| Thu. 07 28. 2005 12:00 AM EDT
You've seen the music video. You've seen the posters. And you've seen the cover shoots. There's no doubt: in The Dukes of Hazzard Jessica Simpson sure can fill out a pair of Daisy Dukes. The 25-year-old superstar told a recent press conference that squeezing into the world's tightest shorts is
You looked like you had fun playing up the sex appeal of this character. Is there a line you won't cross? Oh, there are a lot of lines I won't cross. I did have fun. She's a woman, she's a smart woman and she definitely knows how to use her body! [giggles] What was it in your audition that impressed the directors? I was very shy in my first audition, and I didn't nail it. They wanted to screen-test me anyway, because it was already in the press that I had the role! That put pressure on me. The part was something that I wanted really bad, but I should have never said it to the press. I told myself, "You have to get this. When you walk in to do that screen-test, you have to walk in as Daisy Duke." So I worked with acting coach Larry Moss who said, "Just do what you're doing." He has trained a lot of amazing women like Hillary Swank for Million Dollar Baby. So I was like, all right! Why did you want the part so badly? It was the perfect time for me to do a movie and I thought playing up the whole Southern sexy thing would be great. People have seen my ditzy side and my dorky side and my obsession with clothes, but they haven't seen a lot of strength as a woman. I thought that Daisy Duke would be a great way to show it. How many pairs of shorts did they have you put on before you found the right one? Over a 100. I had to do a different butt pose for the whole thing, and they took Polaroids. It had to fit perfectly. The girls had to like it and the guys had to like So how did you go from walking with confidence to washing the General Lee in a pink bikini? The General Lee and the bikini and all that stuff? That was Daisy. That was definitely me playing the role. I could never do that as Jessica Simpson. I couldn't even walk on the beach in a bikini. I lay down under a blanket! You've said that being on the set of Dukes of Hazzard
It was really just the fact that I wasn't with my family every day. My dad's my manager, and my mom would always dress me. It's a family business. But they didn't come out on set like twice. So I was living with all my girlfriends and just had fun. It was like Sex & the City, but without the sex! Did Willie Nelson ever try to get you high? No, he didn't, because he knows that I'm a singer. I was like, How do you do that and not lose your voice? I can't even be in a smoky bar and talk the next day. So how does he keep his voice? He says that it cures his voice! [Laughs] I don't know. What's the biggest misconception about the South that you'd like to correct for people? Everybody thinks that everybody's riding horses and wearing cowboy hats, y'know? What I loved so much about the South is how tight the family bonds are. In The Dukes of Hazzard, I love that everybody knows each other, and everybody roots each other on. Then you have guys like Boss Hogg. That's very much [part of] the South, too. What pitfalls do you want to avoid in your movie career? A bad script! [Laughs] There are a lot of movie projects that I'm looking at, but there's this one movie called Major Movie Star. It's a Private Benjamin kind of role. My mentors are Goldie Hawn and Dolly Parton. Dolly Parton is my absolute favorite because she's an amazing blonde, a great Southern lady, and an amazing songwriter/singer. She has her own theme park! She has a legacy, and I hope to be doing the same thing as her. We've watched you grow up on camera. Are you comfortable with people knowing as much about you as they do? Letting people enter my privacy is what made me succeed. I absolutely do not regret that. But I do think that it's time to make some things more private and sacred. You always feel like now that people are out to get something out of you. On the one hand, you need the press for your career. On the other hand, it can be so intrusive. How do you deal with it? I do what I do and I go where people tell me to go and I speak my heart. I try not to think about it. A lot of people are out to bring you down, but I can't complain about people wanting to write about me. That would be stupid. What's on your iPod and your Tivo at the moment? TiVo? Entourage. We're waiting for the next season of Desperate Housewives and Lost, too. I don't have time to watch any of it, but I do know how to work the TiVo. That's a step. I have a lot of stuff on my iPod right now, because I just finished my new record, called And the Band Played On. It's inspired by everything from Fleetwood Mac to Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, and Etta James. I can't find [modern] music that I really love, so I went back to the music that I missed out on. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
E-Mail this story to a friend
