Kathy Brier - Actress on One Life to Live and Lead in Broadway's Hairspray

By: Dominick A. Miserandino

Aside from being nominated for an Emmy for her performance as Marcie Walsh on One Life to Live and playing the lead role, as Tracy Turnblad, in the sell-out Hairspray, the most amazing accomplishment is that Kathy Brier does this seven days a week. No break and no vacation for over six months. How does she do it?

DM) You are a busy woman. How are you juggling, a daytime Emmy-nominated soap opera and a Broadway show's leading role, everyday?

KB) It's hard. It's like running a mini-marathon everyday. I wake up at 6:30am and I don't get home until 11:00pm. From 6:00am to 6:00pm I'm at the studio and from 6:30pm until 11:00pm, I'm at Hairspray. Then, when I get home I can be up until 1:00am learning my lines for the next day. I actually try not to think about it. When I think about it, is when I go nuts. I cut my days into segments. When one segment is over, then I throw it away and I start the new segment. It's all about taking it one moment at a time and learning not to go so crazy about everything. A lot of times you go crazy about things and you don't need to.

DM) I would get more overwhelmed about everything else in my life such as laundry, cooking, etc...

KB) That's why I hired a personal assistant; I had to. My first couple of weeks, I was so overwhelmed. I had no time to cook for myself, no time to do my laundry, no time to clean my apartment. I had to hire a personal assistant, otherwise, I would never eat, have clean clothes or a clean apartment.

DM) Do you literally go directly from One Life to Live to Broadway's Hairspray?

KB) Usually not even that. Half of the time, I get off the studio floor at 6:00pm. Usually, by the time I change my clothes and get in the car it's only five or 10 minutes of down time.

DM) Are you able to enjoy what you're doing?

KB) No I'm not. I know it sounds horrible. Somebody asked me that a few days ago and I said, "I enjoy what I'm doing, when I'm doing it. When I'm on the studio floor and I'm in the middle of filming or when I'm on the stage, I enjoy it, but I don't have any down time to enjoy all of the benefits; to reap the benefits of what I'm accomplishing." I think when I'm done, I will, but that's okay because I'm saving all of my money and, I think after Hairspray, I'm going to take a long vacation and enjoy.

DM) For how long can you keep this up?

KB) I'm going to try and do it until August. I've been doing it for 6 months now. My contract ends in May, but my goal was to do it for a year. That's my goal. My body is very tired and it is starting to break down. The next couple of weeks I have some down time from the studio, which is good and it's really rare. The studio is very cyclical. There are times when I work four days a week for a month and a half or two months and, then, they'll bring somebody else's storyline more prelevently and, then, I have only two days a week here. I usually work three to four days at the studio.

DM) So you've been doing either the Broadway show or One Life to Live every single day, seven days a week for how long?

KB) About six months.

DM) When I saw the show, you really don't stop moving the whole time.

KB) No I don't. It's non-stop moving, singing and dancing. There are only seven and half minutes when I'm not on stage moving or dancing.

DM) Officially speaking, the show, Hairspray, is about this overweight girl who is going against the odds. You're doing a hell of a workout that I know I couldn't keep up with for that long.

KB) Well I did lose a lot of weight. I lost about 12 pounds. I gained it all back by going to a sports intuitionalist who helped me figure out how to keep my weight up. It's weird because I have to do physical therapy.

DM) Why do you have to do physical therapy?

KB) Because I'm overweight and when you put that much pressure on your body and only get a three to five hours of sleep, your muscles don't have the time to regenerate correctly. On top of doing the show, maintenance wise, I do physical therapy five times a week. I dance three hours a night and I also exercise before we even do the show. Normally athletes sleep eight or 10 hours a day and I don't even get that. I have to train my body to be strong enough to do the dancing, plus, I have to maintain the weight for the role.

DM) Is that weight position under contract?

KB) It's not under contract, but when I lost the 12 pounds, they freaked out.

DM) I also imagine that when you lost the weight, you were also converting fat to muscle and, therefore, even becoming slimmer.

KB) The funnier thing is, I have gained the weight back, but I'm even slimmer. So what I do, is eat three meals a day, plus I drink protein shakes, three times a day and each shake has 800 calories.

DM) You know this sounds kind of odd that you're cursed with losing weight left and right.

KB) I've actually managed to keep my weight steady for the past few weeks. The funny thing is that I lost the weight that time in no time. I blinked and it was off my body. I gained it back quickly because I had two tablespoons of cashew butter everyday.

DM) When I saw you in Hairspray, you were playing the chubby teenage girl, but you looked pretty normal to me.

KB) It's funny because, there are two things you have to remember. One, this is the entertainment business and I'm a size 12 petite. The average American woman is a size 10-12, so look at me; I'm your average-sized American woman, but in the entertainment business, I'm considered fat and obese. For a 16-year-old, I'm considered a chubby teenager. If I had this body as a teenager, which I did, I'd be considered chubby. It's all how people see you. I was never that teenager who had no curves. I went from having no shape to having a woman's body. I get that a lot; I come off stage and people say, "You're not fat," but they forget that I'm playing a 16-year-old and it's also the entertainment business. I don't consider myself to be a heavy person either, but the flip side of that is that I give overweight women a positive role model.

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