“It’s typically a man’s song, and she’s giving it a very grungy energy that wasn’t of that time, and not necessarily a crowd-pleaser that you would expect from her. “That's the quintessential messy, all-out performance I've come to be obsessed with from her,” Rodriguez said. The Emmy- and Peabody-winning concert special––reportedly the first shot exclusively for television––features in an early episode of Halston, which sees Rodriguez recreating the show’s “I Gotcha” number. It was through Liza with a Z that Rodriguez first encountered Minnelli. The then-23-year-old Minnelli’s performance in The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) is Rodriguez’s personal favorite, citing a 7-minute one-shot monologue in the film as “one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.”
“In her first movie, The Sterile Cuckoo, she played somebody with mental illness who had a very complicated coming of age story, and that’s how she burst onto the scene and got her first Oscar nomination.” “Liza was immediately seen as a more complicated actress,” she added. Relating to Minnelli in her adult life seems a natural progression for Rodriguez, who said she had been a fan of Judy Garland (Minnelli’s mother) as a child, since “she stayed in a very family-friendly realm all the way to the end, whereas Liza completely broke out and did edgier work.” “I went through my own trials, and I feel that people like her gave me permission to talk about it and help others, because she was open with her struggles with addiction and her family and childhood and all that.” “The struggles in her personal life were very well documented and discussed by her, which I find really inspiring,” she said. Rodriguez, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014 and penned a number of Cosmopolitan articles about her experiences with chemotherapy, said Minnelli’s openness about her own struggles became a strong point of connection to her character. brought with her the idea that it’s okay to revel in your mistakes, and in the parts that might seem messy and more unsavory, to let people see you as a real person.” “We keep trying to do the right thing and never make a mistake, but you soon realize you can't possibly do a show every night, for hundreds of performances, and not make a mistake. “As we grow up in theatre, we try to be perfect,” Rodriguez said. She is going all the way, and if that means she makes a face that's not attractive, or if she's sweating and her hair stuck to the side of her head, that is more exciting to watch.”Įxploring this controlled-chaos technique struck the actor as the opposite of what ‘proper’ musical theatre training usually strives for. “The way she performs is with total abandon it doesn't have any stopping point,” she added. The actor said that while Minnelli’s vocal technique is “perfect,” she toyed with a unique ability to “throw it away and move from her chest and heart to give it everything.” “I’m thrilled to be someone who plays women that can be a little bit complicated and messy and get their hands dirty.”Ī tabloid-frenzied lifestyle wasn’t the main source of messiness Rodriguez enjoyed exploring. “There's a lot of things about her that I loved digging into,” she said. Our phone conversation below is edited for length and clarity. I spoke with the actor about what makes Minnelli a popular culture legend, and delved as deep into stan territory as any self-respecting Liza fan should, when presented with the opportunity. The EGOT recipient was a close friend of the fashion icon, and their Studio 54-heavy lifestyles closely mirrored each other in their highly publicized mix of brilliance and self-destruction.īeyond a striking physical transformation, Rodriguez stood out by living up to Minnelli’s talent and charm-her first scene, an electric nightclub performance of “Liza with a Z”, is as good a character introduction as any this year.
In the Netflix miniseries Halston, about the fashion trailblazer’s life, she has found a perfect match playing Liza Minnelli. From Wednesday Addams, to Ilse in Spring Awakening, and Megara in the Public’s Hercules, her characters have often reflected her own scrappy, can-do spirit. Krysta Rodriguez has spent much of her career playing ambitious, off-beat women. 16 June 2021 ∙ Originally published in Theatrely
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