Fight the power, biatches
That's right, it's Seth Rudetsky here supporting the NYCLU,
the New York Civil Liberties Union, sitting here with Celia Keenan-Bolger,
you could tell by her hyphenated name she's a feminist!
By the way, she's actually married to John Ellison Connolly, so your name is, wait,
It would be bad, it would be bad
Let me hear it all
Celia Elizabeth Keenan Bolger Ellison Conley
That could be, that could be
So why did you decide to keep it just Keenan Bolger?
Oh well why did you not make it, like at least keep like
Because I thought maybe I could choose
like one parents name and do like Keenan Conley
or Conley Bolger, but then the whole point of my parents
giving me both names was to have both names.
But now what about your kids?
Well, I think they'll just have Conley
cuz that's getting crazy.
So I guess you're not such a feminist.
Now why do you support the NYCLU?
Oh my gosh, for so many reasons.
I feel like the most reason the most
recent reason has a lot to do with marriage equality for which they were
hop-hop-hop fighting the fight for way before a lot of the more mainstream
people got on board.
And this particular concert benefits a lot of the youth
programs, um, which has to do with military recruitment in schools and like
over bullying of low-income kids
and I think they have a health initiative for
teens that helps kids or teenagers get
reproductive health care and aid for whatever sexual relations they're having
and education, which I feel like is a huge important part
of being a young person and having accessibility to that.
Have the knowledge and you make the choice.
That's right.
Now then, so you rose to fame in Spelling Bee,
however you sang a lyric that gave me a headache
and it was like, something something Nietzsche
who's a grandfather Christina Ricci,
and I I remember like hearing it and being like, is that supposed to be true?
But it's like before I had Google on my iPhone
so my god, I can't even look up if it's true.
Wait, what was supposed to be true?
Just the rhyme, only the rhyme
is true
It was a rhyme for the joke.
For a very clever wordsmith of a young person
Okay.
I don't know if it quite works
Where she knows who Nietzsche is and Christina Ricci
Is that your subtext here?
Okay, did it ever get a larf?
It did the entire Off-Broadway run
and then we got to Broadway and James was like,
it was funnier, well how you used to do it.
And I was like, I know,
but I don't know what I was doing.
And then the laughs sort of went away
And then I added a laugh after it, then the laugh would get the laugh
Oh, that old desperateness
And then a wink, and a ba dank donk
Ya, da dun dun
Ba dank donk. Okay, then you did Les Mis on Broadway
Now that didn't get any laughs, dear.
Nope.
That was a sad part.
Not much, nope.
That was a sad sad part.
That is correct.
Was it your dream role? Eponine?
Of course.
Mine too!
I remember, I mean of course.
I remember, even when I went to audition for it,
I was like, if the ten-year-old version of myself knew that I was going
to audition for Eponine on Broadway, she would have peed.
A breakdown
Yeah
And then you got it. Was it as much fun doing it as you always hoped it would be?
Yes! More! That show is incredible
and really really fun. And our cast happened to be fun
and brave and super talented and so it was it was
an amazing experience.
Go back to Spelling Bee and the Christina Ricci.
You would always bring up people from the audience
and then they'd always get to a point in the show where
they had to be kicked off the stage, right?
but they would be like real people from the
audience spelling in the actual Spelling Bee, but there comes a point of the show
where it would have to get hard enough where we could finally get rid of the audience.
And what would usually happen is people would see the show and what we would do intentionally,
we would make,
I'm giving away the secrets of the Spelling Bee, but...
The show closed, dear.
So if you catch it in Appleton, Wisconsin,
this is what's happening.
That, there's a sort of fake word that
however the person spelled it we would say was right,
so then the audience would be like oh my god this person is a genius,
which would make them all feel like ah this person is duping the show
which of course was not true because we did it every night
And then we would give them lysergic acid diethylamide
or some other hard word.
And then they would always get out on that.
So, we, all the time people would come up to me and be like oh my
gosh, you know, the night I saw it a guy, he, they couldn't get him out
And we were like, that happened every night
Unless it was somebody who was really obnoxious
and that we would just get them out quickly.
You really would make a choice
Of course!
We can bring down our whole Broadway show.
Did anyone last way too long?
Mm-hmm, one, the only person that ever happened to
there was a little boy, his name was Samir Patel,
and we were warned before that he had competed in Spelling Bees
How old was her?
uh like 10
Wow
And way more adorable than the 25 year old
wearing overalls and braids
A sports bra!
And he got up there and he spelled
There was one word, webbyen, that it was like the hardest word that
nobody had ever spelled right
And he was like, oh ya, webbyen, E
And we were like
so then they just opened the dictionary and we're like
googlinghimlung, like some terrible word,
and he was like the language of origin please.
He kept asking the language of origin.
But then, when of course when he got off the audience was like yeah,
I could give or take the rest of this show, we want some mirror back, so that was...
And this show promptly closed.
Okay, so since no one ever, since there's no recording of Les Mis
I thought we'd do a little "On My Own" for those of you that missed it
and there was no actual recording of it.
So this is Celia recreating her Eponine
Hoping that ten-year-old Celia is watching right now.
Yes! Truncated.
And I know it's only in my mind
That I'm talking to myself and not to him
Although I know that he is blind
Still I say, there's a way for us
I love him
But when the night is over
He's gone
A river's just a a river
Without him the world around me changes
The trees are bare and everywhere the streets are full of stangers
I love him but every day I'm learning
All my life, I've only been pretending
Without me, his world will go on turning
A world that's filled with happiness that I have never known
I love him
But only if I'm the grandfather of Christine Arichi
Audience.