There’s no one quite like Cyndi Lauper, that’s for sure. The pop icon turned the eighties on its head with her anthems of feminine empowerment, one of the first pillars of an MTV generation that would come to be defined by bright colors, loud music, and a “we’re not gonna take it” attitude, Twisted Sister-related or otherwise. She became a music legend exactly for those ideals, and even after forty years in the business, she isn’t going anywhere any time soon, continuing to be the bombastic sensation that proved that “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

Now, forty years after her debut album hit the charts, she’s headed to the silver screen for Prime Video’s newest project, The Horror of Dolores Roach. A Sweeney Todd-inspired tale of love, revenge, and accidental cannibalism, the series is one of a number that Lauper’s participated in over the years, on a resume that also includes The Simpsons, Bones, and Magnum P.I. Lauper is one of a host of zany characters that populate the series, a private investigator who moonlights as a Broadway usher because it’s her “passion”. (Do I smell a Kinky Boots reference? Or is that just the empanadas?) She’s easily the highlight of the series, alongside star Justina Machado, and never loses her unique, iconic spark for a second.

In this interview, we broke down how she got involved in The Horror of Dolores Roach, and what motivates her to take the various acting roles she’s dabbled in over the years. She also explained her process for writing original music for the show, and lavished immense praise on the show’s creative team, including showrunner Aaron Mark.

Check out the full interview (edited for clarity) below, and stream The Horror of Dolores Roach on Prime Video.

Image via Prime Video

RELATED: Justina Machado Channels Her Inner Sweeney Todd in ‘The Horror of Dolores Roach’ Trailer

You’ve done a little bit of TV and movies across your career. Obviously, your focus is mostly on music, but what does it take for a project like The Horror of Dolores Roach to really pull you in? What piques your interest in acting specifically?

CYNDI LAUPER: Well, this story has a landscape of wonderful characters, and it is so much fun to play a character and create one. This was a really interesting project because one, Aaron Mark…he was a fan of mine, I didn’t even know, and they wrote me this letter, and I read the script that they sent and I thought that the writing was so strong, and it was funny and it was scary, and it had all kinds of elements in it. Then, when I got there, there was so much diversity in this space with all these diverse, extremely creative people. I got to work with Justina [Machado] and I think that she’s a really terrific actress.

It was a lot of fun for me to create Ruthie throughout the whole series of these wonderful characters with wonderful actors, and I think that to be a part of that was pretty thrilling and nice. You’re not even…I mean, you’re working, but when it’s like that you turn into Flipper for somebody because it was so great. And the technology, the way they lit and edited, and how they used film because, you know, film has moved ahead so much and keeps moving ahead. To watch it, to stand back and then watch the guy editing as we go, I was just like, “Wow!” This was really something, and I think the end result was really beautiful.

Yeah, it’s a gorgeous show.

LAUPER: And it’s got real-looking people in it. That’s the other thing that I really, really enjoy. The director for my episodes was fantastic. [Hiromi Kamata is] Japanese-Mexican, and she was fantastic. To watch her work and watch a DP, you just get to see so much. I take those projects…I mean, I won an Emmy for Mad About You, but again, really, really wonderful writing. When people can write a character that you can embrace that sounds like all of the dialogue really was just language originating in your brain… it was so fun. And this is… [she laughs] It’s a strange thing. It’s a little scary, it’s a little funny, and just to go on that roller coaster ride with Dolores, it’s really compelling and funny, and to me, it had a little bit of everything I love. Creating the character was so much fun, and I shopped for her. The wardrobe person that I was working with, he was great and we actually went shopping together to find different things.

When I was writing Kinky Boots and I was working on Kinky Boots in the theater, I spent a lot of time like a theater rat in the theater — sitting in the corner, sitting on the floor, sitting in the orchestra, sitting all the way up, sitting on either side of the theater all the time, and became really close to the ushers. Actually, I don’t know how many people really think of this, but the ushers are also a part of the show, you know? Well, [it was] in my case for Ruthie, I think Ruthie had a following. People like to go see Ruthie too. I based my look on the people. Probably not so much the ones at the [Al Hirschfeld Theatre], the Hirschfeld was all black, but I think in Chicago they had those burgundy blazers, and I thought, “Oh, man, and gray hair!” Because gray and burgundy actually match really nicely.

I had a blast doing it. Aaron and all the people around who were part of the creative team, they made you feel so welcome. They welcomed your ideas, and you really were creating with them. It checked all the boxes for today. It had diversity, it had people talk to you if you had to do a [pressing] scene to see if you were okay, and teach you how to do certain things. It was really great, really, really great. It’s one of those shows you could just continue– I’m a binger. I’ll binge a show, so it’s kind of perfect for me. [she laughs] I get to see, “Okay, what’s happening?”

Image via Prime Video

I will say, I binged the entire show in one afternoon, so it definitely has that potential.

LAUPER: Yeah, I know! It’s one of those shows, you know? And it’s scary and then you’re laughing. It’s like, “Oh my god!” There were some times I was crying, it made me sad. But I just think [it’s] fantastic and, my god, there are so many wonderful actors, Marc Maron and the woman that plays his girlfriend is amazing. I mean, do you think so? And how about the lady in the laundry? And the one from Kim’s Convenience, did you see, [Jean Yoon]?

I did, yeah!

LAUPER: She was fantastic. She had all these elements to her that were just… I would be watching her off-camera because she’s so interesting. I just thought the way they cast it was so great because it was really interesting, didn’t you when you were watching it?

It was fascinating.

LAUPER: That’s what I thought. I was like, “Wow!” I love that stuff. You know, that kind of goes back to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” I wanted everybody in because that feels like home because I’m a New Yorker, and this is a New York story too. He set it in [Washington Heights].

You also wrote a song for the finale of this show, and you’ve obviously written music for other projects — you’ve done The Goonies, you did all the music for Kinky Boots. When you’re writing something for a TV show or a movie or a stage musical, is that any different from writing things that are strictly for an album that you’re putting out? Do you get carte blanche for that, or are you working with people to give you some guidance?

LAUPER: Well, if you’re working on a movie for somebody, you really wanna get into the director’s brain and give them everything they need sonically and emotionally as the storyteller-singer. With this, I was sitting there, and I said, “Hey, do you have a song for this spot?” And they were like, “No, we don’t have that.” And I said, “Well, I could write one for you.” And they were like, “Would you?” And I was like, “Hey!” So because I was part of that process, I kind of knew about Dolores, and I just heard in my head that it should be like that because that’s the emotionality of “what the hell is going on??”.

I wrote it with Ben Hopkins. They were in a band, PWR BTTM, they are just a really talented guitar player. Ben plays all the guitars and the bass on it, and I got my friend, Shawn Pelton, who is a fantastic drummer, to do it. We recorded it at The Hit Factory, and then we mixed it maybe at The Hit Factory, I don’t know. But I found this really great place in New York City that is a great mastering place, and the guy’s name is Fred Kevorkian. He had equipment that is not all digital — analog, right? So after we’re done, he put the song through analog, like tape compression, but not the fake one, the real one, the one we always used to use before everything went digital and then everybody said, “Oh no, it’s the same!” You think it’s the same, but I’m telling you, it’s not the same at all. So sonically, I love new technology, but there is some old technology, especially sound-wise, that I thought was better, and that for this particular song was much better. It really, really worked.

The story was fun, so I wanted to tell the story but also capture the fact that it’s scary, it’s edgy, but it’s also a little funny. Because I guess the tragedy, it’s like a Sweeney Todd thing, you know? When you go into one of those Sweeney Todd kinds of empanada places, I would just suggest a vegetarian kind! [laughs] But I think that the whole genre of this is really interesting. They have a palette of a lot of wonderful, wonderful characters in this story, and they got some really wonderful actors to portray these characters. Justina Machado was right on top, she was fantastic. She really was.

I think I lucked out to be a part of that group. It’s a wonderful, creative group, and Aaron Mark is a fantastic guy, but along with Aaron is his partner [Dara Resnik]… They’re really great. You have all these great people; Daphne Rubin-Vega, Jason Blum, Chris McCumber, Jeremy Gold, Chris Dickie from Blumhouse, GloNation Studios, and also Roxann Dawson, who also directed the pilot. These people together, it just was one of those great creative explosions. It’s kind of like when I did Kinky Boots; I always said this was like the perfect storm. I think that The Horror of Dolores Roach is kind of like the perfect storm. All these people came together, the writing, the visuals, the way it was produced, it was really, really terrific.

The Horror of Dolores Roach is streaming now on Prime Video.