But Enough About Me (19 page)

One morning at
Rolling Stone,
Jann called me into his office. As his personal chef brought him a plate of fruit salad, he explained that Wenner Media and Disney had formed a synergistic deal, one of the components being that the Wenner-owned
Us
magazine would have a presence on the Disney-owned
Good Morning America.
Given my experience as a veejay, he thought I might be a good candidate to be the “
Us
correspondent.”

My initial impulse was to leap up and run out of his office. I had, after five years, only recently stopped breaking out in hives on camera. I stared at him, fighting panic, as he outlined his plan. When Jann wanted something, he was the most charmingly persuasive person on earth. At the same time, of course, I was pleased that he thought of me.

I stalled by telling him I would think about it. The only TV I had done outside of MTV was two appearances on
Charlie Rose,
in which fellow veejays Carson Daly, Dave Holmes, and I were summoned to make predictions on Grammy winners. I could barely cope, so we first met at the Subway Inn, a Midtown dive near the studio that always had at least one patron snoozing with his head on the table and no lock on the door of the men's bathroom. The three of us knocked back a slew of drinks in quick succession. The
other two were much calmer than I. That round oak table! The terrifying black backdrop! Those, those, those glasses of water! Set 'em up, Joe!

I went back to my desk and quietly made some calls.

“It's network,” said Lou. “You'd be crazy to turn that down.” He told me that I could probably ease out of my MTV2 contract. At that point, I was probably Viacom's oldest female veejay. It was only a matter of time.

“Do it,” said my mother. “Jann has always supported you.” Jann may have been a controversial figure in the publishing world, but he could do no wrong in the eyes of my mother, who had on two separate occasions sent him thank-you notes for being good to her daughter. In our house, Jann was nearly as important a figure as J. C. Penney. “And this is a chance to move into a more adult job. How long can you be on MTV?”

She was right. Maybe, as Elvis Costello once said, clown time was over.

Many meetings later, I agreed to try out. Jann wanted my
GMA
debut to be a report on “The Hunks of Summer,” but at the last minute after calling around town in desperation, I was instead able to arrange a backstage piece on Madonna's flashy stage wardrobe for her
Drowned
world tour.

The amount of work that goes into one three-minute TV segment is astonishing. First, a producer and I spent hours at Madison Square Garden taping an interview with Madonna's wardrobe wrangler and exclaiming over her size-zero stage clothes. As we finally packed up to leave, the producer asked if we could borrow one of the black bras and panties that Madonna wore onstage to show Diane Sawyer, and we headed back to the show's Upper West Side office to write the script. After we wrote for about an hour, we waited for script approval from the higher-ups, after which we met with the script person who inputs Diane's intro into the TelePrompTer. Then it was time to record voice-overs in a little booth. The producer kept urging me to be more energetic, explaining that I had to sound over-the-top. With each try, I felt like I sounded more demented, but it's amazing how flat you can come off, otherwise, when the piece actually runs.

After an hour of this, the producer's work was just beginning. The process of editing our footage down, putting the piece together, and adding
that clubby music that you hear in the background during the “action” part would keep him up until at least two in the morning. In the meantime, the executive producer had decided that I should appear with Diane the next morning to introduce the segment. A car would pick me up at five a.m. Oh, and wear a bright color.

I didn't sleep for a nanosecond. It was still dark when the car picked me up and glided into an eerily quiet Times Square. I stared numbly out the window at a gaggle of people who had already gathered in front of the glass-fronted
GMA
studio.

I was ushered into the greenroom, where a few staffers were pouring themselves coffee and hurriedly eating bagels. A production assistant rushed over. “There you are,” he said. “I see you did your makeup.”

“I forgot to ask if I was supposed to,” I said, “so I just did it myself.”

“Let's get you into makeup so they can put on a little more,” he said. I was steered into a chair as the hair and makeup women descended, then back to the greenroom, where stood Dr. Phil, sipping a glass of water and talking to a colleague. He was due to go on next. The staffers had vanished and it was just the three of us, so I felt like I should say something to him. I wandered over.

“So are you a morning person, Dr. Phil?” I squeaked.

“Not usually,” he drawled.

“Well, there's coffee over here!” I blurted, as though I had made it myself. I resisted the urge to slap my forehead. Dr. Phil smiled politely and resumed his conversation.

The production assistant reappeared. “You're going on at nine twenty,” he said. Most of the hard news was covered in the first half hour, he explained. After eight, the softer stuff ran, when the viewer “wanted company.”

I looked at the clock. Sixteen minutes to go. I drank more coffee. Oh, no. What was that fluttering in my gut? Was it some sort of stomach ailment? What happened if I had a problem right before I was supposed to go on? Would there be a shot of an empty chair where I was supposed to sit? I went to the ladies' room. No ailment yet, but I still had eight minutes. Dr.
Phil was called on. I watched his spot on the monitor in the greenroom. He seemed as comfortable as if he were in his den at home. When the show went to a commercial, my stomach lurched again.

“It's time,” said the production assistant, leading me into a cavernous studio. Crew members scurried back and forth during the break, barking orders and adjusting cameras. He led me over to two armchairs. “You're in this one,” he said. My stomach twittered alarmingly.

A soundman ran over and fastened a microphone on me. “Count to ten,” he said briskly. I thought I was going to faint. Where was Diane?

“One, two, three…,” I recited. I felt like I was going under anesthesia.

A producer floated into view. “Diane is going to ask you two questions,” she said. “You have about ten seconds to answer the first and about fifteen seconds to answer the second, can you do that?”

I nodded. Ten seconds, fifteen seconds. “What is she going to ask me?”

“Just general stuff,” she said. “Don't worry, no curveballs.” What was general stuff? What if I didn't know the answer?

“Can you give me an idea of what subj—,” I said, but the producer had vanished.

“Twenty seconds!” someone shouted. I couldn't remember the name of Madonna's tour. The Girlie Show, maybe? No. What the hell was the name of her tour?

“Where's Madonna's bra?” another producer shouted. A p.a. raced over and whipped the bra and undies into my lap. They were shiny and black, made of some sort of techno material. I squelched the urge to examine them more closely.

A luminous, gorgeous Diane glided over and sat across from me as her mic was reattached.

“How are you?” she said, hurriedly straightening her shirt.

“A little nervous,” I admitted.

She smiled warmly. “Oh, don't be.” My heartbeat began to slow. As long as I kept my eye on her, I was okay. Keep your eye on the sparrow. Wasn't
that a lyric from a song? It was. It was the theme from
Baretta,
which was sung by Sammy Davis Jr. That, I could remember, but when it came to Madonna, my mind was a sieve. The noise of the set receded and I started to drift away and float upward.

Up, up, up toward the ceiling.
God, Sammy was a true entertainer, and he never really got his due. He was so much more than the “Candy Man.” He could sing, he could dance, he could act. He was a beautiful dresser. Sammy! One of the greats. Yes, one of the greats.

Suddenly Diane was talking into the camera and our pretaped piece was rolling. I could barely pay attention to it because I kept wondering when I should hand her the bra and undies, and whether I should hand over the bra first, or both items together.

She was asking me a question about the clothes and somehow I responded, all the while thinking,
Wait, is this answer supposed to be ten seconds or fifteen?

Then Diane remarked that I had brought something to show everyone and I found myself, absurdly, handing Madonna's underpants to Diane Sawyer, who made a self-deprecating joke, something about not being able to get it over one of her legs.

Then they tossed to a commercial, Diane thanked me and disappeared, my mic was removed, and three seconds later I was outside, blinking, on Forty-fourth Street, looking for the car to take me home.

A producer called me a few days later and said that I got the job, but first, a few issues needed to be addressed. I would have to go to a media coach to smooth out my rough edges. Also, my hair needed more “oomph.”

“Oomph?” I said.

They sent me to a stylist who maintained the hairsprayed heads of many of ABC's on-air personalities. She snipped my long, wavy hair into the morning-television standard, a blunt-cut bob. I felt ten years older.

My clothes weren't right, either. At MTV, I had either worn my own clothing or outfits chosen by one of their stylists. At
GMA,
I had to provide my own wardrobe, one that was tailored, and, preferably, in jewel tones. My
arsenal of black clothing wasn't going to cut it. The camera loves reds and blues and greens. I was dispatched to go buy a couple of suits with the show's wardrobe consultant, including a conservatively cut gray skirt and jacket. When I looked in the mirror wearing my new suit and senatorial hairdo, I was dismayed to find I didn't recognize myself.

Even with my new look, it was difficult to get pieces on the air. My tenure at
GMA
began right before September 11, so my ideas on celebrities and trends were, understandably, rarely considered (with the exception of Flag Fashion: Celebrities Show Their Patriotic Stripes). As the months rolled on and entertainment items slowly crept back into the programming, the edict was that spots had to be Water Cooler, which meant that people should be talking about them with their coworkers over the water cooler the next morning. Their infamous report of an eight-year-old child who still breast-fed, for instance, was Water Cooler. And the ideas had to be newsy but not too edgy, as the average viewer was a woman in her midfifties.

I searched, frantically, for ideas. Jann wanted his “
Us
correspondent” on the air at least once a week. I could barely achieve once a month, despite writing long, frenzied lists of pitches on Celebrity Pets and The Return of Western Wear and Japanese Hair Straightening Techniques. I was told that the executive producer liked segments on items such as the season's must-have bag. I called stylists. I called stores. No must-have bag? Okay, how about a must-have shoe? Earrings—were there any must-have earrings?

Some ideas squeaked through, to my immense relief. One featured celebrity personal trainers who divulged the workout secrets of their stars. One interview took place at the Midtown studio of fitness guru Radu, who had worked with Cindy Crawford. When I shook his hand, his eyes flicked sympathetically over my physique. “I could help you,” he said gravely. Another piece was on the emergence of butt cleavage due to low-rise jeans. We filmed it in the jeans department of Bloomingdale's. “It's not up top!” I shrilled as I walked toward the camera past a bewildered shopper. Then I looked wryly at her bottom. “It's down below!” Cue fast-paced “club” music!

Sometimes I would get a last-minute call to jump on a plane, once to Frankfurt, Germany, to interview Jennifer Lopez for her USO tour of Rammstein Air Force Base. Even though our chat was to take place in front of hundreds of keyed-up troops, I wasn't nervous in the least. Jennifer, resplendent in a white fur Chanel coat, was so dazzling that the troops were hypnotized. I could have been wearing a tutu and a scuba mask and no one would have noticed.

After my interview with Jennifer, I went back to the hotel and staved off homesickness by checking my e-mail. Two important missives were waiting from Lou. The first was a link to various recipes containing Jif peanut butter, including Jif apple pie and Jif soup, which basically involved adding broth and a few vegetables to a cup of peanut butter.
I would eat all of these,
he noted. The second was a passionate recommendation for an upcoming movie on Lifetime called
Sins of the Mind.

I dutifully entered
Sins of the Mind
in my date book. Oh, good: five e-mails from Julie. Every time I traveled, I did two things: told her good-
bye, forever, because obviously the plane was going to crash, and reminded her that in the unlikely event that all went well, please send e-mails to cheer me up—the more mundane, the better. She obliged: