Smallscreen Features

Cat Deeley interview, SYTYCD finale makes her reflect on series

By April MacIntyre Aug 12, 2010, 4:47 GMT

08/08/2010 - Cat Deeley - 2010 Teen Choice Awards - Arrivals - Gibson Amphitheatre - Universal City, CA, USA © Bob Charlotte / PR Photos

"So You Think You Can Dance" season finale airs tonight, Wednesday, August 11th and Thursday, August 12th, for two hours each night from 8 to 10 p.m. on FOX. 

Stunner Cat Deeley is the latest British import to American Telly, and we love her. Ratings for "So You Think You Can Dance" have jumped this season, and Deeley is credited with anchoring the show in a sincere and thoughtful presence as she transitions the dancers from performance to criticism.

The SYTYCD top dancer will be crowned Thursday night.

Deeley was interviewed by Monsters and Critics, along with some other news sites yesterday, and Deeley revealed her hand when she mentioned Kent  [Boyd], “It’s more to do with the reaction that I see from the screaming girls in the studio. It’s literally like Beatle-mania when he hits the stage, and hormones are just crashing everywhere and the general high-pitched screaming.”

Monsters and Critics: Many friends of mine, and my Website are based in the U.K., and they miss you terribly.  I wanted to know how you've adjusted to Los Angeles and working here and how the transition was for you.  You're a full-fledged star here now.

Cat:  Well, you know what, I'm so pleased because you never know quite how you're going to be received when you go into a different country.  For me, it was all about making it into an adventure.  It was about moving and coming here and trying to do the show, but at the same time, it was finding my way around and putting gas in my car instead of petrol and finding the nearest supermarket and all that kind of stuff. 

I love life here in LA.  The sunshine and palm trees get me every time.  It's great, but of course, I miss home.  I miss my friends and my family, but I still have my apartment back in the U.K. as well.  So as soon as I go back to the U.K., I see everybody and catch up with everybody too.  I still do So You Can Think You Can Dance back in the U.K. as well, so as soon as we finished here, we  start doing auditions over there, and that's going to be on BBC 1, I think sometime early next year.

M&C:  I'm really curious about the Children's Hospital, Ormond Street Hospital.   I wondered if you could tell your fans and us about your work with them and what the hospital does.

Cat: Ormond Street Children's Hospital is one of the foremost hospitals in all of Europe.  Actually, any child that's ill, they kind of helicopter in because the specialists there and the doctors and nurses are so incredible  I started working with them I think about eight years ago or something like that, and I recently actually just did a campaign with Kiehl’s, where all the money was donated to Great Ormond Street.  Obviously with me living here, I can't go into the hospital as many times as I would like to, but whenever I'm back, I try and go in there and go and see everybody. 

So, I have two major charities that I work for.  I do Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, and I also work for UNICEF as well.   Recently, I went to Madagascar with UNICEF, and we filmed a mini documentary about the immunization programs there, and what's going to happen if they don't get the funding from UNICEF and stuff.  Well obviously, they won't be able to have access to immunizations that we completely take for granted like polio and TB and all that stuff. 

So yes, I'm very fortunate to be able to work with both, and both are working with kids as well.  I love kids, and I think it's a way of using my celebrity or fame for something really great.  It means that it then has some value, whereas if it doesn't, I don't need any more free shoes and handbags.  It's kind of much more useful to be able to draw attention to both fantastic causes.

Entertainment Weekly: When you first started hosting the show, did you ever think that it would get as big as it is? 

Cat: To be perfectly honest, I didn't.  I mean I kind of dreamed that it might be, and of course, I wanted it to be a huge success.  You can never envision that kind of level of success, and people are really passionate about it too.  It's not just the figures that we get, but it's actually the people that watch are absolutely 100% dedicated fans that are completely passionate about it.  It's not kind of as though our audience dips in and dips out of it and watches other things.  It's like they follow the show every single week, and they feel as though they know every single dancer. 

That's what I love most of all about it.  I love the passion that's behind it and how the audience really gets involved.  That's something that we never take for granted.  That's why we wanted to mix it up a little bit this year and have the All-Stars on the show and Mia on the panel because I think that we have to try and constantly surprise, delight, and entertain.
I think the All-Stars upped the ante a little bit.   I think they really helped the dancers.  They've been invaluable to them not just in terms of their professional, technical dancing but also in terms of what the experience is all about and the things that you should remember.  They're very good about giving advice too.

On a personal level, I loved just having them back because I get the chance to see them all again.  It's like they've all gone off to college and tWitch has done Step Up 3D, and Mark's been on tour with Lady Gaga.  They've all been doing their own little things and then they come back, and I can catch up with them all and find out exactly what they've been doing, how much they're enjoying life, who's kissing who, all that kind of good stuff.  It's been great to just have them back on a personal level.

CNN.com: Some reality show host, they sort of separate themselves a little bit from the competition.  You aren't afraid to speak your mind about what you think.  Is there something you felt compelled to do to really put what's on your mind out there and sort of become good friends with the competitors?

Cat:  To be honest, it was a very natural thing, Henry.  It wasn't kind of like some preconceived idea I had.  I very much wanted to be a part of it.  I didn't want to come onto the show and then people be like, "Hold on.  Who's this English chick who's trying to be our friend?"  You know what I mean?  I wanted to definitely integrate myself in there, and that's something that we started doing right at the beginning. 

So if the dancers stood outside and it's five o'clock in the morning and the snow's coming down in New York to go and audition, then I'm there with them too.  I wanted to be a part of their entire journey, and they're really great people in all honesty.  Dancers have this—it's a quite unique mentality.  It's very much they have a sense of camaraderie, and they're team players. 

And I also think it comes from the fact that nobody dances to really become super famous or super rich.  They dance because they love it.  Because in actual fact, it's a really, really tough occupation.  Quite often they're underpaid, underappreciated.  They're not normally the people in the spotlight, and their career is very short.   They're struggling with injuries all the time and all those different things, so they have to want to do it because they love dance. 

I find that incredibly attractive, and I couldn't help but get involved, to be honest.  I'd be a pretty strange person, I think, if I didn't feel drawn to them in that kind of way.  It ends up with them coming around to my house for 4th of July barbecue and hanging out and swimming in my pool.  The irony of this is not wasted on me.  I know I'm British and I really shouldn't be doing that, but it's fun, and I like being involved with them.

CNN.com:  Ae there any specific dance moves that strike you … that you saw that you'd never seen before?  Anything this year that just was brand new to you?

Cat:  There are always brand new things.  There’s Bollywood and then there was a kind of Hawaiian dance.  There are always new moves, and Mia Michaels never fails to impress with her kind of crazy choreography.  It's so beautiful to watch and have a story and a vision and it's a great piece of art. 

So for me, that's definitely one thing that I've grown to have on the show is a great appreciation of dance.  I'd never appreciated it as much as I do right now.  It is an art form and it can physically move you.  It can give you chills and make the hairs on your arm stand on end.  That's what never ceases to amaze me.  The way that a dance routine can touch you in the way that any great piece of art can touch you. 

NPR:  You've got the best judges of pretty much any competitive reality program, and I was wondering if you'd talk a little bit about the alchemy of finding the right combination of judges and the role that they play in the show's success.

Cat:  It's very difficult to find the right kind of— The balance between them, it's always kind of quite hard.  Even if you've got the same people on, it can change from show to show because of course as people are talking, you kind of feed off them too.  So it really can change. 

I think the first thing that we always try and do is have judges on the show that the dancers really want to know their opinion.  They really want to hear what they have got to say, and that amounts to the work that they do, their incredible choreography, and also their success within the field too.  I think that's one of the great things, and we try and get different people. 

Mia is incredibly creative.  She's a choreographer, and she's Emmy award winning.  And then we've got Adam who has a really amazing successful career in movies, and then course, there's Nigel who started off as a dance.  So I think they have to have that kind of base and experience to draw on.  I think that's the most important thing.  And then to try and get them all working together as well at the same time is really important.

NPR: How do you get them working together?  You can have a lot of expertise and authority but still be pretty boring, and they're not.

Cat:  Absolutely.  I think because they are opinionated actually, and I like it.  That's always what we try and say.  You either love it or hate it, but you have an opinion about it.  As long as you can justify your opinion and as long as you can explain it to an audience at home, that's brilliant. 

We don't want everybody to like everything.  There are definite moments, all like something at the same time or all hate something at the same time.  That's when the panel gets the most interesting and the most vibrant is when they have strong opinions that don't necessarily all match and they clash slightly. 

TV Guide Canada: What do you have to say about the injuries this season?  Do you think the format was a bit more daunting for the dancers this year?

Cat: I really don't know because in terms of the amount of time that they spend dancing and in terms of what we're asking them to do physically, there's nothing really that different from this season to the past six seasons before.  So I really don't know other than to say it's been the curse of season seven. 

I don't know, and that's definitely something that we're looking into because we don't want people to be injured either.  We want these kind of dancers to learn from the experience, and we want to push them as far as we can but we certainly don't want anybody to be injured.  So it's definitely something that we're looking at. 

In terms of it being something as simple as, "Oh now, they're doing 15 hours of rehearsal a week instead of 7," that just simply isn't the case.  There's not an obvious stand-out reason why they are getting injured this season.

TheDeadbolt.com: This season also incorporated a variety of changes from the judging lineup to the way that the dancers actually have to be paired up with the All-Stars.  How do you see these changes affecting the seasons to come?

Cat:  I think it's something that the audience has to get used to too.  I think that with any formatted show, I think the moment you change things up, I think it takes people a few weeks to get into it.  But from people that I've spoken to about it, they are massive fans of the show and so passionate about it. 

Some people said to me at the beginning, "Oh, I'm not sure about the All-Stars.  Don't really like it.  Don't know who to watch.  Not sure."  And now we come to the end of the season, and they're like, "Love it."  It's one of those things where you just have to get used to it and you have to properly understand the format.  Then I think it becomes exciting, and I think that's something that this season has definitely been is a transition.

EW: So the finale's obviously this week and who do you think will win?

Cat: I mean, I think it could be any one of the three.  I think that Robert is exceptionally strong.  I think that Lauren is the last girl left and has been for like weeks now, and I also think Kent has that kind of charm that viewers just find incredibly endearing. 

If I was a betting woman and I had to put some money where my mouth is, I would probably go for Kent, but that's not to do with his technical ability.  It's more to do with the reaction that I see from the screaming girls in the studio.  I mean it's literally like Beatle Mania when he hits the stage and hormones are rushing everywhere, and there's just general high-pitched screaming.  So I think it might be Kent.  I think I always saw Kent as a real competitor, actually.  Right from the moment when he was in Vegas, he just had something about him that was so endearing.  He has a very childlike quality, and he's a little green but in the most wonderful way.  He just kind of says what comes into his mind.  He doesn't try and play the show or play the cameras.  And I think people find that incredibly refreshing, so I kind of knew he'd make it onto the show from seeing him in Vegas, but I didn't know he would get this far.