LUCY LAWLESS on CELEBRITY DUETS
 Helping Support Lucy Lawless


 

Celebrity Duets Dress Rehearsal and Live Show

By LB

Dress Rehearsal

I flew in from the East Coast on Monday nite. Tuesday morning I was up early and got to the parking deck for the dress rehearsal early …the security guards didn’t even know about an audience coming for the dress rehearsal. After everything was squared away with that, they started letting people in about 9:30am.

As I was walking away from my car, I spotted Sharon Delaney getting out of her car. She decided at the last minute to come to the rehearsal. So we walked in and went through security. We are directed back to an area to wait before we could go in to the studio. We met some other Lucy fans in line and didn’t get to go into the studio until after 11am.

There wasn’t a lot of audience for the dress rehearsal, maybe a 100-150 people. We got to be on the front row for the rehearsal, right behind the judges’ seats, but for the rehearsal they had standins for the judges. The rehearsal got under way about 11:30 with Wayne Brady coming out. He was great! He had us laughing the whole time during the breaks, interacting with the audience, getting a few members to get up on stage and sing to entertain us during long breaks when they were having technical difficulties, which was a lot especially with the clips.

Lucy was first up with Michael Bolton. They sang, then the pretend judging with the standins. When they went to the "Marie standin", Lucy said "I have all your dolls". When they got done Lucy spotted her fans and Sharon on the front row and was waving to us.

Lucy was just having a blast up there. We went through the rest of the singers, more technical difficulties, wardrobe malfunctions, then changing up where people were supposed to come out/stand/exit. When Randy Travis and Cheech Marin did their duet they had them sitting on the stage, but the live show they had stools for them on stage. There was more cutting up during the pretend judging…Hal Sparks was funny with that.

When Lucy’s second performance came up we saw a clip of them rehearsing on stage from earlier with Lucy in her casual clothes, hair up. Then when she and Smokey sang…..WOW was all that anyone could say. They sounded and looked awesome. After they performed …Lucy was just glowing and you could just see all the excitement in her eyes with being able to perform with her idol.

She waved to the group again as she left the stage. That was the last time we saw Lucy during the rehearsal. They finished up with the last performance and then we were let out a little after 2. Sharon headed out because she had a backstage pass for the live show later.. the rest of us had to get back by 3 to get inline for the live show, so we went over to McDonalds up the street to get a quick bite.

When we get back and were let in it to the waiting area, it didn’t take long for there to be a huge crowd there. They had school buses bringing in high school kids for the show. We were toward the front of the line, but they went through the line giving out green tickets with your seat numbers. They want the young/hip look on camera, so the people with that look got seats down front. Even though we were toward the front of the line, we ended up back about midways up the bleacher seating area.

But then when it was getting toward onair time they just let anyone sit down front to feel in the seats that were empty, so people that were in the back of the line got to sit down front and they didn’t have to have that young/hip look. It was a crazy process, so basically there is no telling where you will sit no matter where you are in line.

Live Show

When we got into the studio they had the panels set up on stage for the pro singers to stand behind for that intro piece…it was filmed about 10 minutes before they went live. Lucy was chatting with Gladys and Michael, waving to the audience. Other than that and the end part where they all came out to stand on stage to hear the judges’ results it pretty much ran like the dress rehearsal. During the last commercial break they did a run through with the contestants on stage of what to do after the names were called. Lucy was having fun chatting with Cheech and watching the recap of everyone’s performances. When they announced who got cut from the group Lucy looked like she wanted to go over and give Chris a hug, but she had to stay put.

Marie Osmond was talking with audience members during the commercial breaks or defending her judgement on one of the contestants. David Foster chatted some with the audience and Little Richard didn’t interact with the audience. Celebrities I spotted in the audience were game show host Wink Martindale and comedian Kathy Griffin. After the show they had the contestants up on stage taking group photos.

I actually ran into Wayne Brady at a restaurant after the taping and got a chance to talk with him…such a nice guy.

It was a long, fun day…but well worth the trip. Wish I could go to the other tapings. So, it was back to real life since I had an early flight to catch back to the East Coast on Wednesday morning. I hope some of you get to go and see Lucy live up on stage…..its just WOW!!!!!

LB

 


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