On Broadway, Frenchie Finds A Perfect Fit
Plus-Size 'Idol' Contestant Takes Off in 'Rent'
Davis recalls a time when "the cops were locking us out of our apartment. We were being evicted." Now, she's in "Rent" on Broadway. (Helayne Seidman - For The Washington Post)
By Lynne Duke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 6, 2003; Page C01
NEW YORK
The curtain is about to come down on Act 1. Voices are soaring. Hips are shaking. Hair is flying. It's "Rent," the long-running Broadway show, and the singers and dancers are at highest rev, pumping out pure musical theater. They're climbing up on a platform, belting "La Vie Boheme," and Franchelle "Frenchie" Davis, the allegedly humiliated "American Idol" contestant booted off the TV show in February, is blasting away with that famously rich voice.
This is the part Davis, 24, loves most. Sure, that roof-raising solo she'll do in a few minutes will feel great, too. But this moment of highest ensemble energy feels best. It's just like that "Hot Lunch" scene from the movie "Fame," the scene that made her know, really know, back when she was a kid in Los Angeles, that she had to be a performer someday.
She hoists herself onto that platform and dances right along with the rest of the cast. She's made it, really got here, to Broadway, despite the obvious odds.
"I'm sure people's mouths dropped when they saw me hop up on that table," she laughs later. She is, after all, a large girl. Not that she apologizes for it or anything like that. She's quite comfortable in her own skin.
At Angus, a theater district eatery, where she's wearing a low-cut blouse and pants that reveal her thong, she gracefully stands up from the table and runs her hands down her torso and hips.
"Honey, do you not see my hourglass? Do you not see I'm proportionately big? Honey, where am I hanging? What is there to struggle with? Everybody's not supposed to be this big." She holds up her pinkie finger. "I'm a 36KK. I'm supposed to have curves. No one decides for me whether I'm beautiful.
"While being thin may be equated with being beautiful, no one who's around me for more than five minutes can walk away not feeling my sexiness and my beauty. No one. No one."
It's the bravado, the confidence, the audacity of a diva. She's not totally comfortable with that word, though she does describe herself as "a star." The producers of "Rent" think so, too.
So forget those headlines you may have read. ("Frenchie's Fried," a New York tabloid blared. "Frenchie's Toast," hollered another.)
That was back in February, when the TV mini-scandal of the moment was Davis's seeming fall from grace. She no longer seemed "Idol" material, after the show's producers learned she'd modeled for an "adult" Web site four years earlier. She didn't try to hide it; had put it right on her "Idol" questionnaire. It was all misunderstood, she says.
But you know what? None of it seems to have mattered, at least not in the negative sense. With her May 16 debut on Broadway, it would seem Davis is not a woman undone so easily. On the road to stardom, "Idol" was a mere bump.
"I was disappointed, but life goes on," says the Howard University theater student on leave for her Broadway gig. "I know how to dust myself off and keep it movin'," she says. " 'Idol' wasn't my first time going through tough times."
Davis is more than a bit defensive about the Web site controversy, about whether she posed for porn. She is annoyed that she is being asked yet again to explain just what she did. She is annoyed, still, that other "Idol" contestants with controversies in their background were not booted from the show as she was. What about the former stripper?
The Web site at the center of Davis's controversy was "adult, not pornographic," she virtually hisses.
"Posing in lingerie for men who like big boobs is not pornographic. And it was out of desperation. At the time, even though my parents are both educated, we struggled a lot financially. At the time, my mom was not in a financial position to assist me and I couldn't afford to pay all of my tuition, even with financial aid. I was, like, $10,000 in the hole. They had kicked me out of the dorms. I was homeless. I had nowhere to go. I was staying with friends, going from place to place. And that's when I got the job at the Web site."
"It was not topless. And the other thing that's been falsely reported is that it was geared toward men who were interested in underage girls. None of the girls who worked at the Web site when I worked there were under the age of 18, nor did we promote ourselves as such. That's just the truth. And I only worked at the Web site for about three months, and then a few months after I stopped working there, someone else purchased the Web site and turned it into whatever the hell it is now."
It's been reported as a site named Daddy's Little Girls. At least now, it's porn for sure. But Davis refuses to identify the site. "I'm not promoting that [expletive]," she says.
Jeffrey Seller, a producer of "Rent," said the porn controversy was "a non-issue. Hogwash. Not interested."
"Rent" is ecstatic to have her. Seller actually went after her when he learned she was free.
"Call Frenchie! Call Frenchie!" members of the show's marketing team kept saying, Seller recalls. So they called her and heard her "and of course she delighted our musical director," Seller says.
"Frenchie is exactly the type of young person we're always looking for. This was perfect casting."
Though she is part of the ensemble and not a star of the show, she does the solo for the song that has become the "Rent" anthem, "Seasons of Love." Ticket sales went up by 20 percent after the show signed her, Seller says. Davis says she can relate to the show in so many personal ways, including one of its lead characters, Angel, a cross-dresser. Having performed in drag clubs in the District ("I would be the only real girl"), she learned from the drag queens about "being sassy and standing up for yourself and being proud of who you are."
And she's seen friends die from AIDS and struggle with drug abuse, two other themes of the show, whose plot centers on some young artists facing eviction and trying to figure out how to pay the rent on their Lower East Side apartment.
"I remember being 9 years old and coming home from school with my sister and brother, and the cops were locking us out of our apartment. We were getting evicted."
That's what she means when she says "Idol" wasn't her first tough time.
She is the oldest of six children of parents who are also Howard alums. Born in the District, she was reared in South Los Angeles, where she nurtured her theater dreams. She got picked on at school, she says, for being large and theatrical and just different. And she suffered through her parents' divorce when she was 13, which has left her vowing to stay single.
Howard seemed a natural choice for college, she says, not just because her parents went there but because of its long tradition of producing stars. Ruby Dee. Debbie Allen. Jessye Norman. Roberta Flack.
During summers, she traveled to Germany to perform in "Little Shop of Horrors" and "Jesus Christ Superstar." She enjoyed working there, said it felt welcoming, and wouldn't mind working there again.
"And they love girls with meat on their bones," she laughs.
Hybrid Mode
