Tough Times: ‘Hairspray’ Star Nikki Blonsky Now Works in a Shoe Store
Image by Getty Images
The “Steven Dann” doesn’t exactly have the same ring as the Ed Sullivan or Brooks Atkinson. But it’s where you can now catch once-hot thespian Nikki Blonsky.
An “upscale” Long Island shoe store, Steven Dann is where the former “Hairspray” star has been working the floor since last week, according to the NY Daily News.
The 22-year-old actress’s career has taken a downturn lately with the cancellation of her ABC Family series “Huge,” so she’s had to “swallow her pride” and take a job at the boutique in her hometown of Great Neck, N.Y., the News says.
“Steven says she’s one of the best employees he’s ever had!” a store source told E!Online. “Nikki had known Steven for a long time. When she started her career she got shoes, bags and accessories from the store for red carpets but recently approached him about working at the store.” The entertainment site’s “footwear-friendly insider” also reveals that “it’s a little uncomfortable for [Nikki] obviously, but the customer will ask her to sign her autograph on the receipt and she does.”
The former star “even sings and dances for the customers, busting out the tunes from ‘Hairspray!’” The source added that Blonsky is “supposedly working on a project that will catapult her career, something bigger than ‘Hairspray.’”
Blonsky, the daughter of a Catholic mother and Jewish father, apparently came to Steven Dann with customer-service experience; television-trivia site BuddyTV reports she “first worked as a crew in the Cold Stone Creamery before rising to stardom.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
