Kelli O’Hara is currently filming the second season of HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” where she plays Aurora Fane, the sweetest of the society snobs. “I’m trying to find more ways to be spicy,” said O’Hara, “but I think Aurora is definitely one of those who is trying to play by the rules but not have so much judgment.”
As one of Broadway’s brightest stars, O'Hara's career is full of highlights, including seven Tony nominations, as well as roles in the TV series “Masters of Sex” and “13 Reasons Why.” When asked to recall a less-than-thrilling moment from her career, she shared a memory from her time on Broadway playing Nellie Forbush, the lead in “South Pacific” in 2008.
My worst moment …
“In the show, would sing ‘I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair’ in an onstage shower — I’m wearing a bikini, which already was cringeworthy enough — and then Emile de Becque (her character’s love interest) comes on stage, so I put my shorts on and come out of the shower to have a full scene, sing all of ‘A Wonderful Guy’ and do cartwheels and climb ladders.
“One night, I step out of the shower with my shorts on and I immediately feel a thousand painful pricks in my crotch. What happened was, someone had adjusted the seam on the shorts that day and left all the straight pins in — tens and tens and tens of them, all along the interior seams.
“Now at the time, I don’t know the cause. I was thinking: Are there sticks? Are there knives? It feels like pins, but what’s going on? And this is happening during a scene. And if I ran back into the shower, what was I going to do, take off my shorts and then come and do the whole scene in that horrifying bikini?
“But not just that. I didn’t want to stop the show. I didn’t want to run offstage. And it wouldn’t have made sense to run back in the shower. This is happening in a private area of my body — I couldn’t grab it, I couldn’t touch it. I couldn’t do anything about it.
“So my co-star sings the reprise of ‘Some Enchanted Evening,’ we kiss, we make out, and then I start to dance and shimmy. No wait, first of all I start by sitting down to start the song. So I sit and while I’m singing these pins are jabbing into the inside of my thighs and my crotch. They’re going deeper than when I was standing. And then I get up and I dance, I do barrel kicks, I do cartwheels and then I climb a ladder and finish the song.
“And when I finally run off, I’m bleeding. Not that much. But anyway, that was one of the moments I think of when I think: Wow, all the no’s. No, no, no, no.”
Was O’Hara able to concentrate or was she constantly thinking: Something’s very wrong!
“That’s all you’re thinking. The thing about doing a show for a year is there’s a muscle memory that takes over, especially in times of stress. It might be that a set piece is falling or whatever, but your body goes into muscle memory. So the scene was happening — the words were coming out, the singing was happening, the dancing was happening. But all of my senses and sensations were going toward this area!
“I’m not sure I was even in terrible pain at the moment. I mean, things have happened where I got hurt on stage and I didn’t feel it as much in that adrenaline-rushed moment — but when you get off the stage, then you start to realize what happened and you burst into tears.
“Same thing had happened in ‘Kiss Me, Kate’ when I shut my finger in the door while singing a song — and couldn’t get it out. So I had to stop and say, ‘A little help, please!’ and two people had to come out and unlatch the door, and then I just started singing again.
“With the shorts in ‘South Pacific,’ I was like: Just keep singing. I felt it so uncomfortably, but it wasn’t until I got offstage and ripped them off and sort of looked at all the pins staring back at me — that had been angrily jabbing at me the whole time — that I realized what was going on.”
A wardrobe person had clearly adjusted the crotch — was the costume not fitting previously?
“See, I got pregnant in ‘South Pacific’ and not a lot of people knew it. So I’m thinking it was probably when they were secretly letting it out. Because the only people who would have known were the wardrobe people. I had to be in cahoots with them for a bit before I was going to tell people.
“It wasn’t my dresser, because she was horrified. But whoever was doing day work, they were letting out the seam and inadvertently — not on purpose — left all the straight pins in. You line the seam with straight pins and then sew over them, and they just forgot to take them out. It’s just one of those things. I’m sure they felt horrified. There was no lasting damage, of course.
“I did end up telling my co-stars. Are you kidding? Everyone knew! The good thing about it was that it wasn’t so bad that people couldn’t laugh about it.
“It’s amazing, there are so many things that happen that are monumental to the actors that are happening on stage that the audience never knows about.”
The takeaway …
“I can do it — I can get through it.
“I don’t run my hands over my costumes before I put them on, but maybe I should! But because I’ve told this story to every dresser, this would never happen again. I think it’s a dresser’s worst nightmare, to have that happen.”
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