After Regis, Kathie Lee has moved on to her next stage
In the bowels of a small theater in a seedy section of New York City, Kathie Lee Gifford is being a little naughty.
“So I’m having a little vino,” she says sweetly. “So sue me.”
The wine, it’s soon clear, functions in a nerve-steadying role. Gifford is bracing for one of the final rehearsals of her first musical – the first step in a new career as, of all things, a playwright.
Four years after leaving her post as the burbling co-host of “Live With Regis & Kathie Lee,” Gifford insists she’s found joy in the world of theater and far away from the TV camera.
“You know, I turned 50 a year and a half ago and I’m like, ‘Why am I so … happy about that?’ I think it has to do with the fact that I could have the kind of life I wanted,” she says. “It enabled me to take time – for the first time in life – to do something right.”
Gifford’s new “stage project” – for which she supplied the book, lyrics and some of the music – is “Under the Bridge,” an adaptation of a children’s book about a hobo who befriends a homeless family in Paris.
Though she doesn’t perform, Gifford has shown up virtually every day at the tiny Zipper Theatre to fine-tune the show, the first of three musicals she has in the works. She’s also 120 pages into her first novel.
“Menopause is helpful, actually,” she says, with the deadpan humor TV viewers once lapped up. “Because I can’t sleep anyway, I might as well be up doing something productive.”
Gifford is not wistful about the 15 years she spent opposite Regis Philbin, a spotlight made increasingly uncomfortable by the public humiliation of husband Frank Gifford‘s tabloid-fueled affair and allegations that her Wal-Mart clothing line was produced in sweatshops.
“It got very old very fast,” she says. “I could be in an insane asylum with everything that’s gone on. I could have killed somebody or be in jail, or killed myself. You have to somehow find that place to put it that makes sense.”
In theater, Gifford has found a new outlet beyond the TV personality that cooed endlessly about her children or the syrupy sweet Christian singer that once pumped out CDs.
She plans a second musical, “Hurricane Aimee,” based on the true life story of spiritual pioneer Aimee Semple McPherson, and a third based entirely on her imagination.
“Our culture is saying to me, especially a woman in this industry, ‘It’s over for you.’ It’s saying ‘You, the women who are ovulating – step to the front!’ ” she says. “And I’m going, ‘You know what? I’m more creative now than I’ve ever been in my life.’ I have more to offer because of what I’ve lived.
“Everybody always talks about growing old gracefully. I want to grow old gratefully.”
The birthday bunch
Actor Herbert Lom is 88. Actor Bob Denver (“Gilligan’s Island”) is 70. Singer Joan Baez is 64. Actress Susannah York is 64. Guitarist Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) is 61. Singer Bill Cowsill (The Cowsills) is 57. Singer Crystal Gayle is 54. Actress Joely Richardson is 40. Musician Dave Matthews is 38. Singer A.J. McLean (Backstreet Boys) is 27.