Anyone Who's Anyone

by George Wayne

  GW:

  Your image is on the cover of more than 350 Avon romance novels. You’ve sold many a trashy love story dressed as a Viking, pirate, prince, etc. Now Avon has given you a six-figure contract to write three books, and you have never written a day in your life! Some women novelists are upset at your getting this deal.

  F:

  True. But I have great fantasies, and that’s what women want—fantasy. Most of the women writers are happy for me getting this deal. There are only five or six writers who are upset. All the big writers in the business are on my side.

  GW:

  You have a number, 1-900-90FABIO, where women can call to talk to you. What do you talk about?

  F:

  I talk about the differences between men and women, and ways to improve communication between the sexes.

  GW:

  I understand, however, that you don’t have a girlfriend. Do you have a boyfriend?

  F:

  [Laughs] No. I love women. I’m sorry. I adore women. For me, women are the best thing God ever put on earth.

  GW:

  Does Fabio mean fabulous in Italian?

  F:

  [Laughs] No. But in America it does.

  GW:

  How big are your arms?

  F:

  About eighteen inches [around].

  GW:

  What about the third arm?

  F:

  [Laughs] It’s in proportion to everything else.

  GW:

  My God, it must be humongous! You also have the most enormous breasts I’ve ever seen on any man. How long have you been working out?

  F:

  Since I was sixteen. I started working out after I broke my leg skiing. I was a competitive skier from when I was five. When I broke my left leg, I went to the gym for rehabilitation; that’s how I got into working out.

  GW:

  You have so many physical assets. What is your least favorite?

  F:

  I’m happy with myself . . .

  GW:

  That’s easy for you to say.

  F:

  I think everybody should be happy with themselves. I appreciate every single thing God gave me. It is important to love yourself and to love other people.

  GW:

  You say you are negotiating to do another TV pilot for CBS, but would you consider doing a soft-porn movie?

  F:

  No, never.

  GW:

  What if the co-star were Sharon Stone?

  F:

  Well, if it’s a film like Basic Instinct, maybe. I don’t believe that in order to act you have to show intimate parts of your body.

  GW:

  Lately, you’ve been peddling your very own pinup calendar.

  F:

  I’m very proud of my calendar. I’m the first man to ever have his own calendar. My calendar sells more than Cindy Crawford’s or Claudia Schiffer’s.

  GW:

  Oh, let’s not talk about her.

  F:

  My calendar sold two hundred thousand copies in one month. They can’t keep it on the shelves; it’s already in its sixth printing. In December, I’m going to be signing my calendar in Beverly Hills.

  GW:

  Yeah, but I wanted to see you in a G-string, and your calendar doesn’t show that.

  F:

  Well, you’ll have to wait to buy the 1994 calendar.

  SARAH FERGUSON

  —Duchess of York

  MAY 2000

  This is one of the very first interviews that the Duchess of York gave to any journalist living in the United States, and she insisted on meeting me in person. So I flew to Richmond, Virginia, to sit before her in Suite 252 of the vast and dowdy Jefferson Hotel. At the time, in the year 2000, “Fergie” wasn’t so much the media-savvy press maven she would become after having to retreat from a serious series of malodorous scandals that almost sullied her brand into oblivion. Back then she was very much still the true blue-blooded British royal, on this trip to Virginia with Buckingham Palace footing the bill for her and her entourage of royal advisers. And so we settled in the anteroom of her suite at this dowager Virginia hotel to speak. This interview was conducted before Fergie’s toe-sucking scandal.

  I had the great pleasure of being again in the company of Sarah Ferguson, a full ten years after we first met, when out of the blue I got an invitation from the Duchess of York to join her for tea at the Mandarin Hotel. Wow! She was definitely not as fabulously groomed as the first time I met her in that dowdy, old-money Virginia hotel. But I didn’t care because Fergie was so much fun that day. So it was such a shock when—it couldn’t have been but a few days later—I picked up the Daily Mail of May 23, 2010, and read that Fergie was essentially being called “the greedy black sheep” of the Royal Family, and saw those embarrassing photos of her counting ill-gotten gains. I felt bad for her because she really means well and has such an incredible spirit.

  GW will always adore Sarah Ferguson. And this is our GW Q&A from back in 2000.

  GW:

  The amazing thing about the Duchess’s Weight Watchers gig is that, unlike the other celebrity-diet phenomena, you have managed to keep it off. Just look at those gams on the Duchess of York! Are the legs insured by Lloyd’s of London?

  SF:

  I’ve thought about that.

  GW:

  Tell me, do you still consider yourself part of the royal family?

  SF:

  No. I see myself as a very natural mother interested in all sides of life. I’m definitely not part of the royal family. I am very pleased I can give my girls the balance they need to go forward. Because they have to know that life is tough, that ten families in Kosovo live under one roof.

  GW:

  Has it reached the point at all where Beatrice will look at you and say, “Mummy, why does Grandpa hate you so much?”

  SF:

  Oh, yes. I don’t know if she’s ever used the word “hate.” But I think they both want to know why I am excluded from the royal family and family engagements. And I have to explain to them, “That’s just the way it is, and you know what your mummy is like. And you know she has been misrepresented. But that’s the way they have chosen to be. But you know, I am slightly different, don’t you think, girls?” And the girls say, “Well, Mummy, you’re such fun.” And I say, “Well, you’ve got to learn in life that not everybody can like your fun.” Which I learnt at forty, and which they can learn at nine.

  GW:

  But certainly it must be the greatest pain for you: the treatment by Prince Philip. Recently I saw a story about him, and its headline was PRINCE OF DARKNESS. Is Prince Philip your Private Enemy Number One?

  SF:

  I don’t think of it like that at all. I actually respect him enormously. I think he’s very intelligent.

  GW:

  Really? The article said, “His major life’s work has been to walk five paces behind his far more important wife.”

  SF:

  But that’s what’s so difficult for this poor man.

  GW:

  And you consider him smart, even though he says that your role is pointless.

  SF:

  I can’t change his mind, so I’ve come to accept it.

  GW:

  When was the last time you saw him face to face?

  SF:

  Halloween.

  GW:

  Halloween? For what, like five seconds?

  SF:

  I took the girls to see Granny and Grandpa, and he said hello, and I said hello. Granny is wonderful, so special.

  GW:

  You are one of the survivors.

  SF:

  Yes, I’ve kept my head on my shoulders. Usually when you leave the royal family you have your head cut off. They’ve all been beheaded. When I was in bankruptcy I was offered many jobs in Britain. Volkswagen offered me major money to do a TV ad. I said no, because it would be rubbing the nose at the royal family. I will not betray Her
Majesty.

  GW:

  The two tragedies in your life . . .

  SF:

  There’ve been three: Diana first, then Mum, and then Carolyn Cotterell, who was my best friend in the world. She died last year.

  GW:

  When Diana died, you weren’t on speaking terms.

  SF:

  Right. I’m the sort of person that loves unconditionally. Did it matter when she wasn’t speaking to me? It did, it killed me, I hated it. But I understood that that was just the way she was. There are times she would go into her shell, and I would understand that. I didn’t like it, and I’d always wonder what I’d done wrong to deserve it. She was very clever.

  GW:

  And then that phone call in the middle of the night that your mother had been killed, also in a car accident. Was that the worst moment of your life?

  SF:

  No. FERGIE SHOULD BE EXILED—when they wrote that.

  GW:

  Sarah would love to remarry Prince Andrew. Wouldn’t she?

  SF:

  No, marriage is a tough journey. All that stuff is put on the back burner for the moment.

  GW:

  Why do you continue to put yourself through the torture of Christmas alone at Sandringham [the royal family’s estate in Norfolk]?

  SF:

  I like it. I spend five days doing whatever I like. I watch my movies, walk my dogs, and I’m really happy. I like being alone, watching old Cary Grant movies. I’m there, I never have to put any makeup on. I get the girls up in the morning, get them dressed; they go up [to the castle to see the royal family]. I have the whole day to myself, and they come back in the evening.

  GW:

  Prince Philip must be fuming.

  SF:

  They’re all fuming and doing what they like, but I love it. I light the fire, put on my movies, and I’m happy.

  RUSSELL SIMMONS

  OCTOBER 2003

  Having known the hip-hop mogul and visionary from my first arrival in New York City, I was expecting this sit-down with him in the early autumn of 2003 to be a breeze. I did not expect him to insist that I spend the entire day with him. He dragged me from an early morning yoga class to his corner suite at Def Jam Records and then to a local Manhattan radio station where he was having a live call-in with the most notorious urban radio DJ at the time—one Wendy Williams. Yes, the very same virago who helms a very successful syndicated morning talk show on the Fox network. I will never forget sitting in the green room of Hot 97 FM as they gabbed away. Wendy Williams likes to mouth off a lot and it has made her a very wealthy woman.

  And she had Russell on his toes, not literally, the entire afternoon. But he was no match for GW.

  GW:

  Were you at Café Tabac the night that Christy Turlington squatted behind the bar?

  RS:

  I don’t think I was there that night, but I was there many nights with Christy Turlington, and we had a lot of fun. Back then we all drank so much, and she would drink you under the table and be stone-faced, smiling in her Chanel suit.

  GW:

  It’s hard to imagine that Russell Simmons used to sell ganja on 205th Street in Queens.

  RS:

  Really?

  GW:

  According to your book. Or is that just tweaked autobiography to add street credibility?

  RS:

  I did sell fake cocaine.

  GW:

  It’s even harder to imagine that you were addicted not to marijuana, not to cocaine or crack, but to angel dust! When did you become sober?

  RS:

  When I turned thirty.

  GW:

  And you are not the first person to say that yoga has changed his life.

  RS:

  I started practicing yoga religiously eight years ago.

  GW:

  Who was the first rap artiste discovered by Russell Simmons?

  RS:

  Kurtis Blow, whose first single was “Christmas Rappin’,” in 1979.

  GW:

  You founded Def Jam in 1984. What gave you the balls to think you could start your own record company?

  RS:

  Rick Rubin—who was a member of the Beastie Boys, who I was managing at the time—had this logo, Def Jam, and since I had so much success managing Run-DMC and Kurtis Blow and Whodini and other rappers, Rick said we should start a label.

  GW:

  Many inductees into the Hip Hop Hall of Fame will come from the label Def Jam—Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys—but as far as GW is concerned, your greatest discovery is LL Cool J.

  RS:

  That’s my man. We just re-signed LL Cool J—still with us after twenty years.

  GW:

  Def Jam has made about three hundred million dollars in 2003 so far. How much of that money goes into your pocket?

  RS:

  I’m now just the chairman of Def Jam, and they send a little.

  GW:

  A few million?

  RS:

  That company is owned by Vivendi. Now I only get a bonus. I’ve discovered that being attached to money is a source of anxiety. It doesn’t mean anything.

  GW:

  One of the quirks of your marriage [to Kimora Lee Simmons] is that you and your wife keep separate fridges.

  RS:

  That’s because I am vegan and she is not. My refrigerator is vegan and hers is not.

  GW:

  Do you also have separate bedrooms?

  RS:

  No, we sleep together.

  GW:

  What about living in the biggest private residence on the East Coast in Saddle River, New Jersey?

  RS:

  That’s not true at all. It is absolutely not the biggest private residence on the East Coast. It is certainly an excellent, beautiful, well-designed home.

  GW:

  Tell GW, do you really think we need a Russell Simmons energy drink? This just sounds like someone’s ego run amok.

  RS:

  It’s flying off the shelves, blowing out the stores. And a big piece of that profit goes to funding the Hip Hop Summit [a Simmons project that uses hip-hop stars to promote political and social reform], so we really do need it. It is necessary; it’s about endowment. It’s the healthiest of all energy drinks. It contains no ephedra, like the other energy drinks.

  GW:

  You run a fashion company, Russell, but your personal style leaves a lot to be desired. Russell Simmons is a perfect candidate for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

  RS:

  Get outta here! What are you talking about, man? I’m wearing the best sportswear in the world—Phat Farm. I’m always fly. My sportswear is always just right and up to date. I disagree.

  GW:

  GW can’t help but ponder the notion that somewhere in his cranium Russell Simmons is cradling the idea of one day becoming the first black governor of the great state of New York—say, circa 2020. Seventeen years from now you will be sixty-two years old, the perfect age to mount a gubernatorial campaign.

  RS:

  I don’t see that in a million years. I have no political ambitions.

  GW:

  That remains to be seen. Thank you, Mr. Rush.

  EARTHA KITT

  JUNE 2001

  Eartha Kitt still had it going on. The attitude, the guile, the signature purr, and her indefatigable sensual prowess—all firmly intact even though as she herself said on April 5, 1991, when I saw her for the first time, “two days ago I became 2,500 years old.” She was almost seventy, yet there she was perched on a stool, dressed in glittering jewels and a sinuous full-length gown of chain-link shimmer, still holding court in the cabaret at the Carlyle hotel in New York City. Eartha Kitt in her natural wild amongst the posh hoi polloi. Her ruby-red lips were the first thing I noticed as she cooed, “Take me for a walk along the shore of the Bosphorus.” The uptown demimonde swooned ever so blithely. “I’ve had my share, drank my fill, and even though I am satisfied I’m hungry s
till.” Eartha Kitt was simply mesmerizing. After her show her business manager at the time and a dear old friend, Jason Weinberg, took me backstage to meet this fearless, flawless legend. And I was a nervous wreck as I slithered into the aging diva’s tiny quarters. Eartha extended her hand, and I obsequiously bowed and quivered. “I owe the people of Turkey a great deal,” she purred. “When I decided to sing that song in Turkish, everyone told me that no one would buy it, that it would never sell. Well, where are they today?” I wouldn’t have the opportunity to finally interview Eartha Kitt until a full nine years later! Which, come to think of it, looking back, is rather remarkable. It took almost another decade for me to once again meet Eartha Kitt, and she was still fierce and in top form. In December 2000, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Eartha Kitt was still queen bee, and still doling out anecdotes and advice in a book she was promoting at the time. Her third book, it was aptly subtitled It’s Never Too Late.

  GW:

  From reading your latest book, Rejuvenate! (It’s Never Too Late), it’s obvious that Ms. Kitt at seventy-four still maintains a rigorous workout regimen. She is still even able to do somersaults!