Celebrity Detox: (the fame game) (2 page)

And then the lights went back on and people rustled up out of their seats. I was in the lobby and I saw Barbara Walters come out of the theater, crying. “Rosie,” she said, “would you ever consider being the permanent co-host of
The View
?”

I looked her in the eyes. That she was moved moved me. That she had shown working-class women like my mother that a wider wake was possible—that moved me too. I’d been out of show business for four years, a sacred silence this had been, but maybe I was ready to go back. What happened next I didn’t plan. I certainly could never have anticipated it and still today I can’t explain it. All I know is this. “Barbara Walters,” I said. “I’ll do whatever you ask.”

As it turns out, I did not do whatever she asked. I came on
The View
, and this is the story of how it all happened, offstage, onstage, how we struggled to make the show, and then so much more than that. This is an account of what it means to make a show, and a friend, and an enemy, or two. This is about where we went wrong, and right. It’s a story about stars and celebrities and one woman—me—going off air four years ago and then trying to reenter orbit, not knowing if she can. It’s the story of wondering whether I could give up the addictive elixir of fame and then go back, wondering if it’s possible to sip instead of slug. It’s a revision of a book I did four years ago, just as I left my show, but trashed because it was too soon. I could go on and on, it’s a story about so much, but the only thing that matters here, now, is her question, “Will you come?” and my response, “I’ll do whatever you ask,” and how over the year that turned out not to be true at all, how I did not do whatever Barbara Walters asked, how in fact I did very little of what she asked, how she started as a sort of mother, and me a child willing to obey, and where we finally ended up, months later, two very different women with very different values, living in very different rooms, battered by betrayal but nevertheless doing what women all over the world do best. Barbara Walters and I, after all that happened over those hard months, after all the Trump dump and divisive ways of the world we are in, we have still, and nevertheless, at the very end, we have found a way to talk. We have found, dare I say, a way to love? We found, I have to hope, a friendship that, like any other friendship, is both compromised and connected.

CHAPTER 2

Fame Is Like a Tattoo

Q&A with Lauren Slater

LAUREN: So, you’ve been off the air for how long now?

ROSIE: Four years?

L: And if you had to sum up in a nutshell why you left—

R: Losing touch.

L: Right, you’ve said this before. You keep saying you feel celebrities need a rehab where they go to detox from fame. Because they’re so out of touch they haven’t learned the normal activities of life. Like never learning to parallel park.

R: Well, I’m not saying you never learn, I just think that when you’re very famous, as I was, there are things you don’t have to do that someone else will do for you, and you will allow them to do them. And the sad thing is, you get to the point where you basically allow others to live your life for you. I mean, that’s the bottom line. You’re going out to entertain strangers while someone else is home raising your kids and it just feels like an absurd choice. Listen, I had six years of mainlining stardom and I left because I wanted to try something else. Being that famous becomes absurd, you’re in high waves.

L: You don’t realize how high the waves are until—

R: Until you try to make it back to shore. When you walk through a mall you hear people whispering your name. You’re constantly hearing, “There’s Rosie O’Donnell.” What you have to do is shut out the noise, and in order to do that you have to start shutting out other things too and eventually it distracts you from your own spiritual journey.

L: So you want to do a book about why you left your show. Because, as you say, you feel you were mainlining stardom. You feel you almost, or actually did, get addicted. And over the past years, off the air, you’ve been, I guess, detoxing, and seeing what happens when you’re not on screen anymore, when no one pays any attention to you anymore, when you have time to be with, and rediscover, your kids. Have you, in fact, detoxed?

R: Yes, I think I have. Now mind you, I have nannies . . . I have a wife, and two nannies. There are always at least three women raising four children in my house. It takes a village, I made a village of women to raise these four children. I have it easy—very easy; with fame comes wealth—help, access, and freedom. But I’m still the kid I was. Only everything’s easier, cleaner, and better and I’m not looking at the world through the prism of a victim anymore.

Basically, I left my show in order to come back and feel the small moments as huge. You start to miss the small moments, the real parts of your life. You miss the kids’ stitches and the soccer games and the first steps. Yes, I left in order to come back.

L: What are some of the skills you learned since you’ve left?

R: Parking the car. Just driving myself, I had had a driver for six years. My goal that first year off TV was to pick up my kids at school every day. In order to get a parking space, I showed up a half hour early every day. And that’s how I met my friend Sharon. She too was early every day for pickup. She’s very intense in a way that felt familiar. We bonded. She helped me with my reentry into the world. She saved me seats at the Christmas concert, reminded me which day I had to bring a snack. We went to the mall, to the sale days at A.C. Moore. Crafty Sharon, she helped me a lot. She helped me relearn some of the basic things in life.

L: Do you think you’ll ever go back on air?

R: No. The gross excess of the whole thing, it became repulsive to me. My perspective got skewed. Now, mind you, there are times when it came in very handy.

But listen, fame is like a tattoo. It never goes away. Eddie Munster, Butch Patrick, now fiftysomething—he was at a diner trying to get a cheeseburger and the waitress said, “Oh my God, are you Eddie Munster?” He can’t get rid of that. It’s a tattoo on him forever. I used to think the only way to get unfamous was to pull a Garbo and literally disappear and stop speaking to anyone publicly and go out in disguise. I used to think I’d never be unfamous in America because that show was too big for too long. Maybe no matter what I’d always be identifiable. Anyway, as for going back on air, that’s not where I’m at right now.

L: So where are you at?

R: Home. I am home. Still doing foundation work. I’m opening a musical theater school in Manhattan. I’d like to get, like, ten rich feminists together. And each of us could give a million dollars. We could fund a feminist majority. It’s such a patriarchy and we’re so oppressed; we’re raped as entertainment. On network TV. Terror—right here in the USA. Where are the women leaders? Shirley Chisholm—Gloria Steinem—Betty Friedan. It makes me sad. We seem to be going backward as a nation. So, I want to get the rich women in this country together, to start something by and for women and girls. It seems so simple to me, so obvious. So why doesn’t it happen?

L: Good luck. I doubt you’ll get very far.

R: Maybe not. But you asked. In these years, that’s what I want to do, plus paint. And I’ve begun a blog, which is a whole new medium to explore.

L: You didn’t answer my question: do you think you’ll ever go back?

R: I honestly don’t know. I do know I’ve been off air for four years now and I’ve changed a lot. That thing I said about fame being a tattoo. It’s right but it also isn’t right. Because the other day, you know, I was in Target, and this woman came up to me. She kept kind of circling around me, making me uncomfortable, and I thought, “She’s going to ask me for my autograph.” But she didn’t ask. She just kept staring. Viv was with me, and I pulled her just a little closer to my side. And we were just about to leave the store.

“Hey,” the woman said.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Didn’t you,” she said. And then she paused. It seemed a long time before she spoke again. “Didn’t you used to be someone?”

I smiled and said, “No. You have me mixed up with someone else.”

She turned and walked away.

Blog 3/15/05

This is from a book I wrote but decided not to publish

Celebrity detox was/is the title

I am getting paid 2 million dollars for this book.

That’s a lot of money.

Lauren Slater, the un known and un named one who is the brains behind my first book.

She turns a scrap of bread into a four course meal.

And without her there never would have been

“find me.”

I called her up. I did.

Out of the blue—

Lauren Slater—

who wrote books that spoke directly to me—

a poet whose yellow is blinding beautiful

well this was my chance I thought—

the magazine—she will be the literary weight

she is how I want to write

I can learn from her

I dialed

she has never heard of me—

her kitchen is noisy and a mother is there—

but I knew from her books that her mother was not
a mother

so who was this mother and why was she at the home of Lauren Slater—

a woman I had never met

yet was sure would never have her mother in the kitchen

Somehow it worked.

I trusted and she did—and push pull—

I was right—I get her—she gets me.

Her crazy is familiar and welcoming

with her I am not alone.

She has one currency

truth—the most important one.

She needs to bathe more

I need to lose some weight.

Anyway Lauren doesn’t think I should tell you about the money—

cause you reading the book—do not now—nor will you ever be paid 2 million dollars for anything—

and it will come off sounding cocky or arrogant.

It is an unreal life I lead.

Eminem would rap it.

Cause he writes what he lives—

faults acknowledged—irony cherished.

I am rich.

Richer then I ever thought I could be.

it feels odd

It makes my life so much easier in every practical way—

but it doesn’t change anything.

And I can hear it

“screw you bitch

I would gladly trade places

You think it is tough

And blah blah bah”

But folks—if I was you

and not me—I would want to know

From someone who has been there n back

you have it better—you do

It has been one year since my show ended—

I went to goosetown day school fair and ran the button booth—

and I was the field trip mother at the children’s museum

with my 5 yr old—

and I know I have it as good as it gets.

So much help.

When I have had enough I go into my studio and paint.

I do

For hours sometimes

When my kids write their books

“MOREMAMA DEAREST”

There will be a whole section about my daily absences

from their life

I told kelli last week that the reason I became this successful—

I now think—

was cause I knew it was the only way I could parent.

With everything at my disposal—

I wanted ziplock bags—dixie riddle cups and lava lamps.

or I couldn’t do it.

I am not that brave.

So I left my show.

I was offered 50 million to stay

unreal

everyone told me I was being an ass—

except kelli

And my life is better.

And my best friend is still Jackie and always will be.

I am happier then I have ever been. I am adjusting

I talk too loud in a group—

I cannot parallel park—

I try to control things I shouldn’t—

I worry.

Celebrity is a drug

It is held up as the answer and never turns out to be.

ask joni—ask marshall

peace

CHAPTER 3

King Midas and Me

T
he day after the premiere, Barbara Walters called me up to see if I was serious. Would I consider being the fourth host on
The View.
“Yes,” I said to her. “But I can only do a year because I don’t know if I can handle it.” What I meant by that:
I’ve built something solid here, something with Kel and my kids, something that has to do with daily life and the moments no one could ever put a price on, and I don’t want to lose that.
What I meant:
I’ve spent the past four years in my own private cocoon, with my own ideas, blogging them and giving them away for free on the Internet. This has been my own private channel. For the first six months, before anyone knew I was doing it, it was especially glorious, because people would come and leave me comments. The dedicated ones found their way through the maze to get to the place where I had planted a tiny seed and it was starting to sprout for all the most fervent gardeners.

So why would I want to lose these private places, these webs that were my own? I thought one year would be a way to strike a balance. I remember calling Elizabeth Birch, the CEO of my foundation, For All Kids, and telling her about Barbara’s offer. And when I told her she said, “Ro, that’s fantastic. That’s absolutely the perfect stepping-stone back in. It’s what you’ve been looking for and a one-year deal is perfect.”

And I remember saying to her, “The show is over by noon. I could be in the car by twelve-thirty and be able to pick up my kids from school every afternoon.”

“It’s perfect,” Elizabeth said again. “It’s the perfect balance of family and work.” And it seemed it would be. A mid-morning show, four days a week, someone else’s signature on it. A show that didn’t belong to me—it would give me a certain distance, and the freedom necessary to raise my family. I think this is close to every workingwoman’s dream. It’s the fantasy that somehow you’ll land a gig that allows you to explore your talents without shortchanging your children, a job both big and small enough to allow you to exist in all your dimensions—domestic, corporate, maternal, artistic. In the beginning, for me,
The View
, or even the possibility of
The View
, was many things: a stepping-stone back onto air, a credible compromise between work and parenting, and maybe, above all, an experiment, the kind they used to do with alcoholics. Sober them up, wring the ether out of them, and then give them a small cup of scotch to sip. The question: could they sip or would they slug?
The View
—I thought I could sip.

Perfect. What’s perfect? I have always chased perfection in everything I’ve done, and of course I’ve never achieved it. Perfect exists way out there, in infinity, and I’ve lived long enough to know that the stretching is what strengthens you. If perfect were a bird, it would die in domesticity. I was not searching for perfect—I didn’t expect perfect—I was open for the adventure, to find out what I was made of—or not.

What I remembered: the studio lights, the audience, the seventy-year-old woman from Florida who waits in line in the middle of winter to see your show, and when she gets to meet you, takes your hand in hers, and her hand feels leathery, and also loving. Those women—strangers—so giving, so full of love; for me, it is hard to take in. I’d been cocooned away for four years and the thought of being
on air, in air,
it was appealing. But it also frightened me.

Myths

King Midas has riches, is propelled by greed and keeps craving more. A god of early Greece offers to grant him a wish, so Midas, who desires beyond desire, wishes that everything he touches turns to gold. He touches his child and is horrified to find she goes from girl to garnet, from a living child to a high-karat concept—his loss irredeemable, his grief living beyond language. I get the point.

Look at all the other artists, entertainers, who had had enough and then tried to take a second helping, only to have it all fall apart. I had so much, made so much, a nationally known figure of pop culture, and to hold out my hand and try to take more, it seemed innately dangerous, even rude. I was way out there where few surfers get to surf, and then I made it back to shore, put my board in storage. And now I was thinking of paddling back into that surf. What is the definition of crazy? This.

Supposedly there are some things you never forget, like riding a bike, or swimming. Some activities are so engraved in a person’s gray paste that you can have a massive stroke and lose more or less every ounce of sentience, and become for all intents and purposes a breathing vegetable made nevertheless of meat, and need a wheelchair and a feeding tube, but if you’re tossed in the old YMCA pool, you can still swim the butterfly, if you once could, way back when before your brain got busted. I’m not making this up; there are all sorts of stories about people losing all their faculties and abilities except for those they didn’t: the deep abilities that could comprise what we’d call character. I know if I snapped a synapse I could still swim, but I didn’t know that if I stepped off the stage I could remember how to go back on. Maybe I’d accept
The View
’s offer, and go back to TV, and find I couldn’t do it anymore.

“No one in television gets a one-year contract,” my agent said to me when I called her. “You can’t do that, Rosie.”

Agents really are in bed with the studios. They can’t protect you fully because they have other clients who also need work on that same network. I told my agent once that I felt like the hooker, she the pimp.

Round and round we then went. I went round and round and Elizabeth went round and round with ABC. Understandably, television networks do not like to sign one-year contracts with people, because if the show works, they’re left after twelve months holding the bag. This makes sense to me, but my intent was always my own. One year. It seemed to me to put parentheses, or parameters, around the gross excesses of celebrity-hood.

My own TV show started June 10, 1996. Around July the TV character Arthur came to open the new mall in our town. Parker, still in diapers, loved to watch Arthur, so I took him to the mall. Everyone there was looking at me and I remember thinking, “God, this is odd.” A little bit of panic started. Arthur was late. People kept coming over to me as I stood there with my son, waiting for Arthur, and all the people were whispering and pointing and coming up. This sort of thing hadn’t ever happened to me before, and the panic kept coming, so I left. I left with Parker, which was fine, because he wasn’t yet two and had no idea Arthur was coming anyway. We went home and had mac and cheese and he went down for his nap. As soon as he was asleep I heard the gate ring. And when I went to look out the window I saw the top part of Arthur’s head and his fuzzy seven-foot ears peering over my fence. “Hi! We heard that Rosie and her son tried to see Arthur at the mall but they had to leave so we came here!”

I was stunned. “Well,” I said, “um, Parker is sleeping right now, but thank you anyway.” It was awkward and I felt almost afraid, unsure. Something had shifted. No denying it.

People often ask me why I decided to leave my show. Well, Arthur rang my bell . . . that’s what I wrote in my last book, the one I
didn’t
publish, because I couldn’t. Too early. Too true, and also not true enough. That book, which I also called “Celebrity Detox,” was wrapped up with a red bow on its pretty packaging, when real life is scraps, held together by Mod Podge, messy at its edges. When I read through the pages now though, I see some things worth repeating:

Chapter One

People ask me why exactly I decided to leave my show, and I give them one reason: yellow.

Fame stole my yellow.

Yellow is the color you get when you’re real and brutally honest. Joni Mitchell is my yellow. Bruce Springsteen. Cyndi Lauper. I have been soaking in them lately.

Yellow is with my kids—with Parker always—the boy who first handed me my own piece in human form—himself. The bundle of bright yellow warming my very core, formerly frozen and uninhabitable. Parker.

Fame stole my yellow, my time with my children, my true voice.

Broadway shows—they were the never-fail yellow station for me—“fill her up, high test,” and in it would go as the orchestra tuned itself and the lights started to dim; yellow, glorious, life-altering soul fuel the life force yellow. Yes. Always on Broadway.

And then, in year three, I started to notice something was missing from my opening nights. The attention on me ruined it somehow. I started watching who was watching me, waiting for their response. I was no longer alone in the velvet seat—in the world of theater—I was being looked at. People watched me watch a show. It changed everything.

When I got too well known, then the joy of just watching people anonymously on a street corner was gone. The joy of finding the perfect cotton Gap pullover—size twenty-four months on the sale rack—no longer there. Playing with my son in the park while people stared—ruined. All of my yellow places started to fail me.

If you are good at stand-up, and I think I was—you make yellow. Chris Rock does. So does Ellen DeGeneres. They tell life’s common experiences from their own truth point.