Curtain Cutie: Nick Spangler

Actor Nick Spangler is your quintessential all-American cutie. He grew up in Northern California in a family of six shooting clay pigeons, horse-back riding and enjoying the outdoors. (He was a Boy Scout!) He moved to New York to study musical theater at NYU and before he even graduated got a small role as the mute in the revival of Tom Jones’s long- running, record setting off-Broadway show The Fantasticks. Everything was going as planned until his sister Starr, a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader signed them up for the reality show competition The Amazing Race. His life has recently returned to normalcy and I wasn’t allowed to ask him if he won, (the show premieres on Sunday so you’ll have to watch it on CBS and see!) but we got a chance to hang out at the Snapple Theater where he’s now playing the lead role of Matt in the reincarnated production of The Fantasticks. He told me about his love of reality TV and his hot Dallas Cowboys cheerleader girlfriend (sigh!).

So how does it feel to be back to your normal life after The Amazing Race?
It was actually really good to come back after all that craziness to kind of a routine. It was like this crazy ridiculous thing happened and then immediately it was like back to work. It was kind of bizarre especially since I wasn’t allowed to talk about it and at that point it wasn’t released so I couldn’t even mention that I had been on it, because we didn’t even know when it was going to premiere back when we finished. The only people we were allowed to talk about it with are people who signed the confidentiality forms which were my immediate family and my girlfriend, that’s it.

That's crazy! Where did people think you went for a month?
I told some people that I was backpacking through Europe with my sister but for a lot of people I just disappeared. I got back from the race and I had tons of messages that were like where are you, because they confiscated our phones I would get drunk messages from my friends like, 'OK, you’ve totally disappeared,' so I had to be like, 'yeah I was out of town for a while,' and was just really vague.

Were you close with your sister before the race?
The first memories I have were junior high and high school which were not good memories. We ran with totally different crowds and were totally different people. I was in school first and so when I was a sophomore she came in as a freshman and was on the cheerleading team and a bleached blonde. But when I left we kind of suddenly became really close, like she would call me on the phone and confide in me.

Why the Amazing Race?
We watched it as a family and it was so much fun. Reality television was just becoming a whole new genre so we’d always joke about Starr doing it and she looked up applications. But you have to be 21 to do it so we would joke maybe in five or six years when we both turn 21 if it’s still around, totally not thinking that it still would be. So lo and behold, Starr turned 21 and randomly went on line and found an application. She was gung-ho about it and I was kind of a naysayer, like I don’t know if they’ll want us, is it really worth all the time and effort, but good thing we did it.

What are your Fantasticks dressing room must-haves?
A big bottle of water, because I’m always drinking water, and a hair dryer because I don’t put anything in my hair to style it, which a lot of people don’t believe, but I get it wet and then I blow dry it up and it kind of swishes up. I have pictures of my girlfriend up. I met her because her and my sister cheered for the Dallas Cowboys together so I’ve got her calendars up to. I like teasing Lewis (El Gallo) by elbowing him in the ribs and saying that’s what I get to go home to. I live with my sister and with her and one other roommate. Other than that it’s kind of sparse in there. I’m not really high maintenance.

Would you do reality TV again?
Oh yeah it was fun. I wouldn’t do like Big Brother or something like that or a dating show, but I would totally do The Mole. It’s all strategy and lies and deceit.

What are some of your goals as an actor?
My biggest hope or dream is to originate a role in something. One of my challenges as an actor is that I get locked into how I think a role is supposed to be played, or if I’ve seen it once I’m like, 'oh that’s how it has to be done,' but what I love about new material is it’s totally untouched. I can do whatever I want. There are no rules so I love that.

Pictured above: Nick in character (photo by Joan Marcus); Nick and Starr on The Fantasticks stage (photgraph courtesy of Broadwayworld.com