Jenny McCarthy, the curvy, blonde enfant terrible of TV, talks about the days of Singled Out, the debacle of Jenny and the blast she had making BASEketball for the big screen. While she's at it, she recounts her casting couch nightmare with a famous action star and explains why she'd like to skin her boyfriend after he dies.
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I have friends who swear they'd rather have been living in Iraq than witness the pop culture rise of that bodaciously endowed, tongue-flicking conniption fit known as Jenny McCarthy. The 25-year-old, 34-26-34 bopping blonde just isn't everybody's mug of triple espresso. But for all those not aghast at her antics, McCarthy's incredible leaps in showbiz have been a kick-ass sight to behold.
It all began in Chicago, when McCarthy went to the offices of Playboy magazine in search of a gig that could pay off her nursing school debt--she never graduated but still owed thousands. A few months later she was Miss October. Soon tired of the bunny life, she moved to L.A. to launch a film career and picked up a bit part in Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead. The shift in fortune came when she went in to audition for MTV's Singled Out, a show designed to be a latter-day The Dating Game on crack. She won the role of cohost by being louder and tougher than the other beauties who were trying to prove they could wrangle studs and provoke an audience. Once on the show, McCarthy added to her unhinged act by pulling faces and sticking out her tongue. Simultaneously spoofing and selling herself, she merrily thwarted any idea that she could be relegated to a whack fantasy.
Singled Out became a ratings sensation.
In no time, McCarthy was making faces on magazine covers, hawking Jenny McCarthy's Surfin' Safari CD music compilation and appearing in another movie, The Stupids, with Tom Arnold. She quickly bypassed such other Internet icons as Madonna. MTV knew it had lucked into something big and bumped her up to The Jenny McCarthy Show, a limited-run sketch comedy show that featured McCarthy as a shamelessly mugging love child of Jim Carrey, a Queen of Gross Out who cut wind and blew lunch. When MTV handed her off to NBC for her sitcom Jenny, which had a highly unusual 22-episode commitment, movie producers lined up to book her on hiatus. Producer Richard D. Zanuck, who'd helped Goldie Hawn make the transition from small screen to big, was interested. Rumors swirled that McCarthy might take the lead in the movie versions of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie.
Then things changed. The overhyped and poorly conceived Jenny crashed and burned with critics and viewers. McCarthy's Candie's shoes ad campaign, a segment of which featured her perched on a toilet holding The Wall Street Journal with her scanties around her ankles, unleashed a torrent of bad press. Her book, Jen-X: Jenny McCarthy's Open Book, in which she yammered about her bodily functions and lamented her $1,500 breast implants, stiffed. On top of all that, she didn't get a good movie role. McCarthy suddenly seemed as much an overreacher as MTV breakout-turned-footnote Pauly Shore. The press started trashing her for having a live-in relationship with her manager, 49-year-old Ray Manzella, who'd formerly guided Vanna White and Pamela Anderson.
McCarthy kept out of sight for a few months, then took a role in the David Zucker-directed crackpot comedy BASEketball opposite Comedy Central's South Park creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Her role isn't huge, but she's in fine company. And overall, she's not nearly as stamped out as some people might wish. When I meet her in one of Santa Monica's good-to-be-seen-in restaurants, every pampered head in the place turns to watch her walk in. Simply groomed in a demure knit blouse and slacks, she's far prettier and softer than one might expect. Warmer, too.
But not wholly unlike the brassy TV icon of old. "I'm shitting my pants," she declares when I ask how she's doing these days. "This is the first time I'm without a contract. It's scary. Since 1994, I'd been working 17 hours a day, seven days a week, and the contract just expired in March. In some respects, I feel like I'm having a real breather. I'm terrified, though, because now that I'm not under contract, I have to do it on my own. There's no one ruling me so I can't blame it on anybody."
What exactly is it she wants to do on her own? "From the time I was a little girl, I was simply going to be a movie star," she declares without batting an eyelash. "I'm looking for the legendary, all-the-way-up-until-I'm-dead career." McCarthy takes a bite of spaghetti and a sip of Coke and continues, "When I meet with executives, I think they think I'm going to come in like the psychotic cheerleader, without a brain or a vision. I think they think I'm out every night living it up during my so-called 'last days on top.' But I'm very competitive, very focused. Once I talk with them, they see pretty quickly that I'm not some idiot just doing what I do to flaunt my butt cheeks."
So where does McCarthy put the blame for her recent flameout? Wasn't it she herself who, after Singled Out, jumped into two ill-conceived TV shows, never slowing to fine-tune her act or beef up her skills? "I don't think a lot of people realize this, but when I signed the contract for Singled Out, there was a paragraph that said, basically, 'We have the right to create up to two other shows for you--another MTV show and a show on a major network.' When I signed for Singled Out, I signed on for The Jenny McCarthy Show and Jenny without a choice. I couldn't take a break, even though I said, 'I think I'm getting a little too overexposed, you guys.'"
Rumors from the set of Jenny, which cast McCarthy as a Utica, New York, convenience store clerk who finds she's been left a posh Hollywood Hills bachelor pad by her recently deceased, B-movie-star dad (played by George Hamilton), characterized the star of the show as a deer trapped in klieg lights. "When NBC told me I was going to be the savior of Sunday night," McCarthy says, "I was, like, 'Holy shit. That's the kiss of death.' No matter how 'hot' you are, it's impossible to save a night--especially with a new show. People were questioning and second-guessing constantly and I was hearing different notes from so many different people, when I had no say on anything. I didn't even want the show to be called Jenny, and I sure didn't want to play someone who keeps whining, 'Where's my dad? I really need a dad!' They put me in a little flip hairdo and squeaky-cleaned me. They were burying me.
Did she read the reviews? She nods, laughing, "All 200 of them, and maybe two of those were good. In the end, I could say it was NBC. I could say it was the writing. I could say it was me. Maybe all of the above. I don't know who to blame. I was totally devastated when the show was canceled. I bawled my eyes out. The network didn't even tell me--I found out from the makeup girls, because their agents had canceled them for the following day." Ouch.
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."
One name McCarthy is willing to mention in this context-- because he insulted her that completely--is Steven Seagal. When I press her on the subject, the hurt in her voice says she's still freaked. "I went to the audition for Under Siege 2 with, like, 15 other Jenny McCarthys. These girls came in and out of his office and I was last. Steven comes out and goes, 'Hmm, so you're last.' I'm thinking, 'Shouldn't a casting person be doing this?' I go inside his office, which has shag carpet and this huge couch, and he's by himself and says, 'Sit on the couch.' I have my [script pages] and I say, 'OK, I'm ready,' but he says, 'No, I want to find out about you.' I knew what was coming. He goes, 'So, you were Playmate of the Year,' and I was trying to go--" Here, McCarthy breaks off and adopts a Laverne & Shirley blue-collar foghorn delivery: "Yeah, but, like, I lived in Chicago, see, and..."
The accent was apparently no turnoff. "I was wearing this very baggy dress," she continues, "which I always wear to auditions, with my hair pulled back. I'm listening to him go on and on about how he found his soul in Asia and is one with himself and whatever. When I said, 'Well, I'm ready to read,' he said, 'Stand up, you have to be kind of sexy in the movie and in that dress, I can't tell.' I stand up and he goes, 'Take off your dress.' I said, 'What?' and he said, 'There's nudity.' I said, 'No, there's not, or I would not be here right now.' He said again, 'There's nudity,' and I said, 'The pages are right in front of me. There's no nudity.' He goes, Take off your dress.' I just started crying and said, 'Rent my [Playboy] video, you asshole!' and ran out to the car." That wasn't quite the end of it. "I'm closing my car door and he grabs me and says, 'Don't you ever tell anybody.' He won't sue me or say anything because he knows it's true. If I saw him today, I would still say, 'You're a fucking asshole and I really hope you change your ways.'"
Hands folded in her lap, McCarthy says, "Each time it happened, I was getting more and more defeated. I would talk to some girls who'd seen the same bigwigs and they'd say, 'Yeah, I did it.' Like, 'So what?' After Steven Seagal, it felt like the final straw. I called my mom and said, 'Mom, I'm coming home. I've had it. They chewed me up and spit me out.' The next day was the Singled Out audition and that led to everything else."
Ah, Singled Out, the show that made her an Internet pinup within minutes. How did she accustom herself to the attention? "In the house in Malibu where I was living until recently," she says, "the doorbell would ring every night around one o'clock with some drunken teenager shouting vulgar things."
McCarthy continues, "I change my number every four months. Ray [Manzella] doesn't tell me, but I know there have been major situations and he doesn't want to scare me." So what exactly is the deal with her and the nearly 50 Manzella? "He is old, but he's 18 in his heart and hotter than hell," she says, cackling. "It's going to be four years in October that we're together. I don't care when people say anything about Ray and me. They don't see him for what he is. I follow my heart."
But can't the heart suffer when it gets tainted by contract hassles and arguments over career choices? "When we're talking about business, I wear the pants and he wears the jewelry," she insists. "My choice is always the one. If it didn't work that way, it wouldn't have worked this long." What exactly does McCarthy find sexy about Manzella? "I love his skin. Smooth, soft--love it. Isn't that a weird thing? I always tell Ray that when he dies, I want to skin him for a sofa or something." And is there anything in particular Manzella finds sexy about McCarthy, besides the obvious attributes? "He's a foot man. He loves to look at mine. I mean, I'll have no top on and he'll look at my $2 pedicure. Sometimes there's toe sucking, it just depends on the kind of mood we're in."
McCarthy is refreshingly straightforward about her ultimate ambition. "Everybody that comes into acting has that 'movie' thing as their goal," she confesses, "whether they say it out loud or not. You always want to see your face on the big screen. But right now, TV likes me more than movies because there's a lot more for a 25-year-old girl in TV than in movies. I just got an agent for the first time in my life five months ago and he's very into it, except I'm tough and I won't settle for just anything now. Because of the way I started in the business, I don't think I'll be taken seriously until I'm over 30 and my generation kind of grows up with me. Most of the scripts I'm looking at now are for girls in their 30s--you know, like Jennifer Aniston movies. They're not that great, are they? The little roles Cameron Diaz does--like My Best Friend's Wedding and The Mask--where she's cute, but still has this great, funny side to her, are not quite what I want to do, but almost. The great role would have been Pretty Woman, this woman who was like, 'Whoo-hoo!' rough, but still someone you can relate to."
McCarthy is studying with Helen Hunt's acting coach now in her campaign to be taken more seriously. "I want to jump into my bucket of fear and go out and audition for stronger roles," she says. "Now's the time for me to take the time to polish the rough edges and learn to say a line instead of making faces.
"Everything I've done has panned out like it was supposed to happen," continues McCarthy, "but I'm at a point where I have to say I have no idea where it's all heading. Hopefully, if I do the work, doors will open to me. It would totally suck to die and have to say to God, 'You know what? You sent me to earth to not make it and that totally sucked! How about sending me back and giving me the opposite?'"
She laughs when she catches herself making a face at God. Hey, at least she didn't flick her tongue at him.
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Stephen Rebello interviewed Jeremiah Chechik for the June issue of Movieline.