A syrupy sweet smile and big doe eyes can get you far in this business, and a mini-skirt doesn't hurt either. In addition to these, Nicole Sullivan walked into the MADtv audition with talent, which definitely got her the job. It is precisely her talent and inimitable creativity that have entertained audiences for five years running on the edgy late night sketch-comedy show.
A student of classical theatre at the British American Dramatic Academy and Northwestern University, Sullivan was never a class clown, instead opting for juicy Shakespearean roles onstage. The trip West after college to pursue an acting career found Sullivan depressed and out of work after a few brief sitcoms. Then she found comedy-that is, she learned comedy from an improv team that featured the late comedic actor David Strickland, whom Sullivan credits with teaching her everything she knows about sketch.
After much licking of envelopes and mailing of flyers to countless industry pros, CAA finally showed up to one of the group's performances. And Sullivan was recommended to audition for MADtv, which was scouting for talent.
Sullivan, widely known as "the blonde" on the show ("I can't dye my hair different colors like I used to, because no one would know who I am") offers up her celebrity impersonations with a dead-on humor that is not only flawless but rather telling of the flaws inherent in celebrity-the very reason for the imitation in the first place. With send-ups of Britney Spears, Melanie Griffith, Brett Butler, Jenna Elfman, Lea Thompson, and countless others, Sullivan infuses an honesty and sincerity that extends beyond impersonating the voice and mannerisms of the celeb.
But Sullivan admits that weird voices and impersonations didn't come naturally. "If I had to do Hillary Clinton," she said in a recent phone interview, "I'd have [fellow castmember and gifted voiceover artist] Phil LaMarr do Hillary Clinton into my tape recorder, and then I'd imitate Phil imitating Hillary Clinton. It was one step removed, but it was easier for me." When she started at MADtv, Sullivan found herself listening to a voice through headphones for seven or eight hours just to deliver four lines of dialogue in a sketch.
Though she appreciates the challenge posed by the impersonations, the New York native recognizes just how much the audiences love her signature characters, among them the Vancome Lady, a collagen-stuffed, hairspray-helmet madeup saleswoman who would reach into your chest, pull out your beating heart, and extinguish her cigarette in it. "I hit a wall with her emotionally," she said of the character she's done for the last five years. Though each time she becomes more vicious, you love to watch her operate on so many levels of inappropriate behavior.
Sullivan's favorite character, Antonia, wasn't meant to be a character at all. During a table read of a sketch, Sullivan tried to spice up the scene by reading the lines in the voice she would use to speak to her cat, CeCe. "They loved it, and said, "Let's do more with that character.' That character? That's just a funny voice I use to talk to my cat," the actress recalled. And so Antonia, a tight-lipped, seemingly somnambulistic girl who talks out of the side of her mouth, was born.
Whether she's doing impersonations or playing a wacky, reality-escaping sister (on the very short-lived ABC sitcom Talk to Me), Sullivan uniformly embodies her female characters with a strength, however tenuous, that makes these women, in some part, believable either in their maliciousness, benevolence, or just plain ignorance.