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Nicole Travolta is currently starring in her one-woman show Nicole Travolta Is Doing Alright, now playing at the SoHo Playhouse off Broadway
She started working on her show before COVID and staged its first production in 2023
In the show, Travolta discusses her shopaholic tendencies and how a job as a spray-tanner helped her turn everything around
Nicole Travolta never thought her side quest as a spray-tanner in Los Angeles would have such a huge impact on her life.
The actress and comedian puts that — along with her shopaholic tendencies, crippling debt and famous last name — at the forefront of her show Nicole Travolta Is Doing Alright, now playing at the SoHo Playhouse off Broadway. The show, which Travolta has been working on and performing for years, digs into all the ways her life went wrong, twisted and turned before she found herself back on stable ground.
The autobiographical piece is both hilarious and heartwarming as Travolta connects with the audience on a relatable level. At the top of the show, she immediately addresses her last name (her father is Sam Travolta, that John Travolta’s brother) by joking that she is not a Scientologist (as her uncle reportedly is).
Nicole Travolta in ‘Nicole Travolta Is Doing Alright’
Credit: Joan Marcus
“There’s this magnitude of pressure that you don’t ask for, but that’s just sort of there,” she tells PEOPLE of being a part of the Travolta family. “And also this is such a big name. [People have told me,] ‘Well, change your name.’ But that’s not fair. It’s my name. So I just think it’s important to get it out in this off-the-cuff way.”
Travolta touches on her family name a few times throughout the show but makes it clear that she’s a “nepo niece,” not a “nepo baby.” Instead, she weaves a tale of how she found herself dealing with a chronic shopping problem that kicked into high gear after she and her parents moved from Los Angeles to Orlando, Fla. As soon as she was old enough to sign up for credit cards, she did, and that led to thousands of dollars of debt and a devastatingly low credit score. (Plus a marriage in her 20s that crumbled, partially due to her money troubles.)
“I don’t know that I would’ve felt [the pressure of the concept of the Travolta name] if I’d stayed in Los Angeles,” she says of keeping up appearances with buying designer items. “I think you’re more protected in places like New York and L.A. People just understand. Everyone is related to somebody. You’re in a bubble. But in Florida, it was tough.”
She eventually moved back to Los Angeles and landed some acting gigs in shows like Anger Management and Two and a Half Men. The instability of Hollywood wasn’t helping her tackle the debt, though, which is where the spray-tanning gig came in. What began as a job in the salon eventually turned into a concierge service where she would make house calls.
As she recounts in the show, she saw a lot. But it was also where she was encouraged to pursue comedy.
“The things you see are absurd,” she says of her years as a spray-tanner. “I really did at the time. It’s all about that facade. I thought I was an actor. I was on a show. It’s all so confusing in your brain. But that job put my two feet a little bit more on the ground, and I am so grateful for all of the people that I met along the way and the characters.”
Nicole Travolta
Credit: Storm Santos
At each show, Travolta strips back all pretenses and drops down to her completely authentic self, which she tells PEOPLE is tiring but gratifying. She bares her whole story in a vulnerable way, inviting the audience to feel her emotions behind the struggles of making mistakes and working your way through them.
“The best part about it is connecting with the audience,” she says, recounting tales of how audience members have shared their own personal stories with her in response to the show. “That’s really the most important thing is that art comes from some pain, and comedy can come from pain, but what a gift to be able to stand up there and really connect with people in a way that you might not be able to otherwise. As taxing as it is and as crazy as I feel sometimes, I do love it and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, I think. I’m really, really proud of what it’s become.”
Travolta started working on this show before COVID, while she was a part of the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles. The pandemic derailed her work, though, but she was able to pick back up when she joined the Groundlings. It opened there in 2023 and has only blossomed since then.
“From there, people started coming and I randomly started doing it in places like Las Vegas, which was crazy, and then Pittsburgh, San Francisco, I did the Fringe Festival, and then I went to Europe with it,” she says. “It’s lived all these different lives, and then I did a limited run here in New York, but that’s really where it started. The heart of it is still the same, but it’s changed exponentially from where it was.”
Travolta believes her show still has so much to give the world, which is why she’s still performing it, but what she’s manifesting for its future is for it to be turned into a TV show.
Nicole Travolta
Credit: Storm Santos
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“I would love to adapt this into a series, but I really love doing this, and I would love to stick around here with it for a bit,” she says. “I believe it belongs here, and I would keep touring it. I would keep sending it off. My hope is that the right people come and the right people get it.”
Thus far, she says a lot of the “right people” have come to the show, which is a thrill, because they’re “getting” the story she’s trying to tell about picking yourself back up and learning to work through your mistakes.
As she says in the show, she’s a “big ass work in progress,” and she’s absolutely okay with that.
Nicole Travolta Is Doing Alright, cowritten by Paula Christensen and directed by Margarett Perry, is playing through May 10. Buy your tickets online here.
Read the original article on People
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