Carisa Hendrix bills herself as a comedian and magician who’s “kinda famous on the internet.”
Wait, you don’t know her? Perhaps you know her character, Lucy Darling. It’s pretty likely that you’ve seen clips of this statuesque redhead in an evening gown on Facebook and Instagram, masterfully working the crowds at her full-house performances.
Hendrix says that Lucy has been “a low hum for a long time.” The character will celebrate her 10th birthday next July. In December 2024, Lucy’s first viral video hit the internet, and she’s been going strong ever since.
On Saturday, Nov. 7, Hendrix brings “Lucy Darling: You’re Welcome” to the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Providence.
Hendrix says she loves character work and has five or six characters in her head at a time. She recalls that shortly after she created Lucy, she was booked at the Bird Cage Theater at Knott’s Scary Farm. “I finally got it,” she said, and was expecting to perform her magic as well as her characters.
But when she got there, the organizers weren’t interested in her Halloween show. “They said, ‘Oh, yeah, that Lucy Darling thing that you do, can you just do that?’”
Hendrix grew up in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. “Most of my friends were farm animals and wheat.” She says she had “zero interest in performing as a kid.” She loved magic, loved solving the puzzle. “If you left me alone with a screwdriver and a toy, I was happy.”
She got involved in summer youth programs, where she met various performers and ushered at their shows. She learned circus skills and became entertainment director for the Fright Nights Haunted House, earning $50 a night to entertain in the carnival room. “I’m supposed to entertain, and I’m 16 years old.”
Hendrix had a variety of entertainment-related “part-time jobs to get me through school.” She got a degree in teaching but got nervous about what the “parents would think. I couldn’t drop performing.” She had gone from thinking of performing as a part-time job to “something I really enjoyed.”
Hendrix started wondering if teaching was her purpose in life. “I’m 21, and I spent this whole time assuming I’d be a teacher, and then I thought, nah! I’ll try to build a career in entertainment.”
She started working in a variety show with a friend. Hendrix hosted, working silently while others roasted the acts. “I would lean over to the others and whisper funny things. They finally said, ‘You have to be miked or be quiet.’”
She chose the former, and here she is, 20 or so years later, traveling the world as Lucy Darling. Watch her videos and you’ll notice an accent. “I’m a huge fan of the transatlantic accent,” she says, “from movies of the ’40s and ’50s.”
Hendrix calls it an idiolect — a way of speaking so distinctive it makes a person immediately recognizable, the way Jeff Goldblum’s does. She worked with the dialect coach from the movie “Fargo” to get the sound she wanted. “I could make decisions that are variations on the transatlantic. Keeping the sounds right, where is my mouth when I’m making the sound, is my oral posture correct.”
Most characters, Hendrix says, “have some vocal affectation. It helps me stay in character.” While she’s well known for her crowd work, she is careful to “say things with a certain level of kindness. Because I take risks, some people get offended. Usually not the person I’m talking with, but someone else in the room.”
More and more, Hendrix says, her show is not a show. She recalls seeing Steve Martin at the Bird Cage Theater a couple of years ago, and realizing he was no longer doing “his show.”
“He was hosting a Steve Martin-themed party,” she says. “I am hosting a Lucy Darling-themed party.”
The Veterans Memorial Auditorium presents “Lucy Darling: You’re Welcome” on Saturday, Nov. 7. Tickets and information at TheVetsRI.com.
