Oh, oh, oh, where did she go? Nikki Blonsky didn’t make a cameo in Hairspray Live!, but she did give the cast a shout-out on social media. The 28-year-old actress, who played Tracy Turnblad in 2007’s big-screen version of Hairspray, posted about the NBC production hours after the final curtain call.
“Congrats to the cast of @nbchairspraylive on a job well done from myself and the rest of the Hairspray Movie Cast!” she captioned a throwback pic from her time as the spunky Baltimore teen. “#SetLife #YouCantStopTheBeat.”
Watch Us Weekly Video’s recap of all the best moments from the live event above!
Viewers of Hairspray Live! were surprised to see that Blonsky didn’t make an appearance. After all, Ricki Lake and Marissa Jaret Winokur — who played Tracy in the 1988 film and 2002 Broadway show, respectively — had small roles. They both appeared during the cast’s performance of “Welcome to the ’60s.”
“What’s Nikki blonsky up to tonight,” one commenter tweeted on Wednesday night. A second added: “bring back the queen nikki blonsky.”
Newcomer Maddie Baillio, 20, took her turn as Tracy this time around. Hairspray Live! was her first professional audition, which she almost didn’t do because she was so nervous.
“There were over 1,000 girls there for the first audition,” the Marymount Manhattan College student, 20, told Us Weekly. “I thought I was going to be one of the first girls in line because I got there at 6:45 a.m., and the audition started at 10, but I was number 343 in line.”
Hairspray was Blonsky’s first acting gig ever too. She starred opposite John Travolta (Edna Turnblad), Christopher Walken (Wilbur Turnblad), Michelle Pfeiffer (Velma Von Tussle), James Marsden (Corny Collins), Zac Efron (Link Larkin) and Amanda Bynes (Penny Pingleton).
Blonsky went on to appear in shows including Ugly Betty, Huge and Smash, and more recently starred in the film Dog Years alongside Burt Reynolds, Ariel Winter and Clark Duke. In July 2011, she slammed rumors that she was working at a shoe store in Great Neck, New York.
“So much false reporting and false quotes. NO career changing!” she tweeted at the time. “Just experimented for a day working at a friends boutique to see what it was like. NO singing or dancing happened, but it was fun trying something new for a day.”
Watch Blonsky belt it out in Hairspray in the video above!
