Actress Kallie Hu (Yellowjackets, Motherland: Fort Salem) is making big moves on the Paramount+ original Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies. The musical series takes place four years before the original Grease; in 1954 before rock ‘n’ roll ruled, before the T-Birds were the coolest in the school, four fed-up, outcasts dare to have fun on their own terms, sparking a moral panic that will change Rydell High forever.
PopWire recently interviewed Hu, a dancer who has been acting now for over 6 years, where she discussed her character on the show, the intense choreography, and what viewers can expect to come near the first half of the season.
“You have four incredible misfits on their own, but they come together in this serendipitous mismatch of events,” the Canadian-born actress tells us of the show. “Together they find a place of belonging and create this shift in Rydell High. It will never be the same after that. You have the rise of the Pink Ladies, but you also have the rise of these energies and changes in social hierarchies that happen throughout all of Rydell.”
Among the diverse class of students at Rydell High, Hu’s Peg is a loyal, hardworking, and ambitious friend you want in your corner. It’s the type of character she enjoys playing. “I do resonate with characters who strive to be more than what they’ve been told to be and do in their lives,” Hu says.
“You have this person of color in the 1950s who’s trying to navigate the ups and downs of high school. The way she fits into the soshes is that she has to work even harder to get the same status, to stay within the social norms so that she can keep her status, and she’s a little mean to other people. It’s part of the whole effect of the 1950s and her trying to sort out the position there, just trying to keep her head above water.”
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The road to landing the role on Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies was a pretty challenging one, as she reveals that she might have broken the record for doing the most amount of auditions. “I auditioned thirteen times for the show,” she says. “I did the general open call — you send your video in, you send a singing portion; I auditioned for a lot of the characters.”
With her strong will and determination to get any role on the show, Kallie decided to take part in the dance open call just to be safe. “I had a blast; It was so much fun,” she says. “You send in a video then you get in for a callback, you go in person. On Christmas Eve, I found out I booked the role of Peg and it was the best Christmas present I could ever ask for.”
Not long after securing the gig on the Paramount+ series, she and the rest of the cast were tasked to take part in a somewhat intimate scene for the season’s second episode. The show was not shot in chronological order, and on their first week on set, they were put in a room where they met their castmates, and then filmed the spin-the-bottle scene in which Kallie’s Peg kisses not one but two of her fellow co-stars, Neil (Dylan Stone) and Ritchie (Johnathan Nieves). “Sorry, mom. This is happening,” she says.
“It was during covid which was really interesting,” Hu explains. “Not only did we have an intimacy coordinator, who did a great job at making everyone feel safe, we had covid teams on the side with disinfectant mouthwash between every take. You had to go swish it around and spit into a bag. It tasted like mushrooms and I don’t know why, but it was really weird.”
The spin-the-bottle scene, which takes place at Dot’s (Josette Halpert) house leads into one of our favorite musical numbers from the show so far, “A World Without Boys.” This and all of the other countless performances throughout the series is a technical challenge, in which Kallie sings her praises for their hard-working choreography team. “They did such a great job of preplanning with the directors and producers and making sure that we all had a place to go during the dance numbers. We also had an incredible skeleton crew, a lot of the local dancers here were also working on it.
“We went in and it was already a well-oiled machine,” Hu continues. “I don’t know how the team did it because it was a million balls to juggle. I don’t know how they got so many dancers to so many rehearsals and on set, and everything working together all together. It all went really, really smoothly.”
With the first half of the season now available to stream on Paramount+, there are a lot of fun things to look forward to for those who are catching up, particularly in episodes 4 and 5. “The election gets a little heated up — Jane versus Buddy. You have the soshes on one side and you have all these other groups trying to be won over. You’ll be introduced to a lot of different characters and a lot of different and amazing dance and singing numbers that will just push the whole narrative forward.
“I really love how in Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies we are seeing the pieces really brought to life, the story and the characters more so,” Kallie Hu says. “Everything has a purpose. You’re going to see some really, really exciting things and you’re going to be introduced to some songs that you’re going to want to play on your Spotify playlist all day. That’s what I’ve been doing. I can’t stop.”
Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies is streaming now only on Paramount+.
