EW interviews Kathie Lee Gifford as she prepares to return to Live for its 20th anniversary. Interviewer Nicholas Fonseca asks Gifford to perform in Hell's Kitchen and she takes him up on it.
Fonseca: “You're writing musicals and aiming for Broadway now. The EW offices are in the Theater District and a lot of the gay bars around here have special musical nights where they welcome some stage star onstage. You need to do that. Trust me — there's a whole generation of younger gays who grew up with you on their TV. I think they'd eat it up.”
Gifford: “Oh, thank you! It's interesting — in all the years that I was on the show, I had a very strong gay following and I always cherished that, you know? That they didn't think that because of my faith that I was some sort of intolerant, condemning, self-righteous person. I never got that from them. I got a lot of criticism from the faith world, believe me, for the choices I made through the years. I think people are sometimes afraid of somebody who's different from themselves simply because they don't know it. I think anybody that can only stay in their own pew, people who think and act and believe every way exactly the same, I mean…you want to talk about living a boring life. So I've always sensed tremendous support from the gay community and I'm very, very grateful for it, so I'm going to take your advice and I thank you very much for it. I'm supposed to do a show right now in Queens — how perfect! If I do it, I'm going to call you back and you give me the name of the best gay bar in New York and I'll do it.”
(thanks josh)