Jason Priestley (10 page)

It didn't get more exciting that hosting a live comedy show. My week started bright and early on Monday morning in a conference room in the 30 Rock building. First thing all the writers gathered around with a stack of their new work. Each cast member took a turn presenting his or her material—some was new, some was stuff they'd been working on for a while. All of them were constantly working on bits, sometimes for months.

Everyone knew in advance that I was the guest host that week, so they came prepared. I read a bunch of stuff cold; I was really thrown into it: they just hand you a stack of script pages and you start working on bits right there at the table with no chance to prepare. It's challenging, and I could see that it could be quite intimidating, but my early acting lessons had included improv and I loved it. Lorne Michaels ran the whole meeting; I had never met him before and found his way of working beyond inspiring.

We split up, and all the writers then polished their best bits for a day or so, then on Tuesday we all met again. Same process: I read more bits and then we started staging and getting acts up on their feet. Certain sketches started falling by the wayside, and slowly a comedy show emerged. The pace was incredibly fast; by Friday night dress rehearsal the show was in a pretty good place. Lorne made a few last cuts on Saturday after the final dress rehearsal . . . and there it was, the show I was going to host. Live.

Because the 1992 Winter Olympics were happening in France, Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, and I did a sketch where I played a figure skater who attempted to medal in the Olympics and gave the worst performance of his career . . . falling over and over again. I shot that bit in a place called SkyRink one day . . . a private rink on the roof of a building in Manhattan. I thought that an enclosed rink on top of a skyscraper was a very cool thing.

I was so challenged and busy and engaged all week that I seriously did not have time get nervous. The week literally flew by. Suddenly there I was, doing my opening monologue. My show flew by so fast, I wished I could do it all over again. I was truly only half joking when I asked Lorne to call my show, get me out of work, and let me stay right there.

Back at my regular job, the producers brought in a new character on
90210
named Emily Valentine. The character was an edgy girl played by a young actress named Christine Elise. She wore jeans and engineer boots and had short, spiky blond hair—a much more alternative look than any of the other girls on the show. Apart from being beautiful, Christine had a strong, confident energy about her that drew me toward her. Her very first day on set, she had to pull out a guitar in the middle of the quad at Torrance High and start singing the Janis Joplin song . . . “Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?”

It was a demanding scene for her first day and she seemed to be terrified. She went from being this brassy little chick who cursed like a truck driver and radiated attitude to a nervous wreck when it came time to sing. I was fascinated by those opposing sides to her personality: in one moment she could be so confident, so full of herself, so full of bravado; then the next moment, so stricken with nerves that she was barely able to pull herself together.

Her scene came out fine, of course . . . once the camera came on, you would never have known she was even nervous. The dichotomy intrigued me. I wanted to get to know this girl better. It turned out that she, like me, had moved to L.A. alone at a young age to pursue her acting dream. Her family lived far away, in Boston, so that was a strong bond we shared. We spent more and more time together after that first day, getting to know each other and quickly became close work friends.

I was still somewhat of a wide-eyed optimist back then; it was just my nature to always hope for the best in people and expect a happy outcome in every situation. Christine was far more of a realist. She had a much more cynical and jaded outlook about work, relationships . . . everything. I needed a dose of that in my life; I found her perspective refreshing.

We were shooting more than thirty shows a year, which was fine with me because I loved my job, but it was a day in, day out grind. I worked all the time. When I wasn't shooting the show, I was reading scripts, trying to land roles that might showcase another side of me. I wanted desperately to get out of the Brandon Walsh box I was clearly already in.

In the past six months I had appeared on
Late Night with David Letterman
, been on the cover of
Rolling Stone,
and hosted
SNL
. I'd done tons of print interviews. I'd been a presenter at the Golden Globes. I had hired a helicopter to fly through the Swiss Alps! I was no longer living in the real world. I was in Beverly Hills 90210.

L
ook, we can't all be George Clooney. I discovered early on that I felt better with a steady girlfriend in my life, a woman of substance as opposed to arm candy. When I was out on the town dating all kinds of women, I didn't love it. I felt a little bit at loose ends, a little lost. Most of my friends had no desire to settle down. Not for years and years, anyway, especially at our age. But I felt lucky that I'd made such an important discovery about myself so soon: that being half of a couple was important to me. I partied less and was an all-around better-behaved guy when I had a steady girlfriend, not to mention that I felt happier and more grounded.

Christine was on
Beverly Hills 90210
for nearly the entire second season (and would return in her recurring role in later years as well). Shortly after the season wrapped, our relationship turned romantic. We didn't purposely wait; it just happened that way. Once we hooked up, things moved fast. One Saturday afternoon we were driving around and found ourselves in the Los Feliz Oaks neighborhood. We saw a house with a For Sale sign and got out of the car to take a look. The next-door neighbor happened to come out of her house just then. “They're having an open house tomorrow,” she told us. “Come back then so you can go inside.”

Christine and I returned the next day, toured the house, loved it, and made an offer that night. It was accepted and that was that. I rented out my condo to the Nelson twins—Matthew and Gunnar, Ricky Nelson's sons. They'd put out an album that was huge a couple of years before called
After the Rain
. They were making a new record and touring. Christine packed up her little house, and we moved in together as soon as escrow closed.

No doubt years of having no family nearby and being completely on my own made me eager to establish a solid home base. Christine and I moved in with high hopes and lots of plans. We started with some serious remodeling. We put in a new kitchen and added a movie theater in the basement where I watched football on weekends, on the rare Sundays I was at home. Always an enthusiastic amateur cook, I began stockpiling cookbooks and trying new dishes. We both loved to entertain; we started a tradition of throwing a formal Christmas party every year, where men were asked to wear tuxedos and women, formal gowns. It was our miniversion of the Spelling Christmas party . . . very mini! Meanwhile, the gossip rags credited Christine with getting me to tone down my boozing ways with her firm grip on me. Supposedly, I liked her tough love. This was just more silliness.

Christine introduced me to the wonderful world of wine. When I was growing up, my parents drank wine at home, but I never had any idea what good wine could be until I met her and started going to wine tastings. We liked to take road trips to Napa Valley to all the various vineyards and attend private tastings and wine launches. Because I was on a hit TV show, the wineries treated me in a way not many other twenty-three-year-olds hanging around tasting rooms would be received. Right from the start I was lucky to be given an incredible education of the winemaking process by the top experts in the field.

There were some phenomenal wines coming out of California in the early 1990s, and I was given an insider's perspective. This was certainly one time my fame came in very handy; it allowed me access to people and places I would never have been introduced to otherwise. I met all kinds of brilliant vintners and was given a fantastic behind-the-scenes view. Wine became my passion . . . even obsession. Collecting wine. Tasting wine. Throwing tasting parties where I could introduce my other wine-loving friends to wines they didn't know. Our new house had a large wine cellar, and I got busy filling it up.

I had recently seen a photo of a French bulldog on the cover of
Architectural Digest
magazine that really captured my attention. Then, one day, Christine and I happened to be at the Beverly Center, a shopping mall in Los Angeles, where there was a pet store. It was 1993, and pet stores were still around. The horror of puppy mills and the like that supply pet stores hadn't yet become public knowledge. There in a cage sat a tiny champagne French bulldog looking miserable. While the other puppies played, he just sat there, staring straight ahead. We knew nothing about French bulldogs, but it didn't take long for us to decide we needed to save that little guy.

I was lucky; my little Swifty was free of health problems. At only twenty-five pounds, he was portable and traveled the world with me. Super mellow, whatever we did was okay with him. He was the perfect set dog—he somehow sensed when the cameras were rolling. He never barked when he shouldn't—when he heard the word “Rolling,” he would sit quietly. When he heard “Cut,” he would wander around looking for friends, and he found many of them. He was quite popular with cast and crew alike. A very affable little guy.

My relationship with Christine was my first full-fledged adult relationship. She and I lived together, renovated a house together, owned dogs together, traveled the world together: Ireland, Hawaii—you name it, we went there. She was a busy actress in her own right, plus a wonderful girlfriend. Intelligent, articulate, opinionated, very well spoken, and fun—Christine was captivating. We shared our lives for the next five years.

W
e were shooting thirty-two episodes of
90210
a year, which was an extraordinary number, and our hiatus was very short. Three or four months a year off is standard; eight weeks was the absolute minimum we were allowed by contract—and believe me, that's what we got. Eight weeks to the day. I felt this incredible pressure to find a movie to do in my hiatus between seasons two and three. Where that pressure was coming from, or if I was imagining it, I don't know. But my choices were severely limited by my specific time frame. Still, my agent, Nick, and I worked around it.

I was going to New York to do some publicity for the show, and Nick gave me three scripts to read on the five-hour flight. “All three would work, time-wise, with your hiatus, so read them all and give me a call when you get there,” he told me as he handed me the stack. I read all three on the plane, and the one I liked the best was called
Calendar Girl
. The story was set in the '60s, and I would be playing the lead, a high school kid named Roy Darpinian who was obsessed with Marilyn Monroe. I liked that it was a buddy picture, about three friends from a small town going on a wild cross-country road trip/ adventure. How could I not love a story about some brash teenage guys driving a huge old car to Hollywood in search of their dreams?

I also liked that the movie was a period piece set in the much simpler year of 1962. The underlying theme to the somewhat silly caper was young guys taking one last, final adventure before their real lives as men began—with all the growing up and compromising and losing their ideals that would entail. Their journey was set in the final golden days of the country's innocence and hopefulness, just before it would become roiled by the loss of the president and involvement in Vietnam. Or perhaps I was reading way too much lofty hidden meaning into a movie script!

When I got back to L.A., I met with Penny Marshall, the producer, and John Whitesell, her director. The three of us discussed the character of Roy and whether or not I was I right for the part. Penny had really come into her own after a successful acting career. She had received tremendous critical acclaim for the Robin Williams picture
Awakenings
. She was a very smart woman, and I also liked her personally. I felt that I would be in good hands with her.

John was in somewhat of a similar position as me; he was a successful television director looking to branch out into movies, just as I was with my acting career. There was a very clear division back then between television and movie projects, with movies being considered by far the more prestigious medium for both actors and directors. These days people jump back and forth . . . in fact, the pendulum has swung to where movie actors are actively seeking TV roles!

The rest of the cast was great: Jerry O'Connell from
Stand by Me
played my main sidekick, along with Joey Pantoliano and a number of other good, solid actors who were on board. The whole project seemed promising; the film seemed like the right match for me. The character of Roy was a boxer in the movie, and the big climactic scene was when Roy actually steps into the ring and fights his father, played by Steve Railsback. Steve did awesome work on that movie; I could not have been more impressed, and the two of us became very close.

However, I had to be in the proper shape to play a boxer. For the first time in my career, I needed a personal trainer. I worked with a guy named Eddie Wilde, who was phenomenal. He was huge, a European bodybuilding champ, and I have to say he supervised a remarkable transformation of my physique in a short amount of time. It was painful; I guess it had to be to be so fast and effective. That man could train! The character of Roy had to be a very ripped little guy, like a real boxer, and Eddie managed to give me a convincing boxer's body.

My training consisted entirely of work with weights. No cardio or anything else . . . just weight training. Eddie and I met every day, six days a week, and I trained with him for about three months. My diet was incredibly restrictive. It was all protein: egg whites and fish, but only certain kinds of fish . . . tuna and shark, mainly. No fat. No carbs except a piece of dry toast each day. Lots of vegetables. No salt, no oil, no butter, no alcohol . . .