Cyndi Lauper: She's Too Unusual for TV
Television is not ready for a sitcom starring '80s pop icon Cyndi Lauper — at least not yet anyway. The actress/musician had been talking with NBC about starring in her own comedy series, but creative differences — coupled with an executive shake-up at the Peacock — led to the project's collapse. "It was a sitcom incorporating music and video... [but it] was too radical for what they wanted," Lauper tells TV Guide Online. "They kept making it conform, conform, conform to their thing." The departures of NBC execs Warren Littlefield and Bridget Potter — the latter of whom Lauper describes as "a great creative force behind what I was trying to do" — ultimately laid the idea to rest. But the colorful performer, who netted a 1995 Emmy for her recurring role as flamboyant Marianne Lugasso on Mad About You, remains confident that the project will someday rise from the dead. "It will come," she insists. "There will be someplace t
Television is not ready for a sitcom starring '80s pop icon Cyndi Lauper — at least not yet anyway. The actress/musician had been talking with NBC about starring in her own comedy series, but creative differences — coupled with an executive shake-up at the Peacock — led to the project's collapse.
"It was a sitcom incorporating music and video... [but it] was too radical for what they wanted," Lauper tells TV Guide Online. "They kept making it conform, conform, conform to their thing."
The departures of NBC execs Warren Littlefield and Bridget Potter — the latter of whom Lauper describes as "a great creative force behind what I was trying to do" — ultimately laid the idea to rest. But the colorful performer, who netted a 1995 Emmy for her recurring role as flamboyant Marianne Lugasso on Mad About You, remains confident that the project will someday rise from the dead. "It will come," she insists. "There will be someplace that I can do that."
In the meantime, Lauper is focusing on her burgeoning film career (she received glowing reviews for her performance opposite Christopher Walken in The Opportunists), not to mention her true love, music. In fact, if anything good came out of the whole sitcom debacle, it was that it reminded her of where her true passion lies.
"I spent so much time [developing the show], that I lost my momentum for my music and I started to feel like, 'Hey, I don't feel good anymore,'" sighs the 47 year old, whose son, Declyn, turns 3 on Sunday. "I'm one of those people [who has] got to sing. It makes me feel grounded."
To that end, the Grammy winner wrote and performed a song for Rugrats in Paris: The Movie and is currently in the studio recording a new album, due out next year. And although she hasn't come close to matching the commercial success of 1983's She's So Unusual, Lauper admits that it hasn't been for lack of trying. "It's very hard to be successful and do something great, too," she says, "[but] that's what I always strive for... If you do something [you feel is] powerful, you want it to be heard."