jenna Russell
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| photo by Christie Ford |
My new favorite person is Jenna Russell, who is starring as Dot/Marie in Sunday in the Park With George. I interviewed her at the Chatterbox, and she is so much fun! First of all, if you don't know, she's British. She did her first big London show when she was still a teenager and it had music by ABBA but with different lyrics. Instead of "Fernando" she sang "Back Home Now." Suffice it to say, it did not have the success of Mamma Mia! However, she said that because of that show, Tim Rice and Benny and Bjorn (from ABBA) decided to write Chess, so something good came from it. For the opening, everybody got champagne from the ABBA men, but because she was 16, she instead got an autographed album. She said there are pictures of her holding the album ("Arrival") and glaring because she was infuriated she wasn't allowed to get drunk, but now she's so happy to have an autographed record! Also, in that show she got to work with West End theatre legend, Elaine Paige. Jenna was young and didn't quite have all of her social graces. She literally told Elaine, "You know, I really like you. (pause) I mean, everyone told me that you were a (C word), but I don't think you are!" Wow. Instead of getting her fired, Elaine told her why people were annoyed with her. Elaine started out as a chorus girl and then she got to originate the role of Evita. When she was still in the chorus, she'd go out after the show and hang out till all hours, but after she got the role of Evita, she had to curtail all social activity. People thought she was being a snob by not going out partying, when in actuality she was just trying to preserve her voice so she could belt "A New Argentina" and not have her next gig be replacing Lauren Bacall in Woman of the Year.
Jenna also did Les Misérables as one of the ensemble women, and then spent 13 weeks understudying Eponine. I asked her if she ever went on, and she said only once…which is 100 percent more times than I ever went on for Brooks Ashmanskas in The Ritz. Then, she said, three years passed, and she suddenly got a call from the Les Miz people.
"Hey, Jenna. What are you doing tonight?"
"Um….going out to dinner."
"Oh, good. Because we might need you to go on for Eponine."
"Why!?!?!"
"You see, the girl playing Eponine is out, and her understudy has an abscess, and her second cover isn't prepared. Do you mind calling in at six to see if we'll need you?" Continued...
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