Patrons of a New York ice cream shop can say they got their cones from a movie star.
Nikki Blonsky was working at a Long Island Cold Stone Creamery when she was cast as feisty Tracy Turnblad in the movie version of the musical “Hairspray.”
“I’d auditioned,” Blonsky, now 18, told the Herald, “and they said ‘We’re going to come to do a “Behind the scenes” with each of the four final girls for the DVD.’ Little to my knowledge they were just coming to me.”
Uploading a laptop, they had director Adam Shankman tell her, “You got it! Pack your bags and come to Hollywood. You are Tracy.”
Blonsky was stunned. “I fell off the chair crying and screaming. It took three people to peel me off the ground,” she recalled.
Blonsky said she had been dreaming of playing Tracy since she saw the Broadway hit “for my 15th birthday present.”
“She is awesome, almost like she had done it in another life or something, it is that magical,” said John Travolta, who plays Tracy’s mother Edna.
Hailing from Great Neck, Long Island, the actress has been performing since she could talk and “vocally trained” with coaches since she was 8. “I was constantly doing shows for my family, in the neighborhood,” she said. “As I got older I became the local national anthem girl for all the sports games. Then as I grew up even more, if somebody was getting married I would get a phone call, ‘Could you sing at my wedding?’ ”
She credits her family with giving her support and encouragement. “I grew up with an amazing family, hard-working parents and an adorable 12-year-old brother named Joey.”
The zaftig Blonsky notes “My parents never ever made me feel different. I was always told by them that I was beautiful and just to keep going. That is really why I was able to play Tracy: My parents believed in me. If they didn’t, then there was no way that I could have believed in me.”
It looks like her ice-cream-scooping days are behind her. There’s talk of an album and more movies, but Blonsky is keeping a level head.
“I am doing my own laundry and walking my dog again in Great Neck. I think the first step is just to let the movie come out and really take it step by step, one day at a time.”
