Jenny McCarthy: The Next McCarthy Era

As long as we're discussing rejection, how did McCarthy react when several magazines and TV outlets refused to run her Candies shoes ad campaign? "I freaked," she says. "No, I was confused. The toilet [ad] was my idea and I still can't find the chemical in my brain that says it is bad or naughty"

Has she figured out why her book didn't fly? Buzz around town says that her publisher never promoted it properly. Eager to clarify, McCarthy says, "Judith Regan [president, publisher and editor at Regan Company, an imprint of HarperCollins] suggested I do the book. I talked with the [ghost] writer Neal Karlen for three months, but what he wrote really wasn't my voice, and the publisher rejected it. So a month before the book was due I rewrote it myself while I was doing The Jenny McCarthy Show. Karlen publicly admits I wrote the book. I'm proud of it because I can say, 'I got good reviews on my book and I wrote it.' The publishing house owes me $200,000, but they won't pay it. When I asked them the reason, they said I was a week late in finishing it. I'm like, 'Oh my God, they wouldn't accept Neal's [manuscript] so I wrote the whole thing on my own, and that's why it's late.' I'm not being greedy. I just want what they owe me." After a sigh and a few sips of Coke, McCarthy continues, "I'm really big on reading spiritual books and I know I need what's happening right now. I hadn't given anything into my craft. I have to give a little to get more."

Which brings us to BASEketball, in which she plays Yvette, the diamond-studded, nails-out-to-there toughie who's fighting for ownership of a team that plays a hybrid of baseball and basketball, all while being the trophy wife of Ernest Borgnine, the trophy girlfriend of Robert Vaughn and, eventually, the sweetheart of Matt Stone. What does McCarthy think of the out-there comedy? "To explain BASEketball makes it sound like crap, but it's very edgy and funny. Making it was the most fun I've had yet. Every scene I'm in is funny and I'm not holding the whole movie."

McCarthy was not champing at the bit overtime to be involved with the South Park guys. "I turned down the role seven times and said, 'If someone asks me to do this again, I'll kill them'" she claims. "Then [producer/director] David Zucker called me and said a lot of my part would be improv and that made my ears go up. If someone just says to me, 'Go!' that's where the magic comes from. And they did let me go. I'm not doing 'Jenny,' I'm doing something that comes across as a very different kind of comedy."

I'm curious about the roles McCarthy turned down to take BASEketball--there must have been a slew. Before landing Singled Out, she'd auditioned for the role Shannen Doherty went on to do in Mallrats ("Kevin Smith didn't even wait until I was out of the office to start laughing. So rude") and for the part Catherine Zeta Jones got in The Phantom ("They said at the audition, 'Hey, really great--that was Pussy Galore,' but, at the callback, they said, 'Hey, that wasn't'"), but as soon as the MTV magic started, it was a different story. She nixed the fantasy sex-pot role Drew Barrymore took in Batman Forever ("I didn't want to play a fluff') and, more recently, a role in the hot retro flick 200 Cigarettes ("They got Goldie Hawn's daughter, a 19-year-old, for the lovable character I wanted and offered me the one role I didn't like"). _

Driving Miss Daisy_ producers Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck thought her ideal for the female lead in the yet-to-be-made Stormy Weather, from a darkly comic Carl Hiassen novel, but McCarthy felt it wasn't the right project. ("Richard and Lili really 'get' me and they're keeping their eye out for me.") What about those I Dream of Jeannie rumors? "Complete bull. No one ever even asked, nor would I want to do it." Surely it can't be true that she turned down the part in The First Wives Club that yanked Elizabeth Berkley out of her Showgirls slump? "Even though that movie would have let me work with one of my absolute idols, Goldie Hawn, I wouldn't play a girl who sleeps with someone to get fame. I felt that not doing any movie would have been better than doing that part. [Berkley] did fine in it, but there's more to me than that."

Was the discomfort over playing a girl who sleeps her way up a response to accusations that she's done that in real life? "I know that some girls absolutely think I've laid down," she asserts, visibly upset. "If people in the Industry think that's what I did, they'll soon realize that they're very wrong. By the time I've made it in my career, they'll know that I did it on my own. But the casting couch and bigwigs hitting on girls in this town will always exist. I just don't know why there's this code of silence about it. I read Jennifer Lopez talking to you [in the February '98 Movieline] about Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson and some of those other guys [who hit on her] and I kept shouting, 'Right on, sister!'"

McCarthy's eyes are wet as she recalls the meeting during which a major Industry power broker leapt on her and began gnawing on her neck before she screamed and landed him an uppercut. Then, there was her audition for a network heavy hitter who asked, "Are you the type of girl who will do a little more for a part?" She announced she wasn't and was ushered out with, "Thank you, I have another appointment."

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