Wrestling the Hulk: My Life Against the Ropes

by Linda Hogan

  I became a creative consultant on the show because the production crew kept looking to me for guidance about what the family was doing, since we were all in different directions. We didn’t have wardrobe or makeup people, because Brooke and I had fun doing our own. During Terry’s wrestling days, his bright red-and-yellow tights got him way more attention than the wrestlers who wore boring black. The colors grabbed you and made you want to stop switching channels and take in the action. Although these looks didn’t work out well in public, they really popped on television. I wanted to do same thing for the visual look of our reality show. In every scene, we wore bright colors like turquoise and yellow, and it made Hogan Knows Best a very colorful Florida show. Even though it was kind of goofy, it really worked.

  Living in a house where they shoot a television show every day isn’t easy. A camera crew of twenty-eight rang our doorbell each morning at eight A.M. During that first season, five major hurricanes ripped through our area of Florida, so we mostly had to shoot indoors. Equipment like additional lights were attached to the beams in the ceiling of our kitchen. We even had a tint on many of our windows to block out the natural light, so it was dark in the house. It was expensive for production to take this stuff down and put it back up every day, so we just lived with it after the cameras left. It was like our house became a set at a television studio. Things were often so surreal that it felt like we were in the movie The Truman Show. We started to forget what day it was and what real life was like outside our front door.

  It would take two weeks to shoot one episode during season one. After being sandwiched together all day, work was finally over at around eight P.M. Terry, the kids, and I would go out to dinner and then we’d come back home and all go off and do our own thing. Even though we were family and I love my kids more than anything, we definitely needed a break from each other.

  We really didn’t know the impact the show was going to have until it aired. Fans quickly began to recognize all of us, which was something new for Nick and me. When fans would tell me that I was their favorite TV mom, at first it freaked me out. Moms said they liked me because they could relate to me. Men said they liked me because I was a sexy mom. Teenage girls came up to me because they were excited to meet Brooke and Nick’s mom. Prior to this, if I was noticed, it was because I was Hulk Hogan’s wife. Now, I was becoming a sort of persona in my own right, just being the wife and mother in the Hogan household. It’s heartwarming when you’re commended for doing what you love.

  Sometimes, men would approach me and say, “I can’t believe you’re the mom. I thought you and your daughter were sisters.” Flattery will get you everywhere! I actually found an old fan letter the other day from a man who wrote that I was beautiful and that Hulk was the luckiest man in the world. It made me feel good because, although I felt that my husband might have appreciated me privately, he was always kind of mechanical about it in public. So it was nice when I heard it from a random fan.

  Seeing myself all the time on television was a new thing. At first I thought, Oh my God, I look so fat. Then I let go of those feelings and stopped being so hard on myself. This was reality television, and the world was seeing me for who I really was. Whether we were shooting part of an episode where I had just woken up in the morning or I was glammed up for a night out with Terry, I was seen at my best and my worst. I didn’t feel the need to be skinny to be married to Hulk Hogan or to be the mother of my kids. The public was acknowledging me for what I did as a wife and mother, rather than for how I looked—although I did catch some flak about my wardrobe! I’m just not great at picking out clothes, so I wore whatever I felt like, if it matched my mood. I guess all the years at Catholic school wearing a uniform sort of ruined my ability to figure out “free dress.” I always worked out in the gym. But after doing it and watching grams of fat and carbs and living by the scale and mirror, I just got burned out. There is just more to life than a perfect figure!

  I believe the public embraced our characters on the show because we weren’t afraid to reveal the private side of our lives. Everything was so fun filming as a family. Reality TV was great. The acting started when the cameras stopped rolling, and the conversation ended, too.

  Extreme Measures

  After we shot the first season of Hogan Knows Best, a wrap party was definitely in order! The reality was that everyone on our reality show worked their butts off and it was time to let loose and celebrate a job well done.

  At around eight P.M. after our last day of shooting, the crew and our family headed over to Shephard’s on the beach in Clearwater. About sixty of us had dinner and drinks while a live band played. At about one thirty in the morning Terry wanted to go home, but I wanted to stay for one more dance. The kids were still dancing and having fun with the crew, and so was I.

  “Can’t we wait to leave?” I asked. “I love this song, and the band is still playing.” Terry got more irritated when I insisted on not going home. I didn’t want to leave, and neither did the kids. We were all having fun . . . all of us except Terry. I had another drink and continued to get my groove on regardless of his attitude.

  When we got home, Terry immediately ripped into me. “I wanted to leave an hour earlier and you didn’t listen to me,” he said. “You were partying all night and I was tired. I’m so sick of this crap!”

  “What are you sick of?” I asked, confused. “I wasn’t dancing with any guys. I was dancing with your wrestler friend’s wife, Toni! What’s your problem?” I replied. “I work full time and do everything for you, and you sat back and glared at me all night!”

  “I’m just sick of this,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t stand it anymore.”

  What couldn’t he stand anymore? He was the huge partier. Not me. He’s the one who talked openly and candidly about his drug and alcohol abuse and pain pill addiction. He was just jealous. I wasn’t trying to make him jealous. I just have an open personality and was being friendly and social as I always am. In retrospect, he was probably already setting up to leave me when the show wrapped. I did drink two or three glasses of wine after shooting, out at dinner, but I’ve never been an out-of-control drunk! When I drank, I’d get happy, laugh, and talk. And if I did lash out after having a couple of glasses of wine, it wasn’t because of the wine. I was just sick of the situation I was trapped in, sick of being taunted.

  I was forty-five years old, and now Terry picked up the phone and called my mother at two thirty in the morning. “I can’t control Linda anymore,” he yelled into the phone. “She’s out of control and drinking all the time. I’m sick of it. I need your help. I’m sending her home. You deal with her!”

  I was shocked at Terry’s behavior. Not only did he ruin the fun we were all having at the wrap party, but I was shocked and alarmed that he called my mother three thousand miles away telling her I was basically an out-of-control drunk. I was pissed at Terry for overreacting and scaring my family!

  The next morning, he told me he was sending me to California whether I liked it or not. He gave me an ultimatum: check into rehab or don’t come back. When I arrived in California, it was like walking into an intervention. Terry had brainwashed my parents into thinking I was an alcoholic without them even hearing my side of the story. My mother scolded me and said she couldn’t believe my behavior. She told me that she was driving me, or I was to drive myself, to rehab at the Betty Ford Center.

  Terry was Hulk Hogan—Mr. Wonderful to most—and people assumed that his word was the word because he was so famous. They were blinded by his star power. The cards were stacked against me. He convinced them that I had a problem and I needed help. If only my family knew what I was really dealing with! I got into my Mercedes and drove to Palm Springs where the Betty Ford Center is located. I was advised by Terry and my family to put in a full month of rehab at the center. Oh my God, I thought, I can’t see my kids for a month? I hate him! How could he lie and do this to me? It felt like a conspiracy!

  The next day, I met with a counselor
and she asked me a series of questions about my drinking history.

  “I don’t really have a drinking history,” I said. “I do drink two or three glasses of wine with dinner. Other than that, that’s about it. I have kids and I’m shooting a television show all day, so there is no time to just sit around and get drunk.”

  “Two or three glasses of wine?” the counselor asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Three glasses is my max, because I have to get up in the morning with the kids.”

  “Tell me about your police record.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Have you ever been arrested?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever gotten a DUI?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever blacked out from drinking?”

  “No.”

  “What about prescription medication?”

  “I don’t take any medication. Sometimes I take Excedrin.”

  “So you don’t take any prescribed medications?”

  “No. I don’t have any prescriptions for anything!”

  “Any dependencies?”

  “No, just my kids and my animals.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “My husband got angry with me because we were out and I had a few drinks. It was a party, and I was dancing and having fun.”

  “Sounds like your husband is a little jealous.”

  “Probably,” I responded with a sigh. “My father had a drinking problem years ago, and I think that maybe my family thinks I have one, too. But I don’t drink in secret or private. I drink in public at a restaurant, or at home with my family and friends.”

  “I don’t think there is any need for you to be here,” the counselor stated. “But if you want to stay, you can.”

  I decided to stay at the Betty Ford Center and prove everyone wrong. I had my blood tested and there wasn’t a trace of alcohol or drugs in it. After four days of being in there with people who had AIDS and serious drug and alcohol dependencies, I started to realize this was not the place for me. It was scary, in fact. I had never seen people in such bad shape—blisters on their fingers and lips, with their teeth actually rotting.

  After a few more days, I said enough is enough. I didn’t want to leave the Betty Ford Center without my parents’ permission, but I hated every minute of it and wanted to get out of there. I didn’t miss drinking wine. I just missed my children. My mom insisted that Terry decide.

  I called Terry from Palm Springs and told him that I wanted to leave rehab early and come back home to Florida. He told me that I could come back as long as I promised to be good and stop drinking for a while. I think he realized how his little plan was turning into a serious life-changing event for not only me but our kids. They missed their mom!

  At Betty Ford I had time to think about the state of my marriage. I think the whole reason Terry insisted on sending me to rehab was because he was beginning to lose control over me. For years, I was behind the scenes while Terry basked in the spotlight. I was fine with that. But now I was getting noticed. I wasn’t just this girl behind the man, at Terry’s beck and call. I was now seen as almost an equal to him, and I think it kind of bugged him. Like I always say, “There is only room for one star at the top.” And it was always him. Ironically, I was only doing the television show to help Terry and our children. I never jumped into showbiz before. It wasn’t my calling. I liked decorating, fixing up our home, and taking care of our kids and animals. I didn’t want to be famous. I didn’t need the adoration of anyone except my family and dogs! I loved being a housewife and mom. But now that I was a television personality just like Terry, he kept saying I was out of control.

  I wasn’t out of control. I just wasn’t in his control.

  One of the ways Terry would control me had to do with the children. Whenever I wanted to put the kids in school in California, he would immediately get on the phone and set Brooke up with a big business deal in Florida. He would always undermine my plans and overpower me with his contacts to continue to keep everything in Florida. Terry would also use the kids against me. If I said red in front of them, he’d say it should be blue. If I said it was okay for Nick to go on a field trip, he would say that it wasn’t. It seemed that it didn’t even matter whether it was good for the kids or bad for the kids, everything had to go the opposite direction from me. Parents have to always take a unified front when it comes to their kids. He never did that.

  Terry would also control me with his moods. He would get into a bad mood for no reason at all, and I would ask him over and over what was wrong. Was it something I did? Something I said? I always felt like I was at fault for his sadness. But this was just another way for him to manipulate and control me. When we would get into an argument, he would often break things that I loved. I had an antique wagon that I used as a bassinet for Brooke and he picked it up and threw it across the room one time. He tore my shirt, threw lamps, and held me down on the bed with his hands around my throat during arguments. Slamming doors. Pounding walls. I was always afraid he would kill me in one of his rages. I started to get fed up with it all, the abuse, the manipulation, which I figured stemmed from his jealousy or something! But what could I do? There was no way to talk it out when he was in a rage like that. So I would usually just get in the car and leave.

  I wish I had been more aware of the signs of a controlling husband earlier on. While I’m on the subject, here are some of them:

  1. He calls you all day long to keep track of your whereabouts, probably to avoid crossing paths.

  2. He knows how to push your buttons and does it often.

  3. He embarrasses you in public.

  4. He shoves, grabs, and/or pushes you during an argument. You become submissive because you’re afraid of triggering another violent rage.

  5. He intimidates you by threatening to take away your most precious things, such as your children, pets, homes, and friends.

  6. He dictates the rules and tries to control everything in your life—what you do, where you go, what the money is spent on, and so on.

  7. You feel like you’re being held hostage emotionally, because you’re afraid to speak your mind.

  8. He convinces you that you can’t function and that you’re incompetent without him in your life.

  9. He never confesses to anything, no matter how much evidence you have. Then he turns the tables saying that you’re the one who’s crazy.

  10. He eavesdrops on your conversations and becomes impatient when you’re spending time with your friends and family.

  When I left Betty Ford, I drove myself back to my house in California. I was by myself and happy to be out of that place. I didn’t know if I was going to try to keep my marriage together because I was so bitter and angry at him. I wasn’t as angry about him sending me to Betty Ford as I was at the fact that he turned my family and kids against me. I wondered how my husband could do this to my children. Alcoholism? They didn’t even know what that was. He scared them into thinking something was wrong with their mom. He even had my own mother believing it, and she wasn’t around! I realized he’d had an intervention. Why? Something I never saw coming. Something I didn’t understand.

  I did think about leaving him at that time. I just didn’t know how. That was probably one of the biggest moments of depression that I ever went through. I didn’t want to go home, but I missed my kids! I just didn’t want to face Terry. I didn’t want to make it work anymore. I was mad as hell at him. I was mad at my parents for not listening to me. They felt I was out of control at that time. If I had said I wanted a divorce, they would have thought I was spiraling further out of control. I had to regain my self-confidence and my composure. I had to get the control back that was taken away from me so unfairly. I was being bullied in my marriage. I realized at that point I couldn’t be the victim anymore.

  I really wanted to go back home because my kids needed me. I flew back to Florida just to be with
them. They were so happy to see me. I can’t tell you the joy that filled my body once I held my two kids again. I’ll never let anything ever come between me and my kids again.

  Terry was glad to see that the kids were so happy. I think he also saw me as defeated and dependent once again. He had finally regained the control he so desperately needed. I remained on my best behavior, all the while being a dumb fox! I knew what he was doing! I also knew in my heart of hearts that I wasn’t the one with a dependency problem!

  Chapter Nine

  Welcome to Miami

  AT THIS POINT, HOGAN KNOWS BEST WAS THE number one rated TV show in VH1 network history!

  We completed season two of Hogan Knows Best in Tampa, and our TV ratings were so high that season three was inevitable.

  The kids and I were really burned out living in Clearwater. I had taken the kids out of school to make it a little less stressful with the schedule. Filming a hit TV show and still trying to live a normal nine-to-five life outside the walls of our house remained a struggle. Not to mention, from home schooling for the kids to shooting the show every day for two years straight inside the same house, we all felt confined. The situation was taking its toll on us personally. It’s pretty tough to imagine that in a seventeen-thousand-square-foot house we were actually experiencing a claustrophobic feeling. Not only were the walls closing in on us, but we were down each other’s throats and needed a change.

  Ultimately, I felt that if we could have figured out how to bring the show to Los Angeles, it would have been better for Brooke, Nick, and Terry. With all of the hype of the television, motion picture, and music biz in Hollywood, I felt it would have improved everybody’s career. But Terry liked being in Florida, and it was pretty evident that he was not going to let us all move out to the West Coast. Brooke began to make a push for Miami since she had been going down there so often to record music. We had spent some time in Miami for the VH1 Awards and it seemed like a really fun city. It had a lot more culture and was certainly more in the mainstream than Clearwater. With the music and entertainment industry flourishing in Miami, it was actually quite similar to Los Angeles. I don’t think Terry minded moving to Miami because he felt he could do business there. He also had all of his friends there. He was very bent on staying in Florida, so it was a happy middle ground for everybody.