Another year I auditioned for a pilot called Way Downtown. It was another modern-day Laverne & Shirley. (Apparently, Hollywood really, really wants a modern-day Laverne & Shirley. Every year dozens of writers must walk into networks and say, Okay, imagine this: We open on two young women skipping down the street singing a Yiddish-American hopscotch chant! ) Anyway, I auditioned, they loved me, and the callback was smooth sailing. I went in for the test deal, and the studio approved me. So all that was left was to win over the network, The WB. There were eight of us there—four potential young women for each part. They started pairing us up with the other people to figure out which two had the best chemistry. I was the only “name” there, and every time I met one of the other girls, they were surprised to see me. They couldn’t believe I had to audition—usually “names” don’t. Little did they know I was going to a million auditions (sometimes, it seemed, a million auditions for a single job) just trying to do whatever it took.
After that audition The WB signed off on me. But now the executive producer started to have doubts. Word came back to me that she’d said, “I’m not sure. It’s Tori Spelling.” This was starting to be old hat. So I dutifully went back in to read yet another time to convince yet another doubter to give me yet another part on yet another pilot that, it turned out, would never make it on the air.
If only we lived in a world where hard work and dedication always got their due. There are always mitigating circumstances. For some it’s not having connections. For some it’s not having money. For some it’s not having talent. For some it’s not having the right look. I had, I’d been told, more or less all of the above. I just never expected my name to be my primary hurdle.
But once or twice I felt like justice was served. Like when 90210 was canceled because I’d left the show. I finally had proof that my hard work had paid off. Even though my father had gotten me the part, I’d made myself a critical part of the show. Another time when I felt like the world was surprisingly fair came while I was still on 90210. The parody slasher film Scream came out, starring Neve Campbell. In it there’s a moment when Neve Campbell’s character says something like, “If they make a movie about me one day, with my luck, Tori Spelling will play me.” I knew that line was in the movie—I’d even auditioned for it knowing that line was in the movie. So what? They make fun of me. It’s funny. I get it. Wes Craven, the director, had heard I had a sense of humor about it. So for Scream 2, in which they actually are making a movie about Neve Campbell’s character’s life, he asked me to do a cameo playing myself, playing her. Finally—a chance to be in on the joke. I loved it. (I guess there’s just something about me that appeals to the directors of tongue-in-cheek horror movie sequels.)
So where does the justice come in? Well, when the movie came out, Rolling Stone did a photo shoot for their cover with the headline THE GIRLS OF SCREAM 2. I was happy and surprised that they wanted to include me. I’d appear with Neve Campbell, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jada Pinkett (pre-Smith), and Heather Graham—very fine company for me. I only had a cameo, as did some of the others, but I had the very smallest part.
The cover was to be a group shot—the contract didn’t say so specifically, but it was understood that we’d all share the cover. And after that each of the “Girls of Scream 2” would pose individually for the inside of the magazine. As I was getting my makeup done, I heard some kind of ruckus. Apparently, a couple of the stars were making a fuss over who would be first to have her solo shots done so she could go home earliest. Me, I didn’t care when they did my solo shot. I was loving every minute.
Then, when we went to get our clothes for the group shot, another star was bitching about her options. And, mysteriously, one of the women insisted on having her makeup done in a separate room. I was listening to all this, feeling lucky and thinking that these women had forgotten how rare and great it was for them to have gotten as far as they had.
Mark Seliger, an award-winning photographer, was shooting the cover and layout. By the time I went in for my solo shot, it was the end of a long day. He seemed annoyed. He’d had a hard time, one diva after another. In a tired voice he asked for my requirements for the shot. I had no idea what requirements I might have. The only thing I told him was, “I’m so excited to be here.” He thanked me for being so compliant and seemed to relax.
That was all there was to it—until I got a call from my publicist. Rolling Stone had called to say that the magazine was going to be released the next day, and…I was going to be the cover—alone! The cover of Rolling Stone. It was unbelievable. The message they gave my publicist was that I was such a surprise and a pleasure to work with that they wanted to do it for me. Just imagine! What if the whole world worked on the principle of nice girls finish first?
The next morning the concierge at my building showed me his copy of the magazine. There I was on the cover, looking as if I were naked in the shower, à la Psycho, but turned to just the right angle for modesty’s sake. The cover folded out and the rest of the group—Neve, Sarah, Jada, and Heather—were all together on the inside. I’m sure they all took it very well. It’s funny to me to think that for Scary Movie 2, I went from a major role to a cameo, while for Scream 2, I went from a cameo to the publicity of a major role.
For the most part after 90210 my name seemed to work for and against me in everything I did. I had a stigma that in the business they like to call “too TV-recognizable.” Then an opportunity came along that could have been the high point of my life, if not my career. It almost was. “Almost” being the operative word.
Maybe Baby, It’s You was a play that Charlie Shanian and his writing partner, Shari Simpson, wrote to showcase their writing and acting talents. It started as an off-Broadway play that ran in New York. They both starred in it there and when it came to L.A., but after a while the Coronet Theatre in L.A. wanted to extend its run while Shari wanted to go back to New York. The producers decided to cast a celebrity across from Charlie in order to give the show a publicity boost.
It was a great play, but a tough one to act. There were eleven different comedic vignettes on love and finding a soul mate, and the female star had to play eleven different characters—everything from an eighth-grade know-it-all nerd in science class to the Greek queen Medea to an eighty-year-old Bostonian grandmother watching a soccer game. She had to dance in some bits and to sing nervously in another. It was the kind of show that many actors didn’t want to risk.
It took forever, and a specially staged showing, to get me to see the show, and when I saw it, all my fears came true. It was a dream role for a comedian. I knew I’d be an idiot to pass up the opportunity, but I’d only done “true” theater in high school (Tom Sawyer in second grade didn’t count), and I remembered being scared every night. And that was just a high school play. People weren’t paying to see it. If I screwed up at a reputable theater, I’d be screwing up big-time.
But I was offered the role, and I couldn’t say no. We rehearsed for months, and by the time the show opened, I was still nervous but felt good about the show. Then the reviews started coming in, and it was one amazing article after another. The LA Times said, “Yes, Tori Spelling belongs on a stage. She brings solid comic instinct, a nice flair for characterization and a lot of exuberance to her limited engagement.” I’d barely gotten a good review in my life! True, there was something funny about the wording: They were full of compliments like “Surprisingly, Tori Spelling is a great comedic actress.” Or “We hate to admit it, but Tori Spelling was born to be on the stage.” (My italics, thank you very much.) Nonetheless, the show ran for four months and was a huge success for the Coronet.
I finally thought, I’m good. I’m hilarious. I’ve turned the critics around. I was sure it would lead to something huge. But nothing happened. Except that I met Charlie, my costar and one of the play’s writers. Charlie was a good person, a real person, a trustworthy person, and a welcome change from the bad boys of my past. Throughout my career I’d always wondered why I climbed mounta
ins only to have them disappear. I started believing that the reason Maybe Baby, It’s You had happened was so that I could meet Charlie. We would soon get married, and had we lived happily ever after, then, yes, that would have meant that something amazing came out of the play. But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
No More Mr. Not-Nice Guy
Before I tell you about Charlie, I should tell you about Vince. Between Nick and Charlie—for almost three years—there was Vince, and it was while I was dating Vince that I decided I needed to change my destiny. Vince, my 90210 costar and love interest, was a model-turned-actor, a James Dean type with spiky hair, a beat-up black leather jacket, jeans, and motorcycle boots. Okay, he was just plain hot. The first time I saw him, he was sitting in a corner by himself reading Hemingway. (In retrospect I can’t guarantee that he ever turned a page.) Vince was a classic bad boy: good-looking, mysterious, and interested in me—but not really. And we both liked independent films, art, and eclectic designer fashion. Otherwise, there didn’t seem to be much going on in that pretty head of his.
Vince was raised in a family with three boys and a stay-at-home mom. He expected me to prepare dinner and to otherwise be stereotypically wifelike. I practically lived at his house—shopping, walking the dog, cooking him dinner every night, and cleaning up afterward. He’d watch TV, and I’d bring him his drink. It was so 1950s, but I kind of liked feeling domestic and self-sufficient. My whole life everything had been done for me. This was some version of “normal,” and I wanted to try it out.
But Vince’s fifties vibe wasn’t so cool with me when it came to our weekend plans. He’d go to bars and clubs with guys and wouldn’t bring me. If you ask me, his newfound fame was going to his head. He wanted to go out and bask in girls’ attention. I was no stranger to this phenomenon. It was exactly what I’d done to my first real boyfriend, Ryan. Even if Vince and I were invited to the same party, we wouldn’t go together. Then, starting Sunday night, we’d be as good as married all week.
The beginning of the end with Vince came one night when I went to my former costar Brian Green’s house for a small Christmas party of maybe thirty people. Vince was off with his guy friends. I was in Brian’s kitchen with Ian Ziering’s then-wife Nikki. I’d just smoked pot and was scarfing Christmas cookies when a debonair black man appeared out of nowhere.
The man walked directly up to me and said, “I need to speak with you.” He had a commanding presence and was very serious. For some reason I was feeling a little paranoid—probably it was all those Christmas cookies—so I said, “I’m sorry, can we do it later?” He didn’t push it. He just said, “How about in a few minutes?” I agreed and went back to ravaging the food table. Moments later (or so it seemed) there he was again. He said, “I really need to speak with you.” His tone was pleasant enough, but intense. He made it clear that he wanted to go someplace private. Warning bell. What woman isn’t wary of an intense stranger claiming he has to talk to you alone? Plus, did I mention I was stoned? I just said, “Listen, would you mind if my friend comes along?”
So the three of us went into Brian’s study. We sat down on the couch. He looked into my eyes and said, “I don’t want to scare you, but I have psychic ability. It runs in my family. I was born with it. I’m not a card-reader or a palm-reader.” Nikki jumped in: “Tell me! Tell me what’s going to happen to me!” But he kept focused on me. “It’s not the type of thing where I look at you and know things about you. It just comes to me that I have to find a specific person because there’s something I have to tell them.” I was high, and the whole thing was way too heavy. Nikki and I cracked up. I felt rude—this man was so earnest. So I apologized and confessed that I was stoned and I didn’t smoke pot very often and I was uncomfortable. But he was unruffled. He said, “Don’t worry. It’s human to laugh.”
Then the man got down to business. He said, “I sought you out because I was given a message for you. You’re on the wrong path in life, and I’m hoping to change that path. You’re making a mistake, the same mistake that you’ve repeated for many a lifetime. I’ve been sent to help you change your path.” Yikes. I tried to make a joke. “Um, thanks anyway, but I really don’t smoke pot very often.” But he went on. “You don’t think enough of yourself. You choose relationships that aren’t worthy of you. If you don’t stop, that’s going to be your life. In past lives you had great wealth. You were a queen or princess. Every lifetime you were given great opportunity, and you threw it all away for relationships that changed your life for the worse. You keep missing opportunities to take the right path.”
At this point in the conversation my brother poked his head in the door, scanned the scene, and raised his eyebrows at me as if to ask, Are you okay? I sort of shrugged. I found out later that Randy went to get Brian to find out who this guy was. Good ol’ Randy.
My new personal psychic finished his message. He said, “I’m simply here to tell you that you can change your course of life. I’m not saying this to scare you. I’m just passing on information.” He said, “I’m going to leave now,” and sailed out the door.
I stood up, feeling shaky. He’d gotten to me. I knew my relationship wasn’t good for me. Why did I keep making bad choices? And why had I stayed with Vince for over two years?
Suddenly Brian appeared in the room. He said, “This is crazy. I can’t find him. He’s gone.” I asked Brian who the guy was—figuring he’d say it was some friend of a friend or a hired party fortune-teller or possibly some dude who’d died in this apartment ten years ago to this very day. But no, Brian said it was his next-door neighbor, Terence Trent D’Arby, the Grammy Award–winning musician now known as Sananda Maitreya and actually reputed to be something of a psychic. Brian was a big fan of his and had invited him over. So my psychic was actually a respected member of society. That was a bit of a surprise. But Brian was still talking about how weird it was. He said, “He came in. I took his coat. He talked to you. And then he disappeared.”
I’d never given much thought to whether people can have real psychic abilities. But Terence Trent D’Arby caught my attention. Here was a successful, talented musician who wanted nothing from me and had absolutely nothing to gain from giving me his message. He just came, delivered it, and left. That gave him credibility, and I considered chasing him down for his lotto picks, but that seemed a little disrespectful. At any rate, his voice stuck in my head. I knew I was going to break up with Vince. It was just a matter of when.
The moment came on Valentine’s Day. I was in New York for Fashion Week with my mother—this is the same New York trip when I got the news about Scary Movie 2. While I was gone, Vince planned to go to a party at the Playboy Mansion. I wasn’t into it. I’d been to plenty of parties there myself and knew that it was pretty much a pickup scene. I thought it was inappropriate for him to go without me, especially on Valentine’s Day. Nonetheless, he insisted it was no big deal. Ultimately, I accepted that he was going to the party whether I liked it or not, but I asked him to call me when he got home. It would be three hours later in New York, but I told him to wake me up no matter how late it was.
During the night I woke up a few times realizing he hadn’t called, but whenever I subtracted the three-hour time change, I figured he was probably still at the party. I wasn’t about to call his cell—I’d been demanding enough. To chase him down at the party would make me feel like a total loser. But finally, when I got up to go to the bathroom at around six in the morning, he still hadn’t called and I knew he wouldn’t.
I was done. That was it. Terence Trent D’Arby had spoken, and I was finally ready to listen. I called Vince and told him it was over.
Although he took me for granted, Vince didn’t go easily. He kept asking to see me. He called me crying. He brought me flowers, toys, necklaces. It didn’t matter. I was so done that I couldn’t believe I’d ever been with him. Finally he said, “I know every year for my birthday I go out with the guys to have drinks, but all I want this year is
to go to Santa Barbara with you and have a nice birthday by the pool.” He’d been a distant guy who sometimes wouldn’t give me the time of day, but now he was a sobbing mess. I felt bad and agreed to go.
That night we were in bed. I was wearing full flannel pajamas, the last word in unsexy, just to make it clear that nothing was going to happen. Still, he presented me with an engagement ring and asked me to marry him. There was nothing magical about it, and it wasn’t hard to refuse. Some time after the fact, Pete told me that according to Vince, he’d spent all his money on the ring, but my guilt only goes so far. I wasn’t about to marry him because he’d made a lousy investment. I was ready to break the chain of bad boys that Terence Trent D’Arby said had been my mistake over many a lifetime. Vince was it. I had to find a different type of guy. From then on every time my friend Mehran and I heard the song “Wishing Well,” he’d say, “Terence Trent D’Arby changed your life!”
For better or worse that’s when Charlie appeared. Things with Charlie started about the same way they did in my bad-boy relationships. We were doing the play together, and I wanted to see if I could get his attention. I always did that with my costars—probably because I started 90210 so young that for most of my dating life I’d only met guys when I was working. Charlie had dark hair and looked intellectual. Well, he wore glasses, anyway. My friend Jenny always says that I was overly impressed by the glasses, and I have to confess that they did give him some level of credibility. I thought for sure he was Jewish, which I knew would make my parents very happy. Turned out he was Greek Armenian. Oops.
Stori Telling Page 9