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Kristin Chenoweth on “Pushing Daisies,” Playing Dusty, and Christianity

Infectious is a good word to describe the energy of Kristin Chenoweth. Whether she’s chatting about her love of Broadway, her recently canceled ABC dramedy Pushing Daisies, her charitable causes or the Christmas holidays, it’s impossible to not feel a little intoxicated by talking with her. This is probably no news to her long-time fans but also explains why her career is hotter than ever before.

With her new holiday CD, “A Lovely Way To Spend Christmas,” and her appearance on TNT’s Christmas in Washington special on December 17, it’s easy to see why the holiday is Chenoweth’s favorite.

When we asked how the songs she’ll be performing on the TNT special were chosen she said the producers, “listened to the album and they picked them for me. And I love the songs they chose for me but I’m a little disappointed that I don’t get to do “Do You Hear What I Hear?” which is my favorite track on it but … who knows what everybody else is doing that has to fit into the program. I’m excited to do the classic “I’ll be Home For Christmas” and then, of course, “What Child is This?” is beautiful so I think doing it with a full orchestra – that’s not going to suck.”

On the subject of the long-anticipated biopic of legendary singer Dusty Springfield that Chenoweth has been attached to for some time, she is happy to provide an update. “I just received a new draft of the script and we’re still moving forward.”

Though the project is still some time away from actually lensing (she didn’t have a shoot date to offer) Chenoweth is clearly passionate and determined to see the film made. When asked if Dusty’s relationship with women would be a part of the film, she stressed, “Absolutely. I won’t do the film without that part of her life included.”

One of the other reasons she feels so strongly about audience learning more about Springfield is, “People aren’t aware of all the great music she put out there. There’s so much more than ‘Son of a Preacher Man.'”

With her undeniable talent stretching across many mediums, Chenoweth had a hard time choosing her favorite because, as she admitted, “the answer is always different because it depends on my mood. I think for me, I love, obviously, Broadway. There’s nothing like performing in front of a live audience and also losing yourself in a character.

TV and film has its challenges:

Pushing Daisies is one of the highlights of my career [and] certainly playing that character…but my favorite thing is I do a lot of concerts with orchestras all over the world and I love making music with an 80-piece orchestra behind me. I also love bringing what it is that I do – which is a little bit of everything – especially if you’re doing an opera, to try to make it relatable to people who might not normally like opera.

I like to not be limited by myself by being in a role so I would have to say the concert singing. It’s really what fulfills me the most. That being said, Broadway doesn’t suck. I love it and I miss it. I miss it a lot. But I loved being on TV and I’ve loved being in movies. Four Christmases was so fun. All I care is that I keep getting a job. Beggars won’t be choosers.

As for the demise of the critically lauded/low rated demise of ABC’s Pushing Daisies, Chenoweth said she has a hard time not crying when she thinks about the end of her Emmy-nominated role as Olive Snook.

I’m doing okay. I’m extremely sad. I wish we could have had an episode where we wrapped it up. I am very surprised that this was the show that was [cancelled]…I understand that ratings weren’t what they’d hoped and I also understand that it we’re a very expensive show to produce. I get it in my mind but my heart has a harder time with it so I’m sad.

Any chance the last episode would wrap up the series to appease the die-hard fans? “Our creator, Bryan Fuller, specifically asked if he could write an episode to wrap everything else,” Chenoweth said, “and ABC specifically said ‘Don’t do that because you never know what’s going to happen.'”

We didn’t know until recently that we were cancelled so we went ahead and shot an episode thinking that it would be a possibility that we come back which is kind of a bummer. This is not news, so I’m not breaking any secret here but Bryan has talked about writing a movie version and wrapping things up and also keeping and going ahead with the comic book version of it and even though that would suck for [the actors] because we’re not comic book characters and can’t act those out at least the fans will get closure and, to be honest, so would we.

When asked how she would fix network TV so inventive shows such as Pushing Daisies didn’t have to be cancelled, Chenoweth was just as perplexed as the show’s fans.

One of the things that I don’t think is working is this system of ratings. There are many people who don’t even watch television. They watch an episode at work on their computer [and] those numbers don’t get tallied. I know that DVR numbers are very iffy. I know that they take like three weeks to get back the right number and they’re still not sure. There’s gotta be a better system now than what that is. I don’t know but it’s 2008 and its getting ready to be 2009 and really awesome, special shows are being cancelled and I don’t think they have the exact numbers correct. I don’t.

Spending time with several gay-related groups such as the Point Foundation as well as proclaiming that “I love the gays,” Chenoweth said that she first demonstrated this affinity to befriending gays when she was in elementary school.

“About the fifth grade,” she said. “There was a girl named Jackie Bell, who didn’t have many friends and I loved her. I just loved her. We were total opposites, everybody would say things like dyke about her and of course at that age I didn’t know what that word meant. I honestly didn’t. I was extremely naïve but for whatever reason I just loved this girl and she was just awesome and we stayed friends through high school and obviously I learned what the word dyke meant.”

True to form, Chenoweth didn’t listen to her classmates when they warned her about spending so much time with Jackie.

“I was doing the lead in the high school musical and I needed someone to help dress me and Jackie was a backstage hand, she was in the crew, and I said ‘Hey Jackie, can you help me change?’ and everybody said to me, ‘You don’t want her to do that because she’s a dyke and she’ll try something on you.’ And I said ‘No she won’t. She’s my friend.’ And honest to goodness, Jackie was my friend, she helped me dress, we giggled and laughed through the whole play.”

“My Mom said, ‘Kristi, Your whole life you have been drawn to people who’ve been different and/or gay people’ and it’s the truth,” Chenoweth added, commenting on how natural it was for her to stand up for people who are cast out by society and, sometimes, their own families:

I am in no way a saint, at all. I don’t mean to present myself as such. I’ve screwed up many, many times. But I knew even at a young age that there came a sense of loneliness with these kids and I couldn’t stand it. I simply couldn’t stand it. And, by the way, all from people who loved what I loved…as a Christian person, the tolerance level is really disgusting to me.

Chenoweth also cited a popular book as a foundation for her reason for being on this Earth. “Rick Warren, this pastor that I love, wrote a book called The Purpose Driven Life and I read it and I read it over and over again all the time. I highly recommend the book. It’s not really about religion, believe it or not. But the first line of the book says ‘It’s not about me.’

She went on to say:

I realized my purpose in this world and this gets a little Pollyanna/preachery and I don’t mean for it to but I’ve gotten to a point in my career and I’ve gotten to the age where I’ve realized that I’ve been given a talent, which is singing and acting, but I know my purpose in this world and that is as a Christian person, as a person of faith, to show that we don’t need to just tolerate people …we need to not just tolerate but we need to accept them as they are. Bridget Jones has that great saying in the movie: ‘he loves me just as I am’ and that’s the way God views all of his children. He loves us just as we are. Because who made us is him.

Though she continued to apologize for sounding preachy, Chenoweth shared what she says when someone says that being gay is a sin.

“What if it’s a sin to be short?” she said. “Pretend for a second …I’m going to hell in a hand basket! That silly, stupid, bracelet that all my cousins have that says ‘What would Jesus do?’ It’s true. What would He have done? I think he would be very sad if he walked Earth today and he saw how people are ostracized, how people are unloved. There is so much pain and hurt and at Christmastime it seems to come out even more.”

“This is my purpose in this world … my purpose in life is to be an example of what Christ really was whether you believe in him or not but what he taught and that’s love and acceptance, not tolerance.”

Chenoweth said that she knows a thing or two about not being supported by people close to you.

I’ve been ostracized for my beliefs in this matter. I’ve been hurt very badly by people of faith … my second album was a Christian record that I fought very hard to make. I kind of took it up the butt for that one from the Christian right because I had to say what I believed. I walk an incredibly fine line but I kinda don’t care because there comes the day when you just don’t give a crap anymore. You graduate from that high school of giving a crap. And you believe what you believe. You know, I’m very, very conservative in a lot of areas and I’m extremely liberal in others. Just because I voted for a Democrat doesn’t mean I don’t have Republican views on some things. I would never, never counsel anyone to have an abortion. I was adopted. But I also don’t want to decide for people … it gets into so many other areas that that’s just me.

With her passions having run the gamut of subjects during the course of our chat, Kristin Chenoweth is, at the moment, all about Christmas and the joy it brings her. While her holiday CD is filled with what she calls “timeless classics,” she proves with everything she does that she’s a classic right here and now.

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