A renaissance woman who's worked in Hollywood for more than 30 years Nia Peeples has proved she has more to share than her hair, that gorgeous tousled coif that endeared her to many a girl and gay man in the 80’s when she was churning out chart toppers like “Trouble” and starring in the Fame TV series.
For 30-plus years Peeples’ multi-faceted career has included work as a choreographer, dancer, vocalist, actress, philanthropist and martial artist -- with a mean drop kick -- performing her own stunts as Sidney Cooke on Walker, Texas Ranger. Now she’s appealing to a brand new generation playing mom to a teenaged lesbian character on ABC Family’s break out hit Pretty Little Liars.
Born and raised in Hollywood and a gay icon since the 80’s Peeples, 49, says she had to soul search a bit to get to the heart of Pam, her Pretty Little Liars character who bucks against her daughter Emily’s (Shay Mitchell) coming out.
A woman who has seemingly never stopped working, even to raise two kids, Peeples kicked off her career with daytime work on General Hospital and guest appearances on shows including TJ Hooker before landing the role of the lovable Nicole Chapman on Fame. From there her recording career took off and she later went on to star in Walker, Texas Ranger. Through the years she’s never been too far from the small screen even starring on The Young and the Restless as recently as 2009.
If Peeples’ resume weren’t diverse enough, she has also developed her Elements of Life, a program designed to help women remain healthy, fit and fulfilled while managing the day-to-day pressures of work and family, a program she also ascribes to and practices.
SheWired recently chatted with Peeples about her Elements of Life, her gay following and big-hair heydays of the 80’s and playing an uptight mom to a gay teen on Pretty Little Liars.
Thanks so much for speaking with us!
It’s my pleasure!
I’ll get right to it. You’ve had a long and varied career….
[laughs] I’ve been all over the place!
You’ve had your hand in everything from pop music, to acting, and now you have your website – The Elements of Life. Several years ago you were active with charity work after the massive tsunami. With all that you’ve done with your career what has become most important to you?
Ultimately I really believe that it’s about evolving more into who we are most authentically. We can’t be afraid to let go of the things that used to work for us in order to continue evolving. So that’s why it is all over the place, and that is one of the things that I think is most important -- to learn, to trust that moving into who you are most authentically is always going to bring you the most happiness.
What are some of those things that you have had to let go of--that don’t work any more?
Oh gosh! You have to let go of a lot of things. The biggest thing for me was the whole thing about the tsunami relief. When I hit about 43, I felt like who I had become as a woman had completely outgrown any value that Hollywood could put on me.
Up to that point I had been able to really express various parts of who I am, any thoughts that I had, feelings I had, questions I had through the songs that I wrote, through the performance I had, and through the various characters I created.
Then there is the business aspect of Hollywood where they just kind of respect you for whatever heat you happen to have at the moment. And you go, “Wait a minute! I am so much more woman than that!” I’m a mother, I’m a wife, I’m a friend, I’m a sister, I’m active in my community, I’m intelligent, I have 43 years of experience. I have so much more to share than my hair. [laughs]
And so that’s why I went on that month-long journey on the Indian Ocean. Just because I felt like I needed to put my hands to something that did not need the way I looked. It didn’t need my ability to act, I mean act as a thespian. And just to remember what a phenomenal woman I had become.
More on next page...
\\\
(continued)
Can you tell me a little about The Elements of Life -- what prompted you to create it and what you’ve gotten out of it?
It has been such an amazing journey. I mean, is it making me money? No. [laughs] I would say that the whole process did begin with tsunami relief work. Then I was asked to write an outline for a book on health, beauty and fitness. When I sat down to write the outline I thought, “This is really bogus.” I have a lot of experience with being in shape, and skincare and keeping yourself together. I have a lot of experience to share, but a) I am not an expert, and b) none of that is worth anything if you don’t have the insight to together.
My outline for health, beauty and fitness became an outline called The 12 Elements of Life.
What are some of the 12 elements?
Things like individuality and authenticity, passion, forgiveness, adventure… You know, how do we place these back into our lives?
Can you elaborate on the Fitness Challenge that is on your blog? As a dancer I imagine you have some great advice.
Earlier this week we launched the Fitness Challenge, which I am really excited about! If you go to NiaPeeples.com, there is a little fitness tab, and you can click on it. The Fitness Challenge is based on what I call the Three ‘R’s of the Elements of Life: reassess, research and recommit.
So, there is quite a bit of looking inward built in to being fit…
Well those Three ‘R’s are actually in The Elements of Life, but we are launching a fitness challenge on that, and step one is Reassess. I really believe that, yeah we all know we need to be in shape, and we all know that nutrition is important, but unless you take the time to sit down and write out why, and how that’s going to affect your life there’s not going to be a true commitment to it.
The second step is Research. I have some very powerful programs that I believe have helped me out throughout my life in various incarnations. They can help people reach the goals they want to reach. Because, like I said, not everyone is going to get there in the same way.
Then we Recommit. We start a six-week challenge implementing those programs.
It’s a good time of year to be doing that!
[laughs] Absolutely!
Regarding fitness, what do you do to keep yourself fit and happy?
Well, there a lot of different things that I have employed in my life, and a lot of it revolved around the various roles I had -- lucky for me. I had to do certain things in order to perform the things I needed to perform. I had everything from dance training to yoga training to TRX training to martial arts training. But now, you know I am 50 this year, so there are not a lot of people knocking on my door to come kick somebody’s butt with a jump-spin kick [laughs].
I’m sure plenty of people would love to see you kicking butt.
[laughs] Right, right, right! So, I have had to create my own program again. There are a lot of aspects to it, because for me it’s not about being thin. Being in shape is having a body that can express itself. That means being limber, it means being quick, it means being strong, and agile.
More on next page...
\\\
(continued)
So you’ll be blogging and people can follow your process?
Oh yes! Because by the time I am 50 I just want to BE. and that is in December of next year. I set that as a goal to reset the habits that I have in my life. I just want to reset them.
I have a confession. Looking back at when I used to watch you on the Fame TV series I realize I had a little crush.
[laughs] That’s so sweet! How cute!
photo credit: ABC Family
Also, when I told my co-worker, a gay man, that I was interviewing you, he just went berserk because he just loves your music. Do many fans still approach you about your work from back in the day in the 80’s?
Everyone wanted my hair and my earrings, and I think a lot of the guys wanted my shoes and my pants. [laughs] Absolutely!
And even though you are enjoying success with new projects, you don’t mind that people hold you in some ways to this era that is long gone?
Oh no. When I look back at that, and I used to say this to my gay guy friends when they would tell me they loved me, “You don’t love me, you want to be me!” [laughs] You know, with the hair and the heels – come on!
But I think that at that time, and in particular I think for the gay community, the 80’s was stylistically a time where we kind of were out there. Everything was big, and we were able to express ourselves in a big way. I think that was something. For the gay community, big was good. You wanted to be able to breath, and express yourself in any way. Quite frankly, whether you’re gay or heterosexual, you need to express yourself. And do it freely.
That brings me to your character Pam on Pretty Little Liars. Having grown up in Hollywood I would imagine you’ve been around gay people for most of your life. Now you’re playing this character struggling to deal with her daughter’s sexuality. Did you see that coming when you read the pilot? They eased into the gay storyline in the first couple of episodes.
No. Actually, the funny thing is, when I first read, I read for Aria’s mom, because at the time, I don’t think that they had the girls in place. They kept bringing me back for Aria’s mom, and then when they cast the girls, they went “obviously you should be Shay’s mom.”
That was some spot-on casting…
In the pilot episode I had one scene, and all I knew was that my hair and my clothing were terrible, [laughs] and I was really uptight. It was like “whoa, I’m having an identity crisis,” [laughs].
So yes, it was revealed very slowly, and I had a very difficult time in the first 10 episodes really getting a handle on who this woman is.
How did you propose to do that?
I have to find a common ground between Pam and Nia. I have to find a truth that exists in Pam that also exists in Nia, and then grow it from there. I just didn’t really know, I didn’t have her history.
Normally -- I have not played many recurring roles, I am usually a regular on a show. That means that they have done a lot of research on this woman, they have most of the questions already answered about who that character would be. So when I step foot, my first day, on the set I have all these questions answered.
It wasn’t that way with Pam. I was really struggling and fishing for why she was uptight because they couldn’t answer those questions. As they started to build in things like the fact that Pam’s husband was in the military, and high-ranking military, and the fact that he was gone all the time…
More on next page...
\\\
(continued)
So those were aspects of her life that you did not know ahead of time?
You have to remember I didn’t know; a) if I was married; b) if I had any other children and; c) if we even lived in the same house. So as they began to introduce the storyline – that we were a military family, and that my husband was gone - I went, “Ok.” I see a little bit of the form there, and her clinging to honor that is defined in a specific manner, meaning in a military manner.
I am so thankful in this second season for Pam that they allow her to explore the difficulties that she has with Emily’s sexuality. Like Emily coming out of the closet-- she can no longer live in denial. Now she has to deal with it. So the truth I was able to connect to was that Pam absolutely loves her daughter and wants what is best for her and is trying to lead her in the right direction.
I was the parent of a teenager, and I have another one coming up. I have a 12-year-old and a 21-year-old, and the one thing we know for sure, is that when you’re 16 or 17, you don’t know what you think you know, but you think you know it more than anybody else. It is a time of great, great passion and you feel things perhaps more deeply than at any other time in your life.
If Emily had brought a boyfriend home and said, “I love this man, this is who I want to be with for the rest of my life,” Pam is going to say “no it isn’t. You don’t know that at 16. What do you know?”
As a mother, regardless of what the daughter is bringing home and saying she knows, the mother is automatically going to go “whoa, whoa, whoa. You don’t know that for a fact because you’re only 16.” But what Pam has to accept is that her daughter has to look at these things and ask those questions, and she has to support that.
photo credit: ABC Family
Pretty Little Liars has this whole surreal mystery element to it that essentially relies on the viewer to watch with a certain amount of abandon. But at the same time the storyline for Emily is being told with such dignity and care.
Well, I think that’s the reason the show is so successful. Ultimately what locks people into something like this isn’t just the mystery. I mean, that keeps you hanging on the edge, but it’s in the investment in the characters themselves. The more poignant they can make the individual characters’ storylines, the more connected to those characters the audience is going to be. They have done such a great job of doing that, and that is what makes the writing so good.
Shay Mitchell is just such a wonderful young actress. How has it been working with her?
Awesome, she is amazing. She is a relatively new actress and really willing to learn. It’s interesting coming onto a set at my age. She is starting now; I started at that age, so I have traveled that journey for 30 years. To watch her take it on with such grace and willingness to do the work is wonderful. Shay really has it together. I have a great amount of admiration for her. It’s fun working with her. Its actually kind of fun no longer being the ingénue, but being the old hag [laughs].
[laughs] I wouldn’t exactly put you in the ‘old hag’ category but…
Well, I have been using that expression since I was 30 just because its fun. I can actually now. When I am watching her, sometimes I’ll understand what they need to get at, what the director is trying to get at. Because I have been acting so long, I can play tricks and force that out of her, without her even knowing it. It’s fun, it’s what acting teachers will sometimes do.
Shay’s under a lot of pressure. Suddenly you’re on a huge hit show and you’ve got to deliver. There is a lot of learning to be had. But she is so open and she is willing, so you can play those little games and everybody learns together.
More on next page...
\\\
(continued)
Is there a trick you used to elicit a response from her that you can share with us?
One of the things was, we had a scene where Shay was on the bed, and I was babysitting her basically.
We needed to get some kind of a reaction out of her, and we weren’t quite getting it. I thought, “Ok, I need to do something that’s not written, and is going to really upset her if she is really in the moment.” So, I reached out and put my hand on her face, right in the middle of this thing, and she just like batted my hand away… It was great! [laughs] And there it was, it was so awesome.
Was she ok with you after that?
Totally ok. She was happy. It’s such a weird thing. As actors we train to live in the moment, and to let every moment be honest. But when it comes down to the time to shoot we have to do it again, and match it to the way that we did it before. It’s the antithesis of what we work toward in acting. So, sometimes you have to throw those little things in to force you to be right in the moment right there.
That was fun. A tear just came down her cheek, and I was like “YAYYY!” [laughs], “So pissed!”
You’ve already experienced great career longevity and now you are on one of the hottest shows on television introducing you to a new generation. To what do you attribute your staying power in the business?
It’s an interesting thing, and it is really about perspective. I attribute it to two things. One is a devotion to honing my craft. The other thing is just a philosophy on life about being willing to let go of certain things and continue to grow and evolve and be grateful for everything that does come, and for my ability to express myself that way. I am so grateful for that. I think it just keeps coming because of that.
Well, I am excited for Pretty Little Liars. Over Christmas, I caught up with all of the past episodes on Hulu…
[laughs] Good for you!
Oh, it’s a definite guilty pleasure.
I know. Its really fun being on a show like that. It’s exciting to watch the kids. And it is like you said, a lot of people of many generations watching the show. It’s amazing.
Is there anything else you have coming up or want to share about?
You know, the greatest thing for me right now is The Elements of Life. I just love doing that. It’s kind of nice having that married with Pretty Little Liars, because this is one of those things I am really grateful for -- on one hand I’d love to be starring in my own show that has a character that I can really sink my teeth into 24/7, but that is one of those things where you have to let go.
I realized I have the best of both worlds. Being on a hit show, that does not require my time, but requires my efforts – in other words they are giving me a character I can sink my teeth into – while allowing me to express myself through The Elements of Life and meet a whole other contingent of people. Its so rewarding, I absolutely love it.
Follow SheWired on Twitter!
Follow SheWired on Facebook!
Be SheWired's Friend on MySpace!
