Nikki Webster’s BACK with a new single – OK, control yourself…
“Really!? Why?” asks my partner, who’s laughing as I tell him that today I’ll be interviewing former child star Nikki Webster. This reaction has been pretty standard, really. You’re probably laughing too, right? Let’s be honest; we’ve made a national punchline out of the poor girl since she hit puberty. So, where is she now? Back in Sydney after a stint in LA recording her new album, Nikki now spends her time as director of her dance school, Dance @ Nikki Webster, working the gay nightclub circuit with a sexed up remix of Strawberry Kisses, and planning her musical comeback which will hit the airwaves this summer.
A household face and name at just 13 when she starred in the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, “Brand Nikki” soon went into overdrive. Within two years she’d signed a contract with BMG releasing her debut album, Follow Your Heart (featuring the infamous Strawberry Kisses), launched a tween makeup range, snagged a clothing line for five- 10-year-olds through Kmart and starred as Dorothy in the Australian stage production of The Wizard of Oz. Somewhere in there, Nikki’s public image underwent a metamorphosis – going from cute to spectacularly uncool.
“I don’t think I ever saw a positive story after I was 14,” says Nikki, now 21, as we sit in the lounge room of her family home, where she’s living with her parents and older brother Scott. “I’m at a point now where I laugh at it – people are still talking about me, that has to be good!” she jokes as she tells me of a gag at her expense at the 2008 ARIA Awards. “I think it’s funny and I laugh it off, but if I look back it has made me quite insecure. I think in the long-term it has created a false sense of who I am. Now that I’m older and going out I’ll meet people and they say, ‘Oh! I had the completely wrong impression of you!’ Every time I meet someone I have to break down a wall so they’ll accept me,” she says.
From bad press to worse
In her mid teens the recording contract was nearing its end. “Kids at school would ask, ‘So, what are you doing now your career is over?'” While Nikki believed she had more to give the entertainment industry, she struggled to find her new place in it as an adolescent. “Suddenly, Barbie magazine didn’t want to put me on the cover,” she says of the tween mag she had previously fronted three times. “I asked who was on the cover that month and they told me it was Paris Hilton – it was right around the time her porno come out. They said I was too ‘nice.'” Nikki’s management advised her to disappear for a while and come back sexy. “I wanted to fill the gap, but they didn’t know how to market me.” The gap Nikki refers to is the void between child star and sex symbol, currently being filled by the likes of High School Musical stars Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Hudgens.
If at first you don’t succeed…
Despite not seeing herself as sexy, Nikki accepted an offer from FHM to star in a raunchy photo shoot to celebrate her 18th birthday. She saw it as a cheeky coming-of-age move, but the public were weirded out seeing the “Little girl from the Olympics” in lingerie. Again, she encountered ridicule when the pre-Photoshoped images were released by email. Her 21st birthday would be no different. Radio hosts Hamish & Andy played a practical joke on unsuspecting C-grade celebs, posing as Nikki’s publicist and inviting them to her OK! Magazine birthday bash for a fee. Nikki finally cracked and called the radio station, Austereo, but in a bungle was connected to Triple M’s confused Wil & Lehmo whom she berated live on air. “So, you thought you’d take the piss the whole afternoon…” The rent-a-crowd blooper hit the blogosphere and, predictably, we pissed ourselves.
What’s so funny, anyway?
Whether it’s due to tall poppy syndrome, jealousy from a generation of kids who once wished they were her, or public irritation at her refusal to be “cool”, is unclear. Sitting here on her mum’s couch, Nikki is sweet and polite. She talks passionately about her dance school and her role mentoring the kids who hope to follow in her footsteps. She even has the time of day for comedians who’ve used her name for cheap laughs. “Some of them come up and apologise [when we cross paths]. I just tell them I appreciate [it],” she says. Not Rove McManus, though. “If we’re ever in the same room he runs away from me. I think he feels bad, or maybe he thinks I’m going to have a go at him.”
No matter your opinion of Nikki, she has built a successful business at the age of 21 and, despite constant ridicule, and still laugh it off when dickheads come up to her singing Strawberry Kisses at the pub. This summer, Nikki releases the first single off her new album. “I’m happy with [it],” she says. “I know there’s going to be controversy and horrible stories, but I can be humble and… laugh about it. And then there are the moments on stage where I think, ‘Yeah, I can handle this.'”
Caelia Corse
Source: Cosmopolitan
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