Victoria G Interviews Michele Egerton

Victoria G: What inspired you to become an actress?

Michele Egerton: Well, there's not one pat answer because the long answer to this question evolved over and over again in different degrees and in different ways & for different reasons and situations in my life. Being the youngest in my biological family,... well, that's automatic attention right there from my parents and many siblings. That translated to always being underfoot, constantly around my Mommy who was a musician (piano player, arranger, and singer), she always played the piano and sang at home to calm her nerves, as well as singing at church, with me sitting on the piano bench beside her at Jesus House of Prayer Church in Franklinton, North Carolina (the town where I was raised in my early life). I learned later on that she always wanted to be a performer, so I was told that out of all of her children, I am the one most like her. That humbled me. I also loved how my sister, Nanette, used to sing all the time around the house. The earliest I ever was onstage, so to speak, was at the age of 4, as an aluminum-foil-wire-hanger-made-winged angel (along with the pastor, Elder Young's daughter, Claudiette [that's pronounced "Claw-dee-ET"]), suspended in the air somehow, in a Christmas pageant at Holy Trinity Church, also in Franklinton, North Carolina. After my Mommy died when I was 6, we had to live with my paternal Aunt Belle. She was of a generation that regularly presented at churches and events reciting poems and such, so she taught us (really made us, to be honest, and I'm grateful for her doing this) to read and recite poems at church for Easter, Mother's Day, Christmas, Children's Day, and singing old Negro spirituals in church, as well as going to church programs to see Gospel singing groups (á la Sam Cooke & The Soul Stirrers or Al Green & The Soul Mates) that came to our church and performing in various churches. I must also say watching my Aunt Belle's teenage granddaughters (when they lived there because Aunt Belle didn't allow "worldly music" in her house when they weren't), Gem (Georgene), Alicia, and Denise dancing and playing R&B and Soul music (which evolved into Disco when Black music went mainstream) influenced me greatly, especially my cousin Alicia (she has a beautiful voice - loved singing James Taylor), and watching the local show Teenage Frolics on WRAL-TV, and watching Soul Train, American Bandstand, and many variety shows on TV at the time such as The Tom Jones Show, The Sonny & Cher Show, Laugh-In, The Lawrence Welk Show, et al., were most definitely an influence on me. I participated in and enjoyed the May Day celebrations at Franklinton Elementary School, and eventually, in 5th grade, my teacher, Mrs. Clemons, cast me as the narrator of our Christmas play because of my Aunt Belle's and her granddaughters' influence on me being an apt orator. When I moved back to NYC as a Tween at the height of Disco in the late 1970s, reading and looking at the pictures in the NY Daily News and the New York Post, viewing the spectacle of a young Bette Midler performing in bathhouses, pictures of what was happening in Studio 54 and Cher roller skating in a sheer sequined shirt - braless - at the Empire Skating Rink in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, NYC, and watching Dance Fever on TV, all of these things put a fire in me to become a performer - actress, singer, dancer, I WANTED IT ALL! So, when the opportunity came for me to audition for the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art in Harlem (now, combined with its annex, Performing Arts High School in Hells Kitchen, is known as LaG High School when both schools moved behind Lincoln Center where both schools graduate) I TOOK IT! My audition piece was singing Paul McCartney & Wings' "My Love." I was accepted and started school the next year. I didn't start acting professionally right away, I was busy "adulting", working as a subway station cleaner for the New York City Transit Authority for a number of years until I got hurt and quit in 1999. Watching the PBS documentary on Sidney Poitier lit a fire under me to take a chance to fulfill my heart's desire, reliving what I had in high school and what made me happy helping me to cope with things during my difficult childhood. I started my theatrical career in the year 2000 in the Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj-directed African American adapted stage production of the musical Damn Yankees at the Paul Robeson Theater in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NYC, first as a supernumerary then promoted á la 42nd Street-style to play "Sister" when the actress stormed off and quit, and the director picked me to take her place. From there someone saw me in that production, and told a director, Kelly Morgan, up in Fitchburg, Massachusetts about me, and I was cast, sight unseen in the role of "Lena 'Mama' Younger" in A Raisin in the Sun, which afforded me the opportunity to return to college; while in college, I competed in and won the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival Irene Ryan Scholarship for Region 1 of the United States, and winning the collegiate national Mark Twain Prize for Comedy in 2005. I ended up with a degree in 2006 and was asked to be in A Raisin in the Sun again by someone who saw my performances at the Kennedy Center competitions, and I've been working off and on ever since. I am proud to say I've worked for Kelly Morgan, David Allen George (who was trained as a dancer by Jerome Robbins), Richard McElvain, Cap Corduan, Nancy Barry (in a technical theater capacity, though - in the box office), Bill T. Jones, Dolly Parton, David O. Russell, Paul Feig, and Alexander Payne. I might not be rich, but I am HAPPY, full of JOY! As the song says in the Disney film Pinnochio, "Hey Fiddle-Dee-Dee, the actor's life for me". I wouldn't have it any other way.