Frankie Grande on Tiger King Parody & Needing a TikTok Tutorial

My goodness, I'm doing so well. This is a fun day. I love press day. Why do I love press day so much? Um, because I love to talk and I love to, you know, share things that I've been working on with the world and you know, like I like making people smile and laugh. So that's kind of fun to do on press day, right?

You are doing the bathroom series on your Instagram.

Yes, bathroom talent show. Uh, which is just it just kind of like, I was like, what am I going to do? Like, how am I going to entertain the world while I'm, uh, in quarantine? And what ended up happening was, I just completely decided to, uh, do old talents from like high school, uh, middle school, um, and I, you know, college, whatever, in my bathroom because that's the best light and the best sound, the best.

Always. The bathroom always has the best light.

Right, exactly. So like I just kind of like went went with it and it's been so much fun and I get to make people smile and laugh while they're, you know, not while they're not thinking about the world.

Has it been your favorite one so far that you've done?

Um, let's see. I think my favorite one that I've done, ooh, I don't know. I I I kind of love them all. Oh, no, Little Mermaid. Little Mermaid. Little Mermaid. You never forget that one. Yes. Oh my God, me and a mermaid, um, mermaid tail in a bathtub. Yes. Um, and I'm going to do another one now for my Tiger King music video. I'm going to show you all how I became all those different characters in one video. So that one's going to get posted a little bit later once everyone has consumed the music video.

I know, I wanted to talk to you about the music video. And the outfits for it. Did you already have those or did you order everything so you could really dress up?

Oh, good question. So I had I had to order the teeth, which I wish I had right here. I hope pop off on my.

You killed me. I was like, oh my God, did he have those laying around or did he have to order those?

Cuz I had to order the teeth for sure. We had all of the wigs laying around. Okay. Halloween is a big time in this house. Like it is a big thing in this house. We have buckets of Halloween costumes. So the the Travis wig's actually a Spock wig that we kind of just like teased. Um from Star Trek. So we had a Star Trek wig on my head. Um we had a mullet wig. Um and so the only other thing we ordered were the puka shells. So I could really be Joe Exotic because he loves them puka shells. He wears them in all the time.

You are in the new Nick series the Danger Force.

Yes, I am.

I saw a little clip from it. Um how was dressing up for that and getting in character for that one?

Oh my God, it's so fun. You know, it was really interesting getting to work on uh a television show at home because obviously, like you don't have the whole crew there to help you and like get you through this and, you know, like I always say like, I'm I'm unbelievably appreciative of of a crew and I always like thank everyone. And I'm like, thank you guys so much. And then I was like, when I had to do it all myself, I didn't realize quite how much I needed to be thanking everyone. There's like, there's a lot of people that help you when you're an actor, like hair, makeup, wardrobe, lighting, sound, direction, props. Oh my God, props, like, uh, oh my God. So we had to do it all ourselves in this house. Luckily I have my two best friends quarantined with me who help me out with everything. I got to FaceTime with the the head of Nick makeup, Michael Johnson. He talked me through how to do my face and my look for Frankini. Um, so it ended up being a really fun thing and I learned a lot, which was really cool. And the fact that it looks so good is like, cool, I can shoot a show from my house. So like there is hope for the world.

Did you like doing your own makeup for it or was it hard?

No, it was great. I loved it. I I think I just need to like, maybe I should just start watching YouTube tutorials on like how to do different looks cuz like I know how to do my face like for me, you know, but like I didn't really ever venture into the world of like caricature character um makeup. So it was really neat to like put myself into Frankini, uh, and you know, um, I put myself into drag a couple times in quarantine too. Uh, and uh, that was interesting. So I don't know, I'm learning a lot. Like I don't think I'm ever going to hire a makeup artist ever again. Sorry, guys. Like, I've got my skills down now.

You're a guru now. Coronavirus turned you into a makeup guru.

Exactly. Like, ain't no one might have got no money for that anyways. So let me just do my own face. That's right.

Have you jumped on Tik Tok yet?

Oh my God. Okay. Wow. So subject. I am not okay. I need a tutorial. I'm such an like it's like I was so big on like the Vine and then the YouTube and now the Instagram. And now I got to get into the the Tik Tok and like do it better. I've done like a couple of them, but they need to be up.

If you decide use the G6 filter.

G6. Writing it down. That one that one is going to be key. Okay, that's great. That makes you look like a baddy. So let's just you will just do a tutorial. Like let's just zoom me again and then we'll do a whole tutorial. And then I'm going to be the best Tik Toker on the planet cuz you know I will be. I just Oh yeah.

Once once you figured it out, it's game over for all of us.

I know.

Been doing a ton in quarantine. What do you just like to do to like chill out when you're not working?

I love watching old action movies and sci-fi fantasy films. Like I have like gone through my rollerdex of like my favorite nerdy films. Like I just did Godzilla, then Godzilla King of Monsters. And now I'm on to Aliens and the Alien series, Alien vs. Predator. I watched Predator. I like I have all of these like favorite movies from like, you know, my childhood up until now. We did Star Wars on May the 4th be with you. We did um episode one and episode two. I uh I just like it's been really nice to like kind of like just geek out with my boyfriend and just like huddle in bed and watch like old sci-fi fantasy action films. And we're big board gamers too. And um Yeah, big board gamers and then we we stream on Twitch, um our love of like PC games. So yeah, we have a lot of fun times uh, and we we get to game a lot, me and my boyfriend, which is nice.

Yeah. We want to play a quick little cute game with you.

Woohoo. Ready?

It's going to be finish the sentence and it's kind of like quarantine self isolation related too.

Okay. Remember when you guys almost um killed me last time with all the food that I had to eat.

We did.

I was so funny. I was like this is crazy. I'm so glad that you can't send me food right now for me to eat it all the time.

It's in the mail actually right now. It's outside. I need to go myself. It actually just dropped it off at your doorstep.

That was so funny. thing I'm going to do after quarantine. It's go to Disneyland. Woohoo. Oh my God. I can't wait to go back to a theme park. Oh God. I can't wait. Oh my God. The first thing I do when I get up in the morning. Um is check my phone. Boring. I know. I start I should start with a gratitude list though. So pretend that's my answer. I write a gratitude list.

Do you answer your texts first? Look through Instagram or what do you like what app do you use first?

First thing I do is text. Look through my texts and decide like if anything important happened while I was sleeping. And then I'm like, cool.

Do you turn your phone on Do Not Disturb when you go to sleep?

Yes. Absolutely. But like certain people can break through. Like I make sure that my nonna can always break through. Even though she calls me at like ridiculous hours sometimes. Like I always want to make sure that nonna gets priority whenever she needs me. I will answer the phone for her.

The last party I attended was.

Oh last party when life was throwback Thursday. Was. Well probably like the Rock of Ages opening night party. Was probably the last like big party celebration where there was like hundreds of people that that I like remember celebrating. Um, I had like a great like final uh dinner and uh before quarantine with my sister, which was really, really fun and really, really nice. Um, but yeah, the last party was probably Rock of Ages opening night. Which is like, oh, that's so sad because then it's closed. Hopefully, we'll reopen though soon. So that'll be really fun.

My favorite app to talk to fans is

My favorite app to talk to. Actually, it's Twitch. It's um to in my live streams because I can really interact with the chat in a way that I've never been able to talk live to fans before. So yeah, for sure it's my Twitch. Yeah.

The one person that I hope watches the Tiger King parody is.

Oh, Carol Baskin. Could you imagine she reaches out to you, that'd be I think she will think it's hysterical.

The last YouTube video that you watched that wasn't yours.

Oh, that wasn't mine.

It was actually um a video of Kristin Chenoweth. Um my my dear friend, um and she was in harmonizing with a fire alarm. Last person you remember FaceTiming. Uh, last person I remember, my sister. My sister and I FaceTimed last night. And it was right before bed. So it was really nice. One person that you want to get on a Zoom call with. One person that I want to get on a Zoom call with, Angelina Jolie.

I like that.

I I want to talk to her so badly. I've loved her all my life. Look, I've got Maleficent tattooed on my body. Um, and Maleficent literally right here. Um, but like I've loved, I mean I've loved Angelina long before she was Maleficent. But um yeah, I don't know. Someone was just talking about like what celebrities are doing now. And I was like, I want to know what Angelina Jolie's doing right now. I think that was a success. I think we nailed it. I think we had a great time.

Okay, Frankie, thank you so much. Frankie, you're the best. Thank you so, so, so much. I'll see you all over the interwebs.

Oh yeah, definitely. See you later. Bye.