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[0:00] Alan Seales: Welcome to another episode of The Theatre Podcast, intimate, personal conversations with theatre's biggest talents. Today, we have Tony-nominated actress, singer, and songwriter born and raised in New York City, started her career in the music business as one half of the pop R&B duo Orin Moore on EMI Records, and then went on to great success on Broadway, made your debut in Footloose, the musical, now you're in Pretty Woman, the musical. Orfeh, thank you for joining me today.

[0:40] Orfeh: Thank you for having me today.

[0:42] Alan Seales: No problem.

[0:43] Orfeh: Thank you.

[0:44] Alan Seales: So, you've been, I said, you were born and raised in New York. What was being a kid in New York like for you compared to what it is, what it is for kids now?

[0:56] Orfeh: Gosh, I, you know, I don't, I don't much have a frame of reference as to what it's like for the kids now. I imagine it was safer when I was a kid.

[1:09] Alan Seales: Safer how?

[1:10] Orfeh: Well, just you could, I was a latchkey kid. I was riding the subway by myself, like, when I was 10. And we all were, you know what I mean? So, so I don't know, but I wouldn't trade it for any other kind of a childhood. I went to public school, again, I rode the subway really young. We were, we were, we were tough, scrappy kids, you know, and I loved it. I loved it. I still love it. Clearly, I'm still here. And it was a, it was a good group. It was a good group. It was a good time, you know, so.

[1:42] Alan Seales: And how, how exposed, I guess, were you to music and theater at that point in your life?

[1:47] Orfeh: Well, here's the thing. City kids don't really go to theater. At least I know we didn't. Because city kids, parents try to get them out of the city every chance they get. So, weekend excursion wouldn't necessarily be 10 blocks west and up, you know what I mean? Or down, depending on where you lived. So, it wasn't the thing that we did. Our parents generally would send us away to summer camp, sleep away, get us, again, get us out of the city. Or weekends would be more like getting out of the city to, you know, go skiing or go somewhere where there was, you know, grass and things of that nature. We skied a lot. That was our thing. So, that's really what it was. I started to be introduced more to theater and plays and off-Broadway.

My best friend's mom was really into it. So, once I was in junior high and high school, she would come to town. She lived in Los Angeles. My best friend was from Los Angeles, went to school in New York with me. And her mom started to get into it. And I saw everything in like a rapid succession of, you know, binge theater watching. So, that was what I got to do as a teen. So, I saw everything from Darlene Love in The Rink to the original Penn & Teller to the original Signs of Intelligent Life with Lily Tomlin. And literally everything in between, you know, from Speed the Plow to Leader of the Pack to everything. So, that was my big. I think as a kid, I definitely saw Annie because I don't think there was a kid in the world that didn't see Annie. I got to see the original cast with Andrew McCardell. So, yeah. I mean, again, it wasn't what you did as a city kid, as a native. They tried to get you out.

[3:41] Alan Seales: So, when you got into theater, did your group of friends change? Or did you do that with your friend's mom? Or I guess she and her mom.

[3:50] Orfeh: My group of friends hasn't actually changed. I have certainly, I've been in theater for so long that I have an extensive group of friends in the theater world. I have lots of friends in different parts of the planet from childhood till now. They never leave. The good ones don't.

[4:11] Alan Seales: And I actually, if you don't mind, I'd like to talk about your name for a second. It's very unique.

[4:17] Orfeh: I know. It seems less and less unique as the years go by.

[4:23] Alan Seales: Really?

[4:23] Orfeh: Yeah. And it didn't seem unique in the music business. It only became a thing. I always said, I always say this, I didn't know I was short or had a weird name or any of that until I got into the musical theater. In the music business, I was tall and everybody had one weird name. Mine just happened to be real and on my birth certificate. So, I didn't know anything was strange. And I went to public school. So, again, I didn't know I was different. It was only when I got into musical theater that it started to be a thing. And the whole like, who she thinks she is? Why does she have one name? And what is that name? And how do you pronounce it? And blah, blah, blah, blah. I didn't know any of that was a thing until I was, you know, a grown up. So, imagine being different in, you know, pushing 30. It was a bizarre thing. But it's a name my mother made up. It's real. It's my birth name. And it's based on Black Orpheus, the opera.

[5:18] Alan Seales: No kidding.

[5:18] Orfeh: Yeah. Yeah. So, which is why it's spelled with an F-E-H instead of a P-H-E-U. It's not the Greek. It's Black Orpheus.

[5:24] Alan Seales: Right. Which is F-E-U-S. Right. You know, so there's so many different versions. It all goes back to the same story, basically.

[5:38] Orfeh: Yeah. But that's specifically the one she named me after is the opera. So, you said that you and your siblings, how many siblings do you have?

[5:43] Alan Seales: I have no siblings.

[5:46] Orfeh: Oh, I thought you said you and your parents then would leave.

[5:46] Alan Seales: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was an only child as far as I'm concerned.

[5:53] Orfeh: As far as you know.

[5:53] Alan Seales: As far as I know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No siblings. I was going to ask if they have equally amazing names as well.

[6:01] Orfeh: No. My siblings' names are Mary, Sue, and John. No. I have no siblings. Mary, Sue, John, and Orphe.

[6:08] Alan Seales: Yeah. Exactly.

[6:08] Orfeh: Yeah. So, you said, too, that you didn't get into musical theater until later in life. But when did you realize you had a gift for singing and a real passion for it?

[6:13] Orfeh: I didn't. And I have said this before, too. But I didn't know everybody didn't sing because I was singing probably before I spoke, you know, and every commercial on the television, every car ride, the radio, you know, the top 40 radio. I knew every song. I knew every jingle. I knew everything. And I didn't know that everybody didn't belt at the top of their lungs to the point where, you know, my mother was like, you have to just be quiet. I didn't know that's not what everybody did. So, I would say, if I'm really recalling, like a cognizant memory, I would think from six years old on, I didn't know there was anything else. That was always what I wanted to be. That's what I always wanted to do.

[7:00] Alan Seales: You always wanted to be a singer.

[7:00] Orfeh: Absolutely. I was singing into the hairbrush in my, you know, mirror for hours on end to any, you know, 45 my mother had in the house that I could get my hands on, you know.

[7:11] Alan Seales: So then did you study music?

[7:13] Orfeh: No, I did. I never studied music. I actually studied acting, deep method acting, Stanislavski, Lee Strasberg, all of that. I, you know, again, I didn't know. Obviously, I knew I wasn't, you know, I saw the commercials for Evita and Dreamgirls growing up, but I didn't know that that was something I could go and do. I just thought I'm going to get a record deal. I'm going to get a record deal. I was very tunnel vision, single minded. You know, I went to performing arts. I got into music and art. It was further away at the time. The schools hadn't merged at that point in time. And I thought, well, this is closer. I can walk to performing arts. You know, I can walk to LaGuardia, actually. But I didn't, you know, I didn't see that career.

I just said, I want to be a pop star. That's it. That's all I ever envisioned. That's all I ever dreamed about. That was my single minded goal, because I thought that's where I fit. You know what I'm saying? It just it seemed right at the time, and still does. I still miss it every day. I'm just grateful I still get to make my living as a singer, singer in front of a live audience, you know.

[8:22] Alan Seales: So tell me about your early career a little bit. What was Orin Moore?

[8:22] Orfeh: Orin Moore, gosh, I went to performing arts. There were some of the most to this day, brilliant musicians. We had a music department, an acting department and a dance department at performing arts. And the musicians were brilliant. And there was this guy in the music department, he played the guitar, but you couldn't go to performing arts for guitar, you had to play the standup bass. So he played the standup bass at school. And another guy who also played rhythm guitar would play the standup bass. So they were these brilliant, brilliant, brilliant musicians in the music department, I was in the acting department with a couple of other guys who were really into music, you know, lively bunch of very talented people, I did get to get lucky enough to be with a lot of very talented people my whole life.

And they put together a band called Geneva. And this was 100 years ago. So they put together this band was like an R&B band, and they were like, we need a lead singer, we need a girl singer. And I was like, Okay, so one of the guys in the acting department with me, he was the lead singer, he's like, well, I need a, you know, I need a girl to sing with. And my, you know, the guy who wound up becoming my partner for, you know, my whole entire music career in the music department, he was like, Yeah, well, you know, he had a recording studio in his house, it was crazy. So we would just go after hours, you know, you're young, you don't need sleep, you don't need anything. We'd go to his house in Merrick, Long Island. And we would record song after song after song after song. And we would just cut demos all day all night. It was a 24 hour endeavor.

[10:11] Alan Seales: Were you writing too at the same time they were writing?

[10:11] Orfeh: I wasn't actually writing because they wouldn't let me write. They were like, No, no, you just sing. I was like, Okay, cool. Okay, I would do a lot of the vocal arrangements. I would do a lot of the background vocal arrangements. I do a lot of the vocal production. But you know, you don't get credit for that. You know, um, and make a very long story short, Geneva, kind of disbanded. And I was the only one left. I didn't kind of run for the hills. And Geneva became or and more. But before Geneva became or and more, Geneva with just the two of us, not the whole band, not all the guys put out a 12 inch single back when there was still 12 inches called life in the movies. And it got heavy club play.

Johnny Dinell, who was the biggest DJ in the universe at the time spun it. You know, David LaChapelle, who was not David LaChapelle at the time, took our album picture and all our like press shots. It was insane. And from then on, it took a few years to get the solo deal because that was just a one off. It was like just a one off. I'm sure it was like a favor to somebody somewhere. I think my partner's dad knew the guy at the label. And I'm not I'm specifically leaving out names on purpose. But I don't know if anyone wants credit for it. But we had this big 12 inch club hit. And then somehow we wound up again, doing 300 demos. And I'm not making up a number. It was literally 300 demos. And we somehow we got rejected by a ton of labels that I wish to this day hadn't rejected us because I really, again, to this day wish we had been on Sony with Tommy Mottola at the time.

Another smaller label wound up passing on us. So we wound up with Ron Faraday and my records. And part of the reason we wound up with him was because he was really open and we were very young. He was very open to giving us full autonomy. So we wrote, we produced, we did all the arrangements, Mike practically, you know, played all the instruments, we had some fantastic live, our whole CD was live. We were doing stuff that people didn't do, especially, you know, young new people didn't do, but he gave us a great deal of autonomy. And Ron Fair then became Ron Fair many years later, and went on to sign a bunch of people like us who had much, much more success, but they were us. So we kind of just had to sit back and go, wow.

Wow, she's in my clothes. She's in my hair. She's doing my songs. She's in my choreography and costumes and everything. You know, I didn't talk about that for a good decade. I never said like, hey, so and so is me. You know what I mean? Because when you don't have the crazy success and you're on the precipice of that success, you just look either crazy or really bitter. And I was neither. And I'm still neither of those things. It's factual. And a very good friend of mine, Ed Eckstein, he went out to dinner with Ron, and he goes, you know, you get him talking and he admits that you were the template for every success act he had after that, you know. So make a long story longer. When I was on tour, we did, you know, we had a good amount of success for a very short amount of time.

We had a top 40 single with a bullet on the Hot 100. The album was selling. We were opening up for very big acts at the time. So we were playing from anywhere from six to thirty thousand kids a night. Wow. So we were we were hot on the heels of becoming global sensations. And the plug was pulled, everything that went wrong, you know, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. We got completely screwed. Ron, like just completely threw us under the bus. And we were so young, we didn't know how to kind of maintain and control and corral all of that from happening. We really, you know, nobody's mom was their manager. You know, we were just just out there naked, you know. But we had a troop of dancers and background singers.

I mean, you know, the label, to be fair, spent the money. You know, it wasn't like a cheap, creepy tour. We were top of the line. You know, everything was fantastic. So somehow I wound up with my two male dancers. There's their gig immediately after the whole or and more debacle. And we were on tour together. We were very close. You know, they became Broadway choreographers.

[14:44] Orfeh: They literally, their next big gigs, and they had, you know, these were guys who were dancers in every 90s video you'd ever seen, from, you know, Sweat with C&C Music Factory to Snap the Power. If you saw five people, they were in the video and they were my dancers, okay? So, they were like the hot. I always went after the biggest, the best, the hottest of the time, which, hence, why David LaChapelle was my first photographer. Billy B was my first makeup artist. These are people who are legends now. I had a knack. Even as a teenager, I knew I had an eye. So, Anthony Sciuola was one of my lead male dancers. David Marquez was my other lead male dancer. Anthony Sciuola calls me up one day and he goes, hey, I'm choreographing Footloose, the musical.

I was like, yeah, cool. Congratulations. He's like, no, no, no. I want you to come in and audition for it. They have a swing position. He might as well have been speaking another language to me. I didn't know what a swing position was. I didn't know what it meant to audition for a musical. I had no idea what he was saying. I was like, all right, you're going to have to really talk me through this. He's like, oh, just show up and bring your book. I thought he meant to bring a book to read in the waiting room. Right. Okay, I'm going, bring my book? What do you mean? He goes, you have to sing from a book. I was like, I'm still like going, okay, you have to really talk me through this. And I happen to have Mariah Carey's 90 Unplugged.

She had made a book from, you know, a songbook. I was like, okay, I'll take this. I'll sing. I'll sing if it's over. So I went in, in my best Rhythm Nation reject outfit. Like, you know, you walk in and everyone's in pointe shoes and leotards with their hair back. I'm literally dressed like the girl who didn't get in the Janet Jackson video. And his choreography is hard. His choreography is treacherous. So I'm like in overalls and combat boots and my hat and my, you know, white tank top and all these girls like, oh my God, what is this? Who is this? You know, these were not, you know, pop music fans. So they wouldn't have known, oh, you know, her songs on the radio 75 times a week. So I was just auditioned.

I sang If It's Over by Mariah Carey. And by, I guess, five o'clock that night, I had an offer to be the swing. Still didn't really quite know what that meant, but basically what it meant was that I understudied every lead character, female lead character, the young ones in the show. So Rusty, Wendy, Joe, Earlene, and Betty Blast. I didn't understudy Ariel. That was the only role I didn't understudy. The other female swing, my friend Janine, whom I'm still very close with, she understudied Ariel and all the adult women. I understudied every other female. So I had to know every other part in the show, not the ensemble, but just the leads. Do you remember what you felt like the first time you had to go on?

Uh, I, in the nine months that I was in the show, I only ever went on once. No kidding. And with no prior notice, she just couldn't make it to the theater that night. And that track required roller skates, a song. So it was literally trial by fire. And I remember going, God, thank God I can roller skate. Like, that's really what came to mind. I was like, I'm not going to, you know. You didn't have a put in or anything? No, because nobody knew she, first of all, that was not the part that was literally the last part I ever thought I'd go on for. I thought I'd be rusty because I was like the rusty first cover. And, uh, the girl who played rusty never called out. She would show up with literally bronchitis and you name it.

If she could have had, if she could come on with a drip feed and an oxygen tank, she would like, nobody wanted me to go on for them. So, um, cause they knew I'd come from the music business. I could sing, whatever. I was like, you know, you have the job. It's not like they're going to say, Hey, by the way, you're fired. And we're going to put our thing in the show from here on. It doesn't work that way. You can't do that. Um, so I went on, I immediately got my next Broadway show who David Marquez, my other male dancer was choreographing intense audition period, major all that. So I got to leave footloose to do a musical called fascinate and rhythm that had these little known actors. You may or may not have heard of, you know, Patrick Wilson, Sara Ramirez, like the who's who of, you know, we were all in this crazy little cast that ran for 32 performances.

It was one of the biggest bombs of the nineties in musical theater, fascinating rhythm, funky hip hop, uh, R and B cool versions of Gershwin tunes. Yeah, that went over really well. Greatest cast. While I was in there, little did I know the entire time I was in there, I was pretty much auditioning to be in Saturday Night Fever, the musical, same producers, same company managers, same everything. So basically I did a 32 performance audition for Saturday Night Fever. And that's basically the longest story ever. But that's how I got on Broadway. I know it's beautiful. And then, uh, you met someone else special, of course, in Saturday Night Fever.

[20:02] Orfeh: I did. All roads now have left, let me to, uh, led me to marrying Andy Karl. Um, and we'll, we'll, we'll get back to that, uh, in a little bit actually, but I want to ask you first, if, if even right now, do you still consider yourself, uh, a recording artist that's on Broadway or do you consider yourself like a Broadway actress that writes music and records music? I think if you asked anybody, I'm a Broadway star. I have to get over being reluctant about that because I, I seem to still, I, I, I kind of, um, you know how you glorify the past? I'm not glorifying it because there was nothing great about the experience other than the experience, all the politics, all the stuff that happened to us.

I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't have been able to withstand any of it and kept going on in the entertainment business. You know, I should have kind of been in a fetal position in the corner somewhere, you know, going, Oh, what do I do now? But, um, I, I thankfully I'm a type of person who doesn't let the grass grow under my feet and I just keep forging ahead and forging ahead. But I consider myself a reluctant Broadway star and still longing for that big pop stardom, which clearly will never happen. I'm never going to be that, which I had intended to be. But again, I'm very grateful that I was accepted into a world that still allows me to perform in front of a live audience singing. And thankfully I've been able to do all the pop musicals.

You know what I mean? So I get to sing the way I sing. Um, I'm most likely never going to be hired to be in a musical like Les Mis. I'm not. Have you ever tried to sing that music? I can. It's just that that's not what I'm known for. And I think it would take a little bit of a stretch of an imagination for the powers that be to go. She has a soprano legit voice and she can do this. I'm also of a very specific mindset that you give the audience what they want. And I know, and I'm very in touch with my audience. I know what they want from me. I know what they want to hear from me. I know how they want to hear it from me. And I know the kind of roles that they want to see me perform in on Broadway.

So I get, you know, I get slack for it, you know, now and again, why do you always do these, you know, kids so much like Paulette, first of all, kid is nothing like Paulette for the record. Let's set that straight. Not at all. But people know what to hire me for. People know what is going to sell tickets to a show that I'm in for, you know? Uh, so I'm really cool with that. And I, I just, I have to just get comfortable after 20 years. This is, this is what I'm mostly known for, you know?

[22:58] Orfeh: And so then, um, married to, to Andy Carly in 2001, uh, he, he told the story, uh, Oh God. Yeah. He told the story of the whirlwind of like, all of a sudden you blink twice and you're engaged and married. Um, do you, do you enjoy, uh, I guess, I don't know if you're allowed to say otherwise. Do you enjoy being in the same industry as your spouse? Listen, let me tell you something. I can freely, honestly, with every ounce of truth in me, tell you that it is the greatest thing in the world to be in the same industry as Andy and in the same show. And we haven't been in the same show in a long time, but for us, we get along really, really well. We have an exorbitant amount of chemistry, which is not often the case with couples.

You see a couple on screen and Oh my God, you're like, Oh God, do they even like each other? Do they even speak when they're not, you know? But, um, it's been a really, really wonderful thing. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade all the pop stardom success if it meant that I would have never met Andy. Do you know what I mean? So, cause I think about that again, going into my imaginary time machine and people will say, well, what if you had all that pop success and then you'd never met Andy? So it's, it's puts me right back into the reality of the present. And I go, Oh yeah, you're right. That could have gone another way, you know, but, um, it's the greatest thing in the world. That's amazing. It's literally the greatest thing in the world.

I don't have a magic formula for why it works. But like I said to you a little while ago, I have the same friends. I, I, I think that, uh, I'm, I have been gifted with, um, I'm good at relationships, whether it's friendships, you know, got the same doctor, you know, voice doctor since I was 13, you know, like I have, uh, an incredible amount of loyalty that I put out. So I think I get that back. You know, my best friend and I have been best friends every day for the past 8 billion years and we haven't missed a phone conversation. You know what I mean? In 20 some odd years.

[25:07] Alan Seales: That's, that's beautiful. He had his, his eyes lit up when he told this, he told the story of how you guys met and I was like, Oh yeah, they really like each other. Did he tell you he forgot all his lines?

[25:19] Orfeh: No. He went on with me, you know, he, he, uh, he was Joey. He came in as Joey in Saturday Night Fever. He took over for one of the leads and that track understudied Tony Manero and he went on a lot, like four times a week. He was on as Tony Manero. He was fantastic. He was fantastic. People were like immediately like, Oh, who is this? Andy Carly's amazing. The first time we got on stage together for him to play Tony, we have our big scene where he's teaching her the choreography and they're supposed to do the contest together. And like seconds later he leaves and goes, I'm not doing it with you. I'm doing it with Stephanie. He literally forgot the entire scene. So I just did the whole scene as a monologue.

No kidding. I swear it was, that's the funniest thing. And I was like, maybe this guy digs me, but it was great. It was great. I'll never forget it. And I will forever, ever be in debt to the, you know, the universe for putting me in Saturday Night Fever through being in the 32 performances of Fascinating Rhythm and, you know, Manny Cloditis for hiring me, Stigwood for hiring me. Stigwood handpicked everybody that was in Saturday Night Fever. You had to audition for him. And so forever I'll be grateful because he gave me my husband. It's amazing. And you also did Legally Blonde with him.

[26:40] Orfeh: I did. Total fluke. They didn't want me for that show. Really? I was the very last person cast. How did that work? They didn't want me for that. No matter what, Jerry Mitchell, he knows. He was like, nope, nope. All wrong. All wrong. And he was like, and they had auditioned everybody. And I mean, everybody from California to Chicago to Miami to New York. And they'd had various workshops with different Paulettes. And Andy just called Jerry and Jerry and Andy are very, very, very close friends. He's like, Jerry, I'm telling you, it's my wife. You've got to see her. And he finally was like, okay, okay. I mean, because they had kind of struck out with everybody. And I walked into the room and I said, Celtic Moods.

And to this day, Jerry Mitchell's like, she said those two words. And I knew that was Paulette. You got the Tony nomination in 2007 for that as well. And did your career change? How did your career change, I guess, after the nomination? Because now you're always Tony nominee, Orfeh. Well, that's probably the best thing about it is that no matter what else, if nothing else ever happens for the rest of time, I will always be able to have that as part of my like, you know, whatever legacy, for lack of a better word. You know, some things that I won't get into because it's too long. We don't have a lot of time. Some very strange things happened while I was in Legally Blonde. Very strange. Can't go into it.

I'm not trying to tease you. But what could have and should have happened did not. There were a series of events that again, different day, different time, different conversation. But nothing, you know, look, sure, it certainly gives you a little bit more clout, a little less auditioning for musical theater. It didn't change what I had to do outside of musical theater. You know, I still, on some occasions, a lot of indie films I've done that you'll probably never, ever see, I didn't have to audition for because people said, I want the girl who's, you know, I want that girl with a weird name that's in Legally Blonde. So it's certainly put my legit career in a different level in a different place.

There's only so many Tony nominees wandering the earth, you know. So it certainly changed the game for me. But didn't fast track me to anything else other than in the world of musical theater, which in and of itself is a great thing. I think what's cooler is that Andy and I are a Tony nominated married couple. I don't know how many more of those there are. I know Hume Cronin, Jessica Tandy, certainly. I think that's really cool. I just, you know, it.

[29:26] Orfeh: It didn't hurt. It didn't hurt. It didn't, you know, get me a three-picture deal with, you know, Sony. You know, Martin Scorsese didn't come rushing at my door. I wish he had. But it can possibly be the gift that keeps on giving.

[29:43] Alan Seales: Oh, I hope so.

[29:44] Orfeh: In not the sarcastic way.

[29:46] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[29:47] Orfeh: You know, because look, I mean, Jerry Mitchell, when he, you know, optioned and knew he was going to do Pretty Woman, he called me up. He said, you can't say no, you're doing the show with me. Do you know what I'm saying? He's like, this is your part and you're doing the show. And he had always said, because we haven't, you know, Jerry and I haven't worked together since Legally Blonde. And he's like, when the next right thing comes along, you're going to do it with me. I was like, I don't know if I'm doing musical theatre ever again. You know, that's my thing. And he was like, you're doing this. He called me and I've been with Pretty Woman since the very first half table reading. It's going on almost three years ago.

[30:21] Alan Seales: Wow. Yeah. I didn't realize it took that long to bring it to the stage.

[30:26] Orfeh: Everything takes that long to bring to the stage. That's what people don't know about musicals. From inception to, hey, let's buy the rights to blah, blah, blah. Until the night you see it on opening night on Broadway, there could be 10 years. This was a fast track. Do you know what I mean? Like, oh, two years from the first table read to opening night. That's a fast track. There were musicals that made it to Broadway that I remember doing workshops for back in the early 2000s that didn't make it to Broadway till like 2010-11 where you'd aged out of that part. You know what I'm saying? It's like sometimes they take forever. Sometimes they're like that. Sometimes lightning strikes, you know, somebody fast tracks, somebody says we need this immediately. But, you know, think about how long Saturday Night Fever was in London before it ever got to New York, you know?

[31:18] Alan Seales: Was that Paula Wagner that fast tracked it?

[31:20] Orfeh: Pretty Woman?

[31:21] Alan Seales: Yeah.

[31:22] Orfeh: I think, and this is almost maudlin, and I don't mean it to be, I think the fact that Gary Past made it fast track a little bit more because I think the estate and his family were like, this was really his dream. Let's make it happen. And, you know, very logistically you have to wait for a certain theater to be available. So you never know what's going to close. If you know you want a certain size theater, you have to wait for that theater. And again, you never know what the show in, you know, that's in that theater, if it's going to run 10 years or 10 minutes. So those are the logistics behind stuff like that. But I think that Gary Passing made a little bit of a difference in how quickly it came to Broadway.

[32:05] Alan Seales: Oh, I'm glad it did. And now you are Kit DeLuca. And the stage character that you play seems to be more prominent in this version than it was in the movie. And I guess her dynamic with the character of Vivian is a lot more matriarchal set.

[32:17] Orfeh: Yeah, matriarchal. Mentoring. Yes, absolutely. I think so. Listen, I think part of the thing that Jerry and I had discussed at length was the fact that people wanted more of Kit in the movie. And J.F. and I, J.F. Lawton, who wrote the movie, who wrote the book for the musical, also said people would always tell him they wanted more of Kit. They wanted to know what happened to her. They wanted to know. I mean, the movie is so different than what it started out to be. It was a dark, very gloomy kind of a movie that turned into Pretty Woman, the rom-com, you know. But we discussed it a lot. And I think that, again, you have a legacy that people are coming. Oh, Orfeh and Andy are in a show together. I don't think they wanted to come and see me do a cameo. You know what I'm saying? And I think that they were very kind to me. The creative staff was very kind to me and they made the part bigger, but to their advantage and to their benefit, you know.

[33:16] Alan Seales: How much creative input did you have?

[33:21] Orfeh: A lot. Yeah, a lot. Yeah. Again, very lucky. And I think it comes from Jerry trusting me because he's very open to creative input and that makes all the difference. He's one of those directors who's like, if it's a good idea, it's not about, oh, I didn't come up with it so we can't put it in the show. He's so collaborative and he's so creative and he knows a good idea when he hears or sees one. If it's good, it's going in the show. That's the joke about Jerry Mitchell. Don't do it if you don't want it to get in the show. If you do something and it's hard or it's really treacherous, don't do it because you're going to wind up doing it eight times a week. You know what I mean? So very lucky that I wound up with this creative team.

[34:03] Alan Seales: That's great. And outside of musical theater as well, you're doing solo work, yeah? I mean, you released a solo album in 2008.

[34:14] Orfeh: Yes. That was when I thought Legally Blonde would run a little bit longer and I could sell it in the lobby. Just as my CD came out, all the record stores started closing. So that was bad timing as well. I'm doing a lot more concerts with Andy now. So I think people started to kind of come around to thinking maybe we put on a good show together. We don't have as much time now, but it's still a big passion to do concerts. I love it. I love that whole world. I still enjoy it and I enjoy working with Andy. I think our couple show is really funny and it changes. Legally Bound is kind of you can accommodate it to any venue and change the songs out. It's complete creative control, which is fantastic.

So yeah, I enjoy doing that a lot. And then you sang a song on Michael Mott's album, Where the Sky Ends, which is ironic. I found that when I was researching for today and I was like, Michael Mott, I worked with that guy. He and I were both at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg as performers so many years ago. So yeah. Hi, Michael, if you're listening to this.

[35:26] Alan Seales: I'm sure he is and he's probably freaking out.

[35:29] Orfeh: Yeah. Great guy. Super talented.

[35:33] Alan Seales: I told you I only know really super talented people. It's kind of frightening.

[35:38] Orfeh: Yeah. Do you find yourself, you're still writing. Do you find yourself pulling inspiration from recording artists versus Broadway artists or Broadway shows or anything?

[35:46] Orfeh: I mean, I don't know. Listen, again, I get to work with all these amazing pop writers, like, you know, from the Bee Gees to Brian Adams, who's a mega, mega star, you know, with a billion records sold. And, you know, every song he's ever done, you know, like I wouldn't even have to look at a lyric. If he handed me a mic and said, sing this, I'd be able to sing it just because it's in my consciousness. So I still, you know, I still pull from the pop world and the pop inspiration world. If I'm asked to write or produce for another artist, I don't know that anyone's going to call me and say, write a musical. It's not where my sensibilities are. I'm sure I could. It would be a harder stretch, I think.

So and I'm still really I'm good at the production side. You know, I'm not I will never consider myself this genius lyricist, but I'm a really good idea person. I'm a good, you know, I can know what should be in the verse, what should be in the chorus. But my strengths are in the production where the vocals should sit, what the arrangements should be, where the string line should be like. That's always been my forte. So and you know, who knew? Do you play instruments?

[37:06] Orfeh: I play the piano and I play the drums.

[37:12] Alan Seales: The drums?

[37:12] Orfeh: Yeah. Yeah. I'm not very good anymore. I don't get to practice. And that's one thing you have to practice. It's like use it or lose it. Right. But yeah, I am. I am a trained pianist and a drummer.

[37:17] Alan Seales: So you've got your solo, the solo, sorry, the you've got the solo work. You've got musical theater. You've got the partnerships with Andy and others and you do TV and film and you've been on The Good Cop, Law and Order, Sex in the City. What what gets you excited? What do you what would what do you really like to do?

[37:38] Orfeh: Voiceovers. Really?

[37:46] Orfeh: Yes. Yes. Yes. Voiceovers excite me. I'm still hoping one day Hollywood will go, yeah, she should be an animated, you know, feature character in all of our Pixar and DreamWorks movies. Yes. That's what still gets me excited. But actually everything gets me excited. Performing still puts the little bugs in my stomach and I still get really excited before the curtain hits and the first downbeat goes and I am I am absolutely still it's like every day is like the first day anytime I get to perform anytime. Seriously.

[38:20] Alan Seales: Wow. I'm not a jaded old crow.

[38:25] Orfeh: So it's about it. So it's still it's still fresh. It shows a week. It's every show. Yes. Because you have to remember and people ask people who do that a lot the same question. How do you keep it fresh? Well, every day there's twelve hundred to twenty five hundred new eyes in that, you know, sets of eyes in that theater. So you have to do it as if you've never done it before because most of the audience has never seen the show before. I mean, Andy and I get a lot of repeat visitors, but that's a cluster of people. The other umpteen hundreds and thousands of people have not seen this before. So you have to play it for them. You know, you have to play the material as if it's new every single time. And like with episodic television, it's always new. It's a different script every every episode. So that's in and of itself fresh off the bat. Um, so that's how I do it.

[39:14] Alan Seales: That's wise. That's great. And and do you do you get I say the same question. Do you have any sort of reaction or do you get pumped or kind of like obligatory feelings about going outside and meeting people at the stage door?

[39:31] Orfeh: I love the the people that, you know, are literally this is their special moment that they've come. They've flown in. They've come as a group, you know, excursion to come and see Pretty Woman or whatever musical they've come to see. And, you know, they go, Oh, God, can we wait and get autographs and things like that and take pictures? And it is probably the one and only time they're going to do this with that show. I'm very enthused by those people. And then, you know, we get some really great sweet people, really polite people. You get the random, not so fabulous people and, you know, the very ballsy people. But it's like life. It's anything, you know, it's anything. But I have generally if you ask my fans, I don't really miss many stage door moments.

I'm always out there signing when Wednesday matinees. I don't go out because I try to cram all the business I have to do in that day so that I can go out the other seven times, you know, or six times. But no, again, hopefully it's a new group. If it's the same people every night, it gets like, how many how many playbills do you need signed? You know, and they know that they know I'm like, you know, shady that way. I'm like, what is this your 19th autograph on the same place? You know, you're like, hey, Mark. Yeah, basically. Yeah. Poor Mark. There's no marks. But yeah, I won't say the names, but it's like sometimes they know. And then are you sick of me? And I'm like, no, not yet. But are you just sick of me? You know, aren't you sick of seeing the same thing all the time? But yeah, you get that. You get that's just the way that the culture is, you know.

[41:11] Alan Seales: So we'll wrap up here in a little bit, but I have a few standard questions. So just very simply, what motivates you?

[41:16] Orfeh: Oh, music.

[41:25] Alan Seales: If you what advice would you give to your younger self and the younger people listening now starting out down a similar path?

[41:32] Orfeh: Gosh, what would I give my. There's so much advice I'd give my younger self, but mostly to really not care about things that aren't important, but you don't know that as a youngster, you think everything's life altering and important and, you know, the end of days. So I would kind of tell everyone to be very selective of what they waste their energy on being upset about. That's what I would tell my younger self and young people. And if you're getting into this business, you better have the thickest skin on the planet because it's not going to always be good.

[42:09] Alan Seales: And last question, if you could only see one show for the rest of your life, but you can see it as many times as you want, what show would you see?

[42:15] Orfeh: Broadway show? Anything.

[42:20] Alan Seales: Oh, my God. You mean other than Andy on Law and Order SVU?

[42:28] Orfeh: I wouldn't mind seeing. Okay, we're going to go with the Broadway theme because that's what we're doing. I'd probably be able to see Dreamgirls a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Any particular cast or just OG cast?

[42:34] Orfeh: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Jennifer Holliday singing that song. Beautiful. Or Lilius White, actually, which was the second. But yeah, that would be the one.

[42:44] Alan Seales: Good choice.

[42:50] Orfeh: Thank you. So, yeah, you want to plug yourself on the socials?

[42:55] Orfeh: Yeah, man. Come follow me on Instagram because I really enjoy Instagram. I'm just at Orfeh on Instagram. Twitter is official underscore Orfeh. And yeah, check me out. Facebook is slash official dot Orfeh? Yes. Is that you? And then YouTube is the official Orfeh? Oh. And it's a combined. It's a great channel and it has everything you'd ever want to see, including like things you probably I shouldn't probably have on the channel, like bootlegs, basically. So you should definitely, definitely subscribe to our YouTube channel because I don't promote that very much. And buy the CD Legally Bound.

[43:31] Alan Seales: Yes. Well, thank you so much for coming.

[43:37] Orfeh: Thank you so much.

[43:37] Alan Seales: Again, I'm Alan Seales. This has been another episode of the Theatre Podcast. I am on the Instagram and Twitter as well as at theatre underscore podcast. And of course, big thank you to our friends, as always, Jukebox the Ghost for this lovely intro and outro music. Please subscribe, share, tell your friends, talk about everything, talk about Orfeh, talk about Pretty Woman, the musical. And thank you again.

[43:59] Orfeh: Thank you for having me.