BroadwayWorld.com has an exclusive look into the making of the movie musical HAIRSPRAY with this special Director's Diary written by Adam Shankman. Check back daily for new entries!
Nikki Blonsky, Nikki Blonsky, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL NAME
So after an exhaustive search, things are going to turn out exactly how I thought. It's going to be Nikki Blonsky, the girl from Great Neck, New York, who worked in the Coldstone Creamery. I couldn't help myself but to keep going back over and over again to her audition on my laptop. There was something just so honest, so refreshing, so sweet and so genuine that she was in fact, a seventeen year-old girl from a working class family who literally lived to perform and who happened to be beautiful. Plus size beautiful. It just was the clincher. I couldn't get past the fact that she was seventeen. It's all that I kept obsessing over. The fact that she had a great voice and a smile that drove me insane with happiness really made it all happen.
More tomorrow with entry #10...
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