It’s been said that if you can’t get Tim Curry to play Frank-N-Furter, you call David Bedella.
“He is the king,” the three-time Olivier Award-winning actor told Clairsy & Lisa on Wednesday, who is in Perth as part of the Australian 50th Anniversary Tour of the Rocky Horror Show.
David Bedella with Clairsy & Lisa.
Bedella (who, honestly, can read us the phonebook any time he likes) recalled first seeing the cult classic in 1976 at the cinema for an iconic midnight screening.
“My friend said you have to make some toast and bring some toilet paper rolls and a newspaper, and it was great fun,” he said, adding that “I never dreamed that one day I’d actually be donning the heels.”
David Bedella with his Best Actor in a Musical Award for Jerry Springer during the Laurence Olivier Awards.
Bedella is no stranger to playing the racier roles; he’s best known for his award-winning role playing Satan in Jerry Springer: The Opera.
“To this day, it’s my calling card,” Bedella said, “Never ever have I gone into an audition where they didn’t say from the other side of the table, ‘Oh my God, I saw you as the devil in Jerry Springer’… usually you’re going into an audition thinking ‘how can I get them to notice me’, to remember who I am.”
David Bedella as the iconic Frank-N-Furter.
Bedella had some incredible anecdotes about how his incredible voice was once the “bane of my existence” and how an incident backstage during Rocky Horror resulted in him performing the show’s finale with a bloodied face.
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You can catch David Bedella as Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show at Perth’s Crown Theatre until August 26.
