The Fabulous Farce of Fergie Ferg: Part Two
Great art demands great suffering — Fergie is no stranger to fighting through adversity, coming back more fergalicious each time.
In the first part of this series, we discussed three moments in the History of Ferg that stood out for their pure silliness and utter hilarity, but despite what you may think, the world has not always been so receptive to Fergie’s signature artistic style and unapologetic personality. All great artists must endure periods where they and their work are gravely misunderstood by the public. And when you reach the top of the world like Fergie has, there will always be someone waiting to tear you down.
Fergie knows that indomitable performance art means suffering for your craft, and her willingness to act as a martyr in the entertainment industry is only further proof of her endless dedication to her work. In today’s installment of The Fabulous Farce of Fergie Ferg, we’ll be discussing three moments when Stacy Ferguson’s ingenuity was undermined by forces out of her control and taking a look at how she deftly came out back on top every time.
The Princess and the Pee
I’m sorry, really I am. We can do one-handed flips around the matter all day, but the fact is, it happened. We simply have to talk about the fact that Fergie pissed her pants on stage. I’m not going to put photos here, but you have Google!
Before you think for even a second that I’m passing judgment, let me just say that I am not criticizing or mocking Ms. Ferguson in any way. In fact, she herself has said that she did what she had to do in the moment and that is something I fully identify with. Living in New York, I’ve had to face harsh truths, and those include do-or-die moments like these. I don’t know a single person who lives in New York City that hasn’t had to come to terms with the painful reality that, at some point, the dam is going to break. It’s a rite of passage. Even friends who move here claiming that it will never be them are forced to reckon with their public urination god complex somewhere along the way: after a night out when the subway is running local and you’re hours from home; trapped at the shuttle station between the subway and JFK that doesn’t have a bathroom(!); locked out of your apartment after leaving your keys in an Uber; it happens somewhere, sometime, and if you think it won’t come for you then you’re sorely mistaken.
Fergie, a student of life, knows this and made peace with it one fateful night sixteen years ago. During a set with the rest of The Black Eyed Peas, Fergie’s “adrenaline was going” while performing “Let’s Get It Started,” and unfortunately, something else got started as well. By the end of the song, an unmistakable spot had formed on Ferguson’s shorts and was captured on cameras to live in infamy forever. In the years that have passed, the pee photos have followed. And though she knows it’s embarrassing, Fergie has taken it in stride!
But here’s the thing: who are we, trying to act like we’re so much better than Fergie pissing her pants on stage? Why should we dare to look at this situation and do anything less than revere Fergie for her commitment and dedication to her craft? The life of a musician is a life filled with compromise and at that moment Fergie weighed her options: disappoint fans by not being present while the Peas perform their megahit or take the stage, pants proudly full of piss, and give the public a performance they’ll never forget?
To criticize Fergie for this incident is like blaming firefighters for being burned on the job — it’s merely an occupational hazard. Fergie was brave enough to do what the moment required of her, and I ask you: could you do the same? Sure, you’ll squat in a dark alley after the bar closes, but things are a little different under the lights of the stage and in front of a crowd. Fergie peeing her pants on stage was cool. It was punk. It was badass. And if you don’t think so, maybe you should take a look in the mirror and question why you’re so hung up on societal norms. Piss your pants! Live a little!
The Journey to a SAG Card
When your presence is as magnetic as Fergie’s, someone is bound to try to poach you to make their star shine a little brighter. After two successful albums with The Black Eyed Peas, how could Hollywood not take note? In 2005, it was time for Fergie to try her hand at acting, and what better vehicle than the remake of a relatively little known 1970s disaster movie about a capsized cruise ship. Fergie negotiated two songs on the film’s soundtrack, signed on the dotted line, and Poseidon was born.
Back when Lady Gaga first signed onto A Star is Born, Bradley Cooper insisted she was going to be billed as Stefani Germanotta. Somewhere along the way, name recognition won out and Gaga clarified that it was “Lady Gaga, baby!”. Fergie, however, stands firm in her convictions — she would not be billed as Fergie, and instead would be making her silver screen debut as Stacy Ferguson, her Christian name! Fergie is no sellout, she’s an artist first. And true artists hold their integrity closer than any paycheck!
When I saw Poseidon in theaters with my dad in 2006, I was excited for two reasons. The first was that the film starred Emmy Rossum, who I had become enamored with the year before when our family rented Phantom of the Opera, which my sister and I promptly became obsessed with, running around the house and singing the soundtrack all summer long while our parents grit their teeth. The second reason was that I knew Fergie had a small role, so Poseidon was a big get for me after the benchmark year of 2005 that brought me two all-timers: Phantom and “My Humps.”
In the film, Fergie plays Gloria, a similarly one-named lounge singer working on the luxury Poseidon cruiseliner during the New Year’s Eve holiday route. Not long into the film, a fifty-foot tidal wave crashes into the boat, putting everyone aboard in grave peril. Unfortunately, a tidal wave is the film’s second disaster. The first is Fergie’s hairstyling, which desperately needs some Malin + Goetz moisturizing shampoo to correct the oil and flyaways.
But aside from a couple of brief scenes, I was saddened to find out that Fergie is barely in Poseidon. An interview with MTV during filming reveals that Fergie was given a raw deal by the studio and editors: her role was originally much larger — Gloria and the ship’s captain, played by Andre Braugher, were having a secret love affair, which was later cut to make the film less character-focused. It’s a detail that’s all too plain to see when looking back at the film, or at least the four-minute compilation of Fergie’s scenes that made it into the film that has since been stitched together and thrown up on YouTube.
When the weight of the water cracks against the glass of the ship’s ballroom, Gloria knows there’s only one thing she can do: hug Andre Braugher and prepare to die, either by the impact of the water or the millions of glass shards that will be blasting through it. If you think about it, the fifty-foot tidal wave is really just foreshadowing for the seismic wave that Fergie was preparing to unleash on the music industry two months after Poseidon’s May 2006 release. Though she had to attend the movie’s premiere and realize while watching the film for the first time that her weeks of work had been cut down to two minuscule scenes and some background work, Fergie surely knew she had the upper hand. Gloria may have died in the film, but Fergie had a lifeboat tucked away in her back pocket: “London Bridge,” the first single from The Dutchess.
After taking a few years away from Hollywood to promote her album, Fergie returned to film in 2009 the way God intended: playing a singing prostitute in one scene of a film made almost exclusively for gay men. In Nine, Fergie transforms into Saraghina, a beach-dwelling sex worker in 1920s Italy, seen only in a flashback when Daniel Day-Lewis’ character remembers a formative experience from his boyhood. For a film that boasts such an insanely impressive cast that also includes Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, Penélope Cruz, and Kate Hudson, Nine is a real fucking mess. It’s self-indulgent and takes itself way too seriously, never reaching any of the heights that it could potentially come close to. And yet, every single person I’ve ever dated has seen this film and remembers at least two songs from it. And, you guessed it, one of them is Fergie’s “Be Italian.”
It’s a showstopping and show-stealing number. Fergie understood the assignment and showed up to set mad as fuck, still reeling from all the material cut from Poseidon, ready to prove herself. She bounces, jumps, twirls, twists, pops, and gets sand in every possible crevice that you could ever conceivably get sand in. She also delivers what could be her best vocal performance…ever? She sounds absolutely astounding. Stacy Ferguson knew that this was her moment — a twist of fate had given her the chance to prove herself as an actress once and for all, and turn a bit part into one of the only memorable sequences from the film. And she still got snubbed from the Vogue cover!
Legend has it that Fergie, free from the obligations she’d been tied to while promoting her album, went full method for her role as Saraghina. Some say they spotted a woman in a man-made clay hut on the beaches of Italy’s boot whose voluptuous figure bore a striking resemblance to Fergie’s lovely lady lumps. When the sun went down, locals heard the sound of a tambourine softly jangling in the distance, calling unsavory, wayward men to stray from their wives for a few shekles of silver (I don’t know the currency of 1926 Italy). And by morning? Whole areas of sand looked as though they had been kicked from one end of the beach to the other. The legend of Saraghina lives on in that sleepy fisherman town, just like “Be Italian” lives on, buried in the iTunes libraries of gay men all over the world.
Tearful Triumphs and Tall Tales at Today
On the day of the release of Double Dutchess, an album she poured years of work and thousands of dollars of her own money into, Fergie went on The Today Show to promote her most personal body of work yet. After performing a collection of songs old and new in the brisk late-September morning air, Fergie warmed herself in the bright lights of the studio while giving an interview for the show’s third hour. Fergie was prepared to earnestly peddle her songs about life, love, and remaining fuckable after giving birth, but she was not prepared to be made an accidental mockery of by the show’s anchors.
“After 11 years she is out with her brand new album Double Dutchess, which dropped today,” anchor Dylan Dreyer began, setting up the setup if you will. “And guess what? The album is currently #1 on the iTunes albums chart!” Al Roker, Sheinelle Jones, and producers off-camera all began to applaud as Fergie looked on in shock. “What?! Are you serious,” she asked them, hand to her mouth and jaw on the floor. “Oh my, really? Oh my god.” At this point, Fergie turns to look directly to the camera, thinking she was looking straight into the homes of an adoring public who spent all morning feverishly purchasing copies of Double Dutchess on an already-outdated platform. She began to tear up, her hands pressed together in gratitude. “Thank you…thank you, everybody.”
There was just one problem. Double Dutchess had gone number one…on the iTunes pop chart, a subsection of iTunes genres where albums frequently shift depending on a much smaller set of data than the entirety of the platform altogether. By leaving the “pop” out of “iTunes pop charts,” the anchors conveniently fooled her into thinking the numbers were more impressive without technically lying to her. It’s a reality that’s all too cruel, especially when considering that by 2017, iTunes had lost a substantial chunk of its customers in favor of streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify, meaning that competition was already less stiff and only a relatively paltry number of albums had to be sold to rocket Fergie to number one on a genre chart within the ten-minute window prior to airtime.
Ever the industry martyr, Fergie spent the remaining two minutes of the three-minute interview holding back tears. “Wow! I’m losin’ it. I’m crazy losin’ it right now.” At one point, while trying to tell a story about her son, Fergie unfolded into a coughing fit and couldn’t get the words out to finish her sentence without hacking up a lung. It seemed that all of the pent up emotion of release week was being let go after finding out she was (read: was not) number one. But instead of just letting her catch her breath and finish her story, Roker wrapped up the interview to make time for Ellie Kemper and Jane Krakowski to make a recipe while promoting The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Fergie was left coughing, trying to pull herself together to perform one final number back out on the plaza.
I imagine there was a sharp pang of disappointment she later had to endure when someone from her team told her backstage that she was actually number one on the pop chart and not the overall chart. But instead of compartmentalizing the embarrassment of being duped by two meteorologists in the third hour of a four-hour talk show, Fergie channeled her feelings into her work. She remembered who she was and the game changed. This is Stacy Ferguson, one of America’s greatest performance artists, and if there was one moment to defy critics and show that she won’t be the fool, it was this one. She returned to the Citi Concert Stage at Rockefeller Plaza, faced the crowd, and performed a perfect song for the moment: “A Little Work.” “We’re all just a little bit broken,” she sang to the crowd. “We’ve all got wounds half open, we all can use a little work.”
Even our most prodigious artists are far from perfect.
Now that you’ve seen that Fergie is capable of defying any bout of adversity, are you impressed? Do you believe me when I say that she’s one of the greatest performance artists of our time, not just a musician but someone whose every move is calculated on a larger scale, with the vision of how it will be remembered for years to come?
If not, you will be. There’s more Fergie to come.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this until Monday, a quote from Fergie from her MTV interview on the set of Poseidon:
“It’s a great time for this theme to come back. People really know that these things can happen, [there are] these rogue waves and natural disasters and there’s nothing you can do to predict it. It’s just there.” Ominous, to say the least. Was she fresh off a viewing of The Day After Tomorrow or had she been worn down, exhausted after talks with Al Gore all afternoon and spending the night studying for her Climatology final? When Stacy Ferguson solves climate change, then you’ll all see I was right: she can do anything.
[Find Parts 1 and 3 of The Fabulous Farce of Fergie Ferg below. I encourage you to spread the message far and wide, and if you enjoy it, subscribe!]
