Just Between Us

by Mario Lopez

  Questions come at me all the time: “Well, why do you do it, man? You make your living with your face. And you’re putting yourself at risk and your career in jeopardy, and all these people who depend on you.” Even my close friends caution me, “Lopez, you and people who need you are going to be in a world of hurt if you get a serious head injury or your nose ends up on the wrong side of your face.”

  Others want to know why I don’t play a mellower sport. Basketball, golf, and so on. Those are fine, and fun too; some of the entertainment sports leagues are collegial and festive. But they are nowhere near as exhilarating as fighting. Back in my late twenties, I learned this truth about me: I want to, I have to, and I need to fight.

  It’s the way I’m wired—could be the underdog in me, the fighter that’s part of who I am. When I’m old and my body is broken down, then maybe I’ll take up golf—with no disrespect to anyone who loves being on the green as much as I love being in the ring. For now, I’m still too energetic and need the challenge. Maybe if golf were a contact sport and you got to battle each other with the clubs. Tennis isn’t for me either—again, no offense to you tennis lovers. Trust me, I’m not that good at tennis. I didn’t grow up in Beverly Hills; I’m not a country club kid. Tennis might be too polite for me.

  Boxing keeps me young, sharp, fresh, and focused. Come to think of it, I’m going to be boxing for the rest of my life if I can. In fact, I’ve sparred with guys in their sixties, so I believe there’s hope. Let me add that it takes a certain type of individual to step into a boxing ring. Maybe you have to be a little bit crazy—but I’m a little bit crazy, so it fits. Also, for me, from a practical standpoint, boxing travels well—which is part of my daily grind. If I want to spar or work out while I’m on the road, it’s fairly easy to find a boxing gym or at least a facility that has a punching bag. It’s easier to carry some gloves, shorts, wraps, and sneakers than it is a set of golf clubs.

  Not too long ago, I was given an opportunity to start calling fights for HBO Boxing. My gigs as a boxing announcer haven’t taken over my career, but it’s fun and I get to watch my heroes fight from a vantage point that is even better than ringside seats. I’m literally on the ring apron. I get to call these fights and give my honest opinion of the action at hand. I’ve called fights for Top Rank, Golden Boy, on HBO Boxing, and on Showtime Boxing. I have come to know the boxing community well, including all the promoters and all the miscellaneous people in the sport. Boxing is part of my multifaceted career in hosting that I had only begun to conceive back in mid-2001 when this all started. Boxing also fed my mantra that you may have heard me repeat elsewhere: “I work out more for sanity than for vanity.” Yes, boxing, as crazy as this may sound, keeps me sane. It’s a release from all the pent-up stress most of us have in our work and daily dramas and day-to-day aggravations. You can’t punch the face of the person who just cut you off in traffic, or the bad customer service representative, or the meter maid who just wrote you a huge ticket, but you can punch a sparring partner or a punching bag.

  Suffice it to say, life after A. C. Slater went on, and I tried to savor the ups and downs of all that I was fortunate enough to experience and learn. But new questions began to eat at me about what the future was going to bring. At the same time, I could feel big changes in the wind. But how they would happen and where they would take me, I had no idea. All I could do was stay focused and watch out for those big left hooks.

  CHAPTER 6

  TURNING POINTS

  It began as a sort of flirtation in the late 1990s, then turned into a fling that would deepen into a solid relationship over the next four or five years. At a certain point, I realized we just fit together. However, with other interests and opportunities that came along, I always held back from that exclusive commitment I really did want to make—but somehow couldn’t.

  Oh, wait. You don’t think I’m talking about my love life, do you? Nope, not at all, even though I could have been. I’m talking about the unexpected passion I found in my late twenties for . . . hosting! That’s right, my path to becoming a host in the wide, wide wonderful world of entertainment was a lot like dating at first. In fact, earlier in my career, back when I was eighteen and on Saved by the Bell, I had started to dabble in off-season hosting jobs—and had a ball doing them.

  The suggestion first came from an executive at NBC, SBTB’s network. The late Linda Mancuso (may she rest in peace after losing her battle to cancer in recent years) gave me that first shot and I would be eternally grateful to her for it. When she called me in for a meeting, Linda was complimentary, saying, “I love your personality, Mario, and I think you’d be a terrific host for a project that we have in the works.”

  The project was a reality show based on the premise of making kids’ dreams come true. The show was to be called Name Your Adventure and would air on Saturday mornings just like our series. When she asked if I’d be interested in hosting it, I was intrigued enough to take the job. Of course, my focus overall was my acting career. But this was an opportunity to play myself—not A. C. Slater—and a chance to explore a side job to acting that seemed made to order.

  Name Your Adventure was positioned to be educational yet still entertainment—what’s sometimes called “edutainment.” The challenge was to find new ways to casually introduce the educational elements. As a result, I learned to do research on my own to come up with all those fun facts, a skill that would serve me well in time to come. Our format included showing up at the home of that episode’s lucky teen and, along with our guides and professional experts, provide the tools for that kid to go off on the adventure of his or her dreams. We climbed mountains, swam with sharks, and went on a cattle drive in Montana. Probably the highlight of the three seasons we shot was fulfilling the dream of one teen to interview the president of the United States—President Bill Clinton. Also right up my alley were the different action sports I had a chance to play alongside our guest athletes. That was quite possibly my favorite gig ever.

  Name Your Adventure was that first exposure that made me think hosting, which is not acting per se, could still open up other avenues for me as a performer. Other little hosting-type jobs continued from there in connection to the Saved by the Bell franchise and I found that hosting suited the part of me that preferred to stay humble. What other role lets you be starstruck on purpose? For example, there was the time early on in the midnineties when NBC had me on hand for special events connected to the NBA’s All-Star basketball game in Phoenix, Arizona—a weekend-long summit of top athletes and celebrities who show up as much for the parties and charity functions as they do for the slam-dunk contest and the game itself. During this particular weekend, I was blown away when I found myself hanging out with Will Smith. The Will Smith, then of NBC’s Fresh Prince of Bel-Air fame. Maybe you’ve heard of it?

  Will was very cool and gracious. Of course, his stellar career would only continue to escalate from this time on, but I was already a big fan. In fact, I had followed him since his hip-hop days as the second half of DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince and loved two of their rap songs, “Parents Just Don’t Understand” and “Summertime.” Will had his crew of boys from Philly with him, but they were in no way “cliquey” like certain celebs can be with their entourages. Over the years after that weekend, whenever Will and I would run into each other, his face would light up, as would mine.

  After hosting gigs like the NBA All-Star weekend, I did begin to think, You know, I could see myself doing more of this. There were moments during other, smaller hosting jobs when I would look around and have to pinch myself. I would actually turn to friends of mine who’d come along for the ride and say, “Oh my God, can you believe they pay me to do this?”

  My buddy Juancho came with me to the 1994 NBA All-Star weekend in Minneapolis, and while I was working, word arrived that I had been invited to Prince’s house for a party.

  If you have never heard of Prince’s legendary parties, let me j
ust say that the invitation was exclusive—that is, just for me. Nobody walks through the door without waiting in line and being thoroughly vetted.

  “Don’t worry, Juancho,” I promised my friend. “You’re with me. We’ll both get in.”

  Just watching the people waiting in line was like a Who’s Who of 1990s Famous Names. Unbelievable. They made Magic Johnson wait in line. When we all finally got in, it was like walking into a dream—like a big nightclub. There were athletes and beautiful models, faces from the news, and, of course, stars from music, movies, and TV.

  “What do you think, Juancho?” I asked. But he was literally too dumbstruck to respond.

  “You know,” I said under my breath, “I can’t believe we are inside Prince’s house. What the hell are we doing at his house with all these famous people? Is this amazing or what?”

  “Amazing,” he finally said.

  It’s true, by the way: Prince does party like it’s 1999! It was surreal. The party kept rocking and at two in the morning Prince decided to do a concert. What an incredibly intimate setting in which to watch him perform—for three full hours. Imagine just partying with all your new friends and hearing all your favorite Prince songs in, basically, his living room! And watching the sun come up as you stumble home. Amazing.

  The best way to get a sense of how surreal that night was is to watch Dave Chappelle’s hilarious impression of Prince in a sketch for his show. In it, Prince serves Charlie Murphy (Eddie Murphy’s brother) grapes and then challenges him to a basketball duel they call the Blouses Versus the Skins. Juancho and I laughed so hard years later when we saw it on Chappelle’s Show. You can check it out on YouTube to see what it was like to party with Prince—I promise you’ll laugh out loud.

  After all these experiences, not surprisingly, I loved hosting. But once I graduated from Saved by the Bell and moved into my twenties—while seeking out strong acting roles in projects like Breaking the Surface—I still couldn’t see building a meaningful career as a host. That is, until I encountered a series of turning points that would slowly but surely make me think twice.

  • • •

  “How tall are you?” my agent asked me over the phone one day back in 1999.

  That was a strange question. At the age of twenty-six, I had been the same height for a while and I was pretty sure my agent knew the answer: “Five foot eleven.”

  The reason for the cryptic question? There was a role in a new Chuck Norris TV series, Sons of Thunder, which was supposed to be a spin-off of Walker, Texas Ranger. It was perfect for me. Because I would be testing opposite Chuck Norris, the producers had to ask how tall I was. “Say you’re shorter,” I was advised.

  Why? Well, apparently, Norris didn’t like anybody to be taller than him.

  The producers advised: wear flats to look even shorter.

  The test went really well and I thought I’d nailed the role of a tough Dallas cop. But it turned out I was still a little too tall. So I didn’t get the part. Seems that Chuck Norris can be a badass as long as he’s taller than you.

  Still, I just wanted to work. I didn’t have the luxury of mapping out a plan, and saying, “I want to work with Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, or only the top-name directors.” My only goal was to be consistently working. Given the work ethic that was cultivated in me throughout my childhood—essentially a hustler’s mentality—I wasn’t going to look down my nose at any opportunity that came my way. But even if my priorities were sometimes screwed up, I wanted to be good at what I did, so it was important to work on projects that would challenge me and take me to a higher level.

  Finding just any kind of work wasn’t a problem. But getting jobs that allowed me to grow as an artist—that was a different story.

  Sometimes I missed out on getting a coveted role merely because of how I look. I may have auditioned for something and they were open to seeing me, but it was more curiosity on their part. In that case, I could usually tell I wasn’t going to get it. For example, if I’m auditioning to play the son in the family, and the mom and the dad are already cast, and they look like the Wonder Bread parents from Family Ties, I’m not going to look like their son no matter how much I impress them in the reading.

  The reality check for me—true for many of us in the business—is that when you go to the audition, you can be the best actor in the room but that’s no guarantee you’ll get the part. You can blow them away and surpass every other contender, but sometimes it doesn’t matter. Because maybe you’re a little too old, a little too tall, or too short. You’re not Caucasian enough; you don’t look like you’re related to the existing cast. Whatever the case may be, you’re not going to get the part if you don’t fit all those variables and intangibles. You rarely find out exactly why. So many factors come into play and so many elements are outside your control. Not to mention the politics involved—even the nepotism involved (in case the producer has a nephew that’s up for your role). A hundred and one factors can snub you and your chance of getting that job.

  “You’re only as good as your last job” is a cliché that’s one hundred percent true. And when your last job is something as specific as Greg Louganis in a TV movie or something as crystallized in public memory as A. C. Slater, that means it becomes even more difficult to get good work—because casting directors and producers can’t see you as someone else.

  So what do you do? In my case, I arrived at a turning point and began to rethink how I saw hosting in general. In mid-2001, as the new millennium began, I was almost twenty-eight. Cable and network TV were booming with greater than ever opportunities for great hosts to make their mark. The entrepreneur in me said, “Why not?” and the creative soul in me realized that being a host would challenge me to grow and learn. And just as I was coming to that conclusion, the universe tapped me on the shoulder to let me know that I was headed in the right direction.

  Actually, the tap on the shoulder was real. It came, once again, at a moment when I was ready—no, hungry—to learn. That nudge forward was from the Jedi Master of hosting, Dick Clark, who had so very much to teach me.

  • • •

  Dick Clark not only ascended the show business ladder to make his mark as the host of American Bandstand—which aired for thirty years, starting in 1957—but in my opinion he helped build the ladder toward stardom for entertainers of every type. There was probably no aspect of entertainment media that Dick Clark didn’t touch—radio, TV, game shows, music, live events, talk shows, comedy, providing a platform for film stars, you name it. He was everywhere and he was beloved for who he was and how he made you, the viewer, feel included in whatever rocking party he was hosting. At this writing, he hasn’t been gone long, but I miss him every day and wonder sometimes whether New Year’s Eve will ever be the same without him behind the mic at Times Square.

  Working with Dick Clark was the single most influential and pivotal experience of my life. Beyond what I learned as a host, Dick’s guidance reshaped everything I’d thought about and had planned for my future. By example, he encouraged me to focus more on being a personality and a brand, rather than only as an actor-performer. For us creative folks, it’s not easy to make this leap, but getting to study the architecture of Dick Clark Productions got me thinking of myself, Mario Lopez, as a business.

  As one of the cohosts for this new show called The Other Half—billed as the male version of The View—I had a seat right next to Dick Clark, who took the older, wiser, Barbara Walters point of view. I bounced off him easily as the young bachelor with fresh takes on various concerns.

  Danny Bonaduce, from The Partridge Family, was on the show as well, though he seemed mostly worried about being funny and wasn’t really paying attention to anything else. Rounding out our cast was Dr. Jan Adams, a plastic surgeon, who, most unfortunately, was later linked to surgeries that led to Kanye West’s mom’s death. But no such scandals or tragedies arose for him during the air
ing of the show.

  When filming the first couple of episodes, I realized that I was quarterbacking the show, with the task of taking us from segment to segment, making the transitions, trying to keep us afloat and focused. Dick Clark appreciated that. Even though he wasn’t officially producing the show, when Dick was involved with anything, he would bring his unparalleled expertise into play.

  Our group on air got along well. I was perhaps more traditional than the rest of the cast and I think Dick identified with that. This was around the same time that I started to build a little more spiritual muscle. My views were changing, as a man, and besides becoming somewhat more conservative than I had been in my wilder younger days, I wanted to be conscious of how my stances could be viewed. Did that mean I was out of the woods in terms of making foolish mistakes in my personal life? Nope. But I was beginning to mature.

  On an ominous note, The Other Half premiered on September 10, 2001, the day before we all woke up to the news of the terrorist attacks that changed the world forever. In fact, some of us on the show had already arrived at the studio by four a.m. Pacific time to get ready to go on air, so we were there to watch in horror as the reports arrived in real time. After that day, the light banter on the show became more serious for a while. We reflected the mood of the country, I think, and had enough of a viewership to last for three seasons, but no more.

  During this time, Dick not only took me under his wing, but the two of us became friends. On several occasions I was a guest at his home, in addition to going out to dinner and to social events with him. A great storyteller, he had many showbiz tales to share and a virtual museum of Hollywood memorabilia in his house. Like the bathroom door that for some reason Michael Jackson had signed and given him, or the framed pieces of clothing and albums and letters from the Beatles, or the gifts from Elvis. Dick said Elvis was the nicest guy—the type of rich guy who wouldn’t hesitate to buy you a Cadillac—but that “he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.”