Body politic

BIG LOVE Darrell Cox cuddles up with Deborah Hearst for dear life in Profiles Theatre’s Fat Pig.

We chew the fat with the season’s least likely and most successful ingenue.
First things first: Deborah Hearst’s laugh is the real deal.

In Neil LaBute’s Fat Pig, which has just extended its acclaimed run at Profiles Theatre, a hot young executive named Tom has a chance meeting with a beautiful, charming and overweight librarian named Helen. Tom falls hard before eventually succumbing to his officemates’ mockery of Helen’s size, but at that first meeting he tells her, “You’ve got a great laugh.”

It’s throaty and explosive, self-deprecating, unforced—the kind of laugh that you just don’t doubt. In a Lakeview coffee shop, Hearst demonstrates that the laugh came naturally to her. She relates the story of having to delay her summer study at the British American Drama Academy because she broke her leg “in a really ridiculous way—I was just walking down the street, and it was a little gravelly, and I wasn’t paying attention, and I just fell.” And then there it is—Helen’s laugh is Hearst’s laugh.

Hearst has been receiving raves in Fat Pig, prompting audiences to wonder where the heck she came from. Turns out she’s not exactly a newcomer. The West Virginia native moved to Chicago four years ago after graduating from Pennsylvania’s Dickinson College (and that postponed stint at BADA). She’s performed sporadically in small shows—she describes her first Chicago acting gig, in a vanity production directed and produced by the writer, as “fascinating” in a way that makes it clear it’s a euphemism—but day jobs kept getting in the way. In the interim, she took classes with companies like I.O. and Profiles, which led to her being called in for Fat Pig, her first high-profile role.

The laugh isn’t the only thing Hearst shares with her character. “As soon as I read it I was like, I want to do this. It was true; when I read it, it was heartbreaking because it was what I know,” she says.

“When we first read the play, I was like, that’s—that’s brutal. You’re talking about me. I’m not a representative of every fat person out there, but for me it was like, Oh my God, this is my nightmare. This is what I’m afraid everyone is saying behind my back and now it’s true,” the actor says. “It was really painful because they were putting a voice to it, somebody’s speaking it and I’m sitting right there.”

But as Hearst sees Helen, “she’s the most comfortable with herself of any of these characters. It’s not that she’s embarrassed that she’s fat; she feels Tom’s embarrassment, other people’s embarrassment, and that affects her.

“I understand that, but then I was like, This is called Fat Pig! I don’t like that!” she says with a burst of laughter. “But I found the beauty of it. I see its purpose, I see its irony, and I like that it gets your attention. But, you know, my grandma? My aunt, my mother, other people say ‘Oh my, Fat Pig, are you sure you want to be in that?’ It’s other people’s shame that affects you, because I’m fine with it.”

Audiences make it clear that they’re on Helen’s side, too. “The audience can be very vocal. My favorite was when Carter says, ‘I’m taking Jeannie to the beach thing,’ and somebody in the audience says, ‘No you ain’t,’?” Hearst laughs. “Eric [Burgher, who plays Carter] says that sometimes he gets mean looks from the audience. He’s like, ‘I’m not really like that, guys!’ But that’s great that it affects everyone so much. They’re so engaged, it’s nice. It’s a compliment!”And there’s that laugh again.—Kris Vire

Fat Pig is running at Profiles Theatre.