Brandi Burkhardt
ONE OF Brandi Burkhardt's greatest passions is travel. Even at such a young age, she probably has more frequent-flier miles than Brad and Angelina, having checked off Norway, Turkey, Egypt and Greece on her destination wish list, but I bet she never thought she'd end up in Harmony.
Where is Harmony, you ask? It's a picturesque New England town where things go bump in the night, where eye of newt is the daily special, and where men with impeccable abdominal muscles fall overboard and are rescued by mermaids.
But don't call your travel agent just yet - Harmony isn't real; it's the setting of NBC's daytime drama Passions.
Burkhardt plays Siren, a naive young woman who has only known life as a mermaid but finds herself having to adapt to life on land. After saving Miguel Lopez-Fitzgerald (played by Adrian Bellani) from drowning, Siren turns up in Harmony now a biped, having to learn how to walk and do chores the rest of us humans dread like making the bed. No one in town knows her secret, which is hard to keep because, as Burkhardt explains, "she's very honest, and she'll come out with something, and then she has to backtrack and cover it up." What she likes about her character is: "She's a free spirit. Since she is not of the human world, it gives you a lot of latitude to explore different situations ... and she has a certain value system that is obviously different, so it comes out and it shocks the other characters in neat ways - she's always provoking something."
Siren is actually a creation of Endora the witch, played by adorable blond toddler Nicole Cox. Burkhardt was a little nervous about how Cox would react when she first saw her in her costume: "They started my character with Nicole having a Little Mermaid doll ... and she wasn't really interested in the mermaid. I was nervous because when I was in my tail, I thought she was going to be scared or not interested, but she was fascinated by it. When I got my feet finally, she called me 'broken mermaid.'"
ACCOMPLISHED VOCALIST
Burkhardt is also familiar with another kind of harmony -- she's an accomplished vocalist and theater actress, having attended the University of Maryland School of Music and New York University's Tisch School for the Arts. As Burkhardt explains: "I love singing. That's my other passion." She recently performed in the First National Tour of Frank Wildhorn's Jekyll & Hyde in Concert and will be featured on the upcoming CD of the original cast recording Jekyll & Hyde: Resurrection. The multitalented Burkhardt is also writing and recording a solo album, which she says has a pop-folk flavor.
With so many stars showcasing their vocal talents on their soaps these days, hopefully it is just a matter of time before Siren becomes the Singing Mermaid.
