When John Travolta took on the role of Edna Turnblad he thought to himself, “Boy, you really do care more about being an actor than you do about being a macho guy.” Ego aside, Travolta donned pantyhose, wigs, heels and even a fat suit to complete his transformation from hunky Hollywood star to the Turnblad matriarch in Hairspray.
With the Golden Globes just around the corner (Hairspray’s up for three, including Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role for John), Travolta met with fans for an intimate Q&A session at West Hollywood’s Sunset 5 Theater followed by a screening of the film.
Here’s just a snippet of what the midas to the movie musical had to say …
Q: How did you manage to capture this character from head to toe? Did you have a plan or discover her as you went along?
JT: [I told the producers], “Okay, this is what it will take. It will take me looking like a woman and not like a refrigerator, but a voluptuous overweight woman.” More like Anita Ekberg gone to flesh or Sophia Loren gone to flesh. That will help me convince macho men that I am a woman. That’s who I needed to convince mostly. [Laughs]
Q: You are already a great dancer, but how did you handle dancing in heels?
JT: It is not easy to dance in high heels. It is not easy to dance as a 300 pound woman. It is not easy to dance as a woman although you are a man. None of that was easy, it was challenging. Part of my technique was to pretend that none of that was apparent, meaning that the weight was not an issue to her joy, I wanted to make her joyous and rise above her weight so it was more fun to watch than to be belabored. I made her more introspective and self-conscious about her weight, but not when it came to singing and dancing.
[IMG:R]Q: I want to flashback to Saturday Night Fever for a moment: Is it true that after taking disco dance lessons for nine months, they weren’t going to use your big dance number?
JT: It was nine very intense months of learning this one routine for the movie. It was a hybrid really of a disco routine and a Broadway … Much to my chagrin they edited it as a complete tight close up. I thought I was going to die. I cried. So I called the producer Robert Stigwood and I said “I have to disown myself from this movie.” I said “I put my life into that dance routine and now it is a tight close up. I don’t want to see my face. I want to see my whole body.” He says “Tomorrow you go to the editing room and you choose exactly what you want.” And he let me in and I went to the master shot and changed history in about five minutes.
