It was a great challenge to reconstruct Gypsy Rose Lee life, and my interviews with her sister [June Havoc] proved invaluable. It's not often that writers have access to living primary source material; this was the only person who experienced life on the vaudeville circuit with Gypsy during the 1920s, and who saw her perform at Minsky's Burlesque in the 1930s. She knew things that no one else could ever possibly know.

It was a great challenge to reconstruct Gypsy Rose Lee life, and my interviews with her sister [June Havoc] proved invaluable. It's not often that writers have access to living primary source material; this was the only person who experienced life on the vaudeville circuit with Gypsy during the 1920s, and who saw her perform at Minsky's Burlesque in the 1930s. She knew things that no one else could ever possibly know.

One of the biggest questions to me was whether or not Gypsy the person was capable of loving anyone or anything beyond Gypsy Rose Lee the creation, and even that was a conflicted, tortured relationship.

I felt differently about her [Gypsy Rose Lee] during every phase of the research and writing process. Often, I felt incredibly sorry for her; she had an extremely difficult childhood and a complicated 'to say the least' relationship with her family, her mother especially.

Female spies typically represented one of two extremes: the seductress who employed her wiles to manipulate men, and the cross-dresser who blended in by impersonating them.

I greatly admired Gypsy [Rose Lee] for being able to rise above her circumstances; I was terrified of her; I thought she was generous; I thought she was brilliant; I thought she was cruel.

When Gypsy was older, after she became Gypsy Rose Lee, I think she was both proud and slightly ashamed of her Seattle roots. She worked very hard to rid her voice of any trace of a local accent, cultivating an affected way of speaking that sounded as if she pinned the ends of her words.