Music

The Pussycat Dolls’ Nicole Scherzinger Went On ‘The Project’ Only To Endure A Woeful Interview

Most of the interview centred on a "human tee-pee" dance move in The Pussycat Dolls' new music video.

by Jared Richards  4 March 2020
The Project interviewed Nicole Scherzinger of The Pussycat Dolls

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The Pussycat Dolls are touring Australia next month as part of So Pop festival, so group lead Nicole Scherzinger went on The Project for a bit of promo, which might be five of the most painful minutes of live TV we’ve seen since, well, that time The Chats and Karl Stefanovic had a chat.

We’re off to a bad start pretty much straight away, when Pete Helliar and Tommy Little can’t help but focus on a particular dance move in The Pussycat Dolls’ new music video for comeback single ‘React’. Scherzinger calls it the “human tee-pee”, and at first, politely laughs off the questions about it, which are mostly thinly veiled ways of asking “why is it so sexy”?

Helliar asks about the “concept” of the video, and Scherzinger talks about working with directors, having a lot of creative imput, and how the fire on-set actually seared their latex costumes to their bodies — which, when you stop to think about, is really intense. Little then jumps in to make a joke about how Helliar didn’t even notice the fire, and goes back to the ‘tee-pee’ move.

There’s pre-packaged joke where Little tries to do the move, where the humour derives from how he’s not a dancer, which Scherzinger is. It’s pretty awkward, and at this point, the interview just becomes jokes between the panel at Scherzinger’s expense: every question levelled at her is a gag, prompting curt “no” or “yes” responses.

To her credit, Scherzinger is a good sport, and cracks a few jokes of her own, but it’s clear she’s not particularly comfortable. Waleed Aly tells an anecdote about mishearing the lines to one of the group’s biggest songs — “You know ‘When I Grow Up?’, to which Scherzinger laughs and says, “I think so” — and asking whether the chorus line is “I want boobies” or “I want groupies”.

Scherzinger plays along, then there’s a couple of lines where Little says Aly was going to ask if she’d “gotten her boobies” yet, to which she shrugs and says, “I don’t know, have I?”.

Aly then asks if she and other acts on So Pop will compare who wore the best ’00s fashion, to which she says, “No”, and then when she’s given an opportunity to talk about how it takes bravery and courage to wear provocative clothing as a woman in the spotlight, the show’s wrap-up music starts.

It’s a mess, absolutely dismissive of Scherzinger as a person and The Pussycat Dolls as an act, which begs the question of why they even bothered in the first place. While sex appeal is a big part of The Pussycat Dolls, a group which started as a burlesque performance, there’s a right and a wrong way to ask about it.

Then again, given The Projects’ previous cringe-inducing interviews with Troye Sivan and Maggie Rogers, we’re not exactly surprised. Watch it below.