Recently, at the Television Critics Association (TCA) winter press tour, John Travolta was on hand to discuss FX’s new series American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, which debuts Feb. 2 (and in which Travolta gives an amazing performance as attorney Robert Shapiro).
Travolta was at the press tour the day after FOX presented a panel for its Grease Live musical event. Of course, Travolta is also legendary for playing Danny in the famed movie adaptation of Grease (pictured), so, naturally, myself and others in a small scrum of reporters at an FX party were wondering if Travolta was going to tune in to FOX for Grease Live on Sunday.
“Tonight, more people have told me I need to,” Travolta laughed, “and I think I’d better. I’m going to view it as though it were on Broadway and I get to watch it in a theater, because it’s a live show, and that’s how it should be viewed. [Grease] is done every day, somewhere around the world, or around the country.”
And will Travolta sing along to the famous Grease tunes?
“I’m a good audience,” he said. “I can just sit and watch, let others sing along.”
This jibes with what executive producer Marc Platt told us the day before, at the FOX panel for Grease Live. Platt had indicated that he knew both Travolta and his movie costar Olivia Newton-John “have both been enormously supportive and send a lot of love … They are very excited because, for them, Grease is such an iconic part of each of their careers and so significant. And the fact that it’s lived on for so many years has been a blessing to them. … I know they’ll both be watching on the evening of.”
While Travolta and Newton-John won’t be cameoing in Grease Live, you can be on the lookout for Didi Conn and Barry Pearl from the original movie. Conn plays a waitress named Vi, who has a small scene with Frenchy (played by Conn in the movie, and by Carly Rae Jepsen in the FOX special).
