If there’s anything to be said about Nikki Blonsky following her film debut in Hairspray it’s this: she still talks about it. She’s been in several movies and TV shows since and she’s continued to keep at least a moderate amount of her popularity from the film, but after ten years you can imagine that people are starting to get a little tired of hearing about it. For the most part it seems that she’s trying her best to keep her career going but really, the constant tweets and the fact that she has to bring up that she was in the Hairspray movie in 2007 doesn’t exactly turn people’s heads any longer and the other fact that when she talks there are moments when you get the feeling that making the sudden jump to stardom was not exactly the best thing that could have happened developmentally for this woman.
That might sound mean, but listen to an interview or two with her and you might pick up on the fact that she still seems a bit vapid at times when she begins to talk about herself and her place in show business.
She is dedicated to what she does.
Nikki has been performing since her high school days when she gladly took the stage for several plays, so it’s easy to see why she was so adamant about trying out for the part of Tracy Turnblad. After seeing the live show for her 15th birthday she was absolutely hooked and wanted nothing more than to take up the part of Tracey and make it work for her. Out of hundreds of young women that auditioned for the part she was chosen, and that is honestly quite an honor since it means that out of all those aspiring actresses she was considered to be the one that had what the director was looking for that could fulfill the part.
Whether or not it was too soon for her to move up in the world is hard to know since the movie didn’t perform that well, but apparently the cast performed their roles without a hitch, even Nikki, who was the overall newcomer. Being in a film with the likes of Christopher Walken, John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, and several others though couldn’t have been easy. It would seem however that Nikki made her part work and was generally accepted as though she belonged there. So in all likelihood she earned her spot, though a few acting classes might have gone a long way just to round out her character and take the edge off just a little bit.
She seems a bit full of herself unfortunately.
This could be something that comes as a byproduct of fame or it could be something that she needs to work on as a character flaw. Unfortunately this can happen to people when they get too famous too quickly, they tend to take things for granted and begin to forget that they had a very humble beginning. Hopefully this isn’t the case for Nikki since to be quite honest at this point and time she’s a B celebrity that tends to overdo things a bit too much. When Hairspray was on Broadway a year or two ago she couldn’t help but tweet out to nearly a dozen people that she would love to spend time with them, that she wanted to be on their shows, and that she was in New York so maybe they could hook up. This kind of reeks of desperation, of a woman that’s trying to hold onto whatever fame she has left so that she can prove that she’s still able to hang with the stars.
The sad part of this is that if she were to learn her craft a little better she might be able to pick up more parts and find herself in a much more tenable position than being relegated to forgettable roles and a career that hasn’t done a whole lot despite the fact that she’s still there. It’s almost as if Nikki has been existing as a celebrity using borrowed time and the quickly-fading fame that was given to her by her role in Hairspray. At this point however it seems fair to say that a lot of people might remember Ricki Lake as Tracey a lot more than they recognize Nikki. That’s unfortunate but kind of true since when Hairspray first came out as a movie it was goofy, campy, and yet so endearing that many people watched it over and over. Trying capture lightning in a bottle again has rarely ever proved to be possible, so it’s hard to imagine why people keep going down that path.
Her career isn’t done it would seem, but she really needs to step it up and perhaps even take an acting class or two in order to get people to pay attention to her again.
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