It's a well known secret that Emily Skinner is my favorite Broadway performer. I got a chance to sit down for coffee with her recently, and this interview is the result. -RR

Robbie Rozelle: Emily Skinner! I've been trying to get this interview for months! You are the hardest woman in show business to track down.

Emily Skinner: I know! I keep telling you to call, and I'm never home...

RR: Well, I've got you tracked down now, so let's get some coffee and chat! I thought we'd just chat about the last year...

ES: Okay!

RR: You were just in Australia... did you love it?

ES: I did... I wish I could have stayed there longer. I was only there ten days.

RR: You were doing a concert?

ES: I was. I was singing with the Broadway Divas. With Lauren Kennedy and Julia Murney. We screamed our brains out for the Australians. It was great.

RR: Did you do Songs For A New World?

ES: No, I had to come back because I'm doing some other stuff here. I would have liked to, because I love that score.

RR: I saw you sing parts of it at Carnegie Hall.

ES: Oh my gosh! Good memory! Wow!

RR: So, you were doing the Broadway Divas concert. Was it stuff from your album?

ES: No... they're so smart. They have sort of a rotating roster of Broadway women singers, who, when you're in a show, they take you off the roster. When you're not, they stick you back on. They have about ten women, and we sort of rotate in concerts all over the world for them. They've gone everywhere... Paris, Brazil, Australia... all of the place. It's great. You get to sing some unfamiliar stuff. It's a wonderful way to see places that I wouldn't see... I would never have gone to Australia, otherwise.

RR: But they need to see you...

ES: Well! I don't know about THAT, but it was great to see them!

RR: Last year, this time, you were doing Camp Sondheim.

ES: I had just finished Company, and was doing Merrily [We Roll Along].

RR: How did you get involved with the Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration?

ES: I auditioned way back in the fall, when I was doing Full Monty. I had already been cast in Company, and they wanted to see me in Merrily. I was cast in both, and it was really neat. Raul Esparza and I were the only two people who got to do two shows. It was thrilling to be there, and to see all of them... to see all of the shows, you know, compare and contrast in a wonderful way. To see how he writes. Every single one of his shows is completely different. He's sort of amazing. You hear a song, you go "Oh, that's a Sondheim song. There's a definitive style about him, but his mind, his scope is so broad, he can write about anything. All of his shows are so moving for me.

RR: I saw all of the shows... I was very lucky, and bought very early...

ES: You ARE very lucky! I'm telling you! I never would have been there, because it sold out so fast.

RR: Company, which I thought was brilliantly staged... you were kind of upstaged by a chick in white who screamed a patter song really fast. I'm talking about your cohort, Alice Ripley. I have to ask the obligatory Alice questions... What was it like doing another show with her?

ES: [laughs] I just talked to her yesterday. It was my third with her. It was so weird, because the guy who cast us didn't know we had ever worked together before. He wasn't familiar with either one of us. We both got cast, and she was like, "Are you gonna do it?" And I said, "Are YOU gonna do it?" She said, "Yeah! We should both do it! It'll be fun!"

RR: The Duets albums are amazing.

ES: We love singing together.

RR: Are you going to do anything together in the future?

ES: We're thinking about maybe doing some stuff in the fall. We're both... I'm about to go out of town, and she just left town to do a play [Shakespeare In Hollywood]. When we get back in the fall, we want to do some stuff at Joe's Pub...

RR: You also did Merrily. I was at the final performance. The opening of act two, you were like a walking wet dream. I have a friend in the original cast of the show who said "She really got Gussie..."

ES: Aww. That's nice. That opening act two, which was only in it from the York, every time I would do it, I kept thinking, "I can't believe that Sondheim isn't telling me to stop!" He never did!

RR: You got to do every single Emily Skinner thing...

ES: Every night I did it differently.

RR: There was a thread on the internet in every show that said, "Emily Skinner screams a line in every show."

ES: [laughs] There ya go. That's my claim to fame. I scream in every show...

RR: Comparing and contrasting Company and Merrily. You did both of the George Furth shows, which aren't very strong book-wise.

ES: You know, I gotta say, I think both of those books are really damn good. They've messed with Merrily so much. But Company, those vignettes... those are gems. They're like perfect gems. I think even Sondheim was surprised. I think he thought that the shows were going to come off dated. It's not. It's still that universal story about being single, being in a relationship, being married... nothing's changed. Being married, you're always sorry, you're always grateful. It's never going to change. It's human.

RR: Do you have a favorite Sondheim score?

ES: I think Sunday and Merrily are my two favorites.

RR: Mine too! We are twins.

ES: I don't know if Merrily would have been had I not done it, and not just grown to adore that score. I have to tell you, I've never had this experience in my entire life. They used to play the overture, and we'd all be behind the curtain around our pianos. We would have, it was like American Bandstand back there. It was like Studio 54 backstage. We would just dance to that music. The last day, this is one of my favorite memories... All of the people who worked at the Kennedy Center came to the sides of the stage to watch us, and Sondheim came, and he saw us. It was like famous. You could see he was so thrilled that we were so into it.

RR: It's a great musical comedy score.

ES: It really is... it really is. And this production, for me, it was a perfectly cast gem. It really was.

RR: Post-Camp Sondheim, I saw you at the Merrily reunion concert, which must have been really interesting to watch...

ES: Oh my God, I was like sobbing... look at them! It was so nice, Raul and I were invited. We sat there, we were like, "Look at them..." It was very moving. So many of those people, that was the only show they ever did. To see them up there, to see them with some sort of, not that it was closure or anything, but to see how much that show meant to them, to see how glad they were to all have been back together again, it was truly moving.

RR: And then, you did a couple of readings...

ES: You just... you're.... wow. Oh my God, you DO know me.

RR: The Little Mermaid... you played Ursala in the reading.

ES: I think that seeing how I scream a lot in every show, they thought, "We should get her to do this role."

RR: Is it very different from the film?

ES: I don't know how much to talk about it, because it's sort of up in the air right now.

RR: You still have "Poor Unfortunate Souls..."

ES: Yeah, what's happened is the movie only had seven or eight songs. Howard Ashman of course is no longer alive... Alan Menken didn't want to touch it because to find someone to measure up to Howard Ashman, and to match his wit in the score, it was very hard. He found this guy who's wonderful. He has the same sort of really quick urban wit. The score now has like 21 songs.

RR: Did you have a lot to sing?

ES: Ursala had like five songs.

RR: It's a good role...

ES: It's a great role. I don't know if they will ever be able to figure out how to get it onstage, production-wise. How to do the sea the sea and land. You can't really do a Julie Taymor. It's so... the book and the songs are so funny, it can't be about concept, what it looks like. It needs to serve the comedy. So, I don't know how they are going to do that.

RR: It will be interesting to see if it goes forward.

ES: It will go forward, I just think it will be awhile. Matthew Bourne was attached to it, but he wanted more time, I believe, to work on it. I think they're probably looking for someone right now.

RR: You also did The Witches of Eastwick reading with Carolee Carmello.

ES: I did it at Manhattan Theatre Club. I was Alex. I don't know what's happening with that either.

RR: Moving on to your Broadway show, Dinner At Eight. The first thing that popped into my mind when I saw you in the show was "How long did she sit and watch Anna Nicole Smith to play this part?"

ES: She was my idol. That's what I was going for. I was going for a thirties Anna Nicole Smith. That's exactly what I wanted.

RR: It was your first Broadway play.

ES: I hadn't done a play since 1995 or so. It's funny because when you get known in the musical theatre world, that's what you're thought of. People don't think of you in plays. Daniel Sweet had just seen Merrily, and he brought me in for this as a lark. I did something I never, ever do. I sort of dressed up for the audition, and just went way, way, WAY past the top. I think Gerry Gutierrez was very smart. I still haven't seen the movie. Apparently, everybody hates the movie, but loves Jean Harlow. I think he so wanted to get away from that version of that character.

RR: It was so big. It was hysterical. I feel you were robbed of a Tony nomination.

ES: Oh, god! I love you!

RR: I saw it with Andrew Gans, and I said, "She's doing Anna Nicole."

ES: That's so funny! I'm so glad you thought of that, because that's exactly what I was going for. All she does is lay in bed, read magazines, scream, and eat chocolates. All she needed was to be doing drugs, she would have been Anna Nicole.

RR: You also did My Life With Albertine, which I did not get a chance to see. However, PS Classics did record it for release on October 7...

ES: I'm so glad that they recorded, because it really is a beautiful score. So eclectic, so fresh sounding.

RR: I hear it was a different role for you. You played a lesbian lounge singer...

ES: I really didn't do very much in the show.

RR: Originally you were cast in two different roles.

ES: I was gonna do the roles that Donna Lynne did. I was sort of excited about that, coming off Dinner At Eight. It would have been so radically different. It's fun not to do the same thing all over again. This was a sort of classic French chanteuse. Some of it is just astoundingly beautiful. People keep telling me that their favorite thing in the show was this little number that me and Brooke and another girl did as sort of a mocking number. Sort of like a lesbian threesome. It was apparently like everybody's favorite number.

RR: Why not? Lesbian threesomes. When you think of musical theatre, you think of lesbian threesomes...

ES: We would go out every night, and whatever men were in the front row would be like "Oh my God!" They were marketing it wrong. If they marketed it to the frat boy, from that aspect. Tell 'em there's lesbians in the show. "Girls Gone Wild meets Proust."

RR: I'm also told you once again ended up in your underwear.

ES: There you go! What's that about? Who knew?

RR: I say "Good times." It's hot on those stages... [Emily snorts with laugher] Moving onward, you did No Strings with Encores!

ES: I did. I had such a good time.

RR: Tell me about the Encores! experience for you, with the week of rehearsal.

ES: I loved it. Annie Reinking was wonderful. Everyone in it was wonderful, they couldn't have been nicer. I've never done summer stock, but this is what I imagine what a really , really high class summer stock would be like. Everyone is super focused, because they only have a limited amount of time. There's Rob Fisher's great band... everyone is so into it, it's a blast. I would love to work with them again.

RR: Maybe Side Show in five years?

ES: I don't know. I think Side Show needs more time. I think they should do Carrie first.

RR: I run the Carrie website.

ES: Did you SEE Carrie?

RR: No, I was like four. I have the video, but... God it's out there. Such good music and such bad music altogether.

ES: I'd love to hear the rest of the score.

RR: I'll send it to you. I'll send you every version of it ever. You've also been on three recordings that have come out this year. The first one is Bob Ost's "Everybody's Gettin' Into The Act." How did that come into play for you?

ES: I'm so amazed that that finally got out. I recorded that years ago. I'm most happy for him that it got released. I love Mary Testa's song a lot.

RR: You are also on "Believe: The Songs of the Sherman Brothers."

ES: Yes. "Where Do the Good Times Go?" Where do they go? Someone said that they should do that at Encores! Over There. Do you know that show? The Andrews Sisters. One of Ann Reinking's first shows.

RR: You've done studio albums, cast albums and a live album or two. Do you have a preference?

ES: Well, no. I like to do stage.

RR: Do you have another show coming up?

ES: I leave town Friday to do Pump Boys and Dinettes in Charlotte. It's the 25th Anniversary show.

RR: You sing a song from that on your solo album...

ES: I do, I sing "Be Good or Be Gone." I'm not playing that role, I'm playing the little sister. Lynne Winterstellar is playing the older sister. Jim Wande, who co-wrote it, has written a bunch of new songs, to see which ones work or don't work.

RR: Is it a pre-Broadway tryout?

ES: I don't know, I know some people from New York are going to come down and see it. They aren't calling it pre-Broadway.

RR: I know that you're in love with Petra in A Little Night Music...

ES: I'll never, ever do that role. I've auditioned for that show like all the time. No one will ever cast me. I'm so bitter about it. There's few things that I go, "I would be really terrific in that role," because most of the time I can think of ten other people who can do it better. I always recommend other people. I do that all the time.

RR: But, a lot of roles have been written to your talents. Full Monty was written to your voice... Side Show was written to your riffings... There's an Emily Skinner school of singing...

ES: That's so disturbing. I'm so sad about that.

RR: All the white girls learn to do that riff down, that you do.

ES: I'm glad it's having a good life.

RR: Side Show? We do need to talk about it. Five years have gone by since it closed. I saw the closing matinee. Tell me about the Side Show experience, five years later...

ES: The Side Show experience was amazing, all the way through. It had such a progression, such a life. To be able to be in something from its inception to it's final product is such an extraordinary gift. I don't know if that will ever happen again. It's just so neat to be on that trip. I did that with two other Violets. It had whole different plot lines that were thrown out. It's very interesting.

RR: That's how you and Alice rose into musical theatre stardom. Do you keep a picture of Natasha Richardson on a dartboard?

ES: No... I'm sure she needed it more than we did for her self esteem. She needed it.

RR: What do you think makes Side Show so universal?

ES: I think that anyone who's ever felt like an outsider in anyway at all, and everyone has, can relate to that show. That's why it touches people so much. The problem with the run was not that people didn't like the show. Everyone who saw the show had a visceral reaction. Whether they liked it a lot, or didn't. The problem was getting people into the theatre. I think no one really knew how to market it. Do we market it so it seems mysterious? There are some people who thought they should put a picture of Alice and I up to show it's not some exploitive thing. It's these two attractive girls, not this grotesque thing. I think that idea really put people off. People heard it was about Siamese twin and thought, "I don't want to see that. What the hell is that?"

RR: Five years later... sad.

ES: It's not sad. It got up. It's having a great life all over, and sometime it will come back to NY. It will. Whether its ten, twenty years... it will.

RR: Luckily, I got to see you. I know you missed a lot of performances.

ES: Yeah. I burst a blood vessel in my throat.

RR: But it also pushed Lauren Kennedy into the spotlight. She has a great cd out, too.

ES: Oh, she's great! When we were in Australia, I got to sing "I Will Never Leave You" with her. It was so odd, because she understudied me. It was sort of novel and fun. She went on with Alice, and I went on with Kristin. So, it was neat.

RR: You're also in a movie that's finally making its rounds this year, in a cameo. You play "Bitchy Receptionist" in the film, "The Adulterer." What is "The Adulterer" about?

ES: It's a movie with Alice Ripley. It's about an adulterer. I haven't seen all of it.

RR: Have you seen you in it?

ES: Yes.

RR: I think it's funny that there is "Bitchy Receptionist" and "Nice Receptionist" listed at IMDB.com.

ES: You know, bitchy, crass, call Emily Skinner.

RR: Is there a role you would like to play that's not bitchy or crass?

ES: I would really like to do 110 In The Shade. I was really trying to get Papermill to do that. I know they've put it on their back burner. I'm dying to do that. It's one of those roles I did in college, but I was way too young to do it. It's a great score, and a great acting role. Vocally, it's all over the map. It's really high soprano and belting. It's like a sung play.

RR: Do you have a belty role you really want to play?

ES: That's so broad! If they ever get Little Mermaid off the ground, I would love to do that. She's just so great, and so incredibly evil. It's a great comic part, they've written her great new stuff.

RR: Who are your musical influences? Did you grow up listening to musicals? Because you don't sing the way you do listening to Mary Martin...

ES: [laughing] I don't think Mary Martin was an influence. You know, whenever people refer to me as a singer, I always go "Oh my Gosh! That's so nice! I've got you fooled!" Because I don't think of myself as a singer, I think of myself as a performer...

RR: But you're on twenty-some albums!

ES: I know! That's so fluky! I'm an actress... I think I'm really good at conveying emotion through song. I think Alice is, too. We were talking about that. It's a very distinct talent. To sing different styles, different genres, is a great thing. The more you have, the more you work.

RR: I heard somewhere that you did Hair in a dinner theatre.

ES: I did! I did! I was like 14.

RR: 14, doing Hair.

ES: I didn't do the nude scene. I was Chrissie, I sang "Frank Mills." Can you imagine at a dinner theatre? That's as funny as Cats at a dinner theatre, which they just did. That tickles me, also. "What?!?" That's just wrong. That's so bizarre that you know that.

RR: I can't add, but I know everything about theatre. Sad, isn't it? Ok, I saw a preview of Jekyll and Hyde. And Linda Eder was onstage, and your voice was coming out of her mouth.

ES: You saw that?!?

RR: It was the most bizarre experience ever… What the hell?! What was that about?

ES: [laughing] It was during previews… we hadn’t had an understudy rehearsal. Because of all the fog in the second act, the stage managers were worried about me going on. I’d never been able to rehearse onstage, let alone onstage with fog. Because she’s running around in and out of the fog…

RR: And then she gets her throat slit, after she belts.

ES: Yeah, right!

RR: Why not?

ES: So, they concocted this thing where I would do my show, as the ensemble, and then run offstage to a mike and sing her stuff, while she mouthed it. It was bizarre. I felt so bad for that audience. They must have been like, “What the hell?!” I don’t even remember if they made an announcement beforehand. They must have.

RR: I don’t remember. But you’re such a different voice type.

ES: Totally.

RR: You’re so warm… and she’s so… not.

ES: Well, it’s just weird to be so familiar with a voice type, and then hear a completely different voice come out of them. It must have been like, you know. She was so lovely, it must have been so bad for her.

RR: Was it just the one time?

ES: Yeah.

RR: The one time I saw the show. I got lucky then.

ES: I’m so sorry you didn’t get to see her.

RR: No, it was fine. Thank god Side Show came along to rescue you…

ES: I was rescued. That’s a good way to put it.

RR: And now, Pump Boys and Dinettes.

ES: Sing me some country western. It’s a great, great score. I wonder if there’s a cd of it. I think I had an album of it when I was 12. You don’t even remember albums.

RR: The last album I had was Nunsense. [Emily laughs] Well, Emily, I’m so glad we finally got to do this!

ES: Me too, I’m sorry it took this long! But we know each other now!

RR: We do! And when you get back from Charlotte, look for a Carrie goodie package!

ES: Thanks so much, Robbie!