by Jennie Garth
Then I started getting texts from Ian Ziering, who’d just wrapped his own stint on DWTS, making it to the semifinals and placing a respectable fourth on season four. He was so encouraging (“Do it! Do it! Do it!”) that I found myself giving it serious thought.
But I agonized, of course, and consulted with my “team,” which included Mr. Showbiz, Adele, and my husband, who would have to hold down the fort at home. But finally, in the end, after way too much hemming and hawing, there was no reason not to do it, so I signed on. And once I did, that good old feeling of absolute dread washed over me, just like it had back when I was fourteen and had signed up for that Cinderella-y pageant where I’d gotten to dance in front of an audience and a panel of judges. I mean, who says fantasies about becoming a ballerina die just because you’re the mother of three, over thirty-five, and not in great shape?
It seemed like within minutes of saying yes, this extremely young, fresh-faced guy showed up at my door, camera crew in tow. It was Derek Hough, who was joining the pro team of DWTS that season, and I would be his very first partner. Derek had just flown back from London, where he’d finished a run as Ren in Footloose onstage in the West End. He was all of twenty-two, I think, sweet and kind, and my three girls followed him out to our backyard like puppies, bumping into one another trying not to bump into him. We sat and chatted awkwardly, and I remember thinking, Does he even have facial hair yet? And so I’d move in a little closer, kind of amazed at the fact that he was so young.
Every time Derek made a gesture or opened his mouth, my kids giggled. In fact, there were fits of giggles. I could tell they thought he was the most adorable thing they’d ever laid eyes on, like a teddy bear just pulled down from a high shelf. I’m pretty sure they were in love.
I watched as Derek sweated through our awkward first conversation, and yet he was so polite. I wasn’t quite sure he even knew who I was, but in the end, that didn’t matter. All that mattered was whether he could dance, because if he couldn’t, we were in big trouble.
Well, let me tell you something: That kid can dance. I mean, breathtaking, way-beyond-his-years dance. He can also choreograph and teach like nobody’s business. His younger sister, Julianne, was already a beloved pro on the show, and as soon as he walked out on that stage, Derek became a fan favorite, too. I knew I was in very good, albeit extremely young hands.
There is no messing around with DWTS. After that “at home” meeting, where they got some footage of Derek and me meeting for the first time, and some material to use in promos, we began practicing pretty much right away, holing ourselves up in a dance studio in North Hollywood, where Derek did his best to teach me the cha-cha.
I’d say there is no better way to lose the last of your pregnancy pudge than by doing the cha-cha (or the mambo, or the quickstep, or the fox-trot—you name it) for eight hours a day. I thought chasing after three girls and keeping the laundry going and the meals coming was the most exhausting thing any woman could do, but I was wrong: Training in ballroom dance with enough intensity and rigor so that you can actually do it on live television just a few short weeks after your first lesson is way more exhausting than being home with three kids. Because, after all, you still go home, after practicing all day, and put that mommy hat right back on.
As you know, I’m a dedicated people pleaser, and I wanted to please Derek and be a very good student—I really did. But even he, a soft-spoken, seriously gifted guy, would throw up his hands when, after my forty-eighth attempt at getting a step sequence down, I’d still mess up. From time to time, not wanting to lose his cool, Derek would step away, and I’d flop over in relief, grateful that I had the chance to catch my breath for a moment.
I don’t think I’ve ever sweated so much in my life.
But before I felt anywhere near comfortable with the cha-cha, it was showtime!
Let me tell you about prepping for the big night. First, there was the custom-made blue sparkly dress that had cutouts that cleverly hid the parts of my new-mommy body that still needed to be kept under wraps. Derek would be wearing a matching blue jumpsuit, the kind of thing Evel Knievel wore when he was going to, say, try to ride his motorcycle across the Grand Canyon. Now, I don’t usually like men in tight spandex, especially anything with rhinestones on it, but I have to say, Derek looked pretty all right in his very tight costume. I guess, for both of us, the producers had the goal of achieving maximum “hotness” without there being any chance of an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction while we danced our butts off.
Once the costume was fitted, it was time for the spray tan. Sweet baby Jesus, the DWTS spray tan. I was a spray-tan virgin at this point in my life, and I was damn proud of this fact. So when I was asked to strip and stand in front of a woman wearing construction goggles and holding a hose who looked like she meant business in the worst possible way, I knew this would not be good.
Now, to the producers’ credit, the spray tan wasn’t mandatory. What I was told was that if I didn’t get one, I’d stand out like a giant, very white thumb, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? No. We would not.
So there I was, buck naked, in front of a very nice lady who sprayed every last nook and cranny, even ones I didn’t know I had. It was an extraordinarily intimate experience, especially the part when she told me to turn around and bend over. It was important, she said while I complied, that there were no visible creases around my butt when I was performing. The things you learn . . . “And it’s very nice to meet you, too.”
I finally emerged from the spray-tan area a few hours later, a custom-blended shade of dark orange. I was then taken to makeup, where about eight pounds of stage makeup was spackled to my face; then came the false eyelashes, which were painstakingly applied in such a way that I actually thought my eyeballs would dry up and fall out, or that I’d be permanently blinded when the makeup artist was finished.
I staggered out of the makeup room, squeezed into my costume, put on my dancing shoes, and then nearly fell over when they announced the order of appearance.
Guess who had to dance first.
Gulp. Me. Never mind that I looked like a showgirl who had run off and joined the circus. Derek and I heard our names being called by that announcer with the very strange, vaguely Eastern European accent: “Here to dance the cha-cha . . .” Next thing you know, Derek and I were onstage, the lights were blinding, the music was blaring, the crowd was clapping, and we danced our little blonde hearts out. Several times, I almost slipped in the puddles of spray tan that were forming all over the stage (I probably lost at least a pound in perspiration, another in anxiety), yet somehow or other, we managed to finish our routine and then found ourselves completely out of breath and standing in front of Carrie, Len, and Bruno, the esteemed and hilariously serious judges of DWTS. I don’t think I heard a word they said, I was so traumatized and exhausted. But I do know that out of a possible thirty points, we scored a respectable twenty-one.
Done and done. Look who’s dancing now.
It felt like before my week-one spray tan had even dried, week two rolled around. I was feeling a little bit better having made it through week one without falling or screwing up in some major way. Going into week two of DWTS, I knew I needed to dig in and find a little bit more confidence so we could score a little higher. The dance for week two was the quickstep, a classic ballroom dance—and I felt way more at ease with this style than I had with the cha-cha. I could do this. Right?
All I had to do was get over feeling like I was dancing with a child. Poor Derek. During rehearsal, he begged me to think of him as a man’s man—George Clooney, actually—rather than as a boy from Utah. So I’d look him in the eye, think, Hi, George, imagining my voice deep and throaty and . . . then I’d burst out laughing. I didn’t mean to be cruel, but, man . . . he was so young!
This was going to be a huge night for me, because my dad, who was pretty incapacitated by this point, and was using a wheelchair to get around, was coming to watch me perform. I knew he’d have a front-row se
at, and this made me feel both excited and even more crazy nervous.
At least this time, we didn’t have to dance first, so I had the chance to go through a few rounds of hyperventilating backstage until . . .
We were on!
Man, we were killing it! I was gliding around the stage, dressed in a flowing pastel-pink number, while Derek looked dashing in a black tux. KT Tunstall’s hit “Suddenly I See” was our song, and I was thinking, Check this out. . . . Suddenly I’m dancing. . . . I knew I had to bring more confidence to my game that night, and so I locked eyes with Derek, straightened my back (the judges had commented on my lack of proper dance posture the week before), and decided to just trust that we wouldn’t mess up. And we didn’t, until . . .
As it happened, we were finishing our number right in front of my father, and the music swelled as we were moving into our superflashy last move, in which I’d slide down onto the floor, glide between Derek’s legs, and he’d twirl elegantly above me and then, ta-da! Fini! But when he released me down to the floor, I felt this weird tug on my dress, and the next thing I knew, Derek was kind of falling over me, his shoe stuck in the fabric of my gown. He’s so good at what he does that he recovered, but it had happened. There I was, on my ass. The first fall of the season. Oops.
We finished up and made our way over to the judges’ table, where Bruno, God bless him, blurted out, “It was like Leo and Kate in Titanic!” After that remark, I didn’t hear a word, just a loud buzzing in my head. It was the buzz of shame. I felt really bad, because my husband and kids—and my dad—were all there. In the end, we must have done something right, though, because we still managed to pull off a score of three sevens, for another twenty-one. What a relief! Because after all the niceties and hoopla of the opening two weeks, where we were all treated with kid gloves, as behooves big “stars” like us, now the gloves were off. It was time to kick some serious ass—this was a highly competitive thing, you know? I mean, more than twenty million—twenty million—people were watching from home and texting or calling in and deciding our fate (which could be shockingly at odds with our judges’ scores). And this was the first week someone would be eliminated. When it came time to announce who was out, I just held my breath as Tom Bergeron asked actress Josie Maran to say her good-byes. Oh. My. God. It was kind of horrifying to watch, and it made me determined to hang on as long as I possibly could. Otherwise that buzz of shame would follow me home and dog me for the rest of my days—or so I stupidly thought.
I was in with a crazy, fierce mix of pros, some of whom had danced before (Mel B from the Spice Girls and Sabrina Bryan, a Cheetah Girl) but the people you really had to watch your back with were the ones with the serious stage experience, those ageless and indefatigable creatures who had been onstage with a mike in hand since before I was born. Yup. I’m talking Wayne Newton and Marie Osmond, in particular.
Wayne, a total doll of a man, had the whole Vegas, easy-swagger, “I’ve got the whole audience in the palm of my hand” thing down pat. I mean, he’d practically invented it. He also happened to be born on April 3, so he was my birthday twin, which created an extraspecial bond between us, too. Never mind that the man couldn’t touch his toes—he was having the time of his life, and he knew how to make sure everyone around him was, too. He and his wife are the loveliest people, and I felt very honored to get to know them both. I adore them.
Then there is Marie Osmond. Wow. What I can I say? She had the whole crazy, giant doll-collecting world behind her, not to mention the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the state of Utah, and what? Like five hundred brothers and their legions of utterly devoted fans? I mean, her fan base was huge. Giant. Colossal. We all understood pretty early on that Marie was going to be the juggernaut, the person we’d all be chasing, and with each passing week she was proving us right—even the night she fainted onstage, which only seemed to kindle her determination, and which galvanized her awesomeness in the eyes of her vast audience, and us, her fellow competitors; I mean, who passes out on live TV and then, five minutes later, cracks jokes about it?
Then there were the athletes, who were quiet but so focused it was intimidating. Even scarier was how freaking graceful these guys were. I’m talking about the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. and the Indy race car driver Hélio Castroneves, who elegantly and stealthily kicked all of our asses—and Hélio then won the whole damn thing. He was incredible: consistent, professional, a delight to watch. And so was his partner, Julianne, who just happened to be my baby partner’s baby sister.
I won’t bore you with the blow-by-blow of each week, but let’s just say that I surprised myself, and week after week I’d make the cut. At home, I was becoming something of a legend. I mean, can you think of anything more awesome to do as the mom of three girls than be on Dancing with the Stars? I was getting seriously buff, too. I lost around ten pounds, but my shape was completely rearranged by all that dancing in pretty phenomenal ways—inches came off, the butt was sky-high, the boobs. It was pretty amazing! Peter was blown away, too, because he knew how freaked out I was by crowds and being in public, and I could tell that with each passing week, even he was surprised by how well I was doing. In a word, I was killing it. And it felt good.
In the end, I made it all the way to the semifinals, even picking up a few perfect scores of thirty on my way to a very respectable fourth-place finish.
HOLIDAYS AND HOSPITALS
Why is it that the highest highs are always followed by the lowest lows? Is this what they mean by Murphy’s Law? And who the hell was Murphy, anyway?
Dancing with the Stars wrapped just before Thanksgiving, which was a beautiful, beautiful thing: I missed being at home with my girls, of course, but I also couldn’t wait to eat whatever I wanted again, knowing that I wasn’t going to be sewn into a skimpy dance costume come Monday, or whatever day of the week it was when we danced “live.”
We celebrated my having cleared the dancing hurdle by taking the girls for a quick island getaway. It was just what my tired muscles and beat-up feet needed: sun, sand, and a lot of nothing else.
When we got home, we put together a big family Thanksgiving celebration, but my middle daughter, Lola, came down with something and . . . she just couldn’t shake it. My normally upright and helpful, superloving five-year-old was curled up in a quiet ball, achy and under the weather.
At first we figured she’d just brought home the big, gnarly school virus that takes out a bunch of kids right before a holiday break. (This is definitely Murphy’s Law, right?) But almost right away, I knew that whatever was going on with Lola was not something run-of-the-mill. Lola, who had the sweet energy of a frisky little colt, was now as limp as a noodle, and so depleted that she barely spoke. Seeing her so sick pressed my mama-bear panic button, and we mobilized around her immediately.
The first call we made was to her pediatrician, and she expressed concern right out of the gate, with little Lola’s body covered in red hivelike bumps, and a fever that seemed to stick around the scary hundred-and-five-degree range. Clearly this was not a typical bacterial infection, because the drugs they’d prescribed for her weren’t touching it. But what did we know? We followed the doctor’s advice and gave the treatment a few days, and pretty rapidly, things for Lola went from bad to worse: In no time at all, she was suffering such severe joint pain that she couldn’t even walk. When she could no longer make it to the bathroom, we knew we were in serious trouble, and so we whisked her to the hospital.
Let me tell you, people: You do not want your daughter (or son) admitted to a major medical center if no one has a clue as to what is ailing your child, and even just thinking about what that meant for poor Lola, all these years later, well, it still ignites a firestorm of maternal rage in me.
Here we were, in the great city of Los Angeles, the land of Hollywood and, we thought, state-of-the-art hospitals, with a very, very sick child on our hands. Because of her overt symptoms (high fever, bright body rash, severe aches and pains), her team of do
ctors immediately jumped on a diagnosis of scarlet fever and began to pump her full of more antibiotics. When her symptoms worsened, they moved on to subjecting her to a vast and fruitless array of painful and invasive tests, including (but not limited to) testing for leukemia, performing a bone-marrow biopsy, and taking out a lymph node and biopsying that, too. Every day they were poking her with needles and ratcheting up the testing, and every day Lola was getting worse.
Peter and I were beside ourselves. Here we were, pacing the halls of the hospital, waiting to hear whether our daughter would test positive for a terrifying cancer or some other horrible disease that very well might take her life. To describe this time as harrowing is an understatement, and I get traumatized all over again just thinking about having to step out of Lola’s room—after she’d been bruised by more needles than I could count and she’d cried herself hoarse—in order to not completely lose it in front of her. I remember once having to run out of her room, and I was so overwhelmed with pity for her, and fear for her, that I just dropped to my knees, unable to breathe or speak, sobbing uncontrollably.
Nothing is worse than your child being so sick.
While the doctors fumbled along, Peter and I were constantly on the computer, doing research like mad, determined to do what all the experts around us could not, which was to figure out what sinister bacteria or virus had invaded our daughter and then find out how to kill it once and for all.
I had a theory, of course, as all moms do when their child gets sick, but the white lab coats didn’t want to hear it. We’d been on that tropical vacation, and Lola had gotten her hair braided on the beach, and the braids had been capped off by tinfoil. The tin paper on one of the braids had cut into her neck, and the next thing you know, we were home and she was perilously ill. To this day, I’m convinced that some strange, tropical disease made its way into her via that big wound that bloomed around that cut on the side of her neck, that this was indeed the point of infection. But of course the world-famous infectious-disease specialists who were brought in didn’t see it that way, and so they fumbled on.