Miss USA Off the Sauce and On the Record

In the course of a year, Tara Conner went from beauty queen to bar-hopping cautionary tale, and back again. Next up, Broadway baby, perhaps.  

As the once disgraced Miss USA 2006 nears the end of her reign, she is looking to establish a permanent home base in New York and repair any damage last year's run-in with the pageant authorities may have done to her title's prestige factor. 

First off was a reminder that everyone who dons the crown, no matter how pretty, perky or talented, is only human on the inside. 

"I used to look at pageant queens and think to myself, 'Wow, they're perfect.' I could never be them,'" Conner said in an interview with Kentucky's Herald-Leder this week. "In a lot of my interviews, people would say, 'Did you expect to win?' and I'd say, 'I went into complete shock.' 

"I didn't think that I was lucky enough," theg 21-year-old from Russell Springs, Kentucky, said. "And when I said I didn't think I was lucky enough, deep down I thought, 'I'm not perfect. How am I ever supposed to pull off this job that's perfect? 

"We're not perfect women. We're humans just like everybody else. We all make mistakes, we all have our own problems. I'm sure we can find an issue with everybody. Nobody's perfect." 

Conner almost lost her crown in December after reports of her underage hard-partying ways surfaced, with Miss Universe Organization co-owner Donald Trump giving the repentant beauty queen a second chance. 

At a tearful press conference a few days before Christmas, Conner announced she would mend her ways and enter rehab, denying at the time, however, that her problems amounted to more than her getting carried away by her newfound status.  

After completing a 31-day stint in a Pennsylvania treatment center, Conner admitted that she suffered from alcoholism and copped to using cocaine in the past year, none of which she blamed on her transition from small-town girl to big-city Trump protégée. Instead, she opened up about the addiction that ran in her family and explained that it was a problem she had struggled with since she was a teenager. 

Telling the Herald-Ledger that she was 78 days sober, Conner described why it was both a curse and a blessing to have been called out for her behavior while living in the media spotlight.   

"[It was] the worst time for that to happen, but in the same sense, it was the best time for all of this to happen," she said. "It made me truly appreciate the little things in life, made me truly appreciate my job and the role in this society. It humbled me a lot. It taught me how to be honest. It taught me to be the genuine Tara. I didn't know who she was." 

Neither did the majority of her public, some of whom were ticked off that Conner, who was supposed to be a role model, they said, was allowed to keep her crown.  

But despite those, Rosie O'Donnell included, who felt Trump made a bad move by prolonging Conner's reign, the now-sober Miss USA is planning to take the good will that she received and run with it. 

"I was a functioning alcoholic," Conner said. "I could deny I was an addict. I could do things and you'd never know. I think it was shocking for some people. I had so much support from my people at home…People don't understand how much that helped me while I was there." 

"With every good, there's a little bit of bad," she said, referring to the more negative feedback she got after seeking help. "I can't expect everybody to be, like, 'Good for you, you went to rehab'…It's not their place to do that. There's always going to be people who are going to be skeptical. Until proven otherwise, I have to take this one day at a time. I can only do my best one day at a time." 

After she crowns her successor, Miss USA 2007, on Mar. 23 at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, Conner is planning to stay in New York. 

She said that she's been in talks with the producers of the latest incarnation of Chicago on Broadway and is waiting to see what transpires in that arena. The New York Post reported this week that Conner's up for the role of aspiring star-turned-merry murderess Roxy Hart.  

"I learned to find my confidence and my self-esteem," Conner said. "I learned that I can face this life without fear because that's what holds us back. I don't have to wear a mask.  

"It's kind of like, 'Take me or leave me, love me or leave me,' because this is who I am, this is what I've done, but this is how I am today, and that's what really matters."