Just Between Us

by Mario Lopez

  Finally I had some letup when I was just going to be in New York for a while and I was all gung ho, planning for a visit from three of my cousins and a couple of their significant others. Most of all, I was excited to see my cousin Chico, who also happened to be my godson. To him I was Nino—short for padrino, or godfather—and in addition to his getting to see the show, I wanted to take him around New York City and be tourists together.

  Chico, whose real name was Emilio, had not always had an easy time of it. He was my mom’s sister’s kid. My aunt was only nineteen years old when she gave birth to him, and she died during childbirth. Everyone was devastated and a dark cloud hung over the family for a long time after that. Doctors said early on that because of all the complications during labor, Chico would most likely be brain-dead or nonfunctional. But he made it; Chico survived. However, he still had some developmental issues—mainly physical, though. For example, he couldn’t maintain his balance a lot of the time and would fall often, but he was smart and sharp as a tack.

  Chico, five years younger than me, grew up with the knowledge that the reason for his mother’s death was that the doctors had given his mom the wrong anesthetic in the delivery room—and so the hospital owed him a large sum of money, payable when he turned eighteen years old. He always saw that money as a beacon of hope that would solve many of his problems. When he finally got his settlement, he was deflated. He had been thinking about it and expecting it for so long, and he thought he’d never have to worry about money again. But it wasn’t enough to do that. It was not the cure-all to heal deeper wounds or make up for losses that money can’t address.

  During the time I’d been away and so busy, I had been concerned about him, to be honest, and wanted to check in with him to make sure he was all set to come visit. We had talked earlier on about him coming out with my cousins Alex and Chica and their respective spouses, and then all of them would stay with me. The rest of the planning was up to me.

  A few days before they were supposed to arrive, I called Chico to firm up the details. “You coming, man? You excited? Did you get your plane ticket?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be there, Nino. I look forward to seeing you.”

  Instead of giving him our itinerary, I decided to surprise him and go over it when he arrived.

  Cut to: everybody in the group shows up except Chico.

  What had happened? I looked from cousin to cousin in confusion. “Where’s Chico?”

  “Dude,” Alex explained, “he just flaked out. I don’t know. He just didn’t come—he didn’t call us or anything.”

  I picked up my cell to call him, but no luck getting ahold of him. I finally asked, “Who was with Chico last?”

  Alex apparently had been with him earlier in the week. “Yeah, I took him shopping, for the suit he was going to wear in New York.”

  The verdict, according to the consensus, was that he’d just decided not to come. But I knew something more serious was up when Alex added, “I’m worried about him. He seems weird lately.”

  The others went on to explain that Chico had been drinking a lot and he’d gotten a couple of DUIs. Whatever was going on, I assumed part of it was him being immature. I would have never guessed his reckless behavior was a serious cry for help.

  A couple of weeks later, I was given the news that Chico had killed himself. He had bought a gun and shot himself in the head. No explanation. No note. Nothing made any sense. He had been fine on the phone with me a few weeks before. He was supposed to come see me in New York. And then, just like that, he decides no. His life is over.

  When someone is that broken that they can’t see the light, you always question yourself and try to think of anything you could have done. All I kept wondering was, what if he’d come to see me in New York? What if he’d seen that there was life outside of Chula Vista? That the world wasn’t so small, and that he wasn’t alone? He would have been there in Times Square. We could have gone to Central Park and all the museums. What if . . . If he could have come to New York, he would have seen the big buildings, felt the energy, and maybe he would have realized there was something else. If he had been in the city where everyone is a little lonely but everyone is just in this life together, maybe it would have made a difference. I’ll never know.

  His death made me cry off and on for several days. It’s still hard for me to come to peace with it, because it was just so senseless. Six years later, I still haven’t erased his number from my cell phone. I can’t bring myself to do it.

  Something about Chico leaving this world made me want to live in it more fully and more consciously. Another big turning point in my life and a time to reinforce a lasting lesson: Live now for everything you’re worth because your life is worth everything.

  • • •

  Toward the end of my run on Broadway, I started to feel a sense of loneliness that had nothing to do with being alone or not. The thing is, I had great East Coast friends who were around and who kept me busy—like Noah Tepperberg, who ran the hottest clubs in the city and was connected to the best restaurants too. With a bevy of models and beautiful people always around him, Noah included me in all kinds of fun scenes and cool parties. But I knew that I was pushing my own limits, burning both ends of the candle. The irony in avoiding being alone was that I ended up going out more, which only had the effect of making me feel lost in the crowd rather than less lonely. Maybe I was homesick for the slower jam of LA or for the family time I loved back in Chula.

  Don’t get me wrong—I loved being onstage and being part of my Chorus Line family. But after curtain call, I’d go back to my dressing room to take off the makeup and realize that I didn’t want to go out drinking in the Theater District or cruise the clubs uptown or downtown. Inside I felt strangely hollow. I just didn’t have the same desire for the nightlife that I did when I was younger. What was wrong with me? Was I getting old? I didn’t necessarily want to settle down and buy a lawn mower and a set of golf clubs, but slowing down a bit was not a bad option for me. Maybe “slowing down” wasn’t the goal. Maybe what I wanted was to accept maturity and try a new angle.

  Though I couldn’t name that tune just yet, I had this new yearning for stability that for someone almost thirty-five years old would not be unusual. The idea of settling down—only just a little—was kind of appealing. I didn’t necessarily want to jump into a heavy-duty relationship, but maybe I was ready for a real companion. Nothing in me was thinking about marriage again. I had been down that road once before, and it didn’t end well.

  If I could hope to have learned from past mistakes, I suppose that my longing for something more—something with substance—was a good sign of maturity. The other sign of growth, I’m happy to report, was that I began to think about what I had to offer in terms of companionship. Financial security was one thing, but as far as stability, who knew where I was going to be from one gig to the next? And commitment? That’s not even an easy word for me to type!

  That was when—not long before I wrapped A Chorus Line for good—I made the decision, once and for all, to commit to what it was that I wanted to do when I grew up. In other words, I was going to commit to hosting all the way. You can’t do everything all the time and do everything really well. Of course, I would continue to say “Yes!” to opportunities that helped challenge me in new areas, but the time had come to lay it all on the line and seize the moment to make a name for myself as a host.

  Once I had that nailed down, then I could try to solve the Rubik’s Cube of long-term relationships. It wasn’t that I’d given up on the idea that one day I’d be ready for that kind of commitment. But for the time being that wasn’t my priority.

  Don’t they say that you always find what you need the most just when you stop looking for it? Well, after a few more turning points to come, I was going to find out just how true that is.

  CHAPTER 7

  SO YOU THINK YOU CAN HOST?

&nb
sp; There must be some scholarly research under way at one of our finer educational institutions in this country about whether TV hosts are born or bred. I would not know the answer. Well, I do know that some hosts really and truly seem to be born for the job whereas others attain their hosting skills in other arenas before picking up the mic. And there are others who sort of fall into both categories, which is where I think I fit in. For me, aspects of hosting came naturally, as I found at age eighteen after my very first gig as a host of Name Your Adventure. But then, over the years with all kinds of hosting stints, I have continually had to learn new and important skills and tricks of the trade. Contrary to popular opinion about what constitutes a great host, it’s not enough to simply enjoy the spotlight and have a gift of gab.

  For that reason, actors don’t always make the best hosts. On the list of things I had to learn the hard way when starting out as a host was that it’s vitally important to take an interest in other people and not to make the conversation all about you. When you’re the product you’ve been selling for your entire life, you tend to become extremely self-centered. I call it an occupational hazard because the truth is, when you’re in showbiz, you have to be on constant alert as to how you look, sound, and appear to others. At the same time, as a host you still need to bring yourself into the mix in interesting and entertaining ways—because you may sometimes be called on to deliver sound bites to fill the air, so you do need to have some original material.

  What I found that helped me on those earlier gigs, like covering sports or hosting beauty pageants and so on, and then being a cohost of a talk show with Dick Clark in my late twenties, is that I love having a platform just to be myself. How cool that there was a job that paid you to be yourself too. Luckily, I’ve been myself my whole life and am happy with who I am. So hosting just came naturally, whether it was house parties and game nights or, as I later learned, national TV and syndicated radio shows. Another plus for me is that I’m a genuinely inquisitive person, which is a quality that lends itself to interviewing people and carrying a show. Because of that curiosity and wanting to learn and get to know others, I have become a better listener than I might have been at first. And maybe because of the family gatherings at my parents’ house when I was growing up, I think like a host most of the time—just wanting to make sure everybody’s having a good time. Mi casa es su casa would continue to serve me well over time.

  Much to my surprise, I’ve seen hosts on TV who don’t pay attention to making guests comfortable and some who don’t even listen to the answer from the interviewee before moving on to their next question, or hosts who have no follow-up questions prepared because they haven’t been listening. I learned from watching those kinds of examples what not to do and I vowed never to be like that. My attitude when I’m interviewing someone is that it’s not about me; it’s about them. If there is one trait that I’ve learned really matters, it’s that being humble is what makes a host great. For us former child actors who grew up having all that attention, being humble doesn’t necessarily come easy. That’s why, in hindsight, I value all the jobs that I didn’t get for teaching me to be humble—or at least grounded and hopefully real.

  Dancing with the Stars proved to be an intensive primer for staying humble. And, again, it put me on the radar for a lot of producers looking for hosts who would attract a large viewership—just as it unexpectedly helped land me a top spot in a Broadway musical.

  Actually, a year or two before I was cast as Zach in A Chorus Line, I had already set my sights on finding the right hosting job that I could make my own. The reality, as I surveyed the landscape, was that there were not many daily entertainment newsmagazine shows in which I could see myself potentially hanging my hosting hat for a while and where the content would fit well with my skill set. Though I’m a news junkie and could have pursued an anchor job, my background was entertainment and that was where my heart was leading me. But when my talent reps reached out to see whether any of the top entertainment news shows were hiring, only one of them—Extra—responded that it might have a possibility for its weekend edition.

  As my luck would have it, Extra was my number one choice. I liked the format, how the show was put together, and how they kept special segments fresh and a little different from the competition. Obviously, I had a good amount of hosting experience by this point, but I knew that I would have much to learn about how they ran the weekend entertainment show. They called me in to test, and fortunately they loved me—and I loved them.

  The great news when I took A Chorus Line was that I was able to continue my fledgling relationship with Extra in New York City as a correspondent doing interviews for the weekend show. The studio was on Forty-fourth Street, a hop, skip, and jump from my condo and the theater. Crazy and sleep deprived as those months were—what with being in a Broadway show, flying back and forth to LA to host MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew, and my New York Extra work—I loved the opportunity to prove myself. Eventually, after paying my dues as a correspondent, I segued officially into being cohost of Weekend Extra.

  Much of the time, I simply stood there and read a teleprompter. The challenge was to make it sound conversational and lively. Sometimes there were glitches and I would have to ad-lib, which made me feel like Will Ferrell as Ron Burgundy—making it up on the spot. But it wasn’t as if they would really need me to think on my feet or provide long, run-on banter with my cohost—the very sweet, cool, and spunky Tanika Ray. We got along great, had fun, and simply had to report the news of the weekend from the entertainment world.

  Unlike with other hosting gigs I had undertaken in the past, the Extra host wasn’t there to offer clever opinions or filler in these small blocked-out moments. This wasn’t because the executive producers were against us showing personality but more because many viewers nowadays have short attention spans—and so many options calling out for their eyeballs—that if we didn’t keep up the frenetic pace, people might change the channel. That was a whole new aspect to the learning curve that I hadn’t fully grasped earlier.

  When Extra’s senior executive producer Lisa Gregorisch-Dempsey had first called me in to meet with her about the potential for a full-time hosting job, I was well aware that she held the reins of power and that whatever she decided would be pivotal to my career. Before I’d gotten there, Mark McGrath, former singer of the band Sugar Ray, had become the host of the daily weekday show. My understanding was that he was thinking about going back to music and might be giving up the big chair he’d been holding down. So I wanted a shot. When I met with Lisa, I made that clear, but she wasn’t convinced. She’s incredibly tough and smart, and doesn’t pull any punches. Let’s put it this way: I would later give Lisa Gregorisch-Dempsey the affectionate nickname “Carmela”—in homage to Edie Falco’s character on The Sopranos. At that point in our discussions, Lisa wanted to keep me as host of the weekend show—perhaps because she didn’t think I was ready for the daily or maybe she thought my vibe was too young. But very quickly, perhaps as the worker bee in me tried to go above and beyond in my weekend hosting duties, I must have proven that I could perform well in the big leagues. Finally, shortly after I left New York and returned to Los Angeles, I was asked to be the sole host for daily Extra. Full-time!

  As fast as it happened, the journey to find my hosting home had really begun almost eight years earlier when Dick Clark challenged me to set my sights on this kind of opportunity. Not only did I find that home, I knew right away that it was where I belonged. There was an immediate family atmosphere on Extra and it reflected the professionalism of everyone who was part of the team—we all felt the drive to go beyond the call of duty and to make each other look good, and to grow together as a show. Not long after I came in as host in 2008, we outgrew the Victory Studios, where our offices would remain while we relocated our studio and filming location to the fabulous Grove, an outdoor mall with shopping, dining, and entertainment, plunked down in the heart of Hollywood, where the w
orld famous Farmers Market still exists. As one of the two shows produced by Warner Bros. and leased to NBC Universal Television—along with the talk show Ellen with my girl, the sensational one and only Ellen DeGeneres—Extra embarked on such a period of growth that we would move yet again.

  And that’s how we arrived at our current shooting location at Universal Studios Hollywood. Imagine going to work every day at a legendary film studio that’s also a theme park with rides and entertainment and, oh, that is also the home of Universal CityWalk—some of the best stores, movie theaters, and restaurants on the planet.

  Hosting Extra absolutely turned out to be the dream gig that I’d been looking for—a spot in the crow’s nest that would let me stay at the forefront of entertainment news on the best show in the business. We recently celebrated our twentieth year on air, five of which (soon to be six) I was on board. Every day is my own Name Your Adventure!

  In fact, one of the big aha moments that I had in the early days of hosting Extra was that it’s great to be a fan, to get excited the way kids allow themselves to do—whether it’s behind the mic on the red carpet for the best awards shows like the Oscars and the Grammys or at a movie premiere or at a charity gala. Why hide the excitement? That doesn’t mean being one of those fawning fans. Rather, it’s showing some love that you naturally would when getting to meet many of the coolest people in the world.