Last week I was one of the hosts of a party to welcome the delightful and crazy talented Darren Criss to Broadway, where he is performing a short season in How To Succeed In Business Without Realy Trying. It was a total hoot and Darren performed a few numbers himself, starting with my favourtie song ever sung by a mermaid, Part Of Your World. This is a funny picture: Parker Posey - another host of the evening and my current ex-wife in The Good Wife, Darren, Grant my husband, and moi.
I am the new Ambassador for the Paul Taylor Dance Company. I am so excited to be connected with someone who is such a legend, and soon I will be posting a report from my most recent visit to the studio where I sat with Mr Taylor as he talked me through his latest creation that will have its world premiere during the company's debut season at Lincoln Center in March. Meanwhile here I am busting some classic Taylor moves with Michael Trusnovec...
I was thinking the other day about all these GOP Presidential candidates frantically trying to outdo each other in ways to attract the evangelical vote in the primary states. It is really fascinating to me how religion plays such a huge role in American politics and yet America prides itself on its constitutional edict about the separation of church and state. Uh, hello, it ain't happening babies!! American society and politics is wracked with religion, it reeks of it. And it goes to the very top and to the very left too. Can you imagine the uproar if President Obama did not finish a speech with the phrase 'God Bless America'? Well, I can tell you that if a politician in Britian or most of the countries in Europe EVER mentioned God at the end of a speech there would be just as huge an uproar, but for the very reason that the American political system is supposedly designed to avoid! Let's get God, or the Gods, out of politics and talk about the real issues. I can't believe the candiates are actively wearing their piousness on their sleeves and yet again bringing up their aversion to abortion and gay rights as a way to show themselves capable Presidents. It's disgusting. Disgusting that the candidates pander to these people and disgusting that these people use religion as their only political compass.
I am going to be on Live with Kelly next Thursday January 25th. The totally darling Kristin Chenoweth will be co-hsoting. We will be able to reminisce about dancing down the streets of the backlot at Paramount singing Easy Street in Annie, and also the other guest is Emmy Rossum who I bitch slapped big time in the movie Dare. Can't wait!
Also, I am going to be playing Macbeth later this year for the National Theatre of Scotland. Well, not just Macbeth, all the parts actually. I have very strong connections to the play. It was the first play I was ever in as a professional actor, I was born very near Birnam Wood and my father's family were for generations workers on Cawdor estate. That is why this picture of the first Earl of Cawdor that hangs in the Drawing Room of Cawdor Castle fascinates me. Doesn't it look very like the person whose blog you are reading right now? Do you think there could have been a little dalliance with the help sometime in the last few centuries?! Maybe I am real Scottish royalty after all!!
And finally, here's to Martin Luther King Junior! This is a great quote by him, and rather apposite in terms of what I was saying about the GOP Presidential race: