We Have So Much In Common… It’s A Phenomenon!

I have posted before about my admiration for Cheyenne Jackson, but with the triple spike of his fabulous new album with Michael Feinstien – The Power of Two, his hilarious turn on 30 Rock as Danny- the irony free Canadian brought on to The Girly Show (the show within a show) to attract Middle-American viewers& his run in Finian’s Rainbow on Broadway. I saw him an Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen & I was again disarmed by his natural charm & charisma. How funny was it that he came clean as a Bravo watcher & that he was fan of all the The Real Housewives Shows? Click on this to read his funny interview on AfterElton.com & wherehe talks about his in their underwear encounter with Neil Patrick Harris at their gym.

Cheyenne & I might be fated to meet, as it seems that he has been chasing me across the cosmos. He grew up in a small town outside of my hometown of Spokane, & later moved to that city when he graduated high school. Growing up gay in that town "was very hard," Jackson told The New York Times, "but my parents were awesome."





My first professional job, at 17 years old, was doing summer stock in Coeur d’ Alene , Idaho. I was thrilled with this job. I was making $100 a week, plus room & board. I was making a living as an actor! Decades later, Cheyenne’s first professional show at age 18, was doing summer theater in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where he was making $280 a week. "I thought I was so rich!" he says.


In the 1980s & early 1990s, I worked steadily as an actor in Seattle including featured roles at Seattle Civic Light Opera (Horace Vandergelder in Hello, Dolly! & Hysterium in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum) & at The Village Theatre. Jackson worked from the late 1990s on, in musicals & revues at Seattle Civic Light Opera, & at Village Theatre, playing leads in Grease, Joseph & His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat &West Side Story in 2000 & 2001… just as I was leaving to make the move to Portland. Late that year, he was in the ensemble of The Prince and the Pauper at the Fifth Avenue Theatre. In the spring of 2002, he starred in the Fifth Avenue’s production of The Most Happy Fella & its revival of Hair, just as I was starting over in my new city. I can only rest assured that we were NEVER up for the same role.



Jackson had one contact when he moved to NYC- actor Marc Kudisch, for whom he was once an understudy in Seattle. Kudisch set Jackson up with an agent, who signed him on the spot. Within a few weeks, Jackson was cast in his 1st Broadway show after going to only 1 audition. He was just shy of his 27th birthday. In more crazy parallels in our lives, I moved to NYC with only 1 contact, I had 1 audition for a Broadway show, I once had a 27th birthday, I once had an agent &… I have seen Broadways shows! I feel with so much in common, we must be fated to meet.