Real Dolls

See more photos of the Pussycat Dolls

Back when PCD were an L.A. burlesque troupe with residencies at the Viper Room and the Roxy, Carmen Electra, Pam Anderson and Christina Applegate—who used to room with the group’s founder, Robin Antin—took on gigs as honorary Dolls. In 2002, Gwen Stefani brought Interscope Records honchos Jimmy Iovine and Ron Fair to a show and, soon after, the label signed them, shaking up the personnel and re-envisioning PCD as a pop sextet. Their 2005 debut melded slithery, contemporary R&B to the sort of single entendres a housewife might say to her pool boy in a soft-core porno. It went on to sell 7 million copies worldwide.

The question eternally on Antin’s mind is how to keep “growing the brand.” There’s still a PCD troupe that dances at the Pussycat Dolls lounge at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas; a new lounge opens in late September in West Hollywood. “I want to get Victoria Beckham to perform at the opening, people are so fascinated with her,” Antin says. She oversees all things PCD, so she’s here at the photo studio. A lingerie line, a denim line, a CW reality show, lounges—those have come easy, too. But here’s a taller order: Each of the girls wants to go solo. “It’s what we’ve been waiting for,” Kimberly says. “We all want individual success.”

Doll Domination, each Pussycat gets her own song. But as recent experience reveals, it’s not easy to pull a Gwen and cut loose from the pack. Last year, Nicole Scherzinger was supposed to launch her own solo career with Her Name Is Nicole—after two singles flopped, the project was shelved. “I decided to hold off,” Nicole says, although that decision was obviously made for her. An elemental rule of showbiz is, if you trip, keep smiling. As she recalls her solo stumble, she’s positively beaming: “I didn’t want to lose the momentum of the PCD. That train’s been moving so fast.”

“It’s not that she didn’t have good songs,” says will.i.am, the Black Eyed Peas mastermind who produced the song “Beep” on PCD’s first album. “The reason that Nicole didn’t take off was bad planning. No one knew Nicole was going to put out a record, because they didn’t develop her as an individual when the Pussycat Dolls were at their height, the way we did with Fergie.” In other words: no humps, no glory.

“We want the world to get to know them separately, but the bottom line is that the fans see what they want to see,” says Antin, 47, who used to dance with the Dolls but gave up the spotlight when they started recording. Recently, Antin has been offering her charges a new kind of advice: spiritual.

“We’ve all gotten into this book, Many Lives, Many Masters. It’s about reincarnation, finding your soul mate, and people who are in your lives for a reason,” Antin says. The Doll world is a closed one—12-hour workdays leave little time for civilian friends, and the group celebrates birthdays and
holidays together—meaning they take all this “for a reason” stuff very seriously. “I think we all knew each other in a different life,” Melody says. Evidence for this includes: She and Ashley each play with their hair the exact same way, and a psychic once confirmed their eternal bond to Jessica.

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