Bailey Hanks

Hometown: Anderson, South Carolina

Currently: Living her dream of making her Broadway debut as Elle Woods, the perky, pink-obsessed Harvard law student in Legally Blonde. Hanks won the opportunity to replace Tony nominee Laura Bell Bundy on the MTV reality show Legally Blonde: The Search for Elle Woods.

What You Want: Hanks has always wanted to be a Broadway leading lady, but she had zero experience with the Great White Way before arriving in New York City via her very first plane ride! to participate in Legally Blonde: The Search for Elle Woods. How did she have such a specific dream? "My mom told me, 'When you want to be a famous person in musical theater, you're called a Broadway star,'" she says with a smile. Hanks took the info to heart and shared her ambition with anyone who would listen. "I look back at all my stuff from elementary school," she notes, "like when you fill out those little surveys on the first day of school—What's your name? What's your favorite pet? What do you want to be when you grow up?—and mine always said 'Broadway star.'"

Serious: The daughter of a pastor, Hanks got her first taste of the spotlight at the age of four when she performed a solo in church. "It was 'Jesus, I Heard You Had a Big House,'" she recalls. "It was really, really cute." She went on to perform in community theater productions of The Wizard of Oz, Bye Bye Birdie and Seussical. "My first big show was Gypsy; I was Baby June," she says. Her father performed alongside her as Uncle Jocko. "He stole the show!" In fact, Hanks attributes her precocious desire for the limelight to her father's influence. "My mom would never [perform]; she would be too shy or frightened," Hanks says. "My dad gets up in front of his congregation every Sunday and Wednesday. That's where I get that confidence and that bold personality to not be scared in front of people."

Every Day's Like an Open Door: Hanks heard about the MTV casting search from a fellow student at Coastal Carolina University. "She found it online and e-mailed me the link. I almost passed out!" Hanks' parents backed her decision to pursue the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. "My parents have been working just as hard as I have to get me where I am today," she says. Her family drove her to auditions in Nashville—a six-hour trip from Anderson—where she sang "I Still Believe" from Miss Saigon and "Good Morning, Baltimore" from Hairspray. She chose the latter because "I wanted to show them my fun, perky, Elle Woods side."

Pink Is Her Color: The young star didn't have to search very deep within herself to find her "Elle Woods side." A natural blonde with a Southern twang and a huge smile, she notes, "I drove a hot pink VW two years before the MTV show. This is who I am." Sitting in her girly PB Teen-decorated dressing room at the Palace Theatre, it's easy to believe her. Even Hanks' cell phone is pink.

Reality Bites: Hanks already knew she was the winner by the time the MTV series was broadcast, but she had to keep mum. "I watched it mainly with the girls from the show," she says, explaining that she was already living and rehearsing in New York at the time. "We all knew who won, so it wasn't difficult. If I had watched it with people back home, and I knew [the outcome] and they didn't, it would have been kind of tough. They'd see how things were edited, while I'd sit there going, "Oh god, that didn't happen that way." For example? "The feud between Cassie S. and me was very much exaggerated," she says. "We actually got along. All of us were extremely close. No one was catty or rude. We were competitive when we needed to be, but we were friends and supportive most of the time."

Sorority Sisters: Hanks is not the only graduate of The Search for Elle Woods to land a job on Broadway. Her runner-up, Autumn Hurlbert, plays one of the Delta Nu sorority sisters and understudies the lead. Is it hard to face her former rival on stage every night? "She's amazing," Hanks notes graciously, but the two aren't best friends. "We see each other more onstage than we do offstage, even though her dressing room is right beside mine." But Hanks is adamant that the relationship is far from cold. "It's refreshing to see a familiar face onstage. We went through everything together [during the reality show]. We have memories that no one else can share because we're the ones who went through it. It's bizarre, but it's kind of neat."

Omigod You Guys: Achieving one's dream at such a young age seems overwhelming, but Hanks says she's able to keep her wits about her because she's had a chance to release the energy and excitement throughout the process. On the other hand, she admits that even thinking of the moment she won leaves her "truly speechless." Her current goal is to continue to get comfortable and adjust to life in the big city, where she's sharing an apartment with other young performers in upper Manhattan. "Everything that's happened is starting to hit me now and starting to make me go, 'Wow, this is a lot! This is huge!' Everyone's like, 'Don't you feel like someone needs to pinch you?' And I'm like, 'Yes, but if this is a dream, I want to stay in it! I'm going to enjoy this as long as it lasts, so do not pinch me!"