Once, at a farmers’ market, a fan approached me and started talking about 90210 as if it had actually happened. She asked how David (my on-screen boyfriend) was and whether Kelly (my fictional best friend) was still my roommate at our beach apartment. I loved it because it was a real, quirky encounter. Networks try so hard to put together “softly scripted” shows, but you couldn’t script that kind of comedy if you tried. With our show it seemed to all fall into place. We encountered wonderfully eccentric characters, like Giselle, who worked on an ostrich farm. I loved her. Who could predict that Scout would fly off a bucking bronco at a dude ranch? Or that my dear and perfect toddler Liam would spontaneously curse (actually, that’s shamefully more predictable than it should be—we left it in once but most of the time we edited it out). Anyway, I worried that if we planned too much, we’d strip the show of the spontaneity and raw truth that drew people to reality TV in the first place.
Once a season got going, there were all sorts of edits we had to make along the way in order to tell a cohesive story. There were also some great moments that we had to edit out of Tori & Dean. One time Dean and I were in the kitchen having a heated parenting debate. Just as we asked Patsy which of us she thought was right, her phone started ringing. Patsy’s ringtone was some disco groove. Everyone in the room—Dean, me, the cameramen, the producers—we all stopped what we were doing and danced to the ringing phone. Then it stopped and we immediately picked up the conversation where we’d left off.
Another day we were filming and suddenly we heard dogs barking and looked out our kitchen window to see the production assistant run past the window, arms flailing, screaming in real fear. Chasing him were all four of our dogs, on the attack. He hurled himself over a fence. He wasn’t badly injured, but the dogs had ripped holes in his jeans in a not-fashionable way. It was a very scary, dramatic, and very real moment, but we couldn’t include it as part of our story because he was part of the production crew, and even though we’d become friendly with him, he wasn’t a “character” on the show.
We’d become close with all of our crew, especially Mario, the director of photography and lead camera guy. Mario knew when and how to be discreet. Once, in the first season, we had a barbecue at the inn. It was a family-friendly affair, with a bouncy house, a Slip ’n Slide, and a petting zoo. My friends Suzanne and Scout were in character costumes to entertain the kids. I’d just given birth to Liam, so I was wearing a maxi dress with Spanx underneath. They happened to be the kind of Spanx that have a pee hole. (I never found the pee hole practical. There’s a reason girls’ pants don’t have flies.) Anyway, the bouncy house we rented had a built-in slide. Suzanne and I decided to go down it while Mario was at the base, filming. I threw myself onto the slide. As I went down, my dress flew up. My legs were spread, and, as Dean would put it, I blew a lip.
Poor Mario. He had to see that through his lens. As I stood up and pulled myself together, I said, “Mo, did you see that?”
He said, “Yeah, I’ll rewind and delete.” It was thanks to Mario that Oxygen never saw the dailies with me flashing my pussy. Maybe we should have left the snatch shot in. After all, their show Bad Girls Club is still on the air.
We also reenacted some moments, like when I took the pregnancy test with Mehran. Redoing scenes didn’t bother me at all. It was the real drama of my real life; we just tweaked it a little so it made sense for the story line and was entertaining for the viewers.
It’s hard for me to watch reality shows without the setup scenes jumping out at me. In Keeping Up with the Kardashians, there’ll be a scene, early in an episode, that seems casual and incidental, like the one where Khloé and Kourtney are riding in an elevator, Khloé thinks something smells bad, and they blame it on a food delivery guy who is in the elevator with them. Later, Khloé tells Kourtney’s boyfriend Scott that it was actually Kourtney’s body odor that she smelled in the elevator. When I saw the elevator scene, I didn’t know that the plot was going to revolve around Kourtney’s BO, but I knew that scene was a setup. I could smell it a mile away—much farther than the reach of Kourtney’s alleged BO. There are no random scenes in reality television.
WHAT HAPPENED AT the end of our fifth season was a perfect example of a time when I felt like the lines of reality got blurred. Dean and I had been fighting, and our relationship issues were central to the story line. As the season drew to a close, we talked about how it was going to end. I’m a sucker for a fairy-tale ending. I knew what the perfect ending would be. Renewing our vows.
Dean and I weren’t really there yet. I knew we’d get there, but not in time for the end of the season. And it was about to be our fourth anniversary. In ordinary circumstances, even if I’d felt like Dean and I were back to normal, I would have waited until our fifth anniversary. I knew it was the right thing to do. But I wouldn’t have done it right then if it weren’t for the show, and that’s the honest truth.
After the vow renewals came season six. Just as we’d shifted season five to show that Dean and I were having issues, we’d shifted season six to focus on my pregnancy with Hattie.
In the past few months, before I’d gone into the hospital for my fourth pregnancy, we’d been jumping through hoops trying to make the next season, season seven, happen. Moving to Malibu might have been a great setup for a change in life, but we’d already left Malibu behind. When I told the network that I’d be having a fourth baby, they all but said, “We’ve already done three babies.”
They felt the same way about the kids’ birthday parties. They thought our lives were too repetitive. Maybe I was too close to it, but I’d always thought that the core of what made our show work wasn’t the parties or the projects or the pregnancies—it was all the little and big things that went wrong or right in the course of our lives. To me, nixing one of our kids’ birthday parties as “overdone” was like telling the writers of The Office that the characters shouldn’t keep going to the office every day.
For two months now we’d been in creative talks with the network trying to find ways to reinvent the show. We talked about making it more raw, home video–esque. At one point we’d talked Liam-cam. I’d even confided in them about the complications I was having in this pregnancy and my hospital stay in case they wanted to document it. I thought women would relate to what I was going through. But the decision had been made.
There would never be a season seven.
TORI & DEAN had been a long journey. It had started with my first pregnancy, and those cameras had witnessed the birth and growth of our family. I couldn’t believe it was over. I lay in my hospital bed, trying to carry Patti’s wisdom and hope into this unexpected and upsetting development. I believed that the universe had a plan for me, but I couldn’t see how and why this fell into it.
Oh, and it would be a good two weeks before I heard a word directly from Oxygen. Finally, one of the heads of the network e-mailed me, saying something like, “I hope you know that was one of the hardest decisions we’ve had to make. You guys have been the face of the network . . . ,” etc. He concluded his note by saying, “Hope your pregnancy’s going great.” Yeah, my pregnancy was absolutely fantastic.
I wrote him back saying, “Yes, I’m sad as well, and my pregnancy’s not going great. I’m in the hospital. We discussed this as a story line so I’m surprised you didn’t know.” He never wrote back.
A True Renewal
Before I was pregnant with Hattie, Dean and I had gone through a real rough patch. Some of the issues we’d had were tied to Dean’s bike racing. I had good reasons for not wanting him to ride. He’d been in a couple accidents, and once he’d broken his collarbone. After that I said, “This is silly. You have kids.” He’d promised not to race anymore. That turned out to be a very qualified promise. He wouldn’t race . . . but every other form of adventure riding was fair game.
As I mentioned, our conflict emerged on the show, and to wrap up the season on a high note, we’d decided to do the vow renewal as the season finale. To lead into it,
Dean spirited me away to Chateau La Rue, the bed-and- breakfast in Fallbrook where Tori & Dean began. When we moved to the inn, we’d rented it with an option to buy. We did lots of work on the house, making it our own, but the deal was that if we didn’t end up buying it, we had to pay for the owner to change it back to what it was. Now, arriving back at the inn, the first thing we noticed was that the owner had kept the chocolate-brown exterior. But she’d changed lots of things back.
The reversion that broke my heart was the rose room. When we took over the inn this room had a pink carpet, pink walls, and a matching floral bedspread and curtains. It had a certain retro charm. But we redid it as our “Tiffany” room, using black, white, and Tiffany blue, with Jonathan Adler accessories. When guests weren’t occupying that room, it was where baby Liam and Patsy stayed, so it held a special place in my heart. I was sad to see that the owner had re-rosed it. Nor was I convinced it was a savvy business decision.
After we were done filming for the day, Dean and I decided to drive down the coast. We ended up in a town where we’d never been before. We stopped at an old-fashioned diner and decided to sit at the counter for ice cream.
Sitting there, we started talking to the mom and pop who ran the diner. They were around seventy years old, and they’d been married for fifty-some-odd years. They had children and grandchildren. She was bubbly and cute. He was the straight man who kept throwing in his two cents. As they spoke, they started to remind me and Dean of ourselves. He said, “When she met me I rode motorcycles. She stopped that.” Dean kneed me under the counter. Then she said, “He was into adventures, then it became all about family.” I glanced at Dean.
He said, “She changed my life. I was on one path. But after we met, all I wanted was to spend the rest of my life with her.”
Dean said, “That’s how I feel about you.”
They said, “We still hold hands when we walk down the street.” It was really adorable.
I asked the wife, “You’ve been married fifty years. How do you make it work?”
She said, “Marriage takes work. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.”
Then her husband said, “She’s always right. I figured that out a long time ago.” Then he whispered, “Or I let her think she is.” They reminded me of us so much that I had a sudden epiphany. It was all going to be okay. Dean and I were in a rough patch, but we were going to make it through.
As soon as we left the diner, I called our producers. I said, “We found the kicker to this story. This couple is the older version of us. We have to come film them tomorrow.”
The producers said, “Tomorrow’s booked. We have scenes all day.”
I said, “We have to make room.” The producers were into it, so they changed the next day’s schedule. The new call sheet that came out that night said “T & D visit diner and get advice on marriage.”
The diner encounter came just in time. I hadn’t been completely sure about the timing of this renewal of our wedding vows, but I got caught up in the moment. There had to be a reason we’d met this couple right before we renewed our vows.
But that night something happened that resowed the seeds of doubt in my mind. Back at the inn, Dean sat me down in the master bedroom and said, “I hate to tell you this, but here’s what we’re up against. I’ve gotten our lawyer involved.” He then proceeded to tell me that one of his biker friends had told him that another one of his biker friends had bragged about how he’d found a sex tape of us on Dean’s computer, copied it, and was attempting to sell it to entertainment shows or anyone who would pay the right price.
I was horrified. I knew exactly what sex tape it was, because there was only one. There was a moment in the fourth season of Tori & Dean when Dean was away filming Santa Baby 2 in Calgary. I was in New York on business with Mehran and the kids. Mehran and I were going to spend Valentine’s Day together, but instead Dean surprised me. We spent Valentine’s Day together. (The irony was that I never let them surprise me on the show. I hate surprises. I always said, “Please discuss it with me and I’ll pretend I don’t know. I’m good at faking surprise.” When the network saw the footage of my Valentine’s Day surprise, they responded, “This staged scene plays false. The audience will know we set it up.” But it was real! Apparently my acting was more believable than my actual surprise. Take that, doubters.)
That night, after he surprised me, Dean and I had a romantic Valentine’s night. Dean said, “We should tape ourselves having sex.” He had a little portable tripod, and he set up his video camera on it. Afterward, I checked my angles and they were good, so I allowed him to keep it. He uploaded it to our computer at home . . . without password protection. It was just sitting there on the computer, and apparently one of his so-called friends had gotten his dirty paws on it.
Our lawyer sent this dirtbag a letter, and he didn’t respond. We never heard from him again, and the incident went away. But my doubts about Dean and his motorcycle shit crept back toward the surface. I had never liked these motorcycle friends and resented that he’d brought them into our lives.
The next afternoon we sat down to film at the diner. We prepped the couple for the scene. The director said, “Tori and Dean loved hearing about your relationship. Just tell them about yourselves; tell them your stories.” Dean and I got ice cream and sat across from the two of them in a booth. But as soon as the cameras started rolling, the husband got totally nervous. He could barely speak. Then he shifted gears. This was his big break. His moment. He started telling us his war stories and blurted out, “We had to kill those Japs.” At some point he even used the N-word. Our sweet, romantic Dean-at-seventy was a racist dickhead! His wife tried to stop him, but he turned to her and said, “Woman, shut up. You don’t know.”
I tried to salvage the scene. “So how do you make your marriage work?” I asked. But he was on a rampage and she was so mad at him she was nearly in tears. The whole scene ended up on the editing-room floor. None of it was suitable for our wholesome family show. Another blow to my epiphany.
During the season, in one of our arguments about the biking, Dean had said that he was sad that it wasn’t a hobby we could share. He talked about how other bikers’ wives went out on rides with them on beautiful days. In the interest of compromise, I told him that I was open to going on a motorcycle with him, but it would never happen in L.A. We could try it sometime in the country, where it felt like the streets were less crowded and safer.
The next morning, Dean appeared in his leather riding gear astride a big, white motorcycle—my updated prince on a white stallion. He said something like, “You promised me you’d get on a motorcycle if I took you out of the city. Let’s go.” We took a beautiful ride out into the country. A cameraman in a follow car took scenic shots, and there was a camera mounted on the back of the motorcycle. As the anti-motorcycle wife, I had to admit that it was really fun—and the footage was spectacular.
After our motorcycle ride, Dean brought me back to the inn, where he had a picnic ready. We sat on the grass in front of the gazebo with the pond behind us. There was a long shot across the whole lawn of the B&B. Dean surprised me by asking me for my hand again. It was a chick-lit engagement fantasy, with Dean sweeping me off my feet for the ultimate romantic proposal. I said yes, of course. But at the same time I couldn’t help wondering if I came across as emotional enough. Did I look in love? The producer in me was interrupting my special moment. Just after Dean asked me to marry him again, he let out a caw like a frightened rooster. I heard the kids’ voices and turned to look across the lawn. There were Mehran, Scout, Bill, and the kids. Liam and Stella started running toward us. We ran toward them. I knew we’d edit it to play in slow motion: our family reunited. It had all come full circle back at the B&B.
I could never bring myself to watch that episode when it was finished. Those scenes bothered me because the emotion behind them was conflicted. But I saw the proposal scene in the editing room, and I have to say that that scene rocked. It was beautifully produced.
I was proud of that. This was the internal struggle I had throughout the show. I’m Aaron Spelling’s daughter. I knew how to write the story. I knew what would tug on heartstrings. But I was torn because it was my life we were talking about. I wanted it to be real.
That night, instead of basking in our reengagement, I had a psychic come to visit. It might sound odd, but for me having a psychic at the door is as common as a pizza delivery guy in a college dorm room. A while back, a masseuse friend of Brandy’s had told us about this psychic. She lived far from L.A. and booked her sessions months in advance, but she happened to live near the inn. Brandy, Megan, and Mehran are as big psychic believers as I am. Since they were all staying with us at the inn for the filming, we had arranged for the psychic to give us a group reading in the living room.
We sat in a circle of chairs. Whoever came forth to talk about our past lives would stand (maybe hover?) behind us. The psychic could see them. Before too long, my dad appeared behind me, but this was not a shock. The psychics always see my dad.
She told us that in a previous life Mehran and I were twin sisters with blond hair and held hands skipping through a meadow. Mehran loved that. He said, “I knew I was a girl!” She told Mehran that in another past life he was not a person, more like an orb moving around. He was like, “Yes! Yes, I believe I was.” We also found out that Brandy was my mother in a past life, and also a madam. Megan had some connection with American Indian heritage that took place on a reservation.
Spelling It Like It Is Page 12
