Diana last fall at the Georgia Music Hall of Fame ceremony. CREDIT: Rodney Ho/rho@ajc.com

Before the “Idol” finale last week, 15 past contestants popped up for an AT&T event outside the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. I had polled you guys for who to interview. I managed to get the top 3, including Elliott Yamin and Michael Johns, already posted. Here is my talk with Diana DeGarmo.

Last week, she took a break near the end of a nine-month run as buxom Doralee on the national tour of   “9 to 5″ in Dallas, flying to Los Angeles for the event. She was scheduled to sing first, then take a helicopter back to LAX to make it for that night’s “9 to 5″ performance.

“AT&T is repped out of Georgia,” she said. “I got to represent for the Georgians.”

She is still enjoying the gig. “The show has evolved with us as actors,” she said. “We have found subtext within the text to keep us entertained as human beings and keep the show fresh and exciting.”

The most difficult part: wearing those Dolly Parton heels. “I’m usually a boot kind of girl. Moccasins. Tennis shoes. It’s tough running around with those heels. It’s crazy hard on my feet!”

To stay in shape, she’s big in yoga. “We could to a travel blog on yoga studios,” she said. “Some are fantastic. Some are awful. Yoga is such a great balance between exercise and serenity. Our industry is always so crazy and so fast paced. Go go go! Take an hour and a half to really center yourself, take a moment just to breath.”

DeGarmo recently was a passenger in a car accident, caught in a nine-car pile up. “I had a good case of whiplash and muscle spasms,” she said. “Thank goodness for pain medicine! We were the final domino. I heard the tires screeching, saw a semi clip a little Honda. I turned to cast members and said, ‘We’re about to be…’ ”

“I could laugh now,” she said. “At the moment, it was a little intense. Everyone had to go to a chiropractor.”

She got to visit Atlanta once this year for a week to take care of her mom’s house. She also attended a Hawks game. And she filmed a “Wyatt Earp” film two months ago with Val Kilmer.

“It was amazing,” she said. “I got to ride horses and my character dies.” She’s one of the flashback love interests to Wyatt Earp. “I got to kiss a cute boy,” she added. She had to readjust her acting. “In the theater, you’re trying to portray emotions to the grandma in the back row. Here, it’s almost mentally acting more than physical acting. Your eyes betray so much more than your body. I had someone work with me on it. It was a good leaning experience. I had a really good time.”

Post “9 to 5,” she said she has a job booked in Los Angeles but can’t say yet. Then she is planning to “go with the flow.”

The flow has worked for Diana. Over the years since “Idol,” she has had steady work in theater, with a few breaks in between to do “Gone Country” on CMT and record songs in her current town of Nashville as well as Los Angeles.

As for “Idol,” she watched snatches of it when she could. She already knew Paul MacDonald from Nashville. “We’ve crossed paths,” she said. “We worked with similar people. He’s such a good guy, a really amazing performer.”

DeGarmo said in this day and age, you have to be a “quadruple threat” to be a bonafide artist – acting, singing, dancing, et. al. “I like to say I can do it all!” she said.

She is also buds with Bo Bice. “He’s like my brother. I just love him to bits. He and his wife are so sweet. We’ve done a lot of things together the past few years.”