Ellen Gray: On 'Huge,' Nikki Blonsky blossoms weekly as a weight-camp teen

HUGE. 9 tonight, ABC Family.

TRACY TURNBLAD, the endlessly upbeat teen from the film "Hairspray," might share a dress size with Will, the defiantly downbeat one from ABC Family's "Huge."

At least if Will - it's short for Willamina - ever wore dresses.

The only thing the two characters really have in common is Nikki Blonsky, the 21-year-old actress and singer who every week taps her inner adolescent to play the reluctant resident of a summer weight-loss camp, and is one of the most believable teenage girls we've seen on-screen since Angela Chase (Claire Danes) moped her way through high school in "My So-Called Life."

Blonsky, who would have been 5 or 6 when Angela was the age Will is now, nevertheless claims to be a "very big fan" of that show and of Winnie Holzman, who created it and who also created "Huge," with her daughter, Samantha Dooley.

"I watched all the reruns and I was obsessed with ["My So-Called Life" co-star] Wilson Cruz, who's [now] my really good friend. It's funny how things work out," she said in a phone interview Friday.

In "Hairspray," she'd worked with Holzman's real-life husband, Paul Dooley, who played Mr. Spritzer and who now plays Joe Sosniak, the crusty cook (and camp director's father) on "Huge." But winning the role of Will wasn't just a matter of picking up the phone.

"I auditioned a bunch of times," she said, "about five times on tape, and then finally I flew out to California for a screen test and then I waited a weekend, and I found out I got the role. . . . but, yeah, it was a process."

After she'd first read the script, she said that she told her agent, "I have to play this girl. I have to, I have to, I have to."

Why Will, who's so different from the girls Blonsky's played in the past?

"I think that's one of the main reasons why I was so attracted to playing her - she was so different from everything that everybody's used to me playing," Blonsky said. "She wasn't the happy camper, she wasn't trying to bring the world together one person at a time, she wasn't singing and dancing her way through life. She was kind of the girl who didn't like her life that much.

"She kind of had this attitude, 'Leave me alone and I'll leave you alone.' And I thought that was so much fun to be playing after Tracy and other characters that I've played that are so upbeat."

Besides, "there are a lot of loners out there like Will, and I wanted to tap into that," she said. "Because it's not such a terrible thing to be a loner - you're just misunderstood."

She also got to fulfill an old fantasy.

"There was always a moment in my life when I wondered . . . what it would be like with a blue streak," she said of her character's hair. "It was like, ask and you shall receive. And now I don't have to wonder anymore."

It's hardly a surprise that Blonsky would eventually be heard singing in "Huge," but anyone who expected it to happen in last week's talent-show episode would have been disappointed.

Not only did the sulky Will not emerge, Susan Boyle-like, as a dark horse with a Broadway-sized voice, she ended up fleeing the show altogether after realizing that the boy she had a crush on must have read at least part of her missing journal.

In tonight's episode, we finally get to hear Will sing, "and I will sing more in the season," Blonsky said.

But "once everybody hears me sing, I think they're going to be surprised, because it's not my normal, typical voice, it's Will's voice, and it's really something spectacular that is different for me," she said.

As for skipping the talent show, "I love that about our writers, that they always do the unexpected."

Blonsky, working for the first time on a project where her size isn't one of the things that makes her stand out - "it's nice to turn around and see someone eating a sandwich" - doesn't seem interested in fulfilling any obvious expectations, either.

Including the one that says that if you're famously plus-sized, you should go on a very public diet.

"I was offered [VH1's] 'Celebrity Fit Club' before I took 'Huge,' and I just wouldn't do it because it's just not something that is for me," Blonsky said. "If I'm going to lose weight, I'm going to do it on my own time, in the comfort of my own home, without cameras."

Shows like "Fit Club" and NBC's "The Biggest Loser" are "great for people who want to be part of them," she added. "It's just that I don't think it's anything that would be appetizing to me. No pun intended."

But the now obligatory would-you-like-to-be-on-"Glee" question got a different answer:

"I would love to be on 'Glee,' and I'd love to really sing and belt a tune or two out and, you know, really knock those girls' socks off and give them a run for their money." *

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