See Leslie Uggams Suit Up as Blind Al to Help Roommate Deadpool Combat His Odorous Scent

"You can imagine what poor Blind Al was going through before she found this product," Uggams says of Old Spice's Total Body Deodorant commercial

Blind Al’s got a new gripe.

Much to her disappointment, Deadpool’s beloved roommate, played by actress Leslie Uggams, can smell the antihero in their quaint quarters. But in between taking trips to the laundromat and building Ikea furniture, the feisty senior has found a solution to help him tackle body odor: Old Spice Total Body Deodorant.

To quote Blind Al herself: Ta. Da.

Ahead of the release of Deadpool & Wolverine on July 26, Uggams, 81, chatted with PEOPLE about starring in the hilarious spot.

“I was so excited. I cannot tell you,” Uggams says of getting the call. “And what I loved about [the set] is they recreated the place where Deadpool and Blind Al lived, so it brought back memories. It was absolutely delightful to do,” she shared.

Uggams says the commercial “is perfect, because God knows [Deadpool] needs every kind of freshness,” She adds with a laugh, “You can imagine what poor Blind Al was going through before she found this product for him that goes from his pits to his toes.”

Old Spice's innovation, which comes in a cream, spray and stick in an assortment of scents (as well as unscented) provides 24-hour freshness “everywhere” as Blind Al put it.

Uggams recalls Old Spice “was the big thing for men” when she was growing up. “The fact that they've been around for so long, and the fact that now they're doing something in this modern age is fabulous. Before it was basically just for the armpits, and now it's for every area, which God knows we know men need,” she says.

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Smelling good is an important part of Uggams’ beauty MO, too.

“I'm very into making sure that when you come near me, you go, ‘oh, she smells good.’ I think I got it from my mother, because she always smelled good, and I was always trying to get in the stuff she had laid out on [her and Uggams’s father’s] dresser. And of course, as a performer, I’m very conscious of wearing deodorant.”

Aside from having a wonderful aroma, the actress says her beauty routine is all about “having a good cleanser, a good moisturizer and a good face mask.”

“Because of my mom and dad, I have good skin, so I want to take care of it,” Uggams explains. “We take our skin for granted, but our skin is very important because it has to breathe, and so therefore you have to clean it out, otherwise it gets all clogged up.

Uggams keeps several products in her rotation. “I love to play. I don't just stick with one thing. But I always make sure that I do my routine in the morning, and I also make sure that I have a product that takes off makeup, because women can get lazy. It's like, oh God, I just want to go to bed. But no, no, no. We have to get that makeup off.”

Although, Uggams only wears makeup when it’s “absolutely necessary.” Most days, she says, “I just cleanse my skin and put on a great moisturizer and I'm good to go.”

“And body lotion. That's another thing,” she says. “I believe in making sure you're not walking out there with dry legs and dry arms. That's important too!”

Related: Leslie Uggams' Amazing Love Story: How Her 53-Year Interracial Marriage Defied the Odds

When it comes to her hair, Uggams let’s it be.

“When I was a little girl, my mother didn't relax my hair or anything like that. And in fact, she didn't even press my hair. And then, my grandmother got ill and my mother had to go and see her in Florida, so she put my father's sister in charge of me. And what did she do? She took me immediately to a hairdresser, and that's the first time I ever had my hair pressed,” Uggams shares.

That eventually led to relaxing her hair, which Uggams says she did for years before reaching her breaking point.

“I was on a cruise performing, and I'm there with the curling iron and I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, ‘I can't do this anymore. This is too much work.’ So let me discover what's really under there. And it's so funny because my husband [Grahame Pratt] for years had been saying, ‘Why don't you stop relaxing your hair?" And I didn't listen to him. And then finally we were on that cruise and I said, you know what? I'm going to take his advice. And I did.”

"When I stopped relaxing my hair, I discovered the beauty of it. I'm so happy I finally came to my senses, let my hair be what it wants to be," Uggams says.

Related: Leslie Uggams Says President Lyndon Johnson Once Propositioned Her — in the Lincoln Bedroom

The Emmy and Tony award-winning actress, who began performing at New York City’s famous Apollo Theater at age nine, can still remember the smell of its backstage area. “Let me put it this way: We needed some Old Spice Total Body Deodorant backstage, because there were all kinds of acts on the bill and so it would've behooved us to have had that experience. But otherwise, it smelled like how a theater usually smells like, which is full of dust and history.”

These days the New Yorker is drawn to the smell of Central Park. “I love that outdoorsy, wonderful scent that comes from the trees and the flowers blossoming,” she says. “The fact that you're able to go into that magnificent park and go, ‘oh my God, it's wonderful here,’ is quite something.”

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For Deadpool & Wolverine’s  premiere this week, Uggams plans to “get dressed to the nines,” and no doubt smell great as she takes in the movie.

“I'm looking forward to it because I have no idea what I'm going to see. So I'll be sitting there in the audience just as anticipating and surprised as everybody else.”

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