Tough Times: ‘Hairspray’ Star Nikki Blonsky Now Works in a Shoe Store
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
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.”
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