Livin’ Lounge by Matt Springer
The Official Magazine’s first chat of many with the much-missed Andy Hallett, aka Lorne.

A dimly-lit bar. Like so many dimly-lit bars in the City of Angels, it’s a refuge for the hopeless, the desperate, the lost. But Caritas doesn’t just cater to luckless humans – it takes in plenty of inhuman customers as well, from demons to vamps and everything in between. Anyone with a mouth to slurp can belly up to the bar for a Tequila Sunrise, and anyone with a song to sing is welcome on its dingy stage, where creatures of the night massacre pop-rock standards of the past 30 years as violently as they’ve massacred their enemies.
    On this particular night, a slender figure clad in a horrific white polyester dinner jacket takes the stage, Ge surveys the crowd, the populace of rejects he’s face so many times before, each one carrying their own burdens and seeking release. He wipes a dollop of swear from his green-skinned brow, dips his head as a familiar opening piano riff fills the air. Then the Host sings.
    “At first I was afraid, I was petrified… I kept thinking I could never live without you by my side…”

And so the second season of Angel began. Not with a death-defying battle against the forces of darkness, but with karaoke. Since then, our fearless heroes have visited Caritas several times. Each time, the Host has been there too, dispensing his words of guidance.
    Andy Hallett is the actor who brings the Host to smarmy life, and if spending your days dressed in a Rat Pack get-up and singing Lady Marmalade tunes is your idea of a dream job, then he’s the luckiest guy in the world. Especially if, like Hallett, you’re a LaBelle fan.
    “My signature is ‘Lady Marmalade.’ I swear to God,” Hallett says. “I begged them to let me do that song. They’ll always think of songs, and of course you have to buy the rights to it. They had looked into it in the beginning of the show, and it just didn’t work out. But they eventually got it and let me do it, which I was so thrilled about, as outrageous as it sounds.”
    In speaking to Hallett, you hear the enthusiasm for the role dripping from his voice. This is his first acting performance anywhere – he’s previously focused solely on singing as a career, appearing in local Los Angeles night-clubs both as a solo cabaret act and in groups. But after auditioning three separate times for the role of The Host, Hallett won the chance to jumpstart his career with an acting debut on one of television’s hottest shows.
    “I feel so lucky to have this role,” Hallett gushes. “I know that a lot of my friends who are in the business always complain about the long hours. I never feel that way. I just feel like this crew and cast are so professional. Also, everyone’s really nice. They’re so laid-back and cool and wonderful.”
    Playing the Host hasn’t just given Hallett his big break in the entertainment world. It’s also given him an incredibly juicy debut part in which to sink his teeth. Dripping with the kind of cheap sentiment and schmaltz that’s pure Vegas, the Host rules his club with a velvet fist, always ready to help his patrons with a psychic reading even if they’re hopelessly tone-deaf. His appearance on-set is usually enough to reduce the typically-reserved Angel crew into a bunch of crooning maniacs.
    “The first scene we shot was the first scene of the first show of the season, and I had to do a really loungey version of ‘I Will Survive,’” Hallett recalls. “We were all screwing around between takes, belting it out in Gloria Gaynor style. Everyone was getting into it – the camera guys, the sound guys. Joss Whedon was there, and David Greenwalt, and they were like, ‘You realise that normally this set isn’t dancing and clapping?’ It’s not always like that – sometimes we have some low-down scenes in there, where there’s no music. But it’s usually a really good vibe.”
    In crafting his performance, Hallett had some big acts to follow. From the vintage Vegas stylings of Robert Goulet and Wayne Newton to Bill Murray’s savage Nick the Lounge Singer parody on Saturday Night Live, the Host is just the latest in a long line of sweat-drenched and desperate lounge performers. To create the Host, Hallett drew on more classic sources for his inspiration especially notorious lounge master Dean Martin.

“What I tried to do when I went in was to give it a little bit of Deano, but in a low-down, karaoke bar scene,” Hallett reveals. “I anticipated that when I went in, because it said in the script that it was a bar welcome to all, including demons, vampires and humans. I was trying to play it so it appealed to all those crowds.”
    Another big inspiration for Hallett was his good friend ‘Boots,’ a ‘KJ’ (slang for ‘karaoke jockey’ – we didn’t know those guys had a title, either) in Los Angeles. “He just got KJ of the Year,” Hallett reveals. “That’s all I kept thinking – ‘My friend is Karaoke Jockey of the Year. I can get stuff from him.’ He’s got a trophy and all this other stuff. They have this huge voting thing at all the karaoke bars, and they have this playoff at the Hollywood Park Casino. It’s totally nuts!”
    Besides actually winning the part, the biggest challenge in portraying the Host has to be the three hours a day in the make-up chair. Although there’s prosthetics covering his entire face and he has to contend with the horns protruding from his head, it’s actually the eyewear that is the most annoying.
    “The mask doesn’t bother me so much. It’s the contacts that bother me,” Hallett says. “I have  to wear these red contacts. I keep them in between takes, because it’s worse taking them out and putting them in. I’m such a baby about  them; they all tease me. I’ve never worn contacts before, so it’s taken me a while to get used to it.”
    As the overlord of Caritas, Hallett definitely has his own opinions on who has the top singing chops among those Angel cast members who’ve belted on the show. He gives his highest marks to Julie Benz and her whispery performance in this season’s ‘The Trial,’ but also has props for David Boreanaz.
    “He’s a better singer than they make him out to be,” Hallett explains. “They asked him to do it the first time, and he did it well. Then they said, ‘No, you’ve got to do it worse’ so he did it horribly. He butchered it. We were dying. Finally, he took a happy medium.”
    With the Angel Investigations crew separated from their boss and Drusilla and Darla on the prowl, it looks as though the services of the Host from Caritas will be required for some time. But if not, Hallett can always return to his hometown of Osterville, Massachusetts, and open up his own karaoke bar. He may not have psychic powers, but Hallett clearly knows how to hold a crowd in the palm of his hand.