Blonsky again as plus-size teenager

NEW YORK - In her latest movie, Nikki Blonsky plays an overweight high school student spurned for being different from her peers. Ultimately, she finds acceptance, glory and the hint of romance with a dimple-cheeked guy, all without surrendering pride to the body-image police.

Queen Sized

, premiering on Lifetime Saturday at 9 p.m., isn't

Hairspray

, but it has elements in common - at least, on the surface - with last summer's hit film.

For that $200 million blockbuster, Blonsky was nominated for a Golden Globe, which will be announced Sunday.

Unlike

Hairspray

, which was set in 1962,

Queen Sized

takes place in present-day South Carolina, where Blonsky is Maggie Baker, a plus-sized high school senior who has always pitied herself for not being skinny, pretty or wealthy. When her name turns up on the list of nominees for the homecoming court as a prank, she's mortified.

The film was inspired by the true story of a suburban Detroit teen who in 2004 spurred a national dialogue about a type of teen bullying: students voting less-popular peers onto homecoming courts for the purpose of mocking them.

"I don't easily give out these numbers, but I can tell you that I'm not a size 0 ... and I'm not a size 6 ... and I'm not even a size 10," Blonsky said last week, laughing into her cell phone from the back of a car. The Long Island teen was en route to the airport for a flight to California, where she was receiving the Rising Star Award at the 2008 Palm Springs International Film Festival.

Though this is her second screen spin focusing on size, Blonsky says, "You can only be typecast if you let yourself be."

Maggie Baker differs from both Blonsky and the hyper-ebullient Tracy Turnblad of

Hairspray

in that she doesn't have that "unbelievable positive energy," says Nancy Bennett, the Lifetime vice president who oversaw production of

Queen Sized

.

"Maggie reflects a lot more of what girls feel like when they feel they don't fit in," says Bennett. "She feels like: 'Why bother? What's the point?' And that's very different from Nikki, or Tracy, who is this blind optimist."

In the Lifetime flick, Blonsky has a clique of outsider pals, and a mom (Annie Potts) who appears via special effects as both a nurturing caretaker and a fang-baring monitor of her daughter's eating habits.

Blonsky bares flesh in

Queen Sized

in two scenes she says Lifetime offered her the "artistic choice" to cut. In one, she wears only a bra and pajama bottoms as she faces herself in a mirror and nitpicks her perceived shortcomings. In another, filmed from the back, she undresses in a bathroom stall, to avoid having to change in front of her peers.

Says Blonsky: "I'm not about exposing yourself. But I realized that a lot of plus-sized women are ashamed of their bodies or are scared to show them - let alone on TV. So I said: You know, 'I'm not scared, because this is what we look like.' This is what most of America looks like in their pajama bottoms."

In case that point hasn't been driven home, a sequence at film's end has Maggie being readied for homecoming by a supportive team of hairdressers, makeup pros and a stylist, who welcomes her with the reminder that "the average woman in this country wears a size 14 dress."

Blonsky, who also collaborates with composer Duncan Sheik on a song for the film's soundtrack, says that if it's her destiny to be offered parts that are weight-related, so be it.

"It doesn't matter as long as it means something to me, and I feel it could mean something to the audience."