Diamond Crimson Blood
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Diamond Crimson Blood

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After competing as Miss New Hampshire in 1973’s Miss America, Badler made her acting debut on daytime television favourite One Life to Live. Like most actors though, she also had a pretty impressive knack for holding a tune. “Singing was the first thing I did when I was young actually. I sang in clubs when I was in university – I sang every weekend. I went to New York and sang, but then acting sort of took over and I stopped,” Badler recalls. And so, over the next few decades she managed to accumulate an IMDb profile longer than this article, most notably for her role as Diana in the cult sci-fi series V.

In the late ‘80s though, Badler came to Australia to film the TV resurrection of Mission: Impossible, fell in love with an Australian businessman and began her new life in Melbourne, for which she is ever grateful. “When I first moved to Australia I found it very difficult to find acting work, so I got back into singing again. [Moving to Australia] forced me to look at many aspects of my art and of my life. Living in LA, I would’ve gone along a particular path and I think it’s been fantastic that instead I’m here. It’s been an amazing journey, and now [music] has taken over my life, and it’s what I love.”

After rediscovering her greatest passion, Badler spent the intervening years on the live performance and cabaret circuits until moving into something she never envisioned, the recording studio. “I never thought that recording was what I wanted to do, but once I started I realised this is what I love most,” she admits. Working with Jesse Shepherd and Sir on her first two albums, The Devil Has My Double and Tears Again, she wanted to put even more of herself into her upcoming Diamond Crimson Blood, diving straight into the new world of songwriting. Badler explains, “It became very evident to me that you really do not have any authority with a band or with an audience until you start to write songs as well. [There was a] lack of power, until the songs were coming out of myself.”

And it is these more personal songs that will make up the essence of Diamond Crimson Blood the cabaret show. Turning predominantly electronic music into a live cabaret performance has been a process in itself; trying to find the right balance of electro and instruments while still keeping the music in tact. With music focused on topics like mortality and addiction though, cabaret does curiously seem to be the perfect stage for Badler’s stories. “I like dealing with dark themes, you know, regret, obsession, revenge. But some of the songs are still quite funny. There’s a bit of rapping, I do a lot of talking, a few poems, to try to make people understand the world that these songs exist in.” And as an actor, cabaret is a place where Badler feels at home and is comfortable exploring her on-stage persona. “I love to add elements that entertain people. When I go through my daily life I am one person, and when I perform I allow myself to be this other person; this other person that I need to express in order to exist.”

And alongside Dave Callan, Greg Fleet and a slew of burlesque dancers, both Badler and this other person are excited to help bring sexy back to the sorely under-utilised Docklands area as part of this weekend’s first Docklands Arts and Laughs festival.

BY KATE MCCARTEN