RuPaul, 2001
“Having RuPaul on the set was huge! I wasn’t sure how much the crew and everybody would know what he was all about, but it was like everybody bowed down to RuPaul! They were entranced. It was just the best day. He was so charming and had such kindness and we had so much fun because everybody got into the whole experience. To me, [drag] is like the whole idea of theater, where on the surface, you see the beautiful makeup and the costumes and get lost in it, but beneath it all, there’s such an art to it. I feel like that’s what everybody got out of having RuPaul on set. When RuPaul transforms in drag, his makeup is so beautiful, almost like an airbrush painting, like you could put it in the Louvre! It’s that good.”
Richard Simmons, 2013
“Richard is truly a pure entertainer and he really wants everybody to laugh and feel comfortable. So the moment he steps on set, he’s greeting everybody, you know, from the lighting guys to everyone else on the crew. He talks and jokes and he points out something personal about someone’s outfit and teases them, so he makes everybody laugh. There are 100 people on the set, and all of a sudden he walks out and all the focus is on this one guy because he is just so present, and listening to every word. He just commanded such a warm feeling with everybody. For some reason, he and I just really hit it off. We connected because Lucy is such a large character, too, that you need to be ‘on’ sometimes when you really don’t feel like it. He came to my dressing room and we had the best talk. It was so much fun to hear what responsibility he feels for his audience. The last day he taped, he brought me this beautiful summery dress that he had actually used in drag for some fun skit and he thought that I would love to have it. It just killed me that he wanted me to have it. I had complimented him on a beautiful tank top he was wearing that had a peacock on it and he sent that to me, too. He was so kind. It was very special to me to have that time with him.”
Maksim Chmerkovskiy, 2013
“That was the best because my mother-in-law is the biggest fan of DANCING WITH THE STARS. I mean, she calls and gives me updates, she emails me about the outfits. She has watched every season. One year, I surprised her for her birthday and took her [to a taping]; we had front-row tickets and I was like, ‘Now I’m her best friend forever!’ So, of course, the very first thing I did was call her to say, ‘Guess who I got to dance with today?!’ She’s 90 now, so she was maybe 80 then, and I thought I killed her because she dropped the phone! I kept yelling, ‘Hello? Hello?’ Anyway, Maksim was so charming and what was fun was that doing our show was one of his first acting experiences. In one of the scenes, he was on a ladder and he missed a cue and I helped him out and he thanked me and so we had this kind of mutual respect going. But when we had to dance, he really had to twirl me around, and he said to me, ‘Please, I know what I’m doing. Let me lead.’ I almost died from embarrassment because I’m so used to, you know, just twirling around and doing silly things that I think I was forcing him around! I could barely talk, but I said, ‘Sorry!’ and we kept dancing. He’s such a good dancer that it was intimidating! It was like a defense mechanism took over: ‘Okay, if I twirl first, I won’t trip and I won’t mess up!’ But, of course, I did [laughs].”
Chandra Wilson, 2014
“I’ve gotten to work with her a few times, because she’s come back to host the Nurses’ Ball red carpet. I don’t remember the scenes we had specifically, but we had met before this — I actually met her sometime in the ’90s in New York City, because we have mutual friends; I think I knew people that she had gone to school with. I liked her right away. She’s just such a sweet human. I had not seen GREY’S ANATOMY [when I first worked with her] and so I didn’t realize what an incredible actor she was. I just thought she was a really cool person. What I remember is just having a great time and enjoying her being around. She was hardworking, but also free and easy at the same time, which is really cool.”