An Interview with Lots of Pretty Chicks, Part 1

Pretty. Such a word. It conjures, no? Immediately, your mind is transported to high school, chats with your mother, Vogue, Maxim. With the second season of the satirical Pretty the Series underway, DCTV creator Daryn Strauss got the ladies of Pretty talking about… prettiness! We talk standards of beauty, women in comedy, and just wait ’till we get on the subject of the Marie Claire article! I just love it when women speak their minds. This is a must-read.

DARYN: First of all, introduce yourselves and the characters you play in Pretty.

STACY MCQUEEN: I’m Stacy McQueen, and I play Annette La Chandra Champagne. I am six years old, and my favorite number is 8.
DEE FREEMAN: Hi, I’m Dee Freeman, and I play Ribina Champagne.
TERRI SIMMONS: My name is Terri Simmons, and I play Parker Kensington-Parker, the Miss Star Eyes Pageant Director.
KIRSTEN VANGSNESS: I play Meredith Champagne who really loves God in her very own way.
ALISON QUINN: I’m Alison, and I’m playing Ginger.

DARYN: Do any of you have experience in beauty pageants?

STACY MCQUEEN: My mother signed me up for Wendy Ward’s Charm school at Montgomery Wards. It was horrifying. I cried the whole first session and never went back.
TERRI SIMMONS: When I was in college, I entered the Miss Nacogdoches Pageant on a dare.
KIRSTEN VANGSNESS: Zero.
ALISON QUINN: I don’t have any experience in beauty.

DARYN: OK, I will admit I am 100% obsessed with Toddlers & Tiaras and Little Miss Perfect. I find them unintentionally hilarious, and you gals completely nail the absurdity of those shows. How much Toddlers & Tiaras and Little Miss Perfect did you watch before you started shooting?

STACY MCQUEEN: I watched an episode a few years ago when Steve (Silverman, Pretty Writer/Director) was obsessing over it. Then the cast watched a couple of episodes, but that was it. Looking back I’m like, why didn’t I study those little girls more?! I guess because I figure Annette isn’t a character. She’s just me in that situation – if I were an abnormally grown 5 year old and had a black mother.
DEE FREEMAN: Before filming the first season, our producers, John and Doug, had us over for a meal while we we watched an entire season of Toddlers & Tiaras. Watching it was kind of like going to a dentist. You know it’s going to hurt but you have to do it anyway.
TERRI SIMMONS: I had only watched Toddlers & Tiara once before we started shooting. It scared me because I grew up with people like that. I’m from East Texas, where it’s not how you feel but how you look, and “the higher the hair, the closer to God.”
ALISON QUINN: I didn’t watch any of those shows. I had seen a documentary about pageants that was pretty scary. It was several years ago and I can’t remember what it was called.

DARYN: Although the show is scripted, everything feels very improvisational. I totally believe these characters are just living their lives and talking off the cuff, which is very hard to pull off! What was the rehearsal process like?

STACY MCQUEEN: What rehearsal? Ha! Thank you! But believe it or not, there were very few improv-ed lines in Season 1. Silverman’s script was so good, everything we needed was on the page. It helps that I know him so well that I literally hear his voice in my head when I read it. I know exactly what he’s going for – what he wants. Not to say I am always perfect – oh no! There were times he’d have to direct me in our BFF short hand – “more of the face” or “less drunk.”
DEE FREEMAN: We had a read-through after we got the script and there were emails sent back and forth with script changes and updates but that’s about it.
TERRI SIMMONS: My entire rehearsal process consisted of dinner one night with Steve Silverman, where we spent a few hilarious hours discussing my character, Parker, and her relationship to the story and the rest of the characters. That’s it. That’s all I got.

DARYN: When I was a kid, the woman I thought was the most beautiful woman was Barbra Streisand, because my friends and I watched movie musicals all the time. I had no idea she was not considered traditionally beautiful. Who was your model of pretty when you were a girl?

STACY MCQUEEN: I remember thinking Sunny from Bosom Buddies was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Steve’s answer will be Jaime Sommers (The Bionic Woman).
DEE FREEMAN: Pam Grier all the way. Here was a woman who was beautiful, intelligent, could handle herself in any situation, and always came out on top – in more ways than one!
TERRI SIMMONS: I was raised watching classic movies, and the first time I saw Rita Hayworth in Gilda, I thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen… oh, and Diahann Carroll because I was secretly obsessed with women of color.
KIRSTEN VANGSNESS: Henrietta Pussycat from Mr. Rodgers Neighborhood.
ALISON QUINN: Lynda Carter.

DARYN: Give me one vital prettying tip!

STACY MCQUEEN: Spanx are your friend.
DEE FREEMAN: Ribina would say “go braless” and “put plenty of Vaseline on the girls so they can stand out!!!”
TERRI SIMMONS: “Pretty is as pretty does.” But of course, Parker would say that is nonsense…
KIRSTEN VANGSNESS: Sunscreen. And I wash my face about twice a week. The rest of the time, I sleep in the make-up grime, which sounds nuts, but I am lucky to have great skin.
ALISON QUINN: Trim those nose hairs.

DARYN: Recently, I wrote a piece in response to that unfortunate article Marie Claire ran about Mike and Molly, which basically opined that overweight people should not be allowed to be in love on television. How do you all deal with the pressures that this industry and country puts on women to look a certain way?

STACY MCQUEEN: I’m so out of it, not only didn’t I read the Marie Claire article, but I don’t even know who Mike and Molly are. In my twenties, I lived in constant a state of body hate and wishing I were thinner/prettier/fitter. I exercised like mad, I took mahuang, I went on every zany fast/cleanse/diet. There was a time I was taking laxatives. I went 12 days without eating, always striving for a number I couldn’t get to. I secretly wished I could be anorexic. Looking back, I WAS thin. I just I wish I could have enjoyed it.
DEE FREEMAN: If more women felt like Ribina, they’d be a lot happier. She knows she’s sexy and she doesn’t care what people think about her. I completely echo Ribina’s thoughts. In this field there is always going to be somebody prettier, thinner or younger. So… be happy, imagined warts and all, with who you are.

TERRI SIMMONS: I believe that a woman has to be consistently true to who she is and be proud of what she brings to her surroundings. I work hard every day to be the best ME that I can be and not to compare myself to anyone else. I want to make sure the world is a better place, a funnier place, a happier place with me in it.
STACY MCQUEEN: I get that whole body dysmorphia thing, but the problem was/is, that it’s not all in your head. Even if back then, I had looked in the mirror and saw my body for the perfectly healthy and beautiful size 6-8 that it was, I got constant prodding/shaming from my agents, directors, boyfriends, other actresses. I had one actress tell me after I shot a few scenes, “Your ass looks THIS BIG.” She held her hands really REALLY far apart. I had another actress come up to me and tell me that the dress I was wearing was a dress she wore on the show when she was 8 months pregnant. How was I NOT to feel horrible about my body?! Honestly, my body was the reason I quit the business and concentrated on live performances and writing and doing my own videos. I couldn’t take going into my agents office and being asked “Are you pregnant?” No lie! Every! Single! Time! Or having them call me and say, “We need you to come and walk around here so we can see where you are weight wise.” Oh, I get sweaty just thinking about it.
ALISON QUINN: I didn’t read the Marie Claire article. I think there’s pressure for women to look a certain way, and everyone says they want to see more realistic people on TV, and yet, our culture seems to prioritize women’s looks over their talent so it seems sort of like a never-ending chicken and the egg type thing. The same women that say “accept me as a size 12″ are also buying all the gossip magazines that glamorize gorgeous women with really skinny bodies and also, are dieting or getting plastic surgery to look more like them. Also, I have only seen a little bit of Mike and Molly, but it’s weird how they are supposed to be viewed as average Americans and yet every joke is about how overweight the stars are, so I don’t particularly find that funny or illuminating. I also think it’s a little bit strange that the whole show is centered around the fact that they are two extremely overweight people who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. The show marketed itself, seemingly successfully, on the issue of their weight, more than who the characters were. So it also doesn’t make sense to me how you can sort of make their weight the centerpiece of the show, and then get upset when some people want to criticize that aspect of the show. Being obese is not healthy, neither is being anorexic. So… if you are going to have a problem with girls being anorexic on shows, isn’t that just the flip side of the coin?
STACY MCQUEEN: Ironically, I’m much heavier than I was then, and OLDER, but I am so much more comfortable with myself. I’ve given up wanting to be a size 0-4. I thought size 0 was a joke. Nope. It helps that I’m playing a 6 year old and having a toddleresque body finally pays off. God bless her ass camouflaging tutus!
ALISON QUINN: But it really stinks that none of this seems to apply to men. When King of Queens was on, no one said, “My goodness, he’s so big, he doesn’t deserve to have a wife.” No one makes fun of older men who are attracted to younger women! And I do think, for the most part, a man’s talent is prized over their looks… with the exception of leading men. There are a lot of working male actors, who you’d recognize even though you might not know them by name, who are not super handsome but are also not charactery looking, and they work a lot because of their acting. Unfortunately, that can’t be said for women. But, I guess we’re making looks very important just by having this discussion. But I can honestly say, if I was a kid, and I wanted to be an actress, and I got to pick, knowing what I know now, I would pick being beautiful every day of the week over being funny. Because pretty women just work more, regardless of their abilities.
KIRSTEN VANGSNESS: I think we put it on ourselves really, I think it’s about learning to understand why we get so unconscious about our own bodies but yet we are so externally body conscious. I say deal with the pressure by always being delighted by the clothes you wear and masturbating.

STAY TUNED FOR PART 2.

Watch the first episode of Season 2 below.