GYPSY OF THE MONTH: Brandi Wooten of '9 to 5: The Musical'

That sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot Franklin Hart Jr. may not appreciate Violet Newstead's talents, but at least one young woman at Consolidated Industries considers her the ultimate role model. Brandi Wooten, who plays a Consolidated office drone in 9 to 5: The Musical, picks Allison Janney (Violet) as the actress whose career she'd like to emulate. "Allison Janney is the lanky character woman. I watch and learn from her every night," says the 5-foot-9 Wooten, who aspires to be a full-time character actor, having already played such roles as Annie's Lily St. Regis regionally.

With her curly blond hair, bubbly personality and fondness for her small-town roots, Wooten also has some things in common with another boldface name involved in 9 to 5: Dolly Parton. Such a comparison would floor Wooten. "I'm kind of a huge fan," the Missouri native says of Parton, who wrote 9 to 5's music and lyrics and starred in the movie on which it's based. "I grew up watching her on Hee Haw when I was eating dinner. My parents only listened to country music. Hands down, I think she might be the biggest star I'll ever work with. I don't mean I won't work with other stars, but in my hometown I feel like Dolly Parton is as big as the President of the United States. She's just an iconic figure of country music and Middle America."

According to Wooten, Parton was present throughout tech rehearsals and previews for both the Broadway run and the Los Angeles tryout of 9 to 5. "I made it a point to go up and talk to her all the time," says Wooten. "She's just the kindest lady." And on opening night, Parton was introduced to some more fans in the Wooten family. "My parents were beaming when they got to meet her."

A year ago, Wooten was performing on Broadway in another screen-to-stage adaptation, Spamalot. She'd made her Broadway debut in that show in May 2007, as a temporary replacement during a five-month medical leave, and then returned to the New York cast (in a different ensemble track) at the start of 2008. Her first go-round with Spamalot had been as a swing on the national tour for most of 2006.

Shortly before joining the Spamalot tour, Wooten had her first lead role: as Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes at Westchester Broadway Theatre just outside NYC. She saw the movie for the first time after winning the role but says she didn't steal anything from Marilyn Monroe for her performance; her Lorelei, she says, was more comic than sexy, more Carol Channing (who originated it on Broadway) than Marilyn.

Which is typical of the onstage personality Wooten discovered when she got to college. "I'm like this quirky, wacky, nerdy person," she says, recalling that before college "I was convinced in my mind that I was going to move to L.A. and do dancing. When I got into Oklahoma City University, I was like, 'I'm totally a musical theater person! I want to act!'"

Wooten majored in dance at OCU, but the coursework entailed as many voice and drama classes as dance classes. She hadn't had an opportunity to do much singing and acting before college, as her public high school in northeastern Missouri—with just 70 students per grade, drawn from three towns—had no theater department and offered choir only as a course, not an extracurricular activity. "I was the only person in my whole class—in my whole entire high school, 9 through 12—who was interested in the arts," she says.

It was kinda the same way at home, too. Her four older siblings were all multi-sport athletes (mom and dad had been a cheerleader and football player in college), and Wooten herself was on the softball, track and basketball teams until she dropped them all around age 16 to leave more time for dance. She'd started attending a dance studio when she was about 5, training in all types of dance and gymnastics; she quit the latter after a growth spurt at 12. Though Wooten is the only one in her family to pursue performance, she says that her sister Lori has great rhythm and "is convinced that she gave me my rhythm while dancing to Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson in our kitchen."

Wooten was born in Hannibal, Mo., and grew up in nearby New London (pop. 1,000). Her dance studio once took a trip to St. Louis to see The King and I at the Muny, and that was virtually her only exposure to live theater before she spent spring break in New York during senior year of college. She came with her classmate Jon Warren (who's also on Broadway now, in Wicked), and they bought tickets at TKTS for the 42nd Street revival, her first Broadway show. On that trip, she also saw Chicago, with Jennifer Holliday as Mama Morton, and Les Misèrables, then still in its original run. And she went to auditions—and booked a job! So right after graduation in 2002, she went out on a non-Equity tour of Fosse for a year; her Fosse castmates included Jessica Lea Patty, who's also in 9 to 5, and Michael James Scott, currently in Hair.

In late 2003, Wooten joined another national tour, Oklahoma. That was sandwiched between work in actual Oklahoma: Wooten has performed with the state's Lyric Theatre in three different seasons. During the summer of '03, she played Hunyak in Chicago, alongside Deborah Gibson as Velma, and also appeared in The Wizard of Oz and Footloose. The following year, she had the featured role of Lily in Annie and ensemble parts in Jekyll & Hyde, Chess and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Wooten also did a season at Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma during college, performing in the summer of 2001 in Carousel, The Sound of Music, Pippin and A Chorus Line. (In an earlier summer during college, she danced at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va.) Wooten played Judy in Lyric's Chorus Line, and in 2004 portrayed Kristine in a production at Houston's Theatre Under the Stars.

Wooten's other regional work includes showgirl Rhoda in White Christmas at Denver Center Theatre Company and a non-musical, the classic comedy You Can't Take It With You, at New Jersey's Two River Theater Company, where she played dancing daughter Essie. Also in New Jersey, Wooten performed in the 2005 world premiere of Waiting for the Moon, Frank Wildhorn's musical about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, at the Lenape Regional Performing Arts Center.

That show was choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler, whose choreography for 9 to 5 is giving Wooten the workout of her career. She arrives at the theater an hour before showtime, rather than the required half-hour, to warm up. 9 to 5 has more dancing than any show she's done besides Fosse, and the choreography is "very low to the ground and athletic," she explains. "Me being tall and lanky, I gotta warm up properly to get low to the ground."

Wooten had danced for Blankenbuehler before Waiting for the Moon, as she's faithfully attended his class at Broadway Dance Center ever since she moved to New York. She's even been lobbying him for a part in his other show on Broadway, despite its Latino cast. "I love hip-hop so much, and I always joke with Andy that I really want to be in In the Heights. He's like, 'Brandi, you could dye your hair black and get a tan, you're still not right.'"

Those three little words—"you're not right"—can sting when they don't come from a friend you're joking around with, but Wooten says performers have to steel themselves for hearing them. "When you go into this business, you have to have a strong sense of self. You're gonna get rejected and you're gonna get told you're too this and too that all the time. It could be bad things or it could be things you can't change," says Wooten, whose unsuccessful Broadway auditions include The Producers, Curtains and Young Frankenstein.

"With the fantastic family that raised me," she continues, "the most important thing I remember now when I go into auditions is I'm just going to go in and show them Brandi. This is what I do, and if it's not right, it's okay. You just have to be yourself. They want to see you. You don't want to be a product, or something you learned from college, or be like Sutton Foster. I'd love to be like Sutton Foster, but you don't want to be somebody else. If it's right, it's right, and if it's not, it's not on your path. I reaffirm that feeling all the time in this business."

Wooten scored her 9 to 5 job without an agent (she asked Blankenbuehler to get her into an invited call); she's been without representation for about a year and a half, but plans to start looking for a new agent soon. "I really want to do character work, even if it's regionally," she says. In addition to Janney, Wooten cites as a role model Sarah Chalke from TV's Scrubs: "She's like the quirky, lanky girl. I love her."

In 9 to 5, Wooten can be spotted in the opening number in bra, skirt and sneakers—one of the people in the midst of getting ready for work in the morning (her bit originally involved a baby and husband, but that was cut during previews in L.A.). In the Consolidated offices, she sits at a group of desks with Jill Abramovitz (in the role previously played by Ann Harada), and in one scene wears what she describes as "a Princess Leia-like, asymmetrical turtleneck," as was the fashion in the 1970s.

Thanks to Tonys producers' decision to open this year's awards ceremony with a montage, Wooten and the 9 to 5 cast were able to perform (with Parton) on the Tonys even though the show wasn't nominated for Best Musical. The experience helped compensate for the disappointment of receiving fewer nominations than any other new musical currently running. "When we did the Tony Awards opening and met all the different casts, I loved the Hair cast so much," gushes Wooten. "I don't know any of them, except Michael Scott, but I feel like they embody the entire feeling of that show—the love and peace. They would just come up to people and were smiling at everyone."

A one-on-one encounter at the Tonys was highly memorable as well. "While I was waiting in the wings for 9 to 5 to go on, Liza Minnelli came right up to me and said 'How you doing, baby?'" says Wooten, miming the tears she shed that night. "I wish things would have been different with awards season. Still, it was great to see the Tony Awards live and see actors who are not necessarily celebrities, like Alice Ripley, getting rewarded for their work."

This past Monday, Wooten went on as Franklin Hart's (Marc Kudisch) wife, Missy, the role usually played by Lisa Howard that she understudies. "I wasn't really nervous until half-hour when I ran the scene with Allison, Marc and Megan [Hilty], and then I was like, 'Okay, here are the real people,'" she says. "Allison, Marc and Megan couldn't have been more supportive and excited for me. And to have lines was awesome! It makes me want to do character work even more."

Wooten also had a great time doing 9 to 5 in L.A. last fall. She'd been there only once before, for a week in high school when she took dance classes on scholarship but didn't get to do anything else around town. This time, she had the chance to see more of Southern California. "I love it there," she reports. "I don't know how good this career would be there. But as far as the quality of life, it is amazing, because of the sunshine, and it's slower-paced, and you have a car..." Staying in a corporate apartment in Burbank, "I had coffee on my balcony every morning," says Wooten. "That starts my day off perfect."

Here in New York, Wooten lives "in a shoebox" on the Lower East Side with her husband and dog. She met hubby Jerry Miceli when they were both in the ensemble of Oklahoma and they married in 2006. Nowadays he's leaning more toward dramatic acting than musicals, and last year he played Laertes in a North Carolina production of Hamlet directed by Gerald Freedman.

In her Playbill bio, Wooten thanks "both Moms and Dads"—the second pair of parents being her in-laws. "I adore my mother- and father-in-law," she says. "To call them Mom and Dad is so natural that I even do it when I'm talking to my real mom and dad." Yet Wooten may shower the most affection on Millie, her 4-year-old King Charles spaniel/toy poodle mix. "I know it sounds kooky to be that in love with your dog," she says, "but she brings me so much joy. I always wanted a dog [growing up], but my parents didn't let me. I was like, 'When I'm an adult, the first thing I'm gonna do is get a dog!'" Wooten has helped raise money for Broadway Barks, the annual dog adoption fair produced by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, and has volunteered to walk dogs for local animal shelters. "If I ever do anything else in life," Wooten says, answering Zach's question from Chorus Line, "it would be something with animals."

Before she made it to Broadway, Wooten worked in between theater jobs as a hostess at Dalton's pub on 9th Ave. and a cater waiter. Not that she expects to need it again, but "I still have my tux in my closet," she says. "It keeps me grounded." 

Photos of Brandi, from top: showing her love for her job, outside the Marquis Theatre; performing Lorelei Lee's signature number, "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," in 2005's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; as Lily in Annie; a dancing but nonmusical role, Essie, in Two River's You Can't Take It With You in 2005; with Michelle Dyer (left), as Rita and Rhoda, in White Christmas, 2007; in an office scene from 9 to 5, with Justin Bohon (left) and Neil Haskell (right); with her husband, fellow actor Jerry Miceli. [Photo credits: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, John Vecchiolla; Annie, Wendy Mutz; You Can't Take It With You, T. Charles Erickso]