Atlanta Peach Magazine
When Katharine McPhee calls me at the end of her first day of filming, she is giddy with excitement. It is hard to believe that only a few months ago, when McPhee and I first met, she still only dreamed of becoming an actor. In fact, it was failing to get parts in films that made this leggy Valley Girl try out for American Idol. “I was looking for anything that was going to give me a new experience,” McPhee says, recalling her pre-Idol mindset. “I wanted to change my life.”
She didn’t win television’s most popular singing competition, but, at 23, McPhee is now a recording artist—a dream she had practically given up on when she dropped out of college to pursue acting—and is making a movie. Her schedule is one of perpetual motion: appearances, parties, concerts, photo shoots, rehearsals and a supporting role in the Adam Sandler-produced film House Bunny. “I’m playing a really fun part,” McPhee says of her character, a pregnant hippie living in a sorority house. Written by Legally Blonde screenwriters Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, the comedy is a “very cute, young, fun, flirty girl movie,” according to McPhee. She has also lined up her next movie role, as the leading lady in the darkly romantic indie The Last Caller, one she hopes “people in the industry will pay attention to.”
As she walks into the Los Angeles studio of Hollywood photographer Giuliano Bekor for the Atlanta Peach shoot, McPhee looks uncannily like Catherine Zeta-Jones. She has just flown in from Italy, where for two weeks she was promoting Sexy Hair products; she landed the gig as spokesperson for the company after Idol. She is wearing dark Earnest Sewn skinny jeans and a vest that exposes her considerable cleavage, and she is badly in need of a manicure. A makeup artist immediately starts creating sexy smudgy eyes, while a hairstylist wraps the singer’s long brown strands around rollers. “I have to pinch myself a lot now!” she says, looking around. “It’s pretty amazing.”
In just over a year since Idol, McPhee has graced the covers of at least a dozen magazines, been named one of People magazine’s “Most Beautiful People” and has been nominated for a Teen Choice Award. “It feels like a dream,” McPhee says and then laughs, remembering how she once could not hold a single job for longer than a month, going from an office assistant to clothing-store clerk to restaurant hostess in order to support her artistic ambitions. “I’d be so bored,” she says.
Bekor walks in on our conversation with several dresses in hand and holds them next to McPhee’s glowing skin and freshly curled mane. “I only want couture!” he commands. “I just hope I fit into all these dresses,” McPhee says with a smile, examining Bekor’s picks: a collection of tiny frocks from such names as Dolce & Gabbana and Tadashi.
Moments later she is posing in a form-fitting golden D&G number paired with Sergio Rossi stilettos and breaking into snatches of song. For the next eight hours, McPhee changes from one glamorous gown to another, flirting with the camera with the skill of a model. You almost forget that singing is what brought her here.
Every season of Idol has had its share of surprises, and the fifth was no different. McPhee was positioned among her competition, so it seemed, as an old-fashioned vocalist with a fan-favored rendition of “Over the Rainbow.” But when she nailed KT Tunstall’s “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” it became clear that McPhee could do lighter pop fare just as well. “It’s harder for someone like me to find my true voice,” she confesses. “I can sing like a country singer, I can sing like a jazz singer, I can sing like a Broadway singer, a pop singer; I can imitate Christina [Aguilera], I can mimic Shakira. It’s kind of a blessing and a curse.” So when she made it into the show’s top 12, McPhee remembers thinking how far she had come. “You know that feeling when you get butterflies in your stomach? Times that by 10—consistently for about three months.”
The butterflies are gone, but her stomach is still the center of her attention: she is wearing a prosthetic baby bump reportedly once donned by Nicole Kidman. “I am really a full nine months pregnant, ready to burst at any second,” McPhee says with a laugh. Her character, Harmony, is the kind of dressed-down, laid-back person to whom McPhee can relate. “Although I do love dressing up and being fashionable sometimes, this role is fun for me because Harmony definitely likes to party and do all kinds of crazy things. But she’s not quite put together,” McPhee explains. “[Acting] is something that I want to do for a long time.”
Years ago, when things didn’t line up in her pre-Idol career, McPhee turned to musical theater, which is where she met her boyfriend, Nick Cokas. It was an instant attraction, and the two have been inseparable ever since. “We spent every second together,” reminisces McPhee of the time she and Cokas were unemployed. “My agent wasn’t sending me on any auditions, and [Nick] was kind of having a hard time with his work, so we literally would go get coffee every day and sit and talk all day long.” Today, both are busy with their own projects, and Cokas is one of the producers of The Last Caller. When will the two get married? “I’ll let that be a surprise.” But a wedding and children are both on her five-year plan. “I hope to successfully move into the film business, have continuous projects and have a baby in the foreseeable future,” she points out. “I want to be a young mother.”
It was the “mother” comment that had McPhee on the defensive after Stuff magazine printed her glib answer to the question of wanting children. She says she was joking when she told the reporter, “I want to have 15 babies.” Pretty soon the number was appearing everywhere next to her name, and McPhee couldn’t believe it. For now, she is content taking care of her two Chihuahuas, Nena and Larry. She takes Nena wherever she goes. “[Larry] is too young right now to take to the set,” she says. “He’s so small, not even a pound and a half.”
As we finish our coffee at a neighborhood café in Sherman Oaks, a little boy approaches our table. He is the son of the owners and wants to say hello. An older man having pastries with his granddaughter asks for an autograph. People stare, though McPhee is wearing no makeup and is clad in a plaid trench coat over her white T-shirt and jeans, her hair pulled back and twisted into a loose knot. But she just smiles and waves. “My mom has been coming here with me and my sister for years,” she notes. This is the San Fernando Valley, where she grew up.
The second daughter of a cabaret-singer mother and a producer father, McPhee comes from a solidly middle-class, tight-knit family that instilled a love for the arts in her and her older sister, Adriana. Ever since they were young, both girls wanted to be in show business. “When my grandma and grandpa came over, my sister and I had shows: We had puppet shows, dance shows, singing shows, plays in the back yard. We’d have them even if nobody was watching,” she recalls. “We both had big aspirations, and my dad was like, ‘Please! Not only do I have two girls, but they both want to be in the entertainment business!’ ” But to this day her parents are her biggest supporters.
Naturally, with her newfound star appeal, McPhee gets a lot of advice. But the counsel she holds dearest is Simon Cowell’s off-camera, post-Idol comment. “He said, ‘You really have a lot more to show America.’ I got that.” And McPhee is acting on it, too. Her eponymous album, which debuted on RCA in January, has been a solid success, with two hit singles, “Over It” and “Love Story.” “It’s very cliché for a singer to want to become an actress,” she concedes. “But I want to do something different that’s going to introduce you to a different person.” And then she surprises me with her ambition. “I want to be the Barbra Streisand of this generation,” she says. “I want to be someone who is remembered as being great at all things: in film, music, theater. I want to have a solid career.”
Beauty Talk With Katharine McPhee
ATLANTA PEACH: You have been working with some of the best makeup artists and hairstylists in the business. Did you pick up any great beauty tips from them?
KATHARINE MCPHEE: I’ve learned a lot with makeup, but I feel like I’ve learned more with hair. I love the trick of braiding my hair and putting a flat iron through it. It makes perfect little mermaid hair. You can also braid your hair and curl the braid in a curling iron.
You have become an iconic brunette; have you ever changed your hair color?
I’ve definitely been thinking about it. I really hope for [a] movie role in which I have to go blonde. Not platinum blonde, but I think it’d be really fun just for a couple months to kind of be a light, dirty-blonde color.
Do you have a beauty ritual?
I really enjoy taking care of my skin. I wear sunscreen every day. I use eye cream. I love Vaseline, too. That’s one of my tricks—I’ll put Vaseline all over: under my eyes, on my face, my frown lines. And I love to put tons of moisturizer all over.
Have you ever had a beauty disaster?
Like every girl, I’ve over-plucked my eyebrows, especially in middle school and high school. And once I wore a strapless brown dress that looked like a big trash bag on me. It was awful. I wore it for one of the [Idol] performances.
Do you work out?
I do what I can, especially as busy as I am. Right now, I’m just working on stretching in the downtime that I have and bringing little weights with me for my arms and doing lunges. Lunges are something I can always do anywhere, so it doesn’t matter if I have a gym or not. And I do love yoga.
What are you eyeing for fall?
Definitely cashmere babydoll dresses with tights and little ankle boots. Long sweaters to wear with jeans, to dress them up. Little hats to wear. Oh, and scarves. I’ve stocked up on scarves.
—E.F.
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