I don’t sound anything like my mother she was so unique and her voice was its own thing. I know your mother died when you were very young, but what an amazing thing it must have been to have parents who were such incredible musicians. First of all, Maya, you grew up in LA and your mother was singer Minnie Riperton and your dad is Richard Rudolph, the songwriter and producer. SISCHY: Donatella, I was thinking we might ask Maya some things about her life before she became obsessed with playing you. I’m such a Lakers fan I’m such a California girl. The dress made my body look insane, and it was the most exquisite thing. For this story I wore Versace, and I look like a fox. RUDOLPH: Yeah! We need to have the real thing. But I can send you some real Versace gowns-it would be better. VERSACE: One thing you do well is the dresses. RUDOLPH: Yeah, I don’t call myself Maya anymore, it’s just MR. You see, a real diva doesn’t need to say her name. RUDOLPH: I want to create a Donatella franchise. VERSACE: Keep doing me, please, for the rest of your life. RUDOLPH: I would love if you would come in and teach me how to really do you. VERSACE: I like you very much but I want you to do me for real. It means so much to me that you like what I do. RUDOLPH: Oh, that’s so nice to hear, Donatella. I never do go to Brooklyn, always Manhattan. VERSACE: Yours is better than mine, but you make me sound like a Brooklyn girl. Anyway, I speak English very badly, but not as badly as you do when you’re being me. That was in my fingers in the nursery room. RUDOLPH: But you don’t think you were born with it? VERSACE: It takes a while to make yourself a diva. RUDOLPH: I’m writing it down as we speak-my notes on being a diva. I have a thousand more things to tell you. I am going to send you some pictures of the models I use now. Your assistant has a very ’80s look-out of fashion. The guys I like now are taller and slender. And the guy who’s playing your assistant looks passé. And petal roses are scattered all over the water. The bathtub is full of water, scented oil, and I wear my embroidered-by-hand G-string. VERSACE: OK? And third, the hair doesn’t move enough. You understand? The second rule is if you can afford jewelry, you buy the real ones if you cannot afford real ones, don’t wear them. Not to shout, just to take people out of the room. RUDOLPH: Because you want to keep an air of calm and cool. VERSACE: A real diva would never scream at her guests to get out-she would ask one of her assistants to make the guests get out.

VERSACE: I think I should teach you a few things about being a diva. “I can’t wear these fake jewels-I’m allergic.” RUDOLPH: I’m going to start saying that on set. I can tell from a mile away that your jewelry is fake. Maya, the diamonds you wear when you imitate me on Saturday Night Live are nothing compared to mine. But forgive me if I immediately start to bitch a little bit. Welcome to Diva 101.ĭONATELLA VERSACE: Hi, Ingrid. So, with Ingrid Sischy moving the conversation along from her office in New York, Rudolph sat pen in hand at the Covent Garden Hotel in London, while Versace reclined in her suite at the Ritz hotel in Paris, surrounded by her communications director, two assistants, a hair stylist, makeup artist, and assorted bodyguards. La Versace has seen her imitator and approves, although she believes the 30-year-old could use a few lessons in how to be a diva. But it is her impersonation of Donatella Versace that is fast becoming Rudolph’s trademark. In 2000 she joined the cast of Saturday Night Live and found a way to combine both of her talents with her hilarious parodies of singers including Nelly Furtado and Destiny’s Child. Although she followed them into a music career, Rudolph soon turned to her first love, comedy, joining the Groundlings, LA’s renowned theater group. Her mother was singer Minnie Riperton and her father is songwriter and producer Richard Rudolph, and Rudolph spent her early years standing backstage watching her parents perform. Self-described California girl and Lakers fan Maya Rudolph grew up in an LA showbiz family. We first met Rudolph two years into her SNL run in October of 2002, when we asked Donatella Versace, the subject of one of her most famous skits, to give Rudolph some lessons in how to be a diva. Pregnant or not, next month Rudolph will take the stage at Carngie Hall with her Prince cover band, Princess, for a “Music of Prince” benefit concert alongside Elvis Costello, Talib Kweli, The Roots, and Sandra Bernhard. The former SNL star and actress Rudolph is reportedly pregnant with her fourth child with director Paul Thomas Anderson. In New Again, we highlight a piece from Interview’s past that resonates with the present.

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