Interview: Nads Talks To Jeanine Mason From SYTYCD

Hey Gasmii, I jumped on a conference call with SYTYCD winner Jeanine Mason last Friday.

It was a quickie, but here is our convo! Enjoy!

Nads: What was it like after you won? What did you do?

Jeanine: It was the craziest night ever; it finished and I went straight into press and I was standing behind those rope … being taken pictures of, and I felt like I had just been bust out of my normal life and thrown onto some Hollywood red carpet. After that we had the wrap party with all the cast, production, all the dancers and choreographers. We had an incredible party and we obviously did a whole lot of dancing. It was amazing.

Nads: You’ve mentioned before that you didn’t love dancing at first…can you tell us about that?

Jeanine: I always loved dancing, but I hated that it made me feel so defeated toward the beginning of my lessons. I was so horrible, my teachers didn’t feel like putting in the effort because they knew how much work it would take to get me to a place that was anywhere near good. So it took me such a long time to find a teacher that was willing to work with me and was willing to put in all that work. And at nine, I finally found the two most amazing teachers in the world and they’ve spent every year since then just working with me and training me, and inspiring me, and brought me to a place, and a state – the Kodak theatre – that I never thought dancing could ever bring me. I have to say that I definitely came home crying a lot between the ages of six to nine…but my mom says she doesn’t know what it was, she had this gut feeling that she needed to keep me in dance and she needed to push me and that it would pay off one day

Nads: Did you and Brandon have a chance to talk afterwards?

Jeanine: Yes, Brandon and I have been friends for a real long time, we’re both from Miami, so I’ve known him for a couple years now and he’s such a nice guy on top of being one of the strongest dancers, which is obviously very evident in his muscles. He was so supportive and he’s so happy for me. Either way, right before she announced, they were like, well either way it’s a win for Miami.

Nads: You’ve mentioned you want to go into acting. What do you see in your future? TV, film, theater?

Jeanine: I’ve always done theatre since middle school, but towards my junior year of high school I fell in love with film and that’s one of the main reasons that I applied to L.A. schools and I decided I was moving out here is because there’s such an amazing … incredible film industry. So I hope to do films and I would love to do movie musicals because it incorporates so much dancing; I’m such a big fan of Chicago and Hairspray and all those amazing MGM films that … would be so amazing as well.

Nads: How sore are you from all of this? Any lingering injuries?

Jeanine: I’m lucky, I’m one of the few dancers that didn’t have any tear or broken bone or sprain this season, but I did have a lot of bruises and cuts. I’m a little bit clumsy, a little bit. So I tend to fall a lot and I actually have a really big scar on my right shin because of that group dance–which was the clown piece we did in a box with Ty Fiorio–I walked the rim of the box in the beginning of the dance and I missed a step and tripped and cut my shin on the box. So, I’m nursing that right now.

Nads: Did you like being in front of an audience of 3,000?

Jeanine: I absolutely loved it. We’re used to filming in front of an audience that’s at most 200 at CBS. So to be at that legendary stage, we were literally taking pictures by the stairwells because we were so excited, we were like, “This is the stairwell from the Kodak.” We were so happy. We were just loving every second of it, to be in front of an audience with over 3,000 people and it’s level upon level, and once you look up to that top balcony, all the way in the back is just – it was the most amazing feeling ever and to have that place filled up and screaming.

There you have it! Can’t wait for next season!