Superficial
Page 11
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2014
Woke up and texted with Padma, who quickly booked in, then Teresa texted and said she couldn’t come into the city and could I meet her in Jersey somewhere. So I am going to Montville tomorrow to meet her on the way to my signing outside of Philly. What does she want to discuss, I wonder?
Did The Rachael Ray Show, where I had polenta with tomato sauce and crispy kale, plus a popover, and then they took me to the kitchen, where I picked on some crème pie and was given homemade Thin Mints to take home and some of that guy Blake’s famous chocolate chip cookies.
Went downtown to defer my jury duty and the lady said, “We had Calvin Klein here yesterday deferring his!” Taped the show with Padma, Olivia Munn, and a bunch of rowers from the UK. They were very cute and shirtless and it wound up being a great show. Ryan had me take a picture where the shirtless rowers were all picking me up and it looked really depressing so I asked them not to release it anywhere.
It’s the holidays and I’ve done nothing about it, including nothing for my Christmas party. I don’t even really know who’s coming. Dinner with Deirdre, John Jude, and John Hill at the Waverly Inn. The prices are just highway robbery. I don’t know if I can go back—sixteen bucks for the kale salad. Got an incredible massage from Adam—one I’d waited for the whole book tour—and slunk into bed directly from the table at one-thirty.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2014—NYC—PHILADELPHIA—NYC
Woke up sore and dehydrated, and a little dizzy. Went and got my staples out. Schlepped to the Montville Inn for my top-secret lunch—and the first meal I’ve ever shared—with Teresa, who arrived with diamond hoop earrings and bone-straight hair that I complimented and she wistfully said, “Yeah, I thought this would be my Season 7 look”—sad, of course, because it doesn’t seem like she will be in Season 7 unless we wait for her. We tried to figure out if we’ve ever shot in this restaurant. Teresa said she vaguely remembers it and I think it was her, Caroline, and Jacqueline talking about Danielle in Season 2. Teresa had two cosmos and I finally had a red wine. She wanted to know off the bat if I’m dating a hockey player. I told her that Sean Avery is straight. She said Us Weekly has her kids’ Christmas lists printed, but the kids don’t even have Christmas lists so she knows everything is bullshit. She hates her hair on the “Free Tre” T-shirts. We talked a lot about her case and how the lawyers fucked up.… I kept pushing her about what life was gonna be like in the prison in Danbury. She has a prison consultant but she hasn’t talked to him yet. Who knew that a prison consultant is a thing?! I want one! She said she had a seen a psychic and the queen card came up, and the psychic said a queen might help her in her life and she thought that might be me because I’m a queen. Hmmm. She said she wakes up in the middle of the night scared. I kept asking her about prison and she goes, “You’re so obsessed with this prison thing, aren’t you?!” So that makes one of us, I guess. She asked what will happen with Housewives while she’s gone and I said I really didn’t know, maybe we would wait for her. She said she would be fine coming back with them all but isn’t sure about Melissa. Melissa and Joe moved back to Montville and didn’t tell her; she hasn’t seen them since the reunion. They’re “fine,” but they’re not talking. So is that fine?
I told her it would be in her self-interest to write a diary, and I told her in my own selfish interest that I wanted her to do an interview with me right when she got out or while she is in prison, and to start shooting Housewives whenever she legally could. Toward the end of the meal we started to get heavy. She said I occasionally hurt her feelings when she was on WWHL; she left the show crying a couple times. I apologized. She said she was hurt when I asked her the day after the sentencing how she looks in an orange jumpsuit. I said it was mean and that’s why we didn’t use it in the show, sometimes I don’t know if something is going to be inappropriate before it comes out of my mouth and only realize after it’s too late. I said she has a good sense of humor and I thought she might jump on the jumpsuit line. In front of the restaurant we had a real moment and I told her everything I wanted her to hear from me if for some reason we didn’t meet again. Her eyes filled with tears and I felt like I was on RHONJ as I put my hands on both her shoulders and told her that she’s important to me, that she has meant a great deal to me over the years, that I care for her, that I am sorry if I’ve ever hurt her feelings, and that I will pray for her. I meant every word of it. We hugged twice and she pulled away in her white Range Rover to sign Gabriella up for advanced soccer.
After, I went to an ebullient last signing thrown by the Katz JCC, outside of Philly. I took two hundred pics quickly with VIPs and had a lot of yentas all over me, then spoke in front of a thousand people on the bema of a temple. The lady organizers had the mic and were reading questions the audience had submitted. If I hear the title of my show misidentified one more time … “Watch What’s Happening Live.” “Watching What’s Happened.” It’s not the best title! Then I ate half a pot lolly, which kicked in fast, while I was also sipping a massive tequila on ice and I signed more than five hundred books. A woman told me her four-year-old son, Sam, has a Housewives tag line: “I may be four, but I run this town.” Haha! And a woman said, as she got hustled through the madness of the yentas after waiting ninety minutes, “This is my Vietnam, but it’s worth it.” A lady named Michelle handed me a piece of paper with Wacha’s Housewives tag line on it: “I may not have balls, but that doesn’t make me a bitch.” Oh, and the couple was there that I wrote about in my book, the ones who I overheard trashing me in the lobby at my show—the lady who squeezed my ass in the photo and made me the collage. She made me another collage, this one of me and Wacha, which I love. And the husband said he was the one who was trashing me in the lobby and felt horribly about it and I said but isn’t it funny that I was listening around the corner? He did think so, and we fist bumped.
I triumphantly left for my schlep home and was momentarily deflated by my driver, who was the whitest black guy I’ve ever met. It took him a solid three minutes (eternity) to do all his little paperwork before starting the car for the ninety-minute journey. Once under way, with the silence thumping in my ears, I asked him to turn on the radio. He asked what I wanted to hear and I said to flip around the FM dial and we’d find something. “That would be pretty hard to do while I’m driving, don’t you think?” he asked. Yes, I said, that would be near impossible to accomplish. I got out my computer and DJed the journey home while slowly sucking the life out of a massive bag of Doritos a fan brought me.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2014
Sherman brought Wacha home this morning and I put him right into bed with me. I was on the phone a while later and heard what sounded like him drinking water, but I knew it couldn’t be that because his bowl wasn’t in my bathroom. Then I realized he was slurping toilet water, which would’ve been fine but it was full of my pee. Gross. Ran around getting ready for my Christmas party and talked to Jake in New Hampshire about Angela and the Patriots. Early dinner with John Hill at the new Italian place that I’m obsessed with. I went home and was really tired but Jake Shears and Kylie Minogue were doing an all–Dolly Parton set on Twenty-sixth Street at ten-thirty and I really wanted to go. John Hill had gone home by that point and I was a little stuck for who to go with. I tried Hickey; he was still at dinner. I wound up staying at home. I would’ve had the guts to go alone if I wasn’t famous but I felt self-conscious about it. Interesting. Mark and Kelly sent me a beautiful, ornate gingerbread house and it took having a gingerbread house to realize it was something I always wanted.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2014
Ran around getting ready for my party all day. It was SantaCon and it seemed like the wind was out of the sails for all the drunk straight people who run around town in Santa outfits, perhaps owing to the simultaneous demonstrations over police violence against black people. I stopped by two independent bookstores, Three Lives and bookbook on Bleecker, and signed their stock of my book. I went crazy on twinkly lights
and looked at my apartment before everyone arrived and realized that between the gingerbread house and the gold tree from WWHL I’ve transitioned to a Christian home. I had no clue who was really coming to my party so the night was an adventure as everybody arrived. All I knew was that Jake Shears was bringing Kylie Minogue. Next year I might want to have people RSVP. I called John Hill in a panic because I forgot to redo my Christmas party playlist and he came over and did some work on it. I told him to add some Kylie, because maybe it would be disrespectful if she was there and there wasn’t any on in a mass of Madonna. The first guests at the party were Grac and Neal. Then Bruce, Bryan, and Barry. Then Mark, Kelly, Jessica Seinfeld, Jake Shears, and Kylie Minogue, who was over by the cheese and crackers looking like she was in crisis. I went up to her and she asked if this was all the food I was serving. I said yes but asked if I could get her anything. She said well, what do you mean, and I said pizza? She said no. I said roast chicken? She said perfect, so I ordered out from Good and she was thrilled a half hour later eating it on the couch. She said she’s never seen the Real Housewives of Melbourne and I said that makes two of us—I have nothing to do with the show. She lives between London and Australia. It was all the regulars: Dave, Ally, Jeanne, Fred, Jackie, Amanda, Jim, SJP, Hickey, Victor Garber, Troy Roberts, Harry Smith, and on and on. I was sitting chatting with Fred and Padma, who had her stilettoed legs sprawled across both our laps, and Jeanne stormed over to her husband, under a blanket of Lakshmi, saying, “Get your fucking legs off my husband!” And then she said, “I’m just trying to protect my family.” It was a real-life scene! Exciting, though. I guess Julianne Moore was having her Christmas party down the street and we got spillover from that. Barkin was amazing; she brought Sandra Bernhard and Sara, who said they were not invited but crashing and I said, “Yeah, I realized I didn’t invite you and wondered why,” which kind of hung there. I made a lunch plan with Greg Berlanti. NPH was there. The bulk of the group stayed until three; we went until after four. Jon Jay and Nikki stopped by at some point in the madness.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2014
I was at WWHL early for Sting and Trudie Styler. They were both all in black and he was wearing black leather pants, which I absolutely loved. He was so Sting. I asked them a lot about tantric sex. She said he has a gay alter ego named Rene and I latched onto that like crazy.
Heard from Anderson that our live stage show is coming together, we’re looking at a March show in Boston to test the water. We need a title. He suggested AC Squared: An Evening with Andy C and Anderson C. We decided on AC2: Deep Talk and Shallow Tales. We taped a show with Jason Schwartzman and Krysten Ritter. He was so lovely before the show and excited to be there but a little tongue tied on the air. The gay shark brought out a birthday cake for Ritter at the end and Wacha jumped up and ate some, which made us all laugh. I thought it saved the show, but I think my producers think he needs management or Cesar Millan. Am I becoming one of those dog owners? Do I not know what is obnoxious or not?
Went to Whitehall with Hickey, who said it was like airplane food and not to get used to seeing him there. I told him he is a food snob from Plano, Texas. Walked home and watched two episodes of The Comeback.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2014
First visit to the dog run in months and Wacha ran around like a motherfucker. Had lunch with Greg Berlanti; it was fun getting to know him. I left my phone aside and I guess it was blowing up while I was in there because Seth Rogen and James Franco bailed on our 4:00 p.m. taping. I booked Anderson and Kelly to replace them tomorrow.
Yolanda and Anna Kendrick were on the early show and I went into Yolanda’s dressing room beforehand and she had her head down and tearily told me she was in really bad shape from the Lyme disease. She was so weak and feeling slow and vulnerable—but looking, I should add, like a million-dollar bill. I’m on the Today show recommending Christmas books with Brooke Shields tomorrow, and they want me there at 7:20 a.m. for a 7:45 tease and I just know that they don’t need me there that early. I know it. But no one else does.
The live show with Vicki and Beth Stern was perfect. I grabbed Vicki before the show because we’re in the middle of figuring out her future on the show. I said you’re nuts to walk away, we are at a good place and you waited nine seasons to be the voice of reason on the show so why walk now? She said she agreed, but who knows. We played Name! That! Pussy! with Vicki. I gave her multiple-choice questions and she had to pick which one was the right cat name (Stormy, Millicent, or Shadow?!) and Vicki got something like six out of eight right and was all “I won; I won!” Of course she won nothing, though.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2014
A never-ending marathon day that started at six forty-five in order to get to the Today show—went to two Starbucks stores on the way and both were out of tea and I don’t even know what to do with that. They’re transitioning to different tea brands this week, so they ran out of the Awake stuff. I was so irritated, and even more so to walk into NBC and discover that my seven forty-five tease had been cancelled and no one bothered to let me know but somehow Brooke Shields got the memo and arrived fresh after eight. I was looking around for someone I could hug to death. The segment was fine and hopefully “selling,” as they say. Went home and walked, then nuzzled with, the dog. Quick lunch with Hickey at Zampa and I was already stressed about having three shows today (we’re in a logjam because of Christmas), but Hickey made it worse by saying I was nuts not to have started looking for a place to live while my old apartment is being combined with the new one. Called Fredrik Eklund to say I need to find an apartment to rent because I have to move out for a year starting in February and he said do you realize how late you are to the table here? I said no.
Radzi came by to get a book signed and remarked that Wacha is the perfect animal. He was just sitting there watching us sweetly with his big eyes. Cut to two hours later, and he bit Anderson! We were short of space at WWHL because we were doing three shows, and it was madness so Anderson was in my office getting ready and I had just given Wacha a fresh meaty bone which I knew would take him through eight hours at least of being at the show, and Anderson leaned down to pet him and he started growling and barking. He thought Anderson was going after the bone. Anderson retreated to the couch and all was fine for thirty seconds until Wacha out of nowhere started attacking him and bit him on his side. He was cut—bleeding a little. Anderson is the ultimate trouper but I was mortified and horrified. Kelly said I need a trainer for the dog but I don’t know what I’m training him to do, erase whatever bad memory he has about being territorial with bones? My mind was on the dog during the whole show, which I thought sucked but the control room thought was great. The gay shark came out at the end for a dance party—Wacha was supposed to be there too, but I nixed that—and Anderson didn’t stand because his shirt was a little bloody and ripped on the side. Humiliating for me! Maybe worse for him, but I was a wreck.
During the break before the next show I distributed my staff Christmas present, which were Adidas track jackets with WWHL embroidered on the back. The whole staff put them on. John Hill and l were chatting about WTF could be wrong with Wacha when Daryn came into my office in tears. This girl she’d been seeing went home to Mississippi to come out, and the mother called Daryn with the girl next to her and threatened her life (“I will come to NYC and blow your brains out”) if she continued to see her daughter. She made the daughter tell Daryn that the daughter was choosing the mother over her and she would never be speaking with her again. This is 2014? I have never seen Daryn so upset. It was horrible. I felt like her powerless dad. And what could I tell her that would make her feel better about being threatened by this intolerant woman and losing her girlfriend? (I said time would heal her, still, not great…)
Then we had Phaedra and Faith Evans, and Phae was freaked about the RHOA episode she’d just screened so there was some light damage control to do there. Dave Brecher’s grandma, Libby, was the bartender and she brought homemade brisket and latkes and
I was just obsessed with getting my hands on some after the show. The whole studio smelled like brisket. I became convinced that the staff was gonna eat it all before I got any, but Mike Robley saved me some and all was okay with the world. I shoved brisket in my mouth and told Mom and Dad about how the tour with Anderson could work and Mom’s first reaction was, “And an agent takes 20 PERCENT?!” I yelled at her for having an immediate negative reaction to it and not focusing on the positive. So that devolved. I spent a good chunk of time prepping for Nicki Minaj, who was on live for the #AndyConda. During rehearsal I realized I should take a butt selfie with her because she has been posting a lot of ass pics and that seemed to work so well with Kim Kardashian. Also, Phaedra was going to come out to do a surprise shotski with her. I made sure to ask Nicki during the promo if she put “Fix it, Jesus” in “Yasss Bish!!” (How do I say that title out loud without sounding like an old Jewish dude? I wondered) because of Phae and she said yes. She said she watches WWHL every night and was excited to be there, which I loved. Right before the show her publicist and Dori came in the control room and said that Nicki wanted to know the Plead the Fifth questions—her publicist was acting like “Wink wink, I know you do this all the time,” but we said actually we’ve never told a guest in advance. Thus began three minutes of me tap-dancing to the publicist as my entire staff watched in delight to see if I was going to be able to push this through. I said the first question was a positive spin on something negative (it was “Say three nice things about Mariah Carey”). He seemed okay with that for a second, and then I said the next one was about one of her song lyrics (something about big asses attracting big dicks, which was leading me into asking her who had the biggest dick in the music business), and the third question was something that then related to that lyric again (it actually related to dicks; this time it was, who is the biggest dick in Hollywood). At that point he went back to the first one and asked, “Is it about someone she’s collaborating with on this current album?” I said no. Finally I just caved and told him the question and he said absolutely not and the truth is that after the day I’d had I was feeling violent and I was having PTSD from being a booker at CBS, and I was upset that my dog bit my friend who had done me the favor of going on my show and upset I couldn’t make (always upbeat) Daryn feel better—but instead of getting mad I said, “It’s gone,” and mentally decided to move the question about what she knew about the elevator incident with Beyoncé to that spot. He asked what the new question was going to be and I said, “It’s about someone she has collaborated with,” and shut it down from there.