Ricki Lake Shares What Hairspray’s Tracy Turnblad Would Love About 2025 — Including Taylor Swift

Ricki Lake is thinking about one of her most iconic roles, as Hairspray’s Tracy Turnblad.

In a TikTok video posted April 28, Lake, 56, shed some light on what she thinks Tracy — the plus-size, extremely bubbly protagonist of the beloved movie-turned-musical-turned-movie — would like about the present. “As the person who's the O.G. Tracy Turnblad from Hairspray, you know, I thought it'd be fun to think about Tracy were alive today, what would she love here in 2025?” Lake said. 

Lake played the first iteration of Tracy in 1988’s Hairspray, directed by John Waters. Though the plot still revolved around music and dancing in Baltimore, it wasn’t actually a musical. That movie was adapted into the 2002 Tony-winning musical Hairspray, which starred Marissa Jaret Winokur. The stage show ran on the Great White Way until 2009. In 2007, the stage show was adapted into the next film Hairspray, starring Nikki Blonsky as Tracy. One more adaptation has also made it to the screen: 2016’s Hairspray Live!, which aired on NBC and starred Maddie Baillio as Tracy.

As for what Tracy would like, Lake said, “Eyelash extensions? Absolutely. Russian manicure. Tracy would love that.”

“Oh, and those Broadway restaurants where they sing, the waiters sing? Absolutely,” she continued. “That would be a winner for her, for sure.”

“For sure, she would be a Swiftie, of course,” Lake said. “I have a feeling she'd be living in West Hollywood. If she was out here in L.A., she would be out in the club getting down.”

In recent months, Hairspray has been a trending topic on TikTok, with fans recreating moments and dances, or just jamming out to the soundtrack. Earlier this April, Tayla Parx, who played Little Inez in the 2007 film, recreated her character’s viral dance to the song "Run and Tell That.” She wrote in the caption, “I heard yall were looking for me 🐣 haven’t done this dance since I was 13.” Parx, 31, is now a Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter.

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After Hairspray, Lake also starred in the Waters film Cry-Baby, released in 1990. From 1993 to 2004, she hosted an eponymous talk show. Reflecting on the show, she told PEOPLE in 2024, “It was a party. It was a blast, and that genre has changed so much. It's just not the same as it was back then, with all of these fragmented options available on TV and streamers. It's just a different time."

"I was 23 when they hired me and I filmed the pilot,” she said. “We went on the air when I was 24. The way I've always been, my entire career, since I'm 18 years old and did Hairspray is that I never really look at the big picture. I just jump in. Someone hires me, and they think I can do it? I don't really doubt myself.”