Interviewed by Joe Montague
By her own admission, actress Heather
Parcells who revived the plum role of Judy Turner in
A Chorus Line on Broadway in 2006 and
who also appeared in Chitty Chitty Bang
Bang at the Hilton Theatre on Broadway, relishes roles where she can portray
strong women, with strong opinions, who can really go after what they want out
of life.
“I am really drawn to characters that
are so extreme, but you do not have any repercussions from that, because it is
fake,” she says.
Ms. Parcells ability to immerse herself
in roles such as Velma Kelly in the national tour of
Chicago is just one of the reasons
why she is considered to be one of the bright young stage actresses on the New
York theatre scene. Her role as Velma Kelly resulted in a nomination for Best
Actress by the National Broadway Theatre Awards.
The five foot seven inch brunette, with
the soprano vocals grew up in Newport News, Virginia, as the daughter of
Patrick, a neurologist and Cathie, a nurse, with one brother T.J., got her first
real taste for the stage, during her junior year of high school when she
auditioned for and landed the role of Audrey in the musical
Little Shop of Horrors.
It became a pivotal moment in her life, as she had ridden horses since
she was six years old and held aspirations of becoming a Grand Prix jumper in
the Olympics. Ms. Parcells who also played tennis, ran track and managed the
varsity football team, during her high school years, decided one summer to forgo
her usual summer routine of attending horseback riding camp and asked her
parents if she could attend the Carnegie Melon pre-college program for musical
theatre.
“I
loved it. I loved every second of it and I couldn’t get enough.
At the end of the camp they gave us an evaluation and they said that I
would never make it in this business. So much for that one!” she laughs.
Yes, so much for that one, as Heather
Parcells would eventually appear in Some
Like It Hot with Tony Curtis and Off Broadway productions,
Mademoiselle Modiste and
Meet Me In St Louis, as well as
serving as the understudy for the national tour of
Thoroughly Modern Millie. Then there
was her role as Velma Kelly in Chicago.
“There are people who thrive on research
and knowledge and all of the very intellectual experiences with characters and I
do to a certain extent, but ultimately, my way (to prepare) is to take it from
the script. You have to know that it is Cook County in Chicago, circa 1920
something. You can’t ignore that. You have to find out how people speak and how
they walk, but as far as Velma goes I analyzed the script, because everything
that you need to know is in the script, as far as what is informing the
character. When somebody writes a play, a film or a television show unless they
are horrifically bad, they have included everything, because they have fleshed
it out in their head. They are just taking their ideas, which are very, very
clear and they are putting them on paper. You just have to learn how to
interpret them. That is how I
approach a character. Specifically, in the first scene, Velma comes out and
tells mama that she is amazing and thanks her for what she did and mama is like,
‘by the way I can get you this, this, this, and this,’ and you know all of the
time that Velma has been paying her money to get her publicity, because that is
all that Velma wants. You learn from that exchange that Velma wants to be the
hottest thing in town. It doesn’t matter how she does it and she will climb her
way to the top to do it. She will
pay for it and she doesn’t have any trouble socializing with people who will get
her things, knowing full well that she will have to return the favor, whether it
is monetarily or in some other way. She
is a very goal oriented, social climbing person, who will stop at nothing, to
get what she wants. You can look up
the woman that Velma Kelly is based on (Belva Gaertner) and you will get the
same information, but I can tell you that from the script,” says Heather
Parcells. 
She refers to appearing in
Some Like It Hot as an amazing
experience. “Tony was one of the most loveable and sweet men and he was so full
of stories. We were doing one scene, when all of a sudden the director said,
‘Tony what was it like when you guys did this scene and the entire room went
silent. It was about Marilyn Monroe and we turned and looked at Tony and he
started telling the entire story of how they got on the beach and what they had
done.”
Although she was thrilled to be cast in
the Broadway production of Chitty Chitty
Bang Bang, Ms. Parcells also says it came with its embarrassing moments. “I
called myself stage parsley, because I was just garnish on the stage for that
one. In that one I was with fifteen
children, eight dogs and a flying car. I also had to wear a hairpiece that
looked somewhat like a toilet brush on my head, as well as a giant white cone
and it ended up looking like a giant tampon. I
had a huge collar around my neck, because I was playing a dancing jokester.
That was probably the most embarrassing costume that I have worn to date,
aside from Gordon the Dragon, but at least nobody could see me then.
It was an amazing experience to have one of my first Broadway shows
(performed) in one of the most beautiful theaters in the city.”
Wait a minute. Did we miss something?
Gordon the Dragon?
“We had been going to Busch Gardens all of my life and I heard they were (holding) auditions. I was hired for the part of Gordon the Dragon after my senior year of high school and before college. The dragon was green, weighed fifty pounds and it was hot as hell outside. I did 616 shows of Gordon the Dragon and I think that I weighed 90 pounds by the end of the summer and I am five foot seven. (she laughs) that was my first paid performing job,” she says.
Some might say that Heather Parcells
landing the role of Judy Turner in A
Chorus Line came about in a rather unorthodox fashion. Apparently, she was
one of the few people to audition who had never seen the musical, the movie or
the script. There were also the added challenges of having to duct tape her feet
into her dance shoes, because of her high arches, coming down with the flu the
night before her final audition and dropping all the papers she was carrying as
she walked onto the stage and she deftly kicked
them under the piano with her foot. Oh did we happen to mention she
prepared her part as a monologue and when the director and the casting director
asked her to sing, she had to explain that she had never received any music with
the words. The director liked what he
saw and he cast her immediately.
Heather Parcells’ current projects
include working as a producer for the Breadth Films’ movie
Bruiser, which she describes as
being, “about a boxer who is unable to fight back, because of his
insecurities. He is into pills and drugs and he can’t punch out. He just hides
behind his gloves. This is about this guy’s journey, as he learns to open up. It
is an amazing thing for women and men and for anyone who has demons. It is
portrayed in a sport, where if you don’t hit back, you are not successful. In
the end, he overcomes his demons. There are so many people in the world, who
work so hard to get somewhere, but when it comes to stepping off of that ledge,
they are not able to do it. The director is Joshua Durham. The screenplay was
written by Joshua and John Patrick Hayden. John also plays the lead character
James.”
Heather Parcells teaches dance master
class, on camera commercial classes, vocal technique, vocal audition and acting
for the camera, for those between the ages of ten and twenty-one years old. She
has been doing so for the past seven years, while she continues to perform.
Please visit the
Heather Parcells website.