“are you serious?” he texted back.
“maybs”
In a short while, Mehran arrived with a couple pee-on-a-stick pregnancy tests. Before I pulled them out, I said, “Did you get the jenky ones with the pluses and minuses where you can’t tell if you’re pregnant?”
“I’m not sure. I got the most expensive ones . . .”
I pulled out the tests. Sure enough, it was the kind where if one pink line shows up in the little window, you’re not pregnant, and if two lines appear, you are.
I said, “Oh no. I can’t trust these. I need the ones that say ‘pregnant’ or ‘not pregnant’!” Mehran looked embarrassed. Poor Mehi, oblivious to the subtleties and whims of a possibly pregnant woman in desperate need of a test that complies with her OCD requirements and speaks to her in the English language.
I took the test. There was one pink line. Definitely. And next to it was something else. A pink shadow? A pink cloud? The ghost of a pink line? I showed the test to Mehran.
“So?” I said, showing him the stick.
He peered at it. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I can’t tell.”
“It’s inconclusive,” I said.
I drank a glass of water and took the second test into the bathroom with me. At least the tests were consistent—the results were equally vague.
Mehran concurred. “It’s very inconclusive.”
Now what? I was inconclusively pregnant. Or inconclusively not pregnant. Should I mention any of this to my husband, who was still at InvenTORI, selling the last of the white chicken Jellycats? (They were an unexpectedly hot item. We sold forty stuffed chickens that day.) It seemed like I’d been sick for two years, always with my migraines and weak stomach. I was the girl who cried wolf. Heck, I’d been nauseated for two weeks, and it had never even crossed Dean’s mind that I might be pregnant. Never even suspected. This was a great opportunity. If I was in fact pregnant, I could surprise Dean with the news. I decided not to mention the pregnancy tests to Dean. They were inconclusive, after all.
THE NEXT DAY my assistant Dana was dropping me off at Universal to meet up with James. We were picking out rental furniture for Cocktails and Caftans, the next party I was throwing for my party-planning book. At this point only Mehran knew about my inconclusive pregnancy, and I wanted to keep it that way. I just needed to take another test—the one that spoke to me in English—and en route to Universal was my best opportunity. I just had to know. I said to Dana, “Can you do me a favor? Don’t ask questions, just pull over at Walgreens.”
Dana complied. I went into Walgreens, thinking I’d buy a pregnancy test and take it in their bathroom. But the minute I went in, a Walgreens staffer ran up to me.
“Tori!” she exclaimed. “I love your show.” I thanked her and posed for a picture with her. I’d been seen. If I bought a pregnancy test now, it could easily be in the tabloids by morning. I walked back to the car empty-handed.
I said, “Can I ask you to do something for me that’s really personal?”
Dana replied, “I’ve had to spoon your shit into a container to take to a doctor. Nothing’s too personal.” It was true. When I had stomach problems, I’d had to leave a specimen for my doctor. It had to sit in one liquid for a certain number of hours, and then it had to be transferred to another container. When Dana called the doctor about delivery, they asked if this had been done. I’d forgotten to do the transfer and I was already on set for the day. It had to be done, and for that Dana should win the Hollywood Assistant Lifetime Achievement Award for Most Disgusting Act in the Line of Duty.
“I think I’m pregnant,” I said. Now there were two people who knew my suspicions before the (inconclusive) embryo’s father.
“Oh my God,” Dana said.
Dana agreed to go in and buy me another pregnancy test. This time I was explicit in my instructions. “Get the pregnant/not pregnant one,” I told her. “The others are inconclusive.”
Dana came out with a bag. I shoved it in my purse, then sauntered back into Walgreens, muttering something to the nice woman about having to pee really badly and praying I wouldn’t be busted for shoplifting. Or reported to the tabloids for being pregnant. Before I even mentioned the possibility to my husband.
I took the test, and this time it was . . . conclusive. I came out to Dana. “I’m pregnant,” I told her. “Pretend you don’t know. And never mention that shit transfer to anyone.” At this point, now that I have four children, it may seem like I’m always getting pregnant, but at the time Stella was three. I hadn’t been pregnant for three years. It was shocking news. Oh my God. I texted Mehran: “it’s conclusive. I’m pregnant.”
Now I had this great secret from Dean. We were in the middle of filming our show. Every day there were cameras surrounding us. If there was ever a time to surprise him with a pregnancy, this was it.
There was one more person who had to know my secret: Megan, who worked for World of Wonder, the production company we were partnered with for Tori & Dean. Megan was a producer, but we’d also become close friends.
Since Megan was my friend, she congratulated me when I gave her the still-very-confidential news. But she was also my producer, so of course the next text to pop up on my screen was, “how are we going to play this out on the show?”
I loved the idea of surprising Dean . . . on camera. When I had taken those first pregnancy tests with Mehran it had been Valentine’s Day. Wouldn’t it have been cute and romantic for the show if I had surprised Dean that very day?
Fortunately, Dean and I had postponed our exchange of Valentine’s presents. We planned to film it for the show, and we’d delayed it for two days because opening the store had been enough for one day (plus I’d gone home sick). Now I had a perfect gift for him.
Keeping the secret from Dean was easier said than done. When I met Dean I went from sharing nothing with my partner to telling Dean everything. TMI is the story of our lives. We regularly share the size, color, and length of our shits. We beckon each other to the toilet to lean in and get a good look. Unfortunately, our kids have picked up on this habit too. There are photos on my phone of the most impressive McDermott family shits. Instagram, eat your heart out.
So keeping my pregnancy from Dean was crazy hard. I wanted the suspense. But I wanted him to ask. I couldn’t stand his not knowing. Especially since other people knew. Filming the surprise right meant cluing in a few key people. The five-person crew needed to know what was coming so they could anticipate camera positions, lighting, etc. As a producer I wanted it on camera, but as a wife and mom it felt completely wrong. Over the next two days I found myself dropping hints left and right.
“Babe, I’m really not feeling good. I’m so nauseated.” I amped up the moaning and groaning, hoping he would guess my little secret, but to no avail. My ailments were so par for the course he never thought twice about it.
Before we shot the big surprise scene with Dean, we wanted to show me taking the jenky inconclusive pregnancy tests. So Mehran and I did it again, this time in front of the cameras. We stayed as close as possible to what actually happened, except for one thing. In real life, I never shut the bathroom door when Mehran’s around. We’ll be talking about designs for Little Maven, our children’s clothing line, while I take care of business. He doesn’t care. What’s the big deal? But we couldn’t be so . . . real for reality TV. (Sort of like the olden days, when they didn’t show husband and wife sharing a double bed. Someday, for better or worse, the bathroom doors of sitcom couples and reality stars will be flung wide open for the world to enjoy. Mark my words.) But this time I had to show the test to Mehran by passing it underneath the door. And we also had to accommodate Mehran, who isn’t an actor. We had to do several takes before he could muster a big enough reaction, although to this day he’ll say, “I did it in two takes, bitch. Nailed it.”
The next day we filmed all day. The last scene of the day was to be our reenactment of Valentine’s Day, where Dean and I would exchange gifts. The scene started with
me in bed. Dean walked in. I asked how the end of opening day had gone at InvenTORI, and I told him I felt bad that I’d had to leave.
Then we got down to business. I went first, opening Dean’s present for me, a beautiful diamond heart necklace, set in rose gold.
For Dean’s present I’d taken the pregnancy test that said “pregnant” in no uncertain terms, put it in a long, rectangular bracelet box, and gift-wrapped it. When Dean opened it, he was completely surprised. I remember having a half-out-of-body moment. The wife part of me was excited and eager to celebrate with my husband, and the producer in me was outside of my body, watching our exchange, noting his reaction, thinking about how well it would play on TV. This is something I’ve gotten used to in the course of making reality TV. I can be in the present, but at the same time, in the back of my head, I’m seeing it as a story. The producer side of me reminds me of my dad. He always thought in terms of the narrative. The difference is that he was never in front of the camera at the same time.
Dean was truly surprised and very happy. We hadn’t used birth control all those three years, so there was no planning involved. We just felt like our angels came to us when they were ready. Later, Dean confessed that when he saw the shape of the box I had for him, he thought it contained a pen. I was offended. “I give the best gifts. I’m so creative!” I said to him. “I would never in a million years give you a pen!”
Dean just shrugged. “I thought a pen would be pretty cool.” He’s out of his mind. I like to go big on Valentine’s Day. Our third baby? Now, that was my kind of present.
Reality Tweaks
I was pregnant with my third child, and the network wanted to make the pregnancy the focus of the sixth season of Tori & Dean.
This wasn’t a total shock to me. The season before we’d also shifted the focus late in the game. That season, Dean and I were going through a difficult time. My main complaint was that he was spending full days riding his motorcycle when I thought he should be home with the kids. I felt like he’d kind of checked out of family life. At first we tried to keep our fights, which were getting pretty gnarly, off camera, behind closed doors. Then one day we were sitting around with our director and two producers when Dean and I started fighting. It started with the motorcycle racing. Dean stood up—he was pissed and yelling. I got up too. The crew started to file out of the room to give us our space. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bobby, the director, gesturing with his hand. He mouthed, “Can we film this?”
I shrugged. Sure. Why not? It was real; couples fight. Bobby slipped out of the room and came back moments later with one of our cameramen. To me, it didn’t feel like an invasion of privacy. If anything, it was the opposite. I was having a hard time standing up for what I wanted. I felt like I wasn’t voicing my needs. Having other people around felt somehow safer. Also, I always wanted the show to be real, and it didn’t get any realer than this.
In season five, after they had filmed that fight, the whole rest of the season shifted focus. It became about our relationship. Dean and I were fighting. The only problem was that we’d already shot a significant chunk of the season while keeping our issues out of sight. On camera we were fine and off camera I was telling Megan, our producer, that he was angry all the time and I couldn’t deal with it. That first fight, the one they caught on camera, was in episode five! It looked like it came out of nowhere. We needed to show viewers what had been leading up to it. So we had to go back and see if there was any earlier footage of us fighting.
In the beginning of the season Dean and I had been visiting Patsy, the baby nurse who had become a family member, at her home outside Atlanta after she’d had gastric bypass surgery. Looking back at the footage, we found a moment when there was tension between me and Dean and added it in to establish the first signs of trouble.
Just as we had shifted last season to focus on our marital woes, we now wanted the sixth season to focus on my third pregnancy. World of Wonder, Dean, and I wanted to do it in real time—in the third episode of the season—but the network thought that the season premiere should be the amazingly dramatic Valentine’s Day during which Dean and I opened InvenTORI, I found out I was pregnant, and I surprised my husband with the news. That meant condensing and cutting much of what we’d already shot for season six. The biggest loss for me was our coverage of my goddaughter Simone’s birth.
The fifth season of Tori & Dean had ended with me and Dean renewing our wedding vows on our fourth wedding anniversary. After the ceremony, my friend Scout told us that he and Bill had found a birth mother.
The truth was that we’d known about the birth mother for months. She was already eight months pregnant! But Scout and Bill were superstitious, so they wanted to wait to talk about the pregnancy on the show. I understood. We knew that by the time the final episode aired, my goddaughter Simone would have already been born.
Simone was born outside New York between the fifth and sixth seasons of Tori & Dean (I’m pretty sure that’s not how her Wikipedia entry will describe it). Although the sixth season wasn’t under way, I thought our first moments with Simone were important and campaigned for Oxygen to film Scout and Bill’s first days as fathers, as they learned to change her, dress her, and feed her. We filmed their moms visiting Simone for the first time—all the things new parents go through.
The day after they got back to L.A., we filmed Liam and Stella meeting Simone, and Bill and Scout asking us to be her godparents. (I was hoping for the honor but not counting on it. But—come on—I was a shoo-in!) We filmed Simone’s baptism. We filmed me and James planning her Sip and See party. Instead of having a baby shower, people came to meet the baby and drink cocktails.
We’d already filmed two episodes. The whole first episode was supposed to be catching up on our lives. It showed Simone’s birth, us finding the storefront for InvenTORI, renovating the space, and starting to set up that business. The second episode centered on Simone’s Sip and See. When we shifted the focus of season six, we lost almost all of Simone’s story line. Our viewers had watched Bill and Scout get married on the show. The Guncles had talked about wanting a baby for years. Viewers had seen them trying to adopt and finding a birth mother. Now it was finally happening. Their dream had come true. I wanted the show to follow through. It felt wrong and sad to leave my goddaughter on the cutting room floor, but such is the reality of reality TV.
WE HAD ONE more party left to film for celebraTORI, and it was my favorite: Caftan and Cocktails. I couldn’t wait to have a party that was a throwback to old Hollywood midcentury modern mixed with loungey Palm Springs resort style from the sixties. A chic party where I got to wear a fabulous caftan. What could be better? In fact, it’s possible that the whole reason I did a party-planning book was so that I’d have a good excuse to throw that party. But I had terrible morning sickness. They put me on an IV drip for fluids and a Zofran pump—a mini-catheter that gave me a steady infusion of antinausea medication.
When the day of the Caftan and Cocktails party came, I unplugged myself from my medical assembly and tried on caftans. I had several gorgeous ones to choose from, but I hadn’t considered the IV site on my arm. The needle was taped there, ready for me to rescrew the bag of fluid in. I needed a caftan that would cover that arm, and there was only one that would do the trick. It was a gorgeous Roberto Cavalli number that was one-shouldered. That caftan had been a present from our World of Wonder producers, who gave it to me to wear to my vow renewal (possibly a bribery gift to convince me to remarry my husband on my fourth anniversary instead of my fifth in spite of our unresolved issues). I loved the caftan, but I’d already worn it to the vow renewal. I was a little ashamed to give it a repeat performance. Such a Hollywood fashion faux pas. But there was nothing to be done. I also didn’t get to buy caftans for my friends; instead we had to raid my closet. So I wasn’t the only one who had to wear a repeat caftan. Sacrilege.
With all the parties I’ve ever thrown—for my children, on the show, for the party-planning
book—I’ve loved the planning. I have a vision of how I want everything to look. But again I was too sick to help much, and I hadn’t told anyone that I was pregnant. So this time I arrived an hour before the party, moved a few things around, and felt sad that this—my favorite party—had gotten the least of my attention. James picked up the props all by himself and then set them in place—I couldn’t bear to miss that! A food stylist made everything without my watching (although later I did find a moment to redistribute the chopped chives on the deviled eggs). I always breathed down everyone’s neck. In a friendly way.
We planned to tell our friends about the pregnancy on camera at the party. Mehran was the only one who already knew. Just before we shot the scene I realized that Ryan, one of the cameramen, hadn’t been there the day I told Dean. He didn’t know what he was about to shoot. People appearing on camera during a reality show are often surprised by what goes down, but usually the crew has some idea of what’s going on. Ryan was in position, camera raised, when I pulled him aside.
“By the way,” I whispered, “what you’re about to film—I’m pregnant!”
He mouthed, “Congrats,” then he raised his camera back up and I dashed back to the poolside bar for the announcement and champagne toast.
Scout was a little annoyed that he had to find out on the show. Afterward, off camera, he said, “I’m really happy for you and this is great news. But, bitch, I’ll be mad if I have to find out about your fourth pregnancy on camera!”
OUTSIDE THE SMALL circle of our friends and reality crew, the rest of the world didn’t know about my pregnancy. But, as we all know, pregnancies can’t be kept secret forever. At least not in Hollywood.
Spelling It Like It Is Page 2
