By April MacIntyre Jul 16, 2008, 17:00 GMT
NBC's "Nashville Star" goodbye to youngsters Laura and Sophie.
It was not without a bit of controversy.
After Gabe Garcia and Melissa Lawson laid down some powerful performances, the duo sang.
It was then they were chastised by an irate John Rich and a snippy Jewel who wished that they had been cut instead of Pearl Heart. Their only ally in the judges' ranks came from Jeffrey Steele who told them to go back to the smokehouse and cure for awhile until they were mature and seasoned enough to handle the big ol’ music industry.
Monsters and Critics joined a small group of journalists and spoke to Laura and Sophie the other day.
Was there an eye-roll on your part?
Sophie Zalokar: I felt very disrespected by her making that comment about us during Pearl Heart, criticisms by the judges. My reaction to her disrespecting us was to roll my eyes. At the time I did not realize that I was doing it and it just kind of happened.
I did apologize to her for it, but I also feel that maybe she should have apologized to us for disrespecting us in that way because you can’t disrespect someone and then expect respect back.
Why did they pick you to compete if you two were so young?
Laura Fedor: I don’t understand that if they thought we were too young to be in the competition why were we chosen to be in this competition. I believe that Sophie and I definitely have potential to get somewhere with our music.
We have a lot of talent. We do have a lot of time ahead of us. We’re 16 and 18 years old, but LeAnn Rimes was 13 or 14 years old and she got pretty big pretty quick and nothing stopped her, so we’re not letting anything stop us.
John Rich seemed overboard in his comments. You two obviously see things that we don’t see backstage behind the scenes. Give us some insight on what it’s like backstage and the things that he says - Jeffrey Steele, Jewel, things that you are coached and mentored versus the reality of the day that you shoot?
Laura Fedor: Actually John Rich is not - he’s actually pleasant off camera. He’s fun to talk to sometimes, and he’s definitely intimidating. We were working with him like the other day and he is pretty intimidating, but we definitely see a change in personality when the camera is on them.
What about Jeffrey Steele, though? It seems like Jeffrey’s personality and his comments are pretty much the same whether he’s on camera or off?
Sophie Zalokar: Jeffrey is just a genuinely sweet guy. And everything he says is from the heart and he truly means it. He has kids of his own, so he knows how to kind of deal with girls our age, and he’s just everything - he’s so sweet with everything on and off camera, and he doesn’t change personalities at all. He’s the same.
What’s your opinion about Jewel and the way she’s been coaching everyone and mentoring everyone? Do you think it’s been constructive or not?
Laura Fedor: I believe that Jewel is - she’s a good mentor. We personally didn’t have her, but some - the guys in the show we’ve heard that she’s a great mentor, but when we’re performing, she doesn’t critique our performances. Normally she does tell us you need to go home or you don’t deserve to be here.
And their job as judges - they’re supposed to tell us what to work on and what we did wrong. We can’t fix anything if they’re not telling us what we’re doing wrong.
So that was the biggest frustration for you is just the lack of communication and direction?
Laura Fedor: Yes.
Versus just harping on your age?
Laura Fedor: Right. I mean, Jeffrey was great at giving us pointers, but John and Jewel never gave us any critique. It was just comments on how we’re too young and we need to go home.
So no career advice, no singing advice, nothing that you could actually use to better yourselves as artists?
Laura Fedor: Right.
Was that Laura’s ex-boyfriend or Sophie’s ex-boyfriend that you were referring to at the introduction?
Sophie Zalokar: That’s actually my ex-boyfriend that we were kind of referring to.
You said that he caused you two to be away from each other for six months. What did you mean by that?
Sophie Zalokar: We actually - like I got so close to him and I kind of separated myself from everyone else, and we started fighting, Laura and I about it, and we just got in a big fight over everything and we just stopped talking.
Laura Fedor: Our music actually brought us back together.
Laura Fedor: Correct.
Laura, do you have a college lined up for this fall?
Laura Fedor: I don’t have a college lined up, but I do want to college. I want to college for communications. I want to be on TV. I want to do broadcasting, so that’s what I want to do.
And Sophie wants to finish up high school and then we can move further on with our music careers.
How are you going to keep your music duo together when one of you is in high school and one of you might be in college?
Sophie Zalokar: We’re just going to - I mean, we have a best friendship, I guess you call it, that not many people. Like we’ve gone through a lot together and I honestly don’t feel that me being in high school and her being in college is going to have too much of an impact on our friendship or our career.
Laura Fedor: Sophie and I actually met seven years ago in a group called The Singing Angels in Cleveland, Ohio, and we met at auditions and have been best friends ever since. And we actually started talking because I told her I got new glasses but I didn’t even know her.
We’re definitely going to keep in touch and still work on our music and we definitely want to stay a duo.
What were you kind of thinking that last night?
Laura Fedor: During the competition because it was such a stiff competition, Sophie and I have been planning for the worst but hoping for the best just so we wouldn’t be let down with going home.
Sophie Zalokar: I’m going to honestly say I was a little bit shocked, but, you know, it’s anyone’s competition now. Everyone’s really good and I really can’t say who I think is going home next, but I was shocked in the sense that I was kind of hoping we’d get further.
Did you guys talk with other contestants about how the voting went?
Laura Fedor: We actually don’t know how the voting goes. We don’t know how it’s announced; if it’s random, if it’s put together. We’re not sure how it goes. All we know is that the bottom two is the bottom two.
Did the public get it right last week?
Sophie Zalokar: That’s really hard to say because I know that the rest of the cast definitely none of us were expecting how hard it is to go that soon. Last week’s double elimination was extremely shocking.
But like it’s been said so many times, it’s just anyone’s competition at this point. And it’s all about what America wants and we don’t know. We just have to kind of wait and see...
You know what? I can honestly say this is the speech I wanted to give the judges, I can honestly say we wouldn’t change anything because everything we’ve done has gotten us to where we are now and we’re totally happy with where we are and we’re happy with everything we’ve been through and everything we’ve accomplished. So we wouldn’t change a thing.
Did the judges say anything to you guys before or after the show?
Laura Fedor: We actually don’t get to communicate with the judges unless we are on our mentor days. This is Laura speaking, by the way. And we don’t have much contact with the judges but Jeffrey and he’s a great mentor.
How did you guys prepare for the last night’s performance?
Laura Fedor: We kind of had like besides practicing and rehearsing all week, before we go on we kind of do this thing where we face each other and then we do even 5 or 10 really deep breaths and they kind of gets us in the zone and have like our nerves under control so we can perform well without kind of getting shaky and freaking out.
It seemed like the experience put a real strain on your relationship. Did it and can you talk about that?
Laura Fedor: Actually the competition, we were very stressed out and we were letting things get to us. And the big argument that (Sophie) and I had is totally gone. It rolled off our shoulders and it pumped us more than it hurt us.
Sophie Zalokar: I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we were keeping little things that aggravated us in for the sake of the competition so that something like that wouldn’t happen. And so when it actually finally did come out it was way worse than it should have been.
From the first audition my personality and my maturity level has definitely changed. Everything that I’ve known before this competition has pretty much changed. It changed my view on life and everything that I thought was reasonable. Now I think that I was being unreasonable. I can’t even explain what an impact it had on me.
Sophie Zalokar: I definitely feel this competition has changed me so much. I feel like I am definitely a completely different person than I was when I started out. I (unintelligible) we both definitely matured a lot and we now understand more of how the business works so that when we do hopefully get into it for real, we’ll know what to expect a little bit more than we did before.
The show has definitely tested our friendship further and we’ve survived it and we could have survived it had we won. That just proves to both of us that we can handle anything that you throw at us and we’re definitely in it together and we’re going to stay together and it’s not going t ruin our friendship/
Laura Fedor: In a year or so we definitely would like to be working on our music and getting somewhere with that but if the music isn’t working out, I definitely want to be going to college. I want to be in broadcasting and communications.
And Sophie, she really wants to finish high school. She wants to get her high school diploma and graduate like I did so everything’s going to work out either way.
Talk about your impressions of Nashville and the experience.
Laura Fedor: Actually Nashville is amazing. The majority of the people that you meet there; they’re all so friendly. They’re just always happy to meet you no matter where you go. And it’s like you’ve known them for so long.
Sophie Zalokar: I know for a fact this is definitely the best experience Laura and I have ever had and it was especially great to be able to do that with your best friend.
We definitely took a lot from this competition. We’ve kind of gained a better stage presence. We kind of have our own sound. We know that we can do modern country now as well as the classics that we’ve been doing for such a long time.
We have more experience. I mean we can say we’ve been on a national television show; that’s just amazing in itself so we’re taking a lot from the show and it was just all together an amazing experience for us.
Laura Fedor: We actually got to talk to Billy (Ray Cyrus) a little bit and he thinks we’re doing great for our age and he thinks it’s very, very courageous for us to, you know, go up there on a national television show with 29-year-old adults who have been doing this for 15 years and we haven’t even really gotten to do it as much. But he said (props) to us for having the courage and that he thinks we can get somewhere with our music.
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