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Culture Stage

Emma Hunter makes a good impression

EMMA HUNTER LIVE at Tallulah’s Cabaret at Buddies in Bad Times (12 Alexander), Friday (August 23), 7:30 pm. $15. 416-975-8555.


The name Emma Hunter might not ring any bells… now. But you certainly know the celebrities she sends up in her live comedy act: Kate Middleton, Paula Deen, the Kardashians, Victoria Beckham, Celine Dion, Carly Rae Jepsen, Sofía Vergara. The list goes on.

You’ve seen her face on shows like Match Game and Video On Trial, and in a month or two it’ll become a lot more familiar. This fall she’ll be staring out regularly from your TV screen in E!’s new game show Pop Quiz and CTV’s Dave Foley series, Spun Out.

Physically, the petite, cherub-faced Hunter doesn’t resemble any of the people she imitates, but through voice, posture and a mysterious transformation that goes beyond mimicry, she hilariously channels their essence, a talent she’s perfected in small comedy rooms over the past couple of years.

“Any accent is a gift,” explains Hunter over coffee at Spadina’s Dark Horse Espresso Bar a week before her first full-length show goes up at Buddies in Bad Times’ Tallulah’s Cabaret. “Take Paula Deen. She speaks at this lethargic, insanely slow pace. That was fun to do on its own. Then she went all racist, and it was like the clouds parted for me.”

Somebody like Victoria Beckham, on the other hand, is a walking caricature.

“She’s clearly obsessed with her weight, never smiles and speaks with this guttural Cockney accent. That combination is just fantastic.”

Hunter’s eyes sparkle when she talks about her work. There’s ruthless accuracy and more than a touch of satire in her impressions, but there’s also affection.

“I think you can get away with a lot more when you’re being someone, as opposed to when you’re just commenting on them,” she says. “I hope there’s a lightness to these performances rather than total judgment.”

Whether it’s capturing the over-emoting bizarreness of a Las Vegas-era Celine Dion – “The more famous I become, the less sense I make,” her Celine says – or an Adele bluntly discussing body image, Hunter distills a performer into a few lines of monologue.

Sometimes it takes even less than that. In an impression of Jepsen from last summer, she girlishly bounced around onstage to the song Call Me Maybe and then, in a deadpan voice at the end, muttered, “I’m 30,” which said it all.

“I don’t want to rag on her,” she laughs, “but there’s something about the way women come across in pop videos as if they’re 12, wearing pigtails and jumping around. Someone trying to deny her age is amusing. Of course I bumped everything up, including her age. My versions are mutations of the person. They’re extreme.”

One of the pitfalls of being a comic chameleon is that your own personality might be lost amidst the impersonations. Successful stand-ups create a strong onstage persona successful impressionists are most vivid when becoming someone else.

“It’s definitely something I’ve thought about,” says Hunter. “Does it matter that people don’t really get to know me after a 12-minute set? I just hope my characters are good enough and that it doesn’t matter. Frankly, I like that privacy.”

You might say Hunter was born for this career. Her mother’s Welsh and her father’s Scottish, and her grandparents hail from northern England.

“So I grew up hearing these distinct voices,” she says, “and my own voice reflected that – it was an amalgamation of them all. My ear got attuned to the subtle differences.”

From the age of four onwards, she orchestrated plays and film shoots to be performed in the backyard of her Etobicoke home.

“I was always small,” she says, “so I had a bit of a Napoleon thing going on, bossing kids around. I once put a male neighbour in my leotards and made him dance ballet.”

One thing was clear early on, however: she was going to be a performer of some sort. She took dance for a decade, studied French and Spanish in the classroom while studying French and Saunders (and other Britcom shows) on TV, and took mental notes as her mom did community theatre.

“From the day I came out of the womb, this was the plan,” she says, laughing. “My parents would have been disturbed if I’d gone into medicine. I think my consistency has given them more joy than anything else.”

While at Queen’s studying theatre, she met Carly Heffernan, Marni Van Dyk and Meg Mack, who would do comedy – singing pop songs and doing characters in a bar setting – in the Queen’s Players. When they all moved to Toronto after graduation, they weren’t getting much acting work, so they formed the terrific sketch troupe She Said What.

“We were big fans of Lauren Ash and Leslie Seiler from [comedy duo] Cory!” says Hunter. “These were chicks who had it going on. And we thought we could maybe do that one day.”

She Said What performed around town and at the Fringe, where I first saw them. Fittingly, Hunter played Napoleon in a sketch.

She did several seasons with the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival in Prescott, Ontario, where she cut her teeth on Juliet, Isabella and other juicy parts.

“I loved it, but I remember doing sketch for the first time and thinking, ‘Now, this is good. It’s just laughing all the time. And being in bars.'”

What she loves about comedy is that you never know what’s around the corner. It’s like riding a wave, she says.

Her wave’s beginning to crest big time. She just shot 60 episodes of Pop Quiz with host Devon Soltendieck, which begins airing on E! sometime this fall. It’s a game show in which contestants square off over their knowledge of pop culture. A sample question: Which Kardashian regrets her boob job?

“In fact, it wasn’t Kim – it was Kourtney!” laughs Hunter, who is the show’s official judge, drawing on her knowledge of celebrities and doing the odd impression, too, usually Celine.

On the upcoming sitcom Spun Out, she’s got a recurring part as a restaurant server with an attitude.

Both shows should help her carve out a comic personality removed from the celebrities she impersonates.

Oh, and then there’s a particular variety series in the U.S. that specializes in sketch and character and has a list of Canadians among its distinguished alumni. Her agent’s been talking with them about having a meeting.

As a budding thespian, Hunter had no idea she’d be doing all this comedy a few years after graduation. But looking back, she says the signs were there.

“I remember in plays the moments when I got to be funny were the best,” she says. “This is all an incarnation of that. I remember really wanting to do the scene in A Doll’s House when Nora does the tarantella. Who cares about the husband? I wanted to act out this wild, crazy moment. That’s basically what I’m doing now.”

Interview Clips

Hunter on her role as a judge on TV’s Pop Quiz, improvising and Celine Dion:

Download associated audio clip.

On using posture to evoke celebrities like the Kardashians:

Download associated audio clip.

On discussing transitions with Gavin Crawford:

Download associated audio clip.

On what she’s thinking when she’s pausing between impressions:

Download associated audio clip.

On impressions that didn’t pan out and a comment on her singing ability:

Download associated audio clip.

glenns@nowtoronto.com | @glennsumi

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