James Marsden Gets "Corny"

We're used to seeing cute James Marsden in bigscreen action epics like X-Men where he played the burning-eyed Cyclops or as Lois Lane's newspaperman fiance in Superman Returns. In the new musical film Hairspray, James plays Corny Collins, the near perfect host of a popular Baltimore teen TV dance program in the 1960's. You can catch James in a romantic fable, Enchanted later in the year and he's currently shooting 27 Dresses, a romantic comedy with Katherine Heigl for release next year.

Picture James in crisp white shirt over white tee and jeans. We wondered how he created his sparkly, over-the-top, dance show host character and hey, both he and fellow X-Man Hugh Jackman sing. Could they do an X-Men: The Musical?

TeenHollywood: You were so perfect in this part that it's scary.

James: [laughs] Oh, thank you. It's frightening how easy it comes to me all that cheese. Well, I watched some old tapes of Dick Clark and then I just turned it up to 11. No, I just thought the tone of the movie and the tone of the Broadway musical was obviously heightened and so I would always cite the example of Dick Clark mixed with a little Ryan Seacrest and then some extra cheese ladled on the top for good measure. No it was I guess a hybrid of those two with a little Johnny Carson.

TeenHollywood: He just has that pasted on smile.

James: Yeah. I look back at the '50's and '60's and the radio announcers and the talk show hosts and the game show hosts and they had like these perfect smiles on their face because they felt it was their duty to lift the spirits of the American people. They tune into us every day and they work hard and they come home and they want to be entertained. So the purity of that; I loved it and with such conviction to play that corny-ness. I guess there's no better adjective or noun. So, I had fun doing it. It was nice to take the X-Men image and do a 180.

TeenHollywood: Do you have a musical background?

James: I don't. The last proper musical I'd ever done was in high school. It's always been a hobby of mine the singing...not so much the dancing, but the singing has been something that I've tinkered with and played with throughout my career and I was always a fan of the standards like Sinatra and the song writers like Rogers & Hart and Gershwin and all that. I would sing these songs because I enjoyed listening to them and I met Mark Shaiman 3 or 4 years ago and I knew that he was Harry Connick's music arranger and I was a big fan of Harry Connick and sort of sang like him a little bit. I ran into him in a bar and I think I'd had a few martini's and said 'we're going to work together someday'. It's just been peppered throughout my acting career.

TeenHollywood: So, why do you think Hairspray director Adam Shankman thought you could sing?

James: Well, I sang on 'Ally McBeal' doing Frank Sinatra tunes and I think Adam saw that and the way he described it he says, 'that's it that's Corny!' Is he critiquing me or I don't know. But the music stuff was never anything that I aggressively pursued. But now I feel like the climate has changed a bit and we're sort of being a little more friendly towards the musical revival.

TeenHollywood: So you wouldn't mind doing another one?

James: Oh, I'd love to do it. There's something very terrifying about doing it live on Broadway and eventually I think I wouldn't do it. Undoubtedly, I would enjoy it but something's keeping me from diving into that right away.

TeenHollywood: We know that your X-Man buddy Hugh Jackman has a huge musical background. Hey, you two could do X-Men: The Musical.

James: Yeah. I'm sort of like his echo. Sort of following his path, it's certainly worked for him. We joke about it all the time. There are more people in that cast that have actually very nice voices. Patrick Stewart has a beautiful singing voice, Halle can sing, Alan Cumming in the 2nd movie, so we really could have done it. I tell people that Hairspray is really X-Men just instead of retractable claws and laser beams it's the mashed potato and the Twist for people who are different; the freaks and they sort of become the heroes in the movie so it's the same thing.

TeenHollywood: Have you talked to Hugh Jackman at all since he's such a Broadway guy himself?

James: Oh, he was thrilled when he heard that I was doing this because we would sit in the makeup trailer during X-Men and we have children that are the same age so we would sing like the theme song from Elmo and harmonize and Bear in the Big Blue House, you know. He was always like, 'mate you've got to do some sort of musical, mate, you're dying to do it, obviously you've got to do it. You've got the chops'. So, he was very nice. At one point he mentioned to me before he did 'Boy From Oz' about seeing if I'd be interested in playing his boyfriend in that and I don't remember why that didn't happen. I think it was because I was doing something but I would love to do something with him actually. He's just like the nicest man in the world.

TeenHollywood: Can you talk about Adam Shankman and working with him and seeing how he directs and choreographs?

James: I've never done a movie that was more fun to work on than this and I think it was because of Adam. You can see how much he enjoyed the process and felt like he was at home doing this. He would say 'go big or go home', you know? So we were like 'this isn't the movie for subtle performances', so he really encouraged us to dig into these characters and go for it.

TeenHollywood: A lot of the big name actors are just wildly fun in this movie.

James: You have a cast that's so courageous to transform themselves in many different ways. When I saw the movie, what appealed to me is seeing these legendary actors enjoy themselves so much. You can tell how much John [Travolta] and Chris [Walken] and Michelle [Pfeiffer] and Latifah and everybody just enjoyed the hell out of the process and I would attribute that to Adam because that's the tone he set on the movie and he's really a phenomenal talent.

TeenHollywood: Was it easy to forget that John was underneath all that Edna Turnblad makeup and costume?

James: Yeah, it was. It was frightening at first. I wasn't scared but when he came out, my brain didn't know how to process it because I immediately summoned up images of him as Danny Zucko [ in Grease] and his characters in Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction and now he's a woman, but more remarkable than just the physical transformation was this internal transformation that happened. When he came out for the 1st time, it was during a table read through and he was pretending to be a woman. It wasn't John Travolta in drag, it was like he was Edna Turnblad and he just became this person. It was really pretty impressive and tremendously courageous. I just take my hat off to him and everybody really goes for it in this movie, but yeah, it was strange at first because you can see his eyes and you go 'those are John's eyes but I don't see anything else'. Then they'd yell 'cut' and he'd go 'how was that take?' and his voice would come back but it was just strange. It was pretty phenomenal what he did in heels, too.

TeenHollywood: Everyone is raving about Nikki, this being her first film and having the lead. What was your impression of her?

James: I'm so impressed with everyone in this movie. I'm mostly impressed with Nikki. She was 17 when she started, was scooping ice cream. It's like a classic Cinderella story, you know. I was nervous acting with Michelle Pfeiffer, who before I was even an actor, I was watching in films and with John who was an idol of mine growing up and I was nervous and I'd been doing it for 14 years. She comes in and gets thrown into not only a cast with these people in it but the emotional core of the movie. I mean, she is the protagonist in the movie and everyone follows suit. She was just tremendous sharing these scenes with Walken and not skipping a beat. She was completely calm and what I found interesting was how much inspiration John drew from Nikki and some of the veteran actors drew from her boldness, her courage and she's just a remarkable talent. I think she's going to be around. She's made to do this. She's a young actress who's trying to succeed and follow her dreams and she has this very fresh clean slate approach; a very open mind.

***

Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.