Janet Fitzgerald
Appearances
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
to break it down and be raw and real and present because they're still teaching from whatever method they've been teaching all these years and it's dry and boring. And so it takes a long time for me to undo an old dog and very little time for me to create a new hot puppy.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
Finally, Julie said, I'm going to bring you to New York. I'm going to put you up for a couple of weeks, you and your girlfriend. I'll fly you out here. I'll pay you whatever you need to make. And she said, I'm going to bring you to New York. And let's just try that. And then I'll make you a final offer. If you don't take it, I'll leave you alone.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
And I was like, honey, we're going for Christmas to New York City because I had no intention. By the way, Julie was an agent. She doesn't take no for an answer and she gets everything she wants, period. That's all.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
Tracy, my girlfriend, and I came to New York. We were greeted in the street, and she gave me keys to an apartment and a bottle of Stag's Leap red wine. And I was like, this is great. This is a good start. And I don't recall now where that apartment was, but I do know it was a walk-up. Very disturbing for this Los Angeles person. I don't know if it was a three or four flight walk up. Okay.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
I'm not even used to walking. We don't walk in Los Angeles. You get in your car, you circle 20 times before you decide to leave because there's not a closer parking place and there's no laundry. So I'm like lugging my sweaty shit down the street to the local laundromat. My feet hurt. It's raining. I'm freezing. I'm also fat.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
And she goes, OK, how about we do this? How about I just I pay you what I agreed to pay you. I'll back you off to about six a week. And I know that you train people. Would you mind working with some instructors? So I met with a small group of instructors, which is where I met Claire Veronica Walsh, this new budding instructor that they were trying to promote. And she was she was full of fire.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
I mean, like it was wild just to be in the same room with her.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
I think she was about 18, and she wasn't getting good feedback. And I was like, okay, let me see what you got here. What's this playlist? And she goes, well, I have like 20 songs. And I'm like, why would you have 20 songs? She goes, well, I have 10. But I have a backup in case something doesn't work. I'm like, first of all, don't ever do that. Okay.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
I need you to sit at home, light a candle, pray, meditate, put this set list together. And that is what you'll be using. And if it's not working, then you're not doing something right. Okay. So let me see this again. Look to the playlist. I go take that out, move this here, move this here, move that here. Go teach that. She calls me and says, someone just gave me like the lottery numbers.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
Claire and I fall in love with each other, meaning like sisterly love, not actually like girlfriend love, but just like she feels like my mini me. Like I've never met a small me before. It was wild. So she says, I've always wanted to move to Los Angeles. She goes, can I come? And I said, yeah, you just come to Los Angeles with me. I'll get you a job.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
So I have a couple meetings with Stacey Griffith, Julie, Elizabeth, whatever. And they're trying to talk me into staying. And I'm like, listen, I got all kinds of things I want to do. One is I'm going to get a warehouse in Culver City and I'm going to get a church choir on Sundays. And I want to produce Moulin Rouge on a bike. And I'm going to have aerial artists coming from the ceiling.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
And I'm painting this picture and they're looking at me like I'm insane. Julie goes, I'll let you do it here.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
I'm so proud of you girls. You're amazing. Let me know if you need anything. I'm going back to Los Angeles. And she says, well, what can I do for you to make you stay?
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
And would you believe she said yes? And she made that happen. I think she just threw me that money because she wanted to take my class and like it was part of the deal. And I said, because I need to be able to work with people like Claire. I need the next level of this. I need to be able to train people to do what I do and to help people be able to deliver this.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
So we have auditions and Julie and I are in the room with the clipboards, right? And Julie doesn't ask me anything about curriculum, what we plan on doing, you know, anything. And I just start hanging out with these kids. We go out to dinner. We go to yoga. They come to my house.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
We sit on the floor for hours at a time talking about how to spiritually prepare to put these mini pieces of artwork together, these little experiences.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
At the time, they never even asked me when they would be done. I swear to you, I think we're sitting on the floor talking for about six months.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
Like I'll never forget this one time, Danny Coppell, who was basically a magician on a bike. I mean, you've never seen anything like this guy teach. It was dinner and a show. It was like lights and water. And like, you know, you'd look up at one point and you don't even see Danny get off the bike. And all of a sudden he's crawling like a cat. along the handlebars of the second row.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
You know what I mean? He was just like, it was unbelievable. Julie used to say, I don't take his class because I'll be up for like several weeks trying to figure out how he did it.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
And Danny, through the whole training, never said a word to me, just sat there with his little feathered hair. never really said a word. His music choices were very odd, you know, like Bjork and like things like that. And I'm like, okay, Danny, we're gonna need some music that someone knows at some point. So I'm standing there watching Danny teach his first community ride.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
And I'm like, oh boy, how's this gonna go down, right? All of a sudden, right around the third song, he gets off his bike. And it's They Don't Really Care About Us by Michael Jackson. And he starts to stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp. People are screaming now. He does a high kick and a Michael Jackson spin. And the whole room blows up. And I text Julie, a star is born.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
He got the worst feedback from every studio. The worst feedback. He's homoerotic. Don't relate to his music. It's too much for us. We don't like it. We don't relate to it. We don't like the look of it. Like everything you can imagine. She pulls me into the office. What are you going to do with this? And I'm like, no, no, you have to trust me. This is a star, Julie. You have to trust me.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
I swear to you, do not get rid of this kid. And that, by the way, this is back in the day that I'm their only mother. There is no training department. It's just me. It's just me. So I've got everybody. on my cell phone and they're texting me constantly. Can I jog to this? Should I climb to this? What can I open to this? You know, like I'm their mother.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
And so I get called in the office and she goes, I'm going to send this young man to Scarsdale. And I go, oh, Julie, don't do it. Please, please don't do it. Don't don't do it. You know, that's like death.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
So I said, please don't do it. She goes, I'm sending them to Scarsdale and we'll see what happens. Well, I'll tell you what happened. Those women in Scarsdale had never seen anything quite like that. And he blew up Scarsdale. to be a giant star. People are laying down the big bucks to get into this class and he is a superstar in Scarsdale. Now here's where Julie is fucking brilliant.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
And the heart of the company was programming because she was an agent. She knew what color the hair should be, how to change the outfit, what they should wear, where they taught, what time they taught, who was taking that class. And she was a pro at it. It was like it was brilliant watching her.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
She plucks Danny out of Scarsdale and puts him in the opening of Union Square. And I mean to tell you, within three months of that studio opening, people were in the hallway trying to touch him like they were reaching for the Beatles. And he's like running from back there into the studio. I mean, like, it's insanity.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
And he blows up into this just like this giant thing that none of us really even understood. Danny had his boyfriend at the time riding the boyfriend bike front row. And Danny, I'm telling you, he was a magician. You never saw him do anything with his hands. Lights would go on and off, but you never saw him flick the switch, you know?
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
And oftentimes he was so strong, he had these giant thighs, like dancer thighs, that he couldn't even use his arms. He would just be like, arms out to the side, like flying to the side. And he's like running out of the saddle in the air with the lights changing at the same time. Choreography, one leg out, floating around, like, you know, whatever. So he flips the switch somehow. None of us saw it.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
Somehow has his water bottle. Remember, we used to have the smart water with the lids. So he has this smart water in between his thighs, which we never saw. And he comes up for the run, squeezes his inner thighs together, and it shoots all over the boyfriend's face. just like comes all over his face. The room is screaming, losing their minds.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
So you've got all these divas that started the industry and then you've got these new budding... divas, right? We're giving them the keys to the kingdom because we've taught them this method and now SoulCycle is blowing up and you can't get into these classes and people are losing their minds. So instructors are getting off the bike, taking off their shirts, shooting everybody with water.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
Every class is like going to some wild concert. The stronger the riders got, the stronger we all got. It was like feeding each other. And a lot of the instructors partied hard. I mean, partied hard. So the young ones would stay out all night doing God knows what, a lot of drugs. And then coming in, popping an Adderall, just trying to keep it together.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
And then getting on the bikes, spinning a million miles an hour. And it was a little bit out of control. Part of it...
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
was the charm to be honest with you to see claire walking in smelling like cigarettes with her pantyhose in a big gash hole in the side she's got a fur coat on and like god knows where she's been all night and she just like walks in and like throws her fur coat down and just like fucking nails class like she's a superstar
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
It was the most devastating thing that's ever happened to me in my life. I went to Utah for Christmas by myself to hike and go to a spa. And Julie texted me and said, Claire just taught the best class of her life.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
And before that class, Claire had texted me and said, Hey, do you think I can open with Lana Del Rey born to die? Or is that too much of a downer? I'm probably gonna start to cry. So this was the Friday before Christmas. And I said, you can play whatever you want, Claire. Go ahead and open with Born to Die. And that was her last class.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
The next day I get a text from Julie and Julie says, hey, have you heard from Claire? And I said, no. And she goes, she didn't show up for her class. And I said, oh, shit, I'm sorry. She probably partied too hard. I said, let me handle this. So I call her and I say, hey, listen, I know you've been messing up and I don't want you to worry about it. Nobody's going to fire you.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
We just want to make sure you're OK. OK. I'll take care of you. I'm going to protect you. I just need to know you're OK. No answer back. Eventually, they ask me, where's her apartment? Where is she staying? So they found out where her apartment was. And Danny Coppell and Lori Cole went with the police and they found her dead in her apartment.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
When I found out about it, her sister called me. That's how I found out about it. And I had a nervous breakdown in Utah and barely got home. I really had felt like part of me died. She was like, it was like me. She was like, I don't know how to describe it. It wasn't even, it was beyond sister. It was beyond lover. It was, we were each other's everything.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
after a lot of healing, because none of us even thought we would even be able to teach again. I mean, devastated.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
I said it's time to do Moulin Rouge and we'll do it as a charity event. And we'll raise money for the Lower East Side Girls Club because her mom wanted that. And she wanted to help girls with eating disorders because Claire suffered with bulimia and body image, you know.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
So I had all the instructors come to my house and we all watched Moulin Rouge together, which was one of mine and Claire's favorite movies.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
It was so beautiful. All of us rehearsing together and like dancing together, singing together and people riding bikes. And it was wild. And we raised a lot of money and it kind of all helped us heal a little piece of that grieving that we had for Claire.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
So we got all dolled up and we all had our SoulCycle gear on. It was just a vibe. It was like the end of an era and there's this crazy new chapter and everyone was there taking photos.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
SoulCycle has opened in New York City, the very first studio fitness of its kind. And Julie's here trying to like sell to these women who are going like, I can get all of this at a gym. Why am I coming to this back alley, stinky, small little studio?
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
So these women did not have an easy time of it, trying to sell people on it. And she began to email me and try to recruit me. And her and Elizabeth would fly into Los Angeles and take class. And we'd go to Earth Cafe down the street and have breakfast. And they would try to talk me into coming. And every time I'd say no.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
When I got here, Julie and Elizabeth signed me up to take Ruth's class. I had no idea at the time that they were on the rocks or anything was going south. I just knew that the girls were in business together. Remember, Janet was Julie's muse back in L.A. at Body and Soul. Julie had told me that Ruth's idea of staffing was that they should just really comb the United States.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
To find the biggest and the best instructors and bring them to New York City because she didn't really feel this is hearsay. But according to Julie, Ruth didn't feel like she could train someone just to be a great instructor and that you need to go out and find the greatest. That's part of it. We had a very different concept in how to create an instructor. And I benefited from that.
Cult of Body & Soul
2. "A Star Is Born"
So when she went to Flywheel and I said, I can train anyone. Matter of fact, I'd rather train some creative little magical unicorn at the front desk than I would ever take some sloppy leftovers in the fitness industry that they've taught everything. You know what I mean? I don't want that person because they don't know how...
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
I'm bringing a bunch of people. I don't want my regulars pushed out of this. I need you on a bike that morning. Do you understand me? Phones were flying off the hook. Everyone signed up. It sold out for the first time. Only Andrea and Debbie ever did it.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
I woke up that morning to teach, and I'm going to make sure that I knock this so far out of the park, there's no way that anyone will ever miss another Sunday. They showed up. We turned people away. And I carefully curated the whole thing. We rattled the walls of that place. And there was never a Sunday that didn't sell out like that again.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
Because I knew I had the goods, but nobody else, do you know what I mean? I was like, I know I can deliver, but I got to have the people there and I got to have the hype.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
Now there's press being written about me. Now there's people in the parking lot trying to pay people to give them their bike. There's people that are fighting for front row bikes. There's like articles about like class and like. The guru this and the guru that, like it just blows up. And then all of a sudden you couldn't get in Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
Then you couldn't get in Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. All of a sudden you can't get in Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You can't get in my class.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
The locker room bathroom was carpeted. The nastiest carpet you've ever seen in the world with stains all over it that looked like perhaps the toilet had overrun several times. The studio itself was also carpeted at the time. And that was, as you can imagine, very smelly and nasty. We had a mic stand and the sound system was like floor to ceiling. It was this giant thing with these crazy speakers.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
I mean, it was so loud. It's amazing any of us can hear at all. The bikes were pretty rickety and the place was pretty nasty. I mean, it was a freestanding building with all of these celebrities. Every celebrity you can imagine in Los Angeles spun in that building. Nicole Kidman, Jodie Foster, Alanis Morissette. I mean, just the list could go on and on and on.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
Again, I just want to reiterate the nastiest, smelliest, broken down piece of shit building. It's very unattractive. They did continue adding more and more and more and more bikes because we were like bursting at the seams, you know, and all of us were living the high life thinking we were the hot shit. When I left, it was a big deal. It was a big, big deal.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
It was about soul searching. It was about spirituality. It was about going deeper. It was about the next level. You have to understand what year it was, right? Because we opened in May of 99. So looking like a sushi restaurant was everything. Every hotel looked like a sushi restaurant. Every restaurant, even if they didn't serve sushi, looked like a sushi restaurant.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
So we kind of looked like a sushi restaurant. I'm not going to lie to you. We had like fountains in the hallway and bamboo on the ceiling and backlit mirrors in the spin room, cucumber water in the training room. Because we had been in such like a scum teaching for so long, I was like, I want this to be special, okay? I had orchids at the front desk and candles. It was honestly stunning.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
No one had ever seen Studio Fitness like this. So it put us on the map in that way.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
Julie Rice, which at the time was named Julie Taylor, was taking my class. She always rode in about the third or fourth row by the windows. She probably rode with me for a long time without me even knowing her name. And we never really had too much of a conversation either. She was just kind of quiet and like did her ride and left.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
And we didn't really have a relationship other than she loved my class and her life was changed and enhanced by it. And she would talk often about when she went to New York about missing my voice, couldn't find my voice.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
Sounds like she did not have her contract written. That's very sad and also very shocking. Maybe she thought it was so small at the time that it wasn't necessary. I have no idea. I got hired into such a whirlwind business. I mean, I had to create an army so fast. I didn't even have two seconds to think about what happened to Ruth or why it didn't work out.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
I mean, may this be a lesson for all of us, and I'm learning it too, is to get that shit in writing and don't assume that other people are going to do right by you.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
They don't need to. They don't need to. That's why they've been successful. No one else is open. But here's the thing. We could say they don't know anything about spin. And that may be true. But they knew the heart of spin and the soul of spin. And that's why it was successful.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
Okay. I've been a dancer my whole life, and I had a very colorful upbringing. And by colorful, I mean disaster. I eventually was such a mess. I was at Call Arts doing dance, majored in dance, with a minor in drugs, or maybe it was the other way around.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
Eventually, it got so messy that I ended up attempting suicide and then was released to my parents in Palm Springs. It was wild because they wanted me to go to rehab. And I mean, like, maybe I should have. I promise we're going to get from crack to the wheel in a second.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
A lot of the instructors partied hard. I mean, partied hard. So the young ones would stay out all night doing God knows what, a lot of drugs, and then coming in, popping an Adderall, and then, like, getting on the bike, spinning a million miles an hour. Ah!
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
I was so in love with him that I got super sober, like literally hauled up in church on Sundays, praying to whoever will listen to like take the desire for wanting to do drugs out of my body.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
So I was like, no, no, no, I'm just going to pray and get this desire taken out of my body. And I did.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
I call it Christian rehab, really, because that marriage only lasts a couple of years.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
I would go and take class, download all of the choreography, take it back to the desert and teach it again. And I would make these trips often to become inspired, really, because Los Angeles was everything. They had all the cool music and all the cool mixes and the new choreography. And it was just like the best place in the whole world to go to. I mean, it was really like Studio 54 of fitness.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
She would say things like, well, I see you have a ring on your finger. Now, are you in love with that man? And then I pause and she goes, it's okay. I already know the answer to that question. So let's go ahead and talk about a date that you're going to break up. That woman read me up and down and sideways. And it was the most transformative thing that I think has ever happened in my life.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
And it was also one of those things where she had said, she goes, you know, by the way, I'm not sure if you have ever thought about dating women before, but you definitely have had a lot of both male and female lifetimes. And so if you were to have an attraction toward women, Women, it wouldn't be a shocking thing. I was like, what?
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
Let's fast forward to now I have a girlfriend and I'm living in Burbank, okay? I am depressed, laying on the couch, and my friends are like, listen, can you just please come to this spin class with us? And I'm like, no. I tried it one time and it's not for me.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
And I went and I took the class and I dropped my head and I closed my eyes. And at some point in the class, I cried. I cried because I felt the first little glimpse of empowerment. And I was like, oh, I'm not dead. I'm in there. Okay. I think I can save myself. I can come back out. I can get hold of this thing.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
There's no real respect for what's going on. It's just like, it's free. They're coming in and out. There's no real code. But Debbie laid down the law early and she did not let people fuck around in her class. There were no shenanigans whatsoever. There was no crosstalk. There was no coming in late, leaving early. You did the routine and you respected the people that you were next to.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
People were just like, oh, come in with like 20 cassette tapes and been like, oh, which one of these do I want to listen to today? And I started to go like. Why would I want to repeat a ride? Well, everyone did. Even Debbie did. Even Andrea did. And I was like, no, I'm not doing that. I'm going to make a fresh playlist every time I teach. And they're like, well, that's ridiculous.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
Like, how are you going to do that? And I said, I'm going to do it. Watch.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
This meant physically going to a record store and buying it. Every Friday night, it took $100. And I went to Virgin Megastore on Sunset. And that $100 was from my waiting tables. And I didn't have a pot to piss in. And I would sit at hundreds of listening stations all along the wall. And I would listen to music all night long. And I would walk away with 10 CDs because they were 10 bucks a pop.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
Everyone else was just like playing old, tired, sped up, like Paula Abdul. OK, that's what that's what we're doing here. We could listen to real music on the bike. And all of the gay boys at the time, even on the bike. I'm like, why would you put a backbeat to Rocket Man? Let's just listen to Rocket Man. So that was a whole nother culture of like the gay boys teaching in West Hollywood.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
It was just like that music, like pots and pans. I'm going to play some Counting Crows and some U2 and some Mary J. Blige. And we'll just see how everyone feels about that. So. It was no longer a fitness class. It was like, I'm going to curate this experience for you. You're going to have emotion. There's going to be screaming. There's going to be yelling.
Cult of Body & Soul
1. "Made in LA"
There's going to be transformation on a deeper level than just a six pack.