Orfeh

First things first: Orfeh is not trailer trash. Even though she's headlining The Great American Trailer Park Musical, she's not exactly the hitch-and-tow type of gal. Nor is she a stripper; she just plays one on stage. She is a former pop princess punch in “Or-n-More” on eBay and her CD will pop up, a veteran of not one but two 1999 Broadway flops, a medical-reality-TV junkie, and an admitted Louis Vuitton addict sorry, girl—secret's out! One more thing: The name is real, thank you very much. It's actually a great story, and Simon LeBon can tell you all about it.

You do know you're totally trendy, right? Stripping is big these days. Teri Hatcher does it to stay in shape, Carmen Electra has those cardio-strip DVDs…
I've taken those classes in Los Angeles; I have my Crunch cardio-striptease T-shirt. But this is a whole different thing.

I bet it's a lot harder than it looks.
Sergio [Trujillo, the choreographer] worked me to within an inch of my life. And I have a feeling he could go to any very high-end strip club in Manhattan and tell those girls what's what!

You have to lift yourself up onto a pole—I don't think I could do that.
I'm lucky because I've always gone to the gym and I have a really good amount of upper body strength, especially for a girl. It was about learning how not to slam my thigh into the pole. I had these bruises—it looked like I had gotten hit by a car.

Or an RV, in this case. Now, can we talk about those costumes?
We can talk about anything you want!

That outfit you wear during the disco storm sequence: Do you get to keep those knee-high lace-up glittery platform boots? Cause those rock.
No! And when I was a teenager I had those boots in black patent vinyl. Not quite as festive, but I did own a pair.

But I think we can sum up your character's style with two words: animal print.
I wear a lot of leopard—down to the brim of my hat. My luggage is all leopard and zebra. I am a cat woman!

And you're brunette. I would have thought a trailer-park-dwelling stripper named Pippi would be a big-haired bleached blonde, but you've got those cascading auburn tresses that you're flippin' all over the place.
I'm working the wig. The wig is a whole character in the show. I named her Ann-Margrock. Remember that, when Ann-Margret was on The Flinstones?

Let's go back to the beginning: How does a nice girl like you wind up in a trailer park?
I knew nothing about the show. It was just another day of my agent calling at 11 o'clock and saying “Can you be somewhere at 2 o'clock?” I had a rough idea of how I thought a stripper would dress for a regular day…

Um, what constitutes appropriate mid-afternoon stripper attire?
A very, very short denim mini-skirt, skimpy tank top, very trashy shoes that you shouldn't wear with a skirt like that, and my best push-up bra to make me look like I had a lot going on.

Did you walk to the audition?
I walked there that way and I walked home that way.

I bet you made a lot of new friends.
I did. I had to explain that they couldn't come home with me.

And they say New Yorkers aren't friendly.
[Laughs] No, they're very friendly!

Is it tough for you to parade around half-dressed on stage? Do you get self-conscious?
From the time I was a teenager I was a recording artist, and we never wore anything less than outrageously scanty outfits. Look at pop music today—all that skimpy clothing? We were doing that 10 years ago. It's function. You can't have a lot of stuff going on and doing choreography. It seems like you're trying to show your body but it's really about freedom of movement.

Well, that explains everything in Britney Spears' closet. Did you guys ever dress like that?
We were never that risque [Laughs], but we did the whole shorts-and-combat-boots look that was very big in the '90s. We had very difficult choreography—stuff that Janet Jackson started with “Rhythm Nation.” You can't be weighed down and make it work. I don't go to meetings and auditions like that unless it's called for; I don't dress trampy. I'm not going to show up at the VMAs in a bikini anytime soon.

I hope not. Eva Longoria got ripped apart for that bathing suit she wore to the VMAs earlier this month. You've got to draw the line somewhere.
I do have a good eye for a line.

Now, Pippi has her eye on the toll-collector-next-door, a big lunky guy named Norbert, played by the fantastic Shuler Hensley.
He and I are like best friends. I always get comments about how real our chemistry is, and it's because we really dig each other as people. We have a real fondness for one another as actors and as people. I got really lucky.

You two have the trickiest parts, though—the show is pretty campy, but your characters have a lot of serious moments.
Sometimes it's difficult because we have to be the straight people. We don't have the really outrageous bits or the really funny moments. The wildness and antics are a big part of the show, but we're the heart of the show.

Okay—on to more serious matters. You have to tell us about your name.
My mother based it on Black Orpheus, the opera.

Like the Monteverdi opera Orfeo? The Orpheus and Eurydice myth?
Yes. Orpheus went to hell for a lost love and sang to the muses so they'd be charmed and set her free. My mother had this "psychic premonition" that I'd be a singer. She didn't know if I was going to be a boy or a girl, and she said “Boy or girl it's going to be Orfeh.” I was like, Okay, thanks… I love it when people think I came up with it. Yes, I chose to call myself this unpronouncable thing. That's a name only a mother could come up with.

The old myth is sad, from what I remember. He loses her in the end. The Gods tell him he can have her if he doesn't look at her until they reach the upper world. And then, stupidly, he turns and looks back and poof! She's gone.
Everyone who gets the name has a different story of what it is. I ran into Simon LeBon at a club, and he said, “What's your name?” and he launched into this diatribe about my name. I learned more about it from him…

Hold up—the lead singer of Duran Duran was giving you the lowdown on your name? How many people can say that?
And you know what? I've been a fan for life. Who wants to talk to a teenager at a club?

And just what was that teenager doing at a club?
[Laughs] I was many places I shouldn't have been at a very young age. I admit it.

Did you get teased a lot?
Well, in public school there was no shortage of interesting and fabulous names, especially at LaGuardia [High School for the Performing Arts]. We had an Experience, we had Rainbow. But Orfeh was off the beaten path. There were many variations: Orca the killer mouse. Orphan. Little Orphan Annie. Everyone had their own nickname for me.

Did you think about changing it?
Where do you go from there? If I were going to change my name it would have to be something like Jane Smith. I never thought it was weird until I got into musical theater. Everyone in the music business has strange names. Think about it. Beyonce? How different is that from Orfeh? Ashanti? These are not normal names.

Your mother kind of sealed your destiny with your name; did you ever think about being anything other than a singer?
If I didn't have such a burning desire to perform, I might have gone to medical school. I'm fascinated with medical shows. Those shows on TLC where they show the emergency room accidents? I eat pizza and watch that. I have the stomach for medicine. But the amount of schooling it would have taken—really my vanity won out. It was the need for adulation. [Laughs]

How did you decide to move into musical theater? The transition from pop music to Broadway isn't really straightforward.
I didn't even make a conscious decision to do it. My recording career went wrong. Really really wrong. We had the business manager that stole all the money, the hit record that was about to become a mega-hit record, and the rug was pulled out from under us at the moment we were about to become household names. It was really every unfortunate set of circumstances that you've heard on Behind the Music. So after being on the road for five years and devoting my life to recording I found myself at home saying, “What do I do now?”

That's a tough place to be.
Music changes all the time. You go from the white girls with the big voices to Seattle grunge to hip-hop; at the time it changed from being what I was. The music business changed drastically while I was in it.

Do you think you'll go back to the music biz?
In my heart I just want to make a solo album. But I have to wait for music to change again. Now they're signing zygotes. When people want real singers and not people who are like 14 years old, then I'll make my long overdue comeback. And I don't want someone to sign me because I'm in a hit Broadway show. It's harder to cross over from Broadway.

Is it ever! They don't grow pop stars on Broadway.
You can be as famous as you want in musical theater and nobody knows you outside that genre. You could have really ardent, crazy, crying stage-door fans and that doesn't mean the head of Sony Records knows who you are. Being in Saturday Night Fever didn't get me a record deal.

Ooh—Saturday Night Fever. Can we talk about your fabulous flops? First, Fascinating Rhythm, the Gershwin show that had a surprisingly long one-month run…
That wonderful show.

What a cast, though. Two of your costars, Adriane Lenox and Sara Ramirez, won Tonys this year alone—Adriane for Doubt, Sara for Spamalot. Michael Berresse was nominated for Kiss Me, Kate; Patrick Wilson's got two Tony noms…
I know! They've all been nominated except for Darius de Haas and me! You know, we had a wonderful time. Brief but wonderful. To sing with those people and to sing Gershwin tunes—it was a no-lose situation. But the critics hated it.

They didn't have much more love for Saturday Night Fever.
[Laughs] Saturday Night Fever was the flop that ran almost two years. It was a much better show than people would have liked to think. I don't think it was trying to be anything more than what it was. And I think it was all in the timing. If Mamma Mia! had opened when Fever did it might have been the flop and Fever might still be running. It's not the worst show I've ever seen.

You had the most unflattering wig in that show, though. Annette was not a glamour girl, was she?
I am the actress who doesn't mind being ugly. Not only did I have the worst wig, but I was padded! I had to look like Donna Pescow. Finally at some point in the run they got sick of it and I got to have my body. Everyone thought I lost 100 pounds. It's like, No, I'm not doing cocaine. I just lost the padding!

And you gained a husband. That's how you met Andy Karl.
My sweetheart, I know. He came in for the last six months; he was the Tony cover, so we played Tony and Annette together dozens of times. We fell in love instantly. Started dating at the end of July, he proposed in December, and we eloped two weeks later.

Is it tough being married to a fellow performer, or does it make things easier?
For us, it's easier. We know what ten-out-of-twelves are. We know what tech is. If one of us says, “I've got to learn these lines,” we get it. I understand when he comes home at midnight and has to go to sleep. There's no need to explain.

I love the shout-out to him in your bio. You call him your “slut hubby.”
I wondered what people would think!

We should probably explain that he is in the off-Broadway musical Slut. But tell the truth: Would your bio have said the same thing even if he weren't the star of Slut?
No! It wouldn't! He's the best. It would have said “To my favorite Altar Boy.”

That's true. He was in Altar Boyz.
I was going to write that, but I didn't have enough words!

See Orfeh in The Great American Trailer Park Musical at Dodger Stages, 340 West 50th Street. Click for tickets and more information.