Cover Girl Confidential

by Beverly Bartlett

  And then he said: “Are you someone, too?”

  I was spared the indignity of answering by a page, who at that moment popped his head in the door and yelled—with no identifiable irony—“Stars, take your squares!”

  Liza rolled her eyes. Carrot Top scooped up Kermit and Miss Piggy and handed them to the page. Whoopi led us onto the set, and we each climbed into our square, silent, but filled, I think, with a kind of vain hope, an optimistic conviction that while this was not a dream come true, it could at least be a redemptive moment. Maybe none of us was the most sparkling star in Hollywood, but on that day we could be the most sparkling star on Hollywood Squares.

  I, myself, was sure I would be witty and wise and a favorite of the contestants. I would be like Richard Dawson—only without the unfortunate smoking habit. That is what I told myself as we taped the show’s opening. The announcer called my name and I waved awkwardly and winked in a campy way. I looked sly! I looked smart! I occupied the (occasionally) critical bottom left square. I would rule this show! I would dominate the game!

  I only got called on once during that first episode. “Phyllis from Philadelphia” even mispronounced my name when she did so. “Addison McPhee to win,” she said. (Luckily, the show was taped and they let her do it over.) But though she might not have known my name, she was glad she called on me, because my incorrect answer was fortuitous for both of us.

  “Though hopes are raised virtually every year,” Tom Bergeron read, “this crowning event hasn’t occurred in more than a quarter of a century, which is too bad because the sport could use a new stud.”

  “So it’s been that long since Prince William was born?” I said with a yawn. I didn’t mean to yawn. It wasn’t a calculated move to feign boredom with the breeding practices of the British royal family. I was just a little sleepy. It’s a long drive from Colorado.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, drumming the table for effect. “Diana’s boy has to be twenty-five.” I made a breezy motion with my hand. “You know, more or less.

  “That’s it,” I said finally. “That’s my answer. The ‘crowning event’ is the birth of a future king of England.”

  If this answer made sense, it did so only barely. After all, I don’t think royal reproduction really counts as “sport.” But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that at the very moment I gave this answer—or at least at the very moment that the taped version was aired in LA—Cal Gupton was sitting in a swank hotel room, smacking the remote control against his bedside table, wondering how on earth a four-figure-a-night hotel could offer its guests a dead remote. (And further wondering the odds of the battery expiring just as he clicked on something as awful as Hollywood Squares.)

  But then—he told me all this later—he saw me yawn sensually. He noticed the ease with which I recalled, “more or less,” pertinent facts of the British royal family, a long-standing interest of his. And he saw the smug, satisfied way I leaned back in my square and crossed my shapely legs. Cal saw me gracefully and elegantly pick up my classy Missoni Bianconero teacup, which featured a sophisticated black-and-white “graphic” wave pattern.

  “After all,” I continued, after taking a sip and giving Phyllis from Philadelphia a bemused look, “what could the word stud mean other than Prince Wills?”

  Then I winked.

  I was basically begging her to “disagree”—the real answer was horse racing’s Triple Crown. Even I knew that. At least, I knew it had nothing to do with Prince William. I was pretty sure, anyway.

  Phyllis did disagree, winning the game for herself and much applause for me.

  “For those eight seconds,” Cal told me later, “you were the coolest thing on earth.” He paused, then added, “Or at least, you know, the coolest thing on syndicated television.”

  If my career were one of the redhead’s plays, then this would be the end of the first act. Cal Gupton, the founder of the upstart GUP network, put down the remote, reached for a pen, and made a note on his left arm. “Addison McGhee,” he said to himself. “Hmmmm. Addison McGhee.”

  Chapter 5

  A few weeks later, Cal had his people call my people. And when I say he called “my people” I mean that he called my agent, the one who’d considered Hollywood Squares a viable career move in the first place. So you can imagine how thrilled he was to learn that Cal had an idea that he’d been describing as “modestly brilliant” and that he wanted me to be a part of.

  When Cal had ideas, even those of only modest brilliance, people listened. His network had first made a name for itself with a “family” of overacted, sexed-up teen soaps—the stars of which were forever making guest appearances on one another’s shows and getting into tabloidesque trouble.

  Cal had been branching out, adding to the lineup some moderately sophisticated comedies, a few gory police dramas, and, most famously, the National Football League season. He had shocked the older, more established networks by making a spectacularly high bid for broadcast rights to the NFL games, and he shocked them again by putting together an unlikely cadre of commentators to call the games, including several who seemed more likely to appeal to women than to the NFL’s core audience of young men.

  The most controversial of the bunch was the “dapper and dashing Hughes Sinclair”—the witty, poised, smart, and elegant son of a former Supreme Court justice and his famous ballerina wife. Hughes was universally loved by bright women and almost always tolerated by enlightened men. He was, however, generally despised by the NFL’s most hard-core fans, who suspected he did not truly love their sport. (For example, he waxed on a bit too long about missing a family dinner during one of the Thanksgiving Day games that year. “I can practically smell Mom’s apple-cider–braised pork loin and oven-dried pears from here,” he said.) Fans were further appalled by his decision to wear a lavender tie on Super Bowl Sunday.

  A columnist from Detroit—not Mitch, he was on a book tour at the time—rather famously took Hughes to task, saying: “It’s the Super Bowl, Hughes. Do you even know what that means? It’s the annual ode to manliness. Have some respect! Wear red or blue or, at the very least, a good deep Minnesota Vikings shade of purple—anything but lavender!”

  Cal can be counted among the enlightened men who appreciated Hughes’s dry wit and biting commentary, but he knew after the Super Bowl that the man’s days as a football commentator were numbered—especially after Hughes unwisely prolonged and enhanced the controversy by protesting to Larry King that the tie wasn’t, technically, lavender, but “a true periwinkle if ever there were one.”

  Larry gave him a long, quizzical look. “So,” he said finally. “You’re one of these metrosexuals, are you?” (That term was just coming into vogue for sharply dressed and accessory-savvy heterosexual men.)

  Hughes beamed and said: “But of course!”

  Cal immediately began looking for a new venue for Hughes. He was also looking for something else.

  Cal had enjoyed, by that point, more success than most people could dream of, but he still had one unrealized dream. He wanted a news empire to rival CNN or Fox. So he had, for a while, been looking for an easy, pop-culture–laden, relatively short-lived news event during which he could experiment with “journalism.”

  When he saw a People magazine article about an unlikely confluence of important weddings—three European royal ceremonies had been scheduled for the same week as the much-hyped nuptials of the sitting US president to the junior senator from Ohio—Cal was so excited that he took notes all over his left hand.

  Cal had a clear vision. He would bring together two witty, smart, and good-looking people for an early-morning show that, thanks to the time change, would run during primo wedding time in Europe. Hughes quickly became the obvious choice for a male anchor, and after Cal saw me making flip comments about the British royal family, he thought I was the obvious choice for the female spot, at least the obvious choice among the women who would consider it. (Scarlett Johansson, I heard later, had not returned his calls.)

/>   “You even played a princess in that Diary movie,” he said excitedly during my only interview for the job.

  I nodded enthusiastically, even while feeling obligated to contradict him. “Grand duchess,” I said. (But I continued to nod.)

  He looked at me with a slight air of defensiveness. “What’s the difference?”

  I started to say: “Well, a grand duchess is, I suppose, like a really great kind of duchess and a princess is, well . . .” But then I realized the futility of going down this road. I leaned toward him, smiling widely enough to show off my left dimple to best effect, and whispered, “There is none.”

  He patted me on the knee and said I was hired.

  Cal’s show would be called Wedding Week, and it was to last no longer than the name suggested. A successful run would not, could not really, extend the show’s duration, but would add fuel to Cal’s plan to eventually launch a daily “news” operation.

  So Hughes and I sat on a cheap sofa in front of a flimsy-looking map of Europe. We sipped coffee and tea and pretended to nibble on fat-free scones while chitchatting about the weddings as the live feeds came in. (The scones were in-edible, but you know what I always say: Inedible food is the best kind!)

  I had spent several months preparing for the big week, including reading every journalism book I could find at the Tattered Cover Book Store in downtown Denver and watching dozens of A Wedding Story–type treatments of various celebrity ceremonies the world over.

  My agent laughed at me when I told him this. “You know, you’re not becoming Diane Sawyer,” he said. “It’s more like you’re playing her.”

  But I had a dream myself. My dream was of a full-time, respectable job. A steady gig. A regular employer. Maybe I could be the first person in my family with group health insurance and, not incidentally, world renown.

  I had a secret hope—more than a hope, really, a gut feeling—that Wedding Week would somehow work its way into something permanent, and I was thus determined to approach my role in it with professionalism and pride. Diane Sawyer nothing. I was going to be Peter Jennings.

  So I showed up for my first day of Wedding Week with several folders full of clipped newspaper articles, all of them alphabetized and cross-referenced. I came with a framed JOURNALISM CODE OF ETHICS to lean on my desk. I had splurged on five Tiffany teacups and saucers, each with a floral pattern chosen to match the color scheme of that particular day’s wedding. (My favorite was the Audubon pattern, which I liked enough to reuse many times over the years. It was immortalized eventually in the Times Square billboard.)

  No other actress, I am sure, would have come to this job with any more enthusiasm and dedication. I was never going to suffer with a bum water heater again, and if a talky news show (or a newsy talk show) would prevent that, then I was going to be pretty good at talking about news. (To the extent that the marriages of distant heirs to minor and largely symbolic thrones count as news anyway.)

  I confess I had a bumpy start. I knew nothing about appearing on live television, and it couldn’t have been more different than the scripted television of my past. No second takes, no scripts to study. During the first day, especially, I struggled to casually work into conversations the information I had compiled in my long detailed notes. This led to a stilted delivery and unnatural transitions.

  “I’m glad you mentioned the bride’s veil,” I said, after Hughes had raved about the intricate needlework worn by a distant cousin of the king of Liechtenstein. “Because I’ve been meaning to talk about her college degree.”

  There was also, that first morning, an embarrassing incident in which the producer confused me by twirling his finger just before a commercial break. Twirling your finger is the universal television signal to “wrap things up quickly,” but I didn’t know that. To me, it looked like a signal to “keep going.” I babbled and babbled and babbled. He twirled his finger faster and faster. I babbled more and more. Finally, in desperation, the producers just faded to commercial. Viewers, not that there were many that first morning, saw the lights dim and heard the sound fade as I uttered the memorable line, “There’s nothing like a wedding to get you thinking about, um, marriage . . .”

  Cal was not happy. He yelled a bit and threw a scone. (It bounced against the wall. Hard.) He screamed at a totally innocent cameraman, sacked the producer who had not prepped me on the hand signals, cursed a page, and threatened to fire me, too. All this during the three-minute commercial break!

  The commercial break ended and Hughes, with unflappable professionalism, introduced a taped story about royal bridesmaids in history. While the tape ran, Cal finished his speech. Luckily, he had softened a bit by then.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve got an idea of extraordinary brilliance. We’ll add a weatherman.”

  “A meteorologist?” Hughes asked, incredulously. “How on earth will that help?”

  It seemed like a good question to me—unless the weatherman was going to teach me the hand signals. But Cal ignored Hughes. “Yes, that’s it,” Cal said. “A forecaster! But not one of those fat, friendly guys like everyone else has.”

  “No,” I said, eager to pipe in with something. “I certainly don’t think he should be like anyone else.”

  “’Course not,” Cal said. He smiled at me, and I appeared to be in his good graces again. “We need to be different. Edgy. Out there. We need someone sullen and mysterious.”

  “Sullen?” Hughes asked. (He was a big believer in chipper and did not at all appreciate the appeal of brooding.)

  “Sullen!” Cal said.

  He smiled brightly, then turned to another producer to bark: “And get Addison an earpiece. Clearly the hand signals are too much for her.”

  The next morning, just before the show, Cal introduced us all to Baxter Bailey, with his slightly shaggy hair, his slightly rumpled suits, and the somewhat outrageous bow ties that never quite matched his shirts. The wardrobe, the hair, and the exasperated frown combined to project an image of a professional contrarian.

  Still, Cal insisted on reemphasizing Baxter’s mission at the morning staff meeting just minutes before we were to go live with coverage of the wedding of a former Jeopardy! contestant to an heir to the now defunct Greek throne.

  “Don’t smile,” Cal said to Baxter. “Don’t make jokes or wish people happy birthdays. Don’t share diet tips and don’t be personable. Why do people think that weathermen should be so damn personable?” Cal looked around at the staff as if expecting an answer. No one offered one.

  He gestured toward the window: Charcoal clouds were rolling in over the harbor. “Weather isn’t cheerful! It’s frightening. Especially at a wedding. A few sprinkles could ruin the whole day!”

  He pointed to Baxter. “Your job is to worry. Fret about flooding. Stew over low-pressure systems. Despair about wintry storms. Brood!”

  “Flooding?” Hughes asked, incredulously. “Wintry storms? At the wedding? Today?”

  “Oh good grief,” Cal responded. “Use some imagination, Hughes! Bad weather anywhere is important. One natural disaster could cast a pall over the entire proceedings. A flash flood in Crete? An earthquake under Mount Olympus? If enough people die, they might have to postpone the wedding.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Hughes, appearing thoughtful. “A pall.”

  Baxter raised a finger to interrupt. “Earthquakes aren’t really predictable, you know. There’s no way for me to say when one is about to happen.”

  “All the better,” Cal said, raising his arms in an expansive way. “It could happen at any time. The wedding party might have to flee to the streets of Athens.”

  “Ah,” said Hughes. “Flee.”

  There was a moment of silence. I felt that as the co-host, I should add something to the conversation.

  “The wedding is actually in London,” I said, finally.

  Everyone turned to look at me. Hughes started flipping through his notes. “I thought it was the heir to the Greek throne today.”

  �
��An heir,” I said. “Not the heir. This guy is like seventh in the line of succession. And it’s the defunct Greek throne. The Greek royal family is in exile.”

  Hughes dropped his notes. “Ah, yes,” he said.

  “Since 1967,” I added.

  Cal grimaced, but then broke into a smile.

  “That’s perfect,” he said. “In London, there is always a chance of showers.”

  Chapter 6

  It didn’t rain.

  But the second day of Wedding Week did go much better than the first. I had an earpiece, for one thing, so I didn’t have to worry about those pesky hand signals. And I demonstrated my impressive understanding of the exile of the Greek royal family, for another.

  Baxter offered regular updates on the 18 percent chance of showers in the Notting Hill neighborhood. (The wedding wasn’t, strictly speaking, in Notting Hill, but never mind that.) Hughes gamely helped Baxter along with the fretting. “I suppose,” Hughes said, “severe weather in Notting Hill could cast a pall on the day’s events.”

  Hughes was, after all, a consummate professional, a seasoned veteran of NFL games. Nothing at a wedding could throw him off—not fumbled vows, not fashion fouls, not even a groom’s surprising pause to hug a famously estranged ex–cousin-in-law.

  “Astonishing,” Hughes would say, in the same tone he had used for an eighty-yard touchdown run. “Simply amazing!”

  Soon his confidence rubbed off on me, and my depth of knowledge began to rub off on him. By the end of the third (unfortunately clear) day, when the young possible future queen of Denmark was exchanging vows with a somewhat aged rock star, we had hit our stride.

  (She was currently about ninth in line to the throne, but we always called her the “possible future queen of Denmark” because Cal figured there could always be some sort of castle-cafeteria food-poisoning event. Or, you know, some sort of ghastly palace coup. The government of Denmark is generally considered stable, but you never know.)