Real Girl Next Door

by Denise Richards

  Nevertheless, we didn’t give up hope. Even knowing the prognosis, I still hoped for a miracle. I think that’s human nature.

  A couple of my girlfriends insisted I needed a distraction, a girls’ night out. They were probably right; I’d turned into a homebody. They wanted to see the American Idol finale if possible, so I called Ryan Seacrest, who kindly arranged for amazing seats for us at the Kodak Theatre. On the way to the theater, though, I was hit by a wave of nausea. I didn’t know what the hell was wrong with me. As I went through security at the theater, my fear of throwing up became an embarrassing reality. My hand went over my mouth and I turned bug-eyed. A guard asked if I was okay. I shook my head no, ran past him, and found a trash can in the corner of the lobby and threw up!

  I hadn’t thrown up since I was fifteen, and here I was, moments before a live broadcast of television’s highest-rated show, on my hands and knees, puking on the floor. I was mortified. A nurse from first aid helped me into her office, where I vomited again.

  I couldn’t figure out why I was sick. I didn’t feel as if I had the flu or even food poisoning. My friends insisted it was stress. “I have never thrown up from stress,” I said. My friend said, “You have never had to deal with your mom dying of cancer.” She was right. After keeping everything from Charlie to Richie to my custody fight and my mom’s cancer locked up inside me, I reached my limit. It exploded out of me.

  After a few minutes in the nurse’s office—it was just like being back in school—I felt better enough to watch the show. I didn’t want to ruin our night out. On our way to our seats, I said hello to the Idol judges, Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, and Randy Jackson. I also waved to Ryan. However, soon after the show started, I began to feel anxious again. The queasiness returned to my stomach. Then I panicked. What if I threw up on live TV? Since they often panned to celebrities in the audience, I knew there was a chance, however remote, of something dreadful being witnessed by thirty million people, and that slim possibility was enough for me to bid a hasty good-bye to my girlfriends and go home.

  A few days later, Ryan interviewed me on his radio show. He asked what had happened to me at Idol. One minute he saw me in my seat, then I disappeared. I lied and said I hurried home after getting a call that one of my kids was sick. I thought that would be easier than explaining I’d puked in the lobby and thought it might be better if I didn’t risk doing it again on the country’s top-rated show.

  Off the air, Ryan asked if I’d come into his office and meet with him and his producing partner about starring on a reality TV show. I agreed to meet, but I said, “No way will I do a reality show.” I had more than enough reality in my life already, thanks very much.

  5

  ONE WEEKEND MY oldest nephew, Al, then twelve, came up for a couple of days of shopping, beach, and fun. We’d always been close and I was looking forward to hanging out together. As we were about to leave for lunch, my dad called, frantic. An ambulance was at the house. My mom had collapsed and was being taken to the hospital. She was in her second round of a new chemo that she hoped would be her miracle. It wasn’t.

  Within minutes, I had a bag packed, put all the kids in the car, and pulled onto the freeway. When I saw my mom in the emergency room, she was weak and her eyes were glazed and seemingly unfocused, though I had a feeling inside she knew what was going on. I’ll never forget the look on her face; I wish it weren’t etched in my memory. After a few minutes, her doctor took me aside and said he was going to stop her chemo, get her hydrated, and then let us take her home.

  I turned toward her and then told him that she wasn’t going home. “I don’t think she’ll make it out of the hospital,” I said. He reassured me that she would.

  I stood by myself, feeling a tremor of reality travel through my body. I knew the time had come to face the grim fact. It had been seven months since the doctor gave me her prognosis. My mom was dying. I saw a look in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. I can’t explain it further. Something was missing.

  All the kids went back to my parents’ house and I stayed at the hospital with my dad. My mom battled for three weeks. We were there every day. Her sister came out from Wisconsin and stayed with us, as did her best friend, Diane. One day my ex-boyfriend Pat came to see her. Sadly, Charlie didn’t come say good-bye to my mom. We celebrated Thanksgiving, my mom’s favorite holiday, in her hospital room. My sister also gave birth to her third son, John, and brought him to the hospital. My mom was barely coherent, yet I know she saw him. That meant a lot to my sister.

  Two days before my mom passed away, she was alert, which the nurses told us was common. Maybe it’s God’s way of allowing time to say good-bye. My mom was such a proud, brave woman, and I know she didn’t like us seeing her sick and vulnerable. She was in and out of consciousness and on a morphine drip. I was terrified she would pass away when I was at the house with my girls. She was my biggest fan, my number one supporter, my confidante, and my rock. I wanted to be there with her at the end, providing all of the same.

  The next day I held her hand for hours as she drifted in and out of consciousness. At one point, when I knew she was awake and listening to me tell her how much I loved and appreciated her, I simply said, “Please don’t wait for me to leave the room and then go.” I never wanted to use the word “death.” I didn’t want to say “when you die.” She remained silent, but I knew she heard. “Mom, you were there when I entered the world, and I want to be with you when you go.”

  Knowing we were near the end, we all slept at the hospital in her room that night. At 4:30 a.m. on November 30, my sister left to be with her family. We all looked at my mom. Even though she was still breathing, the nurse could not get a pulse. She tried again with the same result. “The oxygen mask is helping her breathe, but she is almost on the other side,” the nurse explained. My dad walked over to my mom, lifted her mask off, and kissed her forehead. I held my mom’s hand and five minutes later she passed away.

  I drove back to my parents’ house, though I don’t remember how I got from one place to the other. I was in disbelief. Every morning throughout my adult life I’d called my mom and we talked while having coffee. Who was I going to call at 7:00 a.m.? And my girls were never going to know her. That was a travesty. Early the next morning I walked into my parents’ room and found my dad on the bed, sobbing as he looked through pictures of her. “She was too good of a person to go,” he said. “It should’ve been me.”

  That destroyed me. I wrapped my arms around him, closed my eyes, and hung on, hoping both of us would find strength. When I gave birth to my daughters, I experienced a love that was deeper than any I could imagine. Death was similar—but the opposite. It was a feeling of loss I never knew existed—a deep, painful emptiness that I had to find my way through. And I knew I would, eventually. But at that moment, I was lost.

  I drove back to my house to get something appropriate to wear for my mom’s memorial and brought my aunt so I wouldn’t have to sleep in my house by myself. The girls stayed with my dad overnight so he wouldn’t have to sleep alone, either. In the middle of the night I woke up having what I thought was a heart attack. I couldn’t breathe. I was hit by the full force of my mom being gone and the fact that I’d never see her again, never feel her hug or hear her voice comforting me with advice or an invitation to come home and let her fix me something to eat.

  I spent the whole next day hunched over in pain, trying to catch my breath. At my mom’s memorial, we displayed beautiful pictures of her everywhere and magnificent flower arrangements. My dad and I spoke. We barely made it through, but the dear friends and family members understood. I felt a part of me had died, too. From the day I was born my mom was always there, before friends, boyfriends, marriage. I didn’t know life without my mom, and I certainly didn’t want to imagine it without her. Yet now I had to figure out this next part of my journey on my own. I rued the tragic irony. When I needed her more than ever, she wasn’t there.

  Or so I thought. On the morning sh
e died, I told her friend Diane that I didn’t know how to tell the girls that their nana was in heaven. Diane produced a book. “I think this will help,” she said, wiping a tear. Three months earlier, it turned out, my mom had bought two copies of The Fall of Freddie the Leaf, a book by Leo Buscaglia that teaches simply and clearly through a tree and the changing seasons that death is part of life. One copy was for my children and one was for Michelle’s boys. My mom had sent them to Diane and told her to give them to my sister and me after she died. My dad didn’t even know she had done this.

  Well, inside the book my mom had written a personal note to Sam and Lola saying she had arrived in heaven and was fine, and she would always protect them. I almost fell over when I read it. I could not believe she was still helping me—still helping us. I needed the book at that time more than my kids. I marveled at my mom. After I quit crying, I looked up at the sky and said, “Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

  PART NINE

  It’s Not That

  Complicated

  1

  IN FEBRUARY 2008, almost three months after my mom passed away, E! announced The Untitled Denise Richards Show was set to start production and air that summer. The premise was simple. Cameras would follow me in and out of my home as I raised my children and pursued my career as an actress while also recovering from a messy Hollywood divorce and the loss of my mother. The series fit in perfectly on a network schedule whose hits were The Girls Next Door and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. In other words, women tuned in. As Lisa Berger, E!’s executive vice president, said, “At the core of this series is a resilient single mom who is trying to get her life back on track.”

  Resilient?

  I hoped so.

  Trying to get my life back on track?

  That was the point—and no matter how much of the show would end up being “produced,” the reality of my reality was a part of every decision long before contracts were even signed. As I said earlier, I told Ryan Seacrest that I wasn’t interested in doing a reality series. I was an actress, with a résumé of movie and TV credits; I was having a hard enough time getting a job and thought a reality show might make it worse. But once Ryan called and talked it through with me, I had a different opinion and recognized that it could actually be a good thing. Also, I felt that more than enough of my real life was being captured in the media. I couldn’t go outside without paparazzi pointing still and video cameras at me. There were photos of me at the grocery store, driving car pools, filling up at the gas station, entering or exiting the courthouse, taking the girls out to dinner, even going to the doctor. How much more could I expose?

  As I told Ryan, I was trying to protect my privacy. I’d been ripped to pieces in the press. I felt as if everyone hated me. I was embroiled in an ongoing custody battle. My mom was in the final stages of a losing fight against cancer. And on top of everything else, I didn’t feel good—or rather, didn’t like where I was in my life at that moment. I’d gained weight, I wasn’t social, and I’d pretty much lost all my confidence. My self-esteem was shot. With all I’d been through, I felt beaten and bruised. I was the last person on the planet who needed to put her private life on TV.

  On camera, Ryan exudes a boyish, best-friend type of charm, and he’s no less friendly in person. But off camera, in his office, he’s a savvy businessman and a hands-on producer, which pleasantly surprised me. He listened to everything I said; I was excited at the prospect. But I still wanted to mull it over.

  Aside from mulling it over with my agent, I went to my mom. My mom thought Ryan was adorable, the all-American boy-next-door type that neither of her daughters brought home, and when I told her that he wanted to produce a reality show starring me, she saw it as an opportunity. I remember being in her kitchen over coffee. “Really?” I asked. She nodded and said, “It might be good for you.” When I ran through all the shit that was going on in my life, all the reasons not to do the show, she shook her head. “You’re stronger than you think,” she said. “People need to get to know the real you.”

  By the time negotiations started, my mom had taken a turn for the worse. I negotiated most of the deal while sitting on my mom’s bed in her hospital room. At the time, we were still hoping and praying for a miracle, and so my vision, and the original intention of the show, was to include my mom and dad. They both wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to shoot at their house as well as mine. I envisioned a reality show that was going to be real. I’d been a fan of The Osbournes, particularly the groundbreaking first season, whose addictive charm, I thought, was due largely to their honest take on themselves as a family. I wanted my series to be like that. Maybe not revolutionary; there wasn’t much new ground left to break in reality. But I wanted it to be honest—and raw, if necessary. In addition to seeing me deal with my career and children, I wanted people to see my mom’s heroic fight against cancer. I felt that it was something people could relate to, and I expected her to beat it.

  Unfortunately, she then took a dramatic, final turn for the worse, was hospitalized, and never left. However, encouraged by her to continue with the project, I finished negotiating the deal from her hospital room. I had her support and approval. She wanted me to do it. Even as she was dying, she fueled me with strength. “Keep picking yourself up,” she said. She knew my reality. In addition to everything else going on, my attorney fees were draining my bank account and I needed a paycheck. “I’m not worried about you,” my mom said. “You’ll be fine.” I heard that over and over as she held my hand. Instead, she was concerned about my father and her dog, Sheena. “Promise me that you’ll take care of them,” she said. I squeezed her hand. “I will,” I said.

  After she died, I could easily have backed out of the show. I had an understandable excuse. But despite my sadness, my mom, in some strange kind of way I didn’t fully understand yet, had left me feeling strong and good about the show even though I didn’t feel strong and good about much else. Later, following the memorial, in those difficult days when my dad and I sat around and cried and I found myself calling her cell phone just to hear her voice, I had a moment where time seemed to stop. I saw clearly where I was at that point. My life stood out like a 3-D landscape: problems here, challenges there, responsibilities all around, risks ahead of me, and maybe opportunities, too. I didn’t know. But I made a stark and frank assessment, and I did something that was very much me, but also very much something my parents had taught me my whole life, and that was to face the facts and fix the things I didn’t like. I had to remake my life.

  When I was growing up, and especially during my teenage years, my dad repeatedly told my sister and me that life was what you made of it, and so many times in the past when the cards didn’t go my way, or I felt that they didn’t, I realized he was right. And now those words rang truer than ever before. I heard them loud and clear, as if I were a kid instead of a grown woman, and once again I realized he was right.

  It was up to me to make changes. It was simple advice, but true. If I didn’t like my life, I had to face the facts and then do something about it. Another realization I want to pass on: I didn’t look back at events that were within my control with regret. I just had more work to do. Lots more. In fact, I had a whole list: I had to climb out of my depression. I needed to make money. I wanted the negative press to start changing and for people to discover the real me. I also wanted to get my ass in gear, physically, emotionally, and socially. It would only help my girls if I was happier and healthier.

  And workwise, well, my career was in the toilet. It was hard for me to accept that my personal life had affected my livelihood. But few people casting new movies and TV shows had me at the top of their list. So for reasons that can best be described as “all of the above,” I decided to move ahead with the reality show. I knew it could go either way. But I had nothing to lose. Things could only get better.

  2

  THAT DIDN’T MEAN they’d get easier.

  I don’t like when people giving advice make it seem as if all you
have to do is think positive, snap your fingers, and life changes. It doesn’t. God knows, I don’t have special powers. Real change is a process of taking baby steps and going over speed bumps. Shortly before production began, I got into a minor dustup with Charlie about whether the kids could be in the show. He’d agreed, then changed his mind, and blah-blah-blah. Although we quickly resolved the disagreement, the press worked it up into a piece that made it appear I was an awful mom exploiting the girls for my own benefit. I felt that I couldn’t catch a break.

  It only emboldened my resolve to show people a sense of who I really was. In short order my house was transformed into a set. Lights were installed, producers mapped out each room, there were meetings and discussions about my life, and then the crew arrived. On nearly every one of my previous jobs I’d felt an affinity for the crew. They arrived earlier and stayed later than everybody else, and typically they were a bunch of fun people. My kids especially loved when my gym was turned into the production office. Craft service was there, and they loved the people with all the snacks. The first couple days of shooting, when we wrapped, my girls would go into the production room and sneak out saying, “Mom, the people left all their candy.” They said it as if the people had left all their expensive jewels. It was funny. On the first day of production of my show, I introduced myself to everyone and set out food in the kitchen. I wanted them to feel comfortable. But they were standoffish, and I didn’t get it. As we got under way, I kept cracking jokes and talking to them without getting any reaction. Between one quick setup, I turned toward one guy and said, “I heard you have kids.” He nodded. “Boys or girls?” I asked. No response. I thought, “Whoa, this is going to be a long season. It’s going to suck.”