Efforts to further career cost ‘Britney’ his job on Strip

By Jerry Fink

Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Britney Spears tribute artist Derrick Barry lost his job with the female impersonation revue “An Evening at La Cage” at the Riviera, but the 25-year-old entertainer sees the loss as an opportunity to further his career.

He’s in the running for one of the leads in “Auditing Richard Biggs,” a comedy that will be filmed in Louisiana next year, he says. He’s been contacted by a playwright in New York who is creating a musical legends revue for an international tour next year. “He wants me to close the show as Britney, a 10- or 15-minute set,” he says.

He’s still busy doing his Britney act, recently appearing in San Diego and as a special guest with ventriloquist Terry Fator at the Las Vegas Hilton.

On Thursday he’ll be among the Vegas entertainers who will perform in the 42nd annual Beaux Arts Ball, a fundraiser for Golden Rainbow, a nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting people living with HIV/AIDS in Southern Nevada. The hosts will be Stephanie Sanchez, lead singer of “Fantasy” at Luxor, and Bryan Cheatham, former lead vocalist for the Chippendales at the Rio and an “America’s Got Talent” semifinalist.

A stint as a contestant on “America’s Got Talent” led to Barry’s removal from “La Cage.” He gained nationwide publicity when he was among the first to be eliminated from the show earlier this year. He missed “La Cage” performances for auditions and for the appearance. “I think that caused some dissension among some cast members,” he says.

He returned to sit in the audience with other contestants for the finale of the TV series. The cameo meant he missed another performance of “La Cage,” and the show’s manager let him go Sept. 29.

“It was creating a lot of stress on the cast,” producer Karen Raider says. “They all would have loved to have taken time off to do other things. I finally said, ‘I have to let you go.’ ”

While he was with “La Cage,” she says, he was great. “He’s a good entertainer.”

Barry is confident of his future because of the reaction he received during his few minutes in the national TV spotlight. He says he has no regrets leaving the cast of one of the longest-running shows in Las Vegas.

“I look at my time with ‘La Cage’ as four years of drag college,” Barry says. “I learned from the best professors and instructors who have Ph.D.s in drag. I started out not knowing anything about it and I learned makeup and costuming and choreography and staging.”

If he wanted to pursue his goal of working in film, television and theater, Barry knew, he’d have to leave “La Cage” sooner or later.

“I knew this was my big break,” he says. “When I won a shot to compete I made sure they put my name out front: ‘Derrick Barry as Britney Spears.’ I didn’t want it to be just a Britney Spears impersonator. I wanted my name out there.”

Barry has been chasing stardom since growing up in Modesto, Calif. “I participated in every theater production the schools offered.” He was a theater major at California State University Stanislaus and at CSU Northridge.

He discovered his Britney Spears alter-ego on Halloween five years ago. A North Hollywood makeup artist transformed him.

“I was walking down Santa Monica Boulevard getting all of this attention,” he says. “People were screaming and stopping me.”

He wanted to recoup the $70 he’d spent on his costume, so he applied for a job as a Britney impersonator at Mickey’s, a gay nightclub in West Hollywood. He was hired on the spot. A few days later he heard Spears was appearing on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno.

“I went to the taping in costume and they filmed me in the audience and talked to me while they were interviewing her,” Barry says.

Much of his success has been based on luck. Chad Michaels, a former Cher in “La Cage,” was producing a drag show at Mickey’s and arranged for Barry’s audition with the Las Vegas production.

He was only 20 when he joined the cast in March 2004. Too young to enjoy the Vegas night life, Barry focused on developing his tribute act. “The most difficult thing for me was learning to walk in high heels.

“I will never lip sync again. Everyone in ‘La Cage’ lip syncs, but I can do Britney’s vocals.”

Barry says it was never his goal to be a drag queen.

“It still isn’t,” he says. “It’s a means to an end, a way for my name to be out there.”