Nikky Smedley’s book Over the Hills and Far Away: My Life as a Teletubby has just been published by Sandstone Press.
Nikky has spent her career trying to avoid what her parents called ‘a proper job’. This doesn’t mean she hasn’t worked hard. Running her own dance company for twenty years, she staged the UK’s first piece of vertical dance and, playing God, created and destroyed the world on quantum and geographic scales. After Teletubbies, she worked behind the scenes in children’s TV for a further decade and currently writes and performs stories for young children. Nikky is a highly sought-after conference speaker and still choreographs, though these days she jumps up and down less than she once did.
Nikky discusses how she researched for the role of Laa-Laa, including writing out Laa-Laa’s personality traits, and how she came to choose that type of personality. She shares insights into working with Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport (the producers of the show) as well as the physical demands of being in a huge puppet all day.
She tells us about the funny experiences, the exhausting ones and her peculiarly emotional response to seeing someone new take over the role of Laa-Laa.
Nikky is now doing a one woman show – Nikipedia – and is also doing the choreography for the hugely popular show Cocomelon.
Links:
https://sandstonepress.com/books/over-the-hills-and-far-away
https://twitter.com/howtospeakchild
https://www.facebook.com/nikipedia111
https://cocomelon.com/pages/watch
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