Going Off Script

by Giuliana Rancic

  The next morning, I woke up without a headache and thought, Omigod, that’s the first time I haven’t had dessert in a year!

  I was so excited, I ate healthy all day, happily entering my cottage cheese, salmon, and salad into the journal. Then I ate twelve pieces of fruit.

  The next day, I started over again, and that night I was down to ten pieces of fruit. Each night, the servings of fruit dwindled. Would I have rather had banana cream pie at the House of Pies than a fresh banana at home? Hell, yeah. But I also knew that this was an addiction, and I couldn’t go there thinking “What if they give me just a small slice of carrot cake?” because I knew I would need more. I was like a crackhead who meets her dealer under the bridge. You don’t grab some drugs, say thanks, and save some for tomorrow. You get that shit and you’re going to smoke it there because you’re a fucking crackhead. House of Pies was my bridge. Fruit was my methadone. I enjoyed my cantaloupe or pint of strawberries or bunch of grapes and reclaimed my life. Once I regained control of my body and choices, I started feeling better and became happier. I had the energy to start running again, and the excess pounds started disappearing.

  A month into the sugar-busting plan, I met Bill Rancic.

  Life itself was about to become sweeter than I ever imagined.

  chapter eight

  By the time I met Bill, I had been at E! for four years, and had made it across the minefield of network politics intact to become anchor, despite my embarrassing tic of hitting on George Clooney at every opportunity. He is taller than you think. The first time I met George, at a press junket for his movie Solaris, I blurted out a marriage proposal in front of a room full of people and two cameras recording my every breath. A girl’s gotta take her shot when the sexiest bachelor in the known galaxy is standing right in front of her, right? Before I even got the second syllable of “marry” out, he rejected me and broke into a sweat, like I was a horny cavewoman about to club him and drag him off to my dressing room. Hurtful. But not a deterrent. I’ve asked several times since, and the answer is still “get away from me, you psycho stalker,” or something to that effect. At least that’s what he is probably thinking, though George is way too polite to ever say anything like that. Instead, he breaks the awkward moment by making a funny joke and gives me that perfect Clooney smile complete with dimples.

  I’m a flirt by nature. I flirt with everyone. I’ll flirt with straight men, gay men, old men. I flirt with women, with babies, even dogs. In cases of actual infatuation, however, I do my research first. When I came to work one day and noticed that E! was sending a reporter to cover Bill Rancic, who was doing volunteer work at the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Monica, California, I snatched the assignment for myself, claiming I wanted to get out in the field more and raise my charity profile. No one bought it. I had been a major fangirl ever since Rancic had won season one of Donald Trump’s reality game show The Apprentice. My BFF Colet and I were obsessed with Bill, and I would watch the NBC show and tell Colet that I needed to marry him. I was dating Jerry at the time, and ironically, Jerry is the one who first introduced me to my future husband. We were at an NBC party in New York City for Jerry’s show Crossing Jordan, and Bill was one of the guests. Jerry spotted him first. “You are going to freak out, homegirl! The Apprentice is here! Your favorite!” He dragged me over to meet Bill while I begged him not to. “Jerry, you’re gonna embarrass me. Please don’t embarrass me!” I hissed. He said, “I won’t. I just want him to know what a big fan you are and that you were rooting for him every week.” When we reached Bill, Jerry introduced himself, and the two men got caught up in a guy convo about sports and stuff, leaving me just standing off to the side. Finally I nudged Jerry.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Bill, I would introduce you to my girlfriend, but I’m afraid the two of you would run off together.” We said hello, shook hands, and then Bill said it was nice to meet the two of us and walked away. Two years had gone by, and I was eager to continue the conversation. I hurried back to my desk to do some hard-hitting journalistic research before heading out for my interview. I did what any good reporter would do and Googled the words “Bill Rancic girlfriend.” (If Google had been around when Barbara Walters started out, I’m sure she would have done the same thing.) Up popped a name. Bill Rancic had a girlfriend! I immediately went to the producers to try to wiggle my way out of the assignment, but it was too late to get someone else to cover. I was pissed, but Bill was more handsome (and taller) in person than he’d looked on The Apprentice, and it was a battle not to go full-flirt ahead. Instead, I crossed my arms tightly against my chest and tried to seem as disinterested and unattracted to him as possible.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked him. He looked taken aback by the question.

  “Well, not at the moment,” he replied.

  “Wait, what?” I wasn’t sure I had heard right.

  “Not at the moment, we broke up a couple months ago,” he repeated. This was starting to get a little awkward. Didn’t I want to know more about the charity he was out there to support? Charity, schmarity. The arms came unfolded, I did the old hair flip, moved in a few inches closer, and rested a sympathetic yet shameless hand on his broad shoulder.

  “Really?” I said. This interview was getting better by the second.

  “Yeah,” he repeated. “I’m holding out.”

  “For what?” I said.

  “I’m holding out for you,” he answered, throwing an arm around me.

  “He so knew I wanted him to say that!” I laughed to the camera.

  We ended up talking in the parking lot for forty-five minutes after the cameras were gone. He mentioned how he liked to go running along the shores of Lake Michigan back home in Chicago. I said something about how I enjoyed running by the water, too. As I turned to go to my car, I could tell he was going to ask me out on a date. “By the way,” he called after me, “would you like to go for a run sometime?” Oooh, Spandex and no makeup at nine a.m. Not happening! I need dim lighting, heels, sushi, and a drink.

  “Or we could go out for dinner,” I quickly suggested. We made plans for the following night, and by our second date, we were mapping out our future together. The thing is, when we began dating, Bill liked me because I liked me. I was funny and confident. But he wouldn’t have met that person thirty days earlier, when I was burying my grief—and my face—beneath a mountain of sugar. I put off a totally different vibe and energy then, morose and full of self-loathing. I would have been distracted and anxious instead of quick-witted and fun. I would have cut dinner short so I could go get my second and third desserts of the night. Bill never would have felt a spark. There wasn’t one to feel, until I kicked the sugar habit.

  Once I got the sugar out of my system, it was as if I had hit the reboot button on my emotions, too: the fog and depression lifted, and I realized that it wasn’t the loss of Jerry that had been causing most of my misery—it was how I had dealt with the shock. I could have spared myself months of feeling like crap! In hindsight, though, I get that I had to experience a Jerry in my life so I could evolve enough emotionally to fully appreciate everything I have in Bill. And I have to give the devil his due: Jerry was the first person who taught me it was okay in a relationship to tell someone they’re amazing. I used to cling to that old-fashioned belief that you should leave them guessing so they would want more; I was always holding back. And just the fact that a famous actor who could have had his pick of desirable women had fallen in love with me boosted my self-confidence. I stopped aiming low.

  Professionally, I never held back. My seize-the-moment philosophy about reporting is what put me on a fast track at E! News. When I first got hired, back after the whole Wilmer do-you-do-moms Valderrama incident, the executive in charge of E! News made a big deal of presenting me to the newsroom as the embodiment of a whole new style of reporting that was going to revitalize the show. The reason I was brought on board, they said, was because I was irreverent.

  Irreverent? As I looked around
at the faces in the meeting, I acted like I was owning the word, but in truth my Italian brain didn’t have a clue what it meant. Was it a good thing? I had no idea what it was I was, and I needed to find out, so I could keep being it. Whatever it was. So I snuck off to my computer and Googled it.

  I soon discovered that news directors and editors saying they wanted ballsy did not necessarily translate into them actually being ballsy. I stomped in one morning at six a.m., still fuming from a red-carpet interview with Russell Crowe at the premiere of A Beautiful Mind the night before. Crowe had been a nasty piece of work, and I had the footage to show the world that fame had not only gone to his head, it had fermented.

  “Russell Crowe! Are you excited to be here tonight for your big movie premiere?” I had asked the star on his way into the theater.

  “I’m contractually obligated to be here,” he snarled. “Next question.”

  I kept smiling, determined to keep it light. I’d heard he could be surly, and there were more gracious stars I could buttonhole, so no need to draw this one out.

  “Is it wonderful seeing all your fans?” I asked. It wasn’t a softball question; it was a marshmallow. Crowe gave me a withering look, which admittedly was hard to distinguish from his normal look. Boyfriend has some serious Bitchy Resting Face.

  “That’s your second question?” he sneered. “One, two, you’re through.” He turned his back on me and walked away.

  Three, four, you’re a boor, I wish I’d said. Next time, I would have to remember that what viewers really longed to hear were Russell Crowe’s thoughts on climate control or the Kosovo crisis.

  Back in the newsroom, I gave my editors a heads-up about the blockbuster story I had for that day’s show: “Russell Crowe is such a jerk! I’ve got a piece all about how he was pissed to be at the premiere and was contractually obligated to be there. We’ve got footage! Let’s expose what an asshole he is!”

  I was swiftly shot down. “No,” I was schooled. “We want to celebrate celebrities!”

  (I would interview Russell Crowe again years later, and he couldn’t have been lovelier. Not in the same warm, down-to-earth league as Clooney or Sandra Bullock, but few are.)

  One of my first big interviews at E! was with Sean Penn, who was promoting his movie I Am Sam. All I really wanted to talk about was Shanghai Surprise and Madonna and their volatile relationship, and what more could he tell me about my obsession, Madonna. I was dying to blurt out something about her. But Sean Penn is as intimidating as they get. He’s so serious and intense, it’s easier to ask an esteemed senator a stupid question. I couldn’t get anything cute or funny out of him, and gave up quickly. I asked him only lame-o questions. What’s your movie about? How did you like working with this director? I remember looking at my producer and asking how many minutes we had left. Dreadful as it was, my one-on-one with Sean Penn was a good lesson for a beginner: Read someone’s vibe and follow that, even if it means aborting your plan for the interview.

  My first year with E! News—called E! News Live back then—was a sleepless blur. I would be up by five in the morning to start the day, heading into the office to put together all my material gathered from the previous evening’s events or premieres and turn them into polished reports before the broadcast went live that afternoon. The newsroom would turn into a crazy hive of people shouting, tapes flying, and correspondents rushing to get their segments on the air. After we wrapped at five p.m., I’d turn around, put a new outfit on, and spend all night at parties or red-carpet events to get interviews for the next day’s show. Then I’d go out afterwards to unwind with friends, and finally collapse around one in the morning to grab a few hours’ sleep before starting the cycle all over again.

  Sometimes I wonder if I ended up getting cancer because of that whole period of my life. I would go to bed stressed and wake up stressed. I was running too hard, and never stopping to catch my breath. A full day off, let alone an actual vacation, wasn’t on my calendar. Weekends were never free: too much celebrity news happened then, with premieres, weddings, funerals, gala events, and so on. And in the competitive world of broadcasting, if you’re not out there front and center every day, someone else will be. Other than casual dates here and there, relationships took a backseat to work, and I was fine with that. I genuinely loved what I was doing, exhausting as it was, and I brought my own sense of fun to even the routine, grab-a-quote assignments. Entertainment news, I believed and still do, should be entertaining. I became the go-to girl once the producers realized that I was game for just about anything, whether it was letting Hulk Hogan pick me up and spin me around or challenging Neil Patrick Harris to an impromptu juggling contest at the SAG awards. (NPH won, but I’m self-taught and he obviously received professional training at an elite clown college or something.)

  I had been at E! for a little over a year when both news anchors, Jules Asner and Steve Kmetko, moved on, and management launched a search for new talent. Correspondents in the running for the coveted spots would be rotated to the desk to fill in for a couple of weeks. When my turn came, I wasn’t rotated off, but different guys from both inside and outside E! were brought in to test with me. As week after week passed with me still in the anchor chair, there was a general assumption that I had one of the coveted spots locked down. In the newsroom, I was getting great reviews and encouragement from my supervisors and colleagues, and judging from the feedback we got, viewers also seemed to like me. But Mindy Herman, midway through her brief reign of scandalous terror as network CEO, was not as pleased, and issued this directive from the executive suite: Giuliana is dominating the man. She should be more subservient. I tried to take the note to heart, but they kept pairing me with a bunch of Ron Burgundy types whose only skill was to read from a teleprompter and not have a thought of their own. Was I supposed to just sit back and watch the show fall apart each episode? I couldn’t. So I would jump in and save each chitchat or interview we would be doing. I considered it professional. Mindy saw it as overpowering. In the words of Ron Burgundy, agree to disagree. But I was right for the most part, and everyone told me they agreed with me.

  Then I came to work one day to discover that Mindy had announced that two outsiders who hadn’t even done a test run had been hired to anchor E! News. John Burke was an actor with gray hair and chiseled features. Alisha Davis was a young CNN cultural correspondent with a fresh, pretty face and a head full of luxurious braids. They were perfectly nice people but couldn’t have made an odder on-air pairing, and they had zero chemistry together.

  I was unceremoniously booted back to correspondent, a humiliating move, especially after viewers had come to assume I was an anchor. (I was made weekend anchor, but that was a joke. Maybe ten people watched.) I was devastated and angry. My old boss-turned-friend Pam Kohl, by then my manager, called E! to read them the riot act, and the official press release the network put out announcing John and Alisha’s new jobs included a paragraph extolling my talent and contributions to E! over the years, with a vague reference to a prime-time show being developed just for me. That was news to me, and nothing materialized. They treat you like shit! All my friends kept urging me to quit. “Water finds its own level,” I would reply. I had a feeling this wasn’t over yet.

  Within six months, the show had gone from being merely mediocre to being the lowest rated on the network, and Mindy, for entirely unrelated reasons and amid widespread staff jubilation, was ousted. Her departure came after an internal investigation into accusations that she had abused her power by throwing two over-the-top baby showers for herself, including one at E! headquarters, at E!’s expense. For weeks beforehand, staff-wide e-mail updates from Mindy’s assistant would land in our in-boxes, reminding employees—who were making zilch—where millionaire Mindy had registered for her luxury baby gifts. Disloyal and embittered underlings warned us that Mindy was privately demanding her own regular updates on who hadn’t sent a present.

  I was assigned, on Mindy’s orders, of course, to go cover the more exclu
sive shower she had for a few dozen friends at an oceanfront restaurant in Malibu. Mindy personally directed what the cameras should film. Our first order of business was to report on the gift bags she had waiting for her guests, with me pulling out each item to ooh and ahh over and identify by brand name. (Mindy had a thing for swag bags—the Los Angeles Times later reported that she once jacked costly Grammy goodies intended for two entertainment reporters.) I can only presume that my enforced infomercial at her shower had to do with Mindy hitting vendors up for free “gifts” in exchange for product placement and mentions on air. She was also keen for viewers to see E! stars paying homage to her. “Where’s the gift Joan and Melissa sent?” she barked. “Be sure you get that on camera when I open it!”

  But where is a rich executive pirate supposed to stash so much glorious loot? Mindy had just the answer to that…hypothetical…question: in a new nursery decorated for free by one of Style network’s home makeover programs, minus the two-thousand-dollar budget restriction the decorators usually had to work under. Compared to all this, it wasn’t even shocking when the CEO made gossip headlines herself after reportedly getting into a brawl with another woman in the parking lot of a hot Hollywood club where the launch party was held for the network’s new reality show starring Anna Nicole Smith. I was there but missed the fisticuffs. The reason I was there was because I had to be anywhere Anna Nicole was. The voluptuous former Playmate’s show was Mindy’s brainchild, and she envisioned Anna Nicole virtually rebranding E! across the board. To that end, I was temporarily pulled off E! News to do nothing but follow Anna Nicole for two weeks to film promotional footage. I was supposed to go to her house in the Valley every morning and just hang out to conduct mini-interviews with her practically every waking hour of her day. The waking hours were tricky to come by.