An interview with Divine

Posted for Joe.My.God, who "was crushed when Divine died" and "on some days" considers Hairspray his "favorite movie of all time."

Two weeks before his 1988 death in Los Angeles, I conducted one of the last sit-down interviews with Divine. We talked in Chicago, where he was promoting his new film, Hairspray, and performing at a local dance bar. Hairspray had just begun receiving wide critical acclaim and was being heralded as Divine's and filmmaker John Waters' crossover into the mainstream.

Hairspray is a comedy about a fat teenage girl, Tracy Turnblad, who becomes a star in 1962 on a live TV dance program in Baltimore. Once Tracy achieves fame, she uses her celebrity status to force racial integration of the show, which had previously hosted "Negro Day" once a month. Divine plays Tracy's diet-pill-popping mother, a bored housewife who can't stand hearing The Corny Collins Dance Show blast out of the tube every day after school, until her daughter becomes a star.

I talked with Divine on a Friday afternoon at the Belmont Hotel. He came across as relaxed, soft-spoken, gentle, perhaps even a little innocent and shy.

Rex Wockner: Your new film is a teen flick and a half-serious message movie. It almost seemed to me like more of a message movie.

Divine: No, it's strictly supposed to be a comedy. John [Waters] always makes movies about things that aren't particularly funny. The only reason the race things were brought into the movie at all is because they did exist. Blacks weren't allowed on these dance shows in 1962. Sometimes we had record hops where there were ropes down the middle of the room, with blacks on one side and whites on the other. I remember as a child growing up in Baltimore that black people always sat in the back of the bus or the streetcar.

RW: Edna Turnblad, the bored, jaded, always-ironing, diet-pill-popping housewife you play in Hairspray, is wonderful. Where inside you did you find Edna?

Divine: Well, I'm a fat person, so I did go to many diet doctors and take diet pills. I guess I just remembered those things. It was more or less my own inspiration. Of course, I did have a mother -- I do have a mother and I love her very much -- but she did take diet pills in the 60s. I think a lot of mothers did. A lot of them still do; she stopped taking hers. I think it got to the point where a lot of women took them just because they could get all their housework done. It did enable them to speed up a little bit.

For the look, well, women in Baltimore still look like that a lot. The first day I was in costume in Baltimore, I walked down the street, right through the camera crew, right past John, as close as you are, and kept walking and nobody looked at me twice. I looked like just another housewife in the downtown Baltimore area.

RW: Have you ever gotten involved in gay politics?

Divine: Well, I think when you're an actor, you can't get too involved in politics or religion because you're bound to offend somebody. My job is not to offend, my job is to make people forget about all their problems for an hour and have a good time and laugh. I am very much into work for AIDS and, of course, I stick up for the gay community and do everything I can for the gay community. I always would, there's no question about that. I would not be like some other stars running around denying that I got my start in gay clubs, as certain female vocalists and actresses have done. You know, the fact that Liberace denied this until his death I found very shocking. He could have said something before he popped off; it wouldn't have done any harm for anybody then.

But I've been very involved in AIDS work. You can't spread yourself thin and take everything on at one time. I just did one for AIDS Action Baltimore, which is my hometown. Not that I think I'm Elizabeth Taylor, but I think she's been doing great things, too. [Taylor is chair of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, a large private fundraising organization]. I think it's fabulous that someone with that much clout and that kind of name should get that involved, because I've heard her speak and she says a lot of people are just like "shhhhhhh," you know, "don't get involved." They're so afraid of lending their name because they don't want to get mixed up in some gay mess. But as we all know now, it's not just a gay mess; it could kill anybody.

I still find it very shocking, and it makes me so angry, that this was just let go for such a long time before anything happened. It makes me think that they were they just trying to kill all the gay people. Is that what they thought was going to happen? Let's just get rid of all the queers and then we won't have any more problems, la dee da dee da da? I find it all so shocking; there just aren't words.

RW: Do you live alone?

Divine: Yes.

RW: Not even a dog or cat?

Divine: I had dogs but I just gave them away because I'm not home very much and I didn't think it was very fair for them to be in and out of the kennels and staying with different people all the time. And then I found out that one of the housekeepers I had was beating them everyday with a broom. So I had to fire the housekeeper and now I'm suing because I want something done; that person should be punished. You just don't go around abusing anyone, especially an animal who is now scared to death every time you take the broom out of the closet. I don't understand cruelty and it really enrages me.

RW: What do you do when you're not working? Do you have hobbies?

Divine: Well, I collect china. I have enough china for a sit-down dinner for about 180 people, 12 courses. I just had to build extra cabinets in my house to accommodate it. Now I'm starting to give it away for gifts. I shop. I can shop for just about anything. When I have a week off now and then, I like to do as much of nothing as possible. I like to have no schedule because I'm usually on a schedule all day every day. Once a year I take a month off. I have a place in Ibiza, Spain. I like to go sit there for a month. A different group of friends fly in every week; the other ones leave and new ones come, so my friends can have a vacation there with me because, what fun is it to have a house in Spain if you're going to sit there by yourself?

I go to movies. I love very macho movies -- Charles Bronson. I watched Death Wish III last night. Not that I want things to be like that or anything, but it just fascinates me for some reason. Sylvester Stallone movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris. Of course, A Room With a View I thought was a beautiful movie; I can appreciate that too.

RW: Is there anybody you'd really like to work with?

Divine: A lot of the Italian directors I'd love to work with; they're have such keen minds. Elizabeth Taylor has always been my idol; she seemed to be the epitome of the American movie star, the way she looked and her whole lifestyle. Lana Turner I'd love to work with. I always loved Lana. Rock Hudson was always one of my favorite actors. Warren Beatty I've always liked in the movies.

RW: Since you often play women in films, do you find that you can walk down the street as a man unrecognized, still sneak around and enjoy life without being followed?

Divine: I could until I started doing talk shows and things out of costume, and that sort of ruined all that for me, but I had to do that because I was being labeled a transvestite all the time. If I was a transvestite, I'd be sitting here with a polka-dot blouse on, a crocodile bag, a little hat and a pair of slingback shoes, which I do have on underneath these clothes (he laughs). No, those are my work clothes, which I keep in a box until it's time to put them on and do my job, which is to entertain. When I do go out walking around, well, you don't go out and do that unless you're ready, because people will come up to you and will talk to you and will take your time and ask you to sign autographs.

But these are the very people who do buy tickets and do make you a star or whatever you want to call it -- a personality or a celebrity. So, you do owe this time to them. You've got to be ready to take that on once you set yourself out into the public. Or you can stay home all the time.

RW: When I come to your show tonight, I'm going to meet a very different person than the one I met this afternoon?

Divine: I think quite different, yes. Five hundred percent different. It just comes with the territory. When I'm done up or dressed up, it seems to just sweep over me.