Bridget Everett is in Love

| 02 Mar 2017 | 03:43

Monday is date night for Bridget Everett and the love of her life. The rising star of stages and screens takes her little lady out to an intimate dinner, and then it’s back to their Upper West Side apartment to snuggle on the couch.

“I can’t believe it took me this long to get a dog,” says Everett. “Poppy’s enriched my life immeasurably. She turned my life around, and has shown me how to accept love unconditionally and how to give it.”

The bawdy, no-holds-barred, classically-trained singer has slowly parlayed her one-woman “alt-cabaret” act, beginning with Ars Nova’s At Least It’s Pink in 2007, into a meteoric rise. She’s performed at Carnegie Hall with Patti Lupone, HBO’s Aspen United States Comedy Arts Festival, The Adelaide International Cabaret Festival and The New York Comedy Festival.

The impetus to adopt arrived as she watched three of her closest friends grieve the loss of their dogs.

“It was hard to see, but in some weird way, I wanted to feel that way, too,” she says. “I wanted to love something, someone that deeply.”

Like many love stories these days, this one started online. Poppy was popping up all over the place — Petfinder, Social Tees, Toast Meets World on Instagram, where she was being fostered. Everett needed to meet this dog, and when she did, it was love at first sight.

“Poppy is a supermodel, no question,” says Everett. [See for yourself: @Poppy_Louise] “But her smile and sweet demeanor sold me instantly. When I went to visit her at her foster home, she greeted me at the door, smiling, and then fell asleep in my lap moments later. I came undone! Her bio said she was perfect and she is. She’s my queen.”

Just like that, the purebred Pomeranian from a backyard breeder became front and center in Everett’s life. She and the eight-year-old pup, whose full name is Poppy Louise Mandrell Everett, have been an item for the last two years. Poppy, the dog’s foster name, suited her perfectly so Mom simply added Louise Mandrell, her favorite of the Mandrell Sisters. Everett has even more inspired nicknames.

“I call her everything under the sun when we’re alone. Baby-sweetie-hearts-love-of-my-life-angel-love is just one,” she says.

Originally from Manhattan, Kansas — aka the Little Apple — Everett made her way to the Big Apple in the mid-1990s. She worked hard at her craft while slinging hash for twenty-five years, and now the world is finally discovering that the 44-year-old hyphenate has got range. Everett counts among her favorite singers/performers Barry Manilow, Julie Andrews, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, Carol Burnett, Dina Martina, Murray Hill, and Richard Pryor. The songs on her set list include the tear-jerking Gloria Steinem-inspired “I’ll Take You Home,” the explicit sing-a-long “What I Gotta Do,” and, new to her repertoire, a ditty Everett wrote for Poppy, which she often sings as an encore.

Some lyrics:

Sweet little sunshine

Angel of mine

You took my heart and broke it open wide

Oh little lady

How good life can be

Thank you for taking a chance on me

Poppy shows her Mom the feeling is mutual.

Says Everett: “She has a couple of doggie buddies at Joe’s Pub, but she’s happiest sitting next to her Mama, wherever we are.”

Love is love.

Catch Bridget Everett in the upcoming feature films Patti Cake$ and Fun Mom Dinner, as a recurring character in Lady Dynamite on Netflix, and live on tour. www.bridgeteverett.net