Pop Culture Planet Podcast: Ari Notartomaso On Self-Discovery Through Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies

Happy Pride Month! The Pop Culture Planet podcast returns with an in-depth conversation between our host Kristen Maldonado and the incredible Ari Notartomaso, a queer, non-binary actor leading the new Paramount+ Grease prequel series. They talk about finding themselves while starring in Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, theater kid dreams, and the power in representation for young people.

Episode Quotes

Ari Notartomaso on their passion for musical theater: “My dad owns a record store so I have been around music since I was born and I did my first community theater production at age six. I did a theater production every single year since I was six years old until the pandemic, until 2020. Then I started working professionally when I moved to New York. […] I've known what I wanted to do for a very long time, but how I wanted to do that — especially like who I was and how I could bring myself and especially my queerness to different characters and stuff — was something that I wasn't sure of how to do until very recently.”

Notartomaso on finding their own space in the industry: “There just really isn't as much representation or really just space generally, for intersectional queer folks, people of color who are also trans, or lesbians who are also gender non-conforming. It’s just a very difficult place for queer people or any marginalized person to exist inside of. There has always sort of been an element of pressure to be a sort of digestible minority in just really any entertainment industry. It took a lot, especially during the pandemic, to self-reflect. It took my incredible agency and their expertise and their support to finally allow me to really be able to see myself and even carry different characters and be able to explore that. […] Whenever I first got the audition for Cynthia, I read the pilot [and] I was like, ‘This person is exactly who I want to be playing on television.’”

Notartomaso on the importance of writers: “I will not take credit for the jokes, for Cynthia's dynamism, because she it was written by our incredible writers team who, of course, their Union is striking right now. We need them so desperately. This show is very complicated and there's a lot of characters. Any moment that you laughed because of Cynthia is because of a writer — because I'm not very funny in my own life. We need them.”

Notartomaso on what they learned from playing Cynthia: “My personal identity and my experience as a gender non-conforming non-binary person trans person, I didn't really know how to express myself or that it was possible for me to express my butch-ness and my masculinity until I booked this role. I got to express this character and now I identify as a butch lesbian and I am very masculine in my presentation as a non-binary person. It's just been so interesting that I feel like I kind of got to go back to high school in some ways and heal a part of me that felt like I had to conform a certain way. […] I got to reflect back to myself and now I feel like I've learned just as much from Cynthia as she learned from me.”

Notartomaso on singing original songs by hitmaker Justin Tranter: “The fact that we get to sing these songs in the first place and then also that we're singing them for a cast album second off, which has been a dream of mine since I was a child. These characters are all so near and dear to us and the music so beautifully reflects those characters. Justin Tranter is this incredible, prolific writer of pop songs. Just the knowledge that they have in the music industry, and I know that they're a lifelong fan of musical theater as well, […] and then to open up the the room and collaborate with everyone to make these musical numbers just so specific […] and the references that are brought in, it’s incredible.”

Notartomaso on “Crushing Me” duet: “It’s been really awesome to see which numbers are resonating with people and how they're resonating with people. Like ‘Crushing Me,’ which is a song that’s very short. It's a a duet between Cynthia and Nancy. Me and Tricia [Fukuhara] had so much fun. We're having a good time, like, we had no idea that it was going to have a moment on TikTok and that there'd be a lot of young lesbians and sapphics and generally just people who experience what it's like to crush on people who relate to that song. It's a great surprise to see people feel about those songs in the way that we do as well.”

Notartomaso on the power of the Internet: “It’s really interesting how powerful the Internet is and how it like affects the success of different shows. To see the the amount of people watching the show because of the Internet, it's just much higher than I ever would have thought. I've had a TikTok for a while now, since the pandemic basically. I was very bored and […] I would record singing different songs of musical theater songs and queer them in ways that I thought a song would make sense. There was a song that I sang. It was a Barbra Streisand song called ‘He Touched Me,’ but it originally was ‘She Touched Me’ sung by a man. I was singing it back to that original thing and it had like a moment on the Internet. Then I later learned that our casting directors had seen that video without knowing that it was the same person. They watched my tape and was like, ‘This person is a great Cynthia, we'd love to cast them.’ Then they had watched this other video and were like, ‘Oh, this person would be an awesome Cynthia. This is our Cynthia.’ Then once they put the pieces together they were like, ‘Wait, this is the same person.’ So the Internet did have a piece in why I had booked this job.”

Notartomaso on the note Cynthia and Nancy wrote to each other: “I’m gonna take that one to the grave. [Creator Annabel Oakes] gave us a bunch of pitches and then me and Tricia did […] different takes. We tried out a few things to see what felt right, but we did settle on something. Unfortunately I cannot tell you because truly I think so much of what I love about this queer storyline with Cynthia specifically is that there's so much that we don't we don't have language for in the 50s, that Cynthia probably wouldn't have been able to clarify for herself if she were having a conversation with us. Like what her labels would be. There's so much room for people to identify with the story and the different aspects of this character's life as a queer person in the 1950s. There's so much that's up to interpretation and that's just another aspect of the story that I feel like, whatever you think that Cynthia and Nancy wrote, is what they wrote for you. Whatever it needs to be for you is what I feel like it is.”

Notartomaso on what young people can take away from Rise of the Pink Ladies: “I feel like young people are very regularly overlooked and seen as people to not be taken seriously or people that don't know what the real world is like yet, but they do. Children and young people generally see the world in ways that adults can't anymore because the messages that we've gotten about the world have been so heavy from so young. My hope in young people watching is that they see this show and know that people actually see their thoughts and their feelings and that they know that at least some adults don't see them as crazy or as this like new, young generation that we shouldn't listen to or that they don't understand the world. Young people know themselves incredibly well and know the world so much better than most adults can see it. Especially with the queer story lines, I feel like it's just very important for young people to see themselves and then be able to share that and be heard. This show is about young people being listened to and supporting each other and uplifting each other, which is something that young people do very well, and I think adults are the ones who maybe have a hard time with that.”

Notartomaso on what they hope for Cynthia in a second season: “I love so much how in our show we get to see Nancy and Jane and Olivia's family life, especially Jane. We don't really see Cynthia's home life. I know things about it given the conversations that I've had with our showrunner and some of the writers and I really hope that in a season two we get to explore more of that because I think it's very interesting.”

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Hosted by TV and film critic Kristen Maldonado, Pop Culture Planet is a video podcast featuring analytical pop culture discussions and interviews with diverse voices in the entertainment space. Watch episodes on youtube.com/kaymaldo or listen on your favorite podcast platforms, from Spotify to Apple Podcasts and beyond.