BIO
Emily
Wagner might have been born and raised in New York City,
but it is Los Angeles where she has embraced her true Diva
destiny.
She graduated from Vassar with a degree in Fine Arts and
spent her junior year studying at the prestigious and rigorous
New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.
During her senior year, she reveled in fantasies of going
on to the Whitney Program for postgrad, or to Yale and receiving
her MFA.
But Emily liked to dance.
New York City club life was Emily's greatest seductress
since having hit the red carpets of Studio 54 at the age
of 13. She was crazy about music and summer internships
during college involved working for MTV and the rapper Ice-T's
management company, Rhyme Syndicate. Then it occurred to
her, becoming the first "white, female rapper,"
may be the ultimate art statement. She got to work on her
rhymes, mixing records on the Technique turntables her parents
bought her for a college graduation gift. Her paints and
canvases soon became dust receptacles as her dreams of pop
star diva-dom catapulted her into a new direction. MTV came
calling, she performed live on stage and was called upon
to be in several hip-hop music videos, such as LL Cool J's
"We¹re jingling Baby." It was the early 90's.
Emily was 21 and already experiencing the bling bling.
As a testament to her devotion to the hip-hop scene Emily
had a gold star bonded to her tooth and anointed herself
with a nickname a friend had given her in college, "Pandora."
She was now an official fixture on the nightclub circuit,
"club kid" name and all. She fell in love with
The Duke of Denmark, a Danish hip-hop DJ, already a legendary
player in the NYC hip-hop scene. She begged him to produce
her first song. Soon enough they fell in puppy hip-hop love
and eloped in the basement of the nightclub Mars. Emily
soon found her way into nightclub promoting and DJ management,
leaving the rapping up to her favorites, KRS One, Chuck
D, Slick Rick, De La Sol, Stetsasonic, etc. She went on
to run the promotions of some of the hottest clubs in New
York, and hosted her own radio for Japan called Planet Radio,
a live broadcast of the hottest hip-hop and house DJs of
the time, such as Red Alert, Funk Master Flex, Duke and
Clark Kent, etc. She helped DJ Duke launch Power Music Records,
which went on to become a preeminent label in the early
and mid-90s, infamous for releasing Duke¹s sultry deep
house tracks.
But something was amiss. Emily was so busy promoting other
people's careers (such as hiring a then 19-year-old Moby
for his first ever DJ gig!) that she neglected the vast
creativity of her inner-Divette. She watched as her older
sister and brother were living out their creative dreams:
Maggie making the audition rounds as an actress in New York
and Andrew laboring over his graduate thesis films as a
director for his pending Master's degree at the American
Film Institute.
Emily missed performing. Her entire childhood was spent
as a professional actress from the age of 6 years on. She
had given up show-biz in high school in an attempt to have
a more well-rounded view of the world.
On a fluke her sister sent her on a commercial audition
and she booked it. Then, while in Los Angeles attending
the premiere of the film "For the Boys" directed
by her uncle, Mark Rydell, she happened upon an audition
for a student film at the American Film Institute and won
the role. She flew back to L.A., shot it and the performer
in her was re-ignited.
She immersed herself in her acting studies, working daily
with the famous coach Susan Batson. She left her husband
and "Pandora," The Microphone Explora in New York
and moved to Los Angeles.
She befriended French actress Julie Delpy and together they
co-starred and wrote a short film, "Blah Blah Blah."
They went on to several prominent festivals with it: Sundance,
Toronto, Telluride, etc. They found themselves pitching
pilots to MTV, NBC, ABC and HBO based on the film and their
adventures. They went on to make a digital feature, inspired
by the Dogma filmmakers of Denmark called "Looking
for Jimmy," and that too went on to have an impressive
festival run. While rehearsing the as yet unaired MTV pilot
"Singled Out," before getting fired for not having
large enough breasts (and Jenny McCarthy filling her shoes,
or bra, that is), she auditioned for a one-line role on
an also as-yet unaired pilot, called "ER." That
one day turned into 10 years and enabled Emily to allow
her creativity to find it¹s several shapes and forms.
Over the years she continued to write, produce and act in
her own films such as "Counting" and "South
Main," two more ambitious shorts that hit the festival
scene. Julie, Emily's brother and herself shot another digital
film called "Careful." She was on the panel for
the AFI Film Festival's digital seminar in 2000.
During this time Emily was also actively pursuing her art.
She found show business to be very limiting creatively unless
she was making her own films. Making artwork soon became
the most fulfilling of all her creative avenues. She rented
an art studio and started having shows around town, finding
herself amid the bubbling art scene of Los Angeles.
Emily still plays paramedic Doris Pickman on "ER,"
now in it's 10th season but only pursues acting when asked
to be in projects. This summer her entire family acted and
produced a film called "The Talent Given Us."
Emily starred in it and acted as assistant director to her
brother Andrew who wrote and directed it.
This past spring her drawings were in a show at Mixture
Contemporary Art in Houston, the Dan Silverstein
Gallery in NYC and the Scope Art Fair at The Standard in
downtown Hollywood. In October Emily will show new work
in the project room of Chinatown's Acuna-Hansen
Gallery. She is also hosting and doing performance
art with Cabaret
Voltaire, a DaDa-inspired weekly Cabaret.
Oh, and Emily also teaches a hybrid Yoga-Dance-Strengthening
class at the
Diva-owned "Swerve"
called Yoga Booty Sculpt. In 2002, Emily bought herself
a set of Technique 1200's and started DJing around town.
Things have somehow truly come full circle.
