NBC Previews Hairspray Live
This December NBC will present the fourth incarnation of John Waters’ brilliant comedy, “Hairspray.” “Hairspray Live” will star Harvey Fierstein, Jennifer Hudson, Ariana Grande, Martin Short, Kristin Chenoweth, Rosie O’Donnell, Sean Hayes, Andrea Martin and Maddie Baillio. On Friday the network released a new promo showing off some of the stars in character, and it already looks like it’s going to be an improvement on some of the prior Hairspray remakes.
Water’s original 1988 film starred Ricki Lake as Tracy Turnblad, a hefty but hip high schooler in 1962 Baltimore who auditions for a popular teen dance show and ends up teaching the city about acceptance, integration, equality and fashion. The original film featured an incredible cast including Divine, Jerry Stiller, Sonny Bono, Deborah Harry, and was later turned into a hit Broadway show, and a popular, but unworthy movie remake starring John Travolta. The remake was so popular that the original has all but disappeared from mainstream memory. Do yourself a favor and hunt down a copy. There’s no comparison.
“Hairspray Live” is the fourth NBC Live Musical Event. The network created the genre in 2013 when it aired a live version of “The Sound of Music” which was critically panned, but scored gigantic ratings for NBC. “Peter Pan Live!” and “The Wiz Live!” followed in 2014 and 2015, also to huge numbers. The “Live” series inspired a similar run at FOX with productions of live musical versions of “Grease” and “The Passion.”
Watch the promo for NBC’s “Hairspray Live!”
