My mother, Mark, Randy, and my uncle Danny came in together. (I later found out they’d been viewing the body and saying their good-byes. I tell myself I wouldn’t have wanted to see my father in that state, but I, ahem, would have liked the option.) My mother and Mark greeted the guests together, looking to all appearances like a couple together bidding farewell to one of their parents. Mark was taking charge as he had taken charge at my first wedding. My brother hugged me, took my hand, and guided me to the first row. It was the permission I needed.
My father had an incredible life. He produced more than fifty TV series, made ten movies and almost one hundred fifty TV movies, and won two Emmys and many other awards. A small group of family, friends, and longtime business associates was gathered at a funeral parlor for a closed-casket service on that quiet summer day. It was a somber scene. But the rabbi’s eulogy—I am not kidding—went something like this: “If Aaron could see all his friends and family here today, it would mean so much to him. It would almost be like he was in…7th Heaven. When Aaron started out, he met wonderful people and moved up in the business, but when he met Candy he was on…The Love Boat.” He wove all of the shows my father produced, and probably even a few that he didn’t, into his speech. Then he talked briefly about the important people in my dad’s life: Candy. Tori. Randy. And his good friend Mark Nathanson. Mark was in the eulogy. The deceased’s wife was sitting in the front row of his funeral next to the man with whom she was having an affair, and this rabbi—an old friend of Mark’s?—was going on about what a great friend Mark was to my father. We heard actual snickers from the crowd. Jenny and Mehran were sitting next to a business associate of my father’s, a man who really cared about him. He muttered, “This is so not right.”
Then it was over. We went to the Manor for the reception. As we came in, that same business associate of my father’s was hurrying out the door. He said, “Out of respect for Aaron, I’m leaving. This is just wrong. I can’t do it.” My little group walked inside. Uncle Danny greeted us, crying. He said to me, “Go make up with your mother. All your dad would want is for you to be together. Promise me.” Then Mehran found me and said, “I just talked to your mom. She says she’s happy you’re here, and she wants to meet Dean.”
I was scared, but my mother was gracious. She hugged me, and I thanked her for having us, and she shook Dean’s hand. That was us. Pretending my venomous e-mail and the passive-aggressive press releases didn’t exist. I would have liked to believe that my father’s death trivialized everything else, but I knew too well that this stuff didn’t disappear. It just got buried beneath a thin layer of artifice before surfacing again.
Mark herded us into a room for a prayer. Randy, my mother, my uncle Danny, and I stood at the front. I felt a little better. Then I glanced over at Dean, and he, the tallest man in a room full of Jews, was wearing his yarmulke on the front of his head like a Conehead. Randy and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.
After the prayer Uncle Danny asked the family to gather in a hug. We had a moment. Then he asked me and my mother to say we loved each other, so we did. Uncle Danny said, “I’m so happy. This is what Aaron would have wanted.”
That would have made a nice ending, but the truth is that there was awkwardness at the ongoing reception. I ran into Aunt Renate, my father’s longtime assistant. She was off to the side, crying, and she said she had to leave. That’s when she told me that she’d been fired six months earlier. As I looked around, people seemed like scared mice, walking on eggshells. It was creepy. I told Dean and my friends that I just wanted to go home, where we could sit around and share stories about my dad. But I didn’t want to have to say good-bye to my mother and Mark. Which meant I didn’t want to walk from the garden back through the house. I absolutely refused. So the five of us approached the bushes in the back of the house. Dean boosted me up to the top of the manicured hedges. One by one we dropped onto the three-inch deep pea gravel below, James Bond–style. Then, giggling, we ran to our car. It was a perfect, Lucy-esque exit. I’m sure the security cameras caught the whole escape on video. The guards probably had a good laugh over that one.
Back at our house we sat our version of shiva. For the next week my friends came over every day. Mehran brought food from Baja Fresh. Jenny brought Chin Chin. It was the same as when Nanny died and the same as when Jeremy died. Nanny was my mother, and my friends are my extended family. It made sense to sit shiva with them, eating Roscoe’s chicken and waffles and reminiscing.
As soon as the funeral was over, the press craziness between me and my mother resumed. A reporter from a weekly magazine told me that they were doing a tribute cover story about my father and asked me for some quotes. I talked about what it was like growing up with my dad. I told him about how we’d act out fairy tales and pick up dog poo together. People might have known about the fake snow, but they didn’t know about small father-daughter moments around the house. Then I talked about how his actors weren’t just actors to him. They were friends and family who could call him anytime about anything. If you worked with him once, he’d hire you over and over again. He was loyal. It didn’t matter if you were a big actor or a makeup artist or in craft services—he always seemed to remember you. He’d talk to you, hug you, and make you feel as important as Joan Collins. He may not have had emotionally deep relationships with anyone, but he was still infinitely loving and supportive. I tried to share nice stories. I tried to show the kind of person he was. Of course the reporter asked me questions about the funeral and my relationship with my mother. I told him where the funeral had taken place and didn’t think I said much else. But…
Cut to the cover of the magazine. It wasn’t a tribute to my father. It was a big photo of me. This was not what I wanted. A legend had died, and there I was, taking center stage. Just as bad, the lead quote for the story was, “I was surprised that my mother didn’t tell me herself when he passed.” I’d said it in an e-mail to someone. The article was a compilation of various interviews I’d given over the years, pulling together everything I’d ever said about my mother and my family issues. But if you didn’t pay attention to the dates, it looked like I’d given a full-blown interview about the “estrangement” immediately after my dad’s death. There I was, thinking I was honoring my father’s life. They barely used any of the tribute memories I’d shared. It was an embarrassment.
Apparently, that article so outraged Mark that he decided to tell his side of the story in a competing weekly. Then, as these magazines are wont to do, they called my publicist, told her that Mark’s interview didn’t put me in a good light, and asked if I wanted to comment. They told me that Mark had said that the real reason my father died was of a broken heart, that I was the apple of his eye and when I’d cut him out of my life, he slowly died. Meanwhile, word came to me through a “source close to the magazine” (as the weeklies would say) that Mark had called the magazine volunteering to give an interview about me. He was angry, screaming, and on a rampage about me. I refused to say anything other than to pay respect to my father’s life. But my publicist went a step further. She said to the reporter, “Do your research. Google this man. He’s a convicted felon.” She asked, “Why is Mark Nathanson speaking on behalf of the Spelling family? Who is he?” She implored him to think about what he was writing. Ultimately, they did mention in passing that he was a convicted felon, but I still think it’s amazing that in light of what was happening, for all the rumors that were flying back and forth, the press didn’t pay much attention to my mother’s new boyfriend and what their relationship was. It was all about our feud.
Next there was another statement issued from my mother. It was such a joke. We were using the media to communicate. Us Weekly followed up by putting me on the cover with the headline HER MOTHER’S REVENGE. At this point my publicist just told me to leave it be. Right. It was good advice. I should have taken it a lot earlier. All I can say in my own defense is that those reporters are excellent at their jobs. They tell you that you�
�ve been wronged and you need to set the record straight. Your side of the story needs to be heard. But our issues needed years of therapy. They’d never work themselves out on the printed page. Which I guess is what made it such good fodder.
Most of my father’s shows were on ABC. At one point he was the producer of seven out of twenty-one of ABC’s prime-time hours (T.J. Hooker, Dynasty, Hotel, Love Boat, Fantasy Island, et cetera). Insiders started jokingly referring to ABC as “Aaron’s Broadcasting Company.” A week after my dad’s death ABC contacted my manager and agent to say they wanted to put together a special tribute for my father. They asked me to host and executive produce. I met with them and loved what I heard. They were looking to do a two-hour special that truly honored him. I told them I wanted to interview the people who were important to my dad: not just actors, but the cameraman, the transportation guy, the fans, some of his family left in Texas. We were going to show the house where he was born. The tribute would reveal him to be more than the wealthy, big producer people imagined. It would show him as a person. ABC was completely on board.
Dean and I had to go to Ottawa for work, but the production company flew there to meet with me and begin formatting the tribute. They started interviewing people like E. Duke Vincent, who was my father’s producing partner and had known him for fifty years; Nolan Miller, who designed all those Dynasty gowns (and my Halloween costumes); and Heather Locklear.
We were well into production when ABC looked into licensing clips from my father’s shows. When Spelling Productions was sold to Paramount, they became the owners of the clips. Ordinarily, licensing clips is a matter of paperwork. But this time Les Moonves, head of CBS and a friend of my parents, stepped in. Word came back through the lawyers that Les Moonves wanted Candy Spelling’s blessing before licensing anything. I thought, Oh, shit. Watch this. It’s going to be a nightmare. And, indeed, my mother said no. She said there was going to be a tribute to my father at the Emmys, so there was no reason to do it. That was the reason she gave: oversaturation. Without the clips, the project was dead.
The Emmy tribute was thirty seconds long. They showed some clips from his shows, then the Angels said, “We’ll miss you, Aaron.”
My father would have loved a full-scale tribute with the people he cared about, and he would have loved that I was producing it. I still felt guilty about being out of touch for those nine months. I wanted to give something back to him.
Dean and I were in Ottawa to do a movie together. It was basically the same setup as Mind over Murder, the movie we’d met on one year earlier. This one was called The House Sitter. It was with the same producers, the same director, and the same crew. Dean and I were executive producing and starring in it. We were even staying in the same hotel, the Cartier Place, in my old penthouse suite.
Ottawa was where Dean and I met and fell in love. During the filming of this movie it became the place where our son, Liam, was conceived, in what was for us a setting of pure love. We’d been trying ever since I had a failed pregnancy after we got engaged. Now the timing—right after my dad died—made me feel like he had a hand in it, that part of my father’s spirit had passed into the baby who was growing inside me. My father was an angel, and he’d given me my angel.
I was in my trailer when I got word about my father’s will. Of course I remembered how he’d told me that Randy and I were well taken care of—that we’d each get almost a million dollars, so I wasn’t surprised to learn that $800,000 (actually, a little more than half that after estate taxes) was coming my way.
Still, to be completely honest, I was let down when I heard that nothing had changed. Yes, $800,000 is a lot of money. But from what I heard in the press, my father was worth half a billion dollars. It was his money. I hadn’t worked for it and no part of me thought I deserved it. But, come on, if your father had $500 million, wouldn’t you hope for, oh, just a paltry $10 million? If you had a golden ticket waved in front of your face your whole life, wouldn’t you want it? I cried a little bit in my trailer, and then I felt guilty and disappointed in myself for crying. I’d always taken care of myself. Why was I crying like a spoiled little girl? Certainly I hadn’t been banking on the money. But part of me (the pregnant, hormonal part) wanted to enjoy having a baby and being a mom without having to work my butt off. My father had helped so many people throughout his life. Meanwhile, I’d been working hard to support myself since I was sixteen. In a blink he could have given me the opportunity to be a stay-at-home mom and wife, to play with my child and cook dinner for my family instead of jetting off to Germany for two days when I was four months pregnant to do a personal appearance in order to help pay off my credit card bill. Now, with the announcement of the will, I knew for sure that there was no pot of gold. I’d been reared rich, with no education about money and a high standard of living. Even if I worked really hard, I’d never earn the type of money that he could have just given me.
Oh, boo hoo. I know. But give me this, at least: I got crap my whole life for being a spoiled, rich daddy’s girl. Now I wasn’t that at all, but it’s not like the lifetime of crap disappeared along with my theoretical inheritance. Plus, I was grieving and hormonal.
The funeral for my father had been small, around thirty people, but my mother’s publicist had announced that there was going to be a large public memorial service for my father, possibly at the Television Academy, later in the month.
My dad loved people. He never believed he was as big and important as he was. I imagined him looking down and getting a kick out of how many people would show up at his memorial service. But then, inexplicably, it was canceled. I read the news in the paper. It said that it was too soon and my mom was still grieving, but that she would reschedule for later that year. It never happened. Nanny was gone, my father was gone, and my relationship with my mother was in pieces. My brother was in the middle, torn and wanting to keep the peace. The family I’d been born into was, effectively, gone. But I had Dean and I was pregnant. Something new was growing.
CHAPTER TWENTY
B and B…and B
The idea to open a bed-and-breakfast was also conceived in Ottawa. For one week out of the three-week shoot, we filmed at an old house an hour away from downtown Ottawa. They told us we could either drive all the way back to our hotel every night or we could stay in a bed-and-breakfast a minute away from where we were shooting. I was kind of curious—I’d never stayed at a B and B. Five-star hotels, yes. The Queen Elizabeth II, yes. Vegas casinos, yes. Bed and breakfast? Never. My makeup artist was vehemently against it. She said that B and B’s were musty, dusty, and filled with old people’s crap. It sounded ominous, but we went to take a look.
This particular B and B was a Victorian house on a nice piece of land with a gorgeous lake. There were bicycles and a canoe for fishing on the lake. A lovely old couple showed us their best room. It was the “teddy bear” suite. There were stuffed teddy bears and needlepoint “collectibles” featuring teddy bears sitting on every surface and in every corner. It triggered memories of my early-childhood Madame Alexander doll trauma. But we decided that overall it was romantic and cute, and we’re both suckers for a charming old couple, so we decided to stay.
The proprietress was determined to prove to me that my fame meant nothing to her. Every morning she reminded me that she had never seen 90210, wasn’t interested in television, and knew nothing. Then she’d bring me breakfast and say, “These berries, they come from my neighbor. I told her I was making Tori Spelling’s breakfast. You like them? I’ll tell her Tori Spelling liked her berries.”
The charm and novelty won out until the night we filmed until five in the morning. We returned to the house and crashed, hoping to get some much-needed sleep before our three p.m. call for the next day’s work. But at eleven a.m. our hostess banged on the door and told us to vacate our room so the maids could clean it. We tried to decline maid service, but moments later her husband pounded on the door insisting that we clear out. So we did. For good.
But
we loved the idea that travelers could feel like they were weekend house guests at a country estate. It felt so personal and intimate, but what if it were run by cool young people and didn’t have scary pillows shaped like cats and samplers saying THERE ARE NO STRANGERS HERE, ONLY FRIENDS WE HAVEN’T MET? We pictured a modest, modern house where guests could get the kind of attention that they wouldn’t find at a big hotel.
We knew we wanted to start a B and B. The we had the idea that the process of launching the business as a husband-wife team might make a fun reality show. That’s when Dean and I started making the rounds, pitching Tori & Dean: Inn Love. My pregnancy was part of the pitch—we told them we hatched an idea for a B and B…and B. Yes, I sucked it up and went in to VH1, even though they dropped So NoTORIous like a hot brick. Business is business. But it really killed me when the response from VH1 was something like, “Can they put themselves on tape so we can see what their personalities are like?” They had just produced a whole show based on my life! They knew me! And Dean had been around for the whole time. It was dumbfounding, but thankfully, Oxygen was into the show. We had a deal!
We found a house in Fallbrook, California. Fallbrook, the self-proclaimed Avocado Capital of the World, is in San Diego County, about fifteen minutes from the ocean. We bought the house (well, leased with an option to buy) with a ticking time clock. We had to renovate the house to meet our fantasy of a young, modern B and B, open it up to guests, and shoot the entire first season before the baby came. I would have liked to take more time to shop for a house, to shop for furnishings, to shop for…shopping’s sake, but everything was rushed. In some ways it was the least perfect time to make a big move. How crazy were we to move out of L.A. and embark on a new business venture in the middle of my pregnancy? But in another way the timing was also perfect. The two of us were finally setting up house together. We were starting a business that we hoped would support our family. We were creating a life in a place that was new to both of us. Our baby would be born into a fresh start.
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