I think I was the only girl that had pants. I was so nervous - girls were wearing like wigs and skirts and I was wearing a sweater and pants. I started at the beginning of the line, and as I was walking there were girls who looked like me, who were singing similarly to me. I went to the audition at 6:45 a.m., and the audition started at 10 a.m. and prepared my short portion of 'Good Morning Baltimore,' my favorite song from the show.
#HAIRSPRAY LIVE FULL YOUTUBE PROFESSIONAL#
I really wanted to do it, but I was also really nervous because this would be my first professional audition, and I was thinking: If I can’t get Tracy, what can I get? What is there for me?
"I was in my sophomore year of college and I saw ads on Facebook that there was an open call for Tracy Turnblad. One of my lines in the show is, ‘Everybody says that a girl who looks like me can’t get this guy, but I know that he’ll look inside of me.’ So I know that she looks at people in a certain way."įlash-forward from the early days: How did you wind up auditioning for Hairspray Live! this year? I think a lot of self-hate came from bullying, whereas Tracy: She’s not oblivious to it. When I got the parts, I was like, 'Why would they cast me as this?' But when I was on stage, it didn’t matter. But I didn’t feel like I should hold back anything when I was on stage. It's hard to be a woman who doesn't stack up to society's version of "ideal." I recently went back and watched the original movie, before it even became a musical, and was struck by the same thing. Hairspray, in general, I think is just a body-positive masterpiece." I watched clips on YouTube of the Broadway version, and I fell in love with this girl: There’s self-love in almost every scene.
#HAIRSPRAY LIVE FULL YOUTUBE MOVIE#
A lot of that has to do with Hairspray actually, when I saw the movie first, before anything else.
But recently I started to accept myself, to love myself. I felt the opposite way: I did not love my body. She doesn’t know that she’s supposed to hate herself and her body. Tracy, my character, is the complete opposite. I’ve always been aware of my body and not so confident with it. That was really surprising to me because I’ve always been a bigger girl, and so the fact that I was Ariel when I was younger and then a cheerleader in Grease: I thought that was so strange. But I really got into the dancing side and the singing side in sixth grade, when I joined another community theater and I was in Grease with older people. The next year I was in The Little Mermaid and I was Ariel, and the next year after that I was Ursula in The Little Mermaid. Gulch, which is like the lady before the Wicked Witch they split that part in two.
I really wanted to be Dorothy, but they forgot to cast me, so they made me Mrs. So, you landed your first professional part this year, at 20. Refinery29 gabbed with Baillio about her early roots as a singer, navigating a budding Broadway career, and how she got over feeling self-conscious and learned to love herself exactly as she is. As if that weren't already impressive enough on its own, this was the first-ever professional audition for the Marymount musical theater major, who is taking some time off to work with the likes of Kristin Chenoweth and Ariana Grande, fellow Hairspray cast members who have become close friends since last spring. But come December 7, 20-year-old Maddie Baillio will be singing and dancing her way though living rooms across America, as the star of NBC's latest musical theater special, Hairspray Live! Baillio beat out thousands of other potential Tracy Turnblads for the coveted role earlier this year. I'm thinking about that when the future of Broadway walks in the door, pink-cheeked and shyly smiling. Stars of the stage used to gather at the upstairs bar after their shows wrapped for the night now, the cavernous space feels at once dated and timeless.
But step inside Sardi's - nearly empty at lunchtime on a weekday - and the plush booths are cool and sequestered. On a muggy August afternoon, the hot concrete sidewalks teem with tourists. But tucked away on 44th Street is a relic of Broadway days gone by: Sardi's, the near century-old restaurant known for the hundreds of caricature sketches that line its walls and keep a watchful eye on every patron who crosses the threshold. There's more grit than glamour to Manhattan's theater district these days, between the body-painted desnudas and Dave & Busters flotsam littering the gutters.