0:01

I'm

0:06

Claire

0:12

Parker.

0:19

And I'm Ashley Hamilton.

0:22

And this is Celebrity Memoir Book

0:24

Club! podcast where

0:27

we parse through the pages of a celebrity

0:29

memoir and say, do you know what?

0:31

These could have been said better. And we

0:34

say them ourselves. And do you know what? If you disagree

0:36

and you think, no, the way the book was, was

0:38

the best version, read the

0:39

book. Support indie authors

0:41

like Brooke Shields. But

0:44

if you think, Hey, I like the way you guys say it better,

0:46

then come on board, baby. We're about to say a

0:48

lot of stuff. Oh boy. Are we going to

0:50

say some stuff? Boy, will

0:52

words come out of our mouth. Oh boy, do

0:54

we yammer. Claire. Yes,

0:57

we haven't recorded in a while.

1:00

How would you title the

1:02

chapter of your memoir since last

1:04

time? Hectic. It

1:07

has been, it turns out quite hectic

1:09

to move in the middle of traveling

1:11

a lot, especially when you've never moved before.

1:14

There's just been a lot going on, like, we're

1:16

gone all week, we come back for the weekends, I move, we're gone

1:18

all week, we come back for the weekends. Things

1:19

just keep popping up. I feel like I've never had more

1:21

things pop up than I have in the last week, but the

1:23

worst thing of them all, and it's not like

1:25

not feeling at home, and it's not the jet lag, and it's

1:27

not my dad's health scare.

1:30

Is that I haven't had internet. I

1:32

haven't had internet for five days and we keep calling

1:35

the people and they're like, we're working on it. I'm like, are you?

1:37

Because it feels like you could be working. Like how are you going to be? Callers

1:40

write in, does Bedstein not get internet?

1:42

Or is this just like a fluky fluky week? Because

1:45

so far I've lived there and every day there has

1:47

not been internet and they keep saying they're working on it. And

1:49

I'm just like looking around at all of my neighbors

1:51

trying to be like, have you ever been online? Is

1:54

it just my place or is it like the

1:56

neighborhood? Is it the block? Is this an

1:58

abnormality? but let me tell you. not having internet.

2:00

Home is where the internet is. If you don't have wifi

2:03

and you can't sit on your bed and watch Netflix, you'll

2:05

never feel at ease. I have been like

2:07

a little girl gone. I am a traveler lost

2:10

at sea. I am sitting in my own goddamn home

2:12

feeling like, well, I'll never know love again. I

2:14

can't explain it, but to not have the warm embrace

2:16

of like streaming or Googling,

2:19

I keep making lists of things I have to do. And

2:21

I don't even know, I have to put down this huge deposit for my

2:23

wedding. And I don't know how to explain to them. I'm like, listen, I

2:26

can't because I have no internet. And I know that sounds

2:28

suspicious to you as a business

2:30

that a girl would

2:32

be saying she can't have internet but can't afford the sweating.

2:34

But oh boy, has it been the

2:36

worst experience of my life? I will say

2:38

there is something in the modern

2:40

age where like home is the place

2:43

where you can just sit perfectly still

2:45

and look at your phone or your computer and no one can

2:48

look at what you're looking at

2:49

and you can just scroll sound

2:52

on no headphones. And that is

2:54

what comfort is. I mean, even during the pandemic

2:56

when I was basically living with Mac in his studio apartment,

2:59

I would bike home to my apartment every day to say that

3:01

I needed like alone time to work and just sit and watch

3:03

six hours of Bravo TV. And it's like, could

3:05

I have done that in front of him? Of course, but it's

3:08

so different. It's so different. Like I

3:10

just want to watch TV alone and I don't want anyone

3:12

to see what I look like. I don't want anyone to see how much

3:14

I'm watching. I just, please, it's

3:16

been horrible. Ashley. Yes,

3:18

Claire. How have your few

3:19

weeks been? What would you call your chapter of last

3:21

time? Wait, we forgot to say thank

3:23

you. We forgot to say how much we loved

3:26

everyone. I have had so

3:28

much fun on tour. I am so appreciative of

3:30

these shows. I'm so excited to

3:32

have met everyone that's come out.

3:34

And somehow for me too, the

3:36

day is home have been just train

3:38

wreck after train wreck and I am

3:40

tired. We are so weak.

3:43

It is unbelievable. Like we were built different in that

3:45

we were built worse. We went on one business trip.

3:47

You know, a lot of people in business travel every week.

3:50

You know, some people travel every week and that's

3:52

just their lifestyle. And we're like, we left town twice,

3:55

and I don't know that we'll ever recover physically.

3:58

I have aged like a... president.

4:02

I am so tired. I

4:05

got back like a shipwrecked person. It's

4:08

like I haven't seen land.

4:10

Okay. We had three days

4:12

of not traveling and on

4:14

one of those days I was completely bowled

4:17

over by food poisoning or something.

4:19

I think I might have an allergy to mushrooms

4:22

perhaps TBD, whatever it was.

4:24

I was down and fucking

4:26

out. Like not even conscious. It

4:29

was crazy. I forgot who I was

4:31

talking to, but they were like, well, at least you got like a nice cozy

4:33

day on one of your days off. And I was like, it was not a cozy

4:35

day. It was a lost day. It was a puke. It was

4:37

a day that is just gone to the winds.

4:40

Okay. I have no idea who

4:42

I was or what happened on that day. At one

4:44

point Claire came by to give me ginger ale and she was like,

4:46

do you want me to take bug out? And I was like, I can take bug around

4:49

the block. I'm fine. And when you left, I took

4:51

bug out and I like cried. I was like, that was a huge mistake.

4:53

I mean, bug got halfway to the park, which is a

4:55

six minute walk and and we had to go home so that

4:57

I could throw up and then we went back to the park and she

4:59

was like, what the fuck? She must've thought

5:02

you were an absolute goof head because she's like, I

5:04

take a shit on the sidewalk and you have to go home to puke.

5:07

I wanna give a shout out to Claire for bringing me ginger ale and

5:09

a shout out to Bug for being extremely

5:11

snuggly. Aw, Bug. And also

5:13

you guys, I forgot how much I loved you in touring

5:16

because of the internet thing. I literally was like, well, if I don't

5:18

have internet for a week and put a gun to my head, I don't wanna keep

5:20

living. I don't even care if the internet comes back later. It's too

5:22

late. The damage has been done and I'll

5:24

never be the same again.

5:25

But meeting you guys

5:28

has truly changed my life. It is so

5:30

amazing to get to chat with you. Please, if you're gonna see us

5:32

soon or ever again, like know that we love to say hi,

5:34

we love to chat. I feel like so grateful that anybody

5:36

comes to the shows and that anybody like waits

5:38

to say hi and getting to put a face to a name, a

5:40

face to the DM. A lot of times we'll have been

5:43

DMing you a lot, but you have like a baby as

5:45

an avatar. So I'm like, well, I didn't recognize you as

5:47

an adult. And then when you say your name, we're just like, oh

5:49

my God, we talk every day. I know you.

5:52

I am so happy to meet you guys. And it has just been amazing.

5:54

It's been like, what is all four? It worked out and now

5:56

I can die.

5:58

Please, someone. get internet in Best

6:01

Buy. I do want to keep going. I can't

6:03

believe they don't have internet there.

6:05

So speaking of a world before internet.

6:08

The 80s. Have you ever heard of them? This

6:11

week we were talking about Brooke Shields. There

6:14

was a little girl, the real story of my mother and

6:16

me. And I want to say real quick before

6:19

we get into it, we are recording this episode

6:21

before the documentary comes out on

6:23

Hulu, but we will be covering the

6:25

documentary on the Patreon

6:28

this week.

6:28

So I think it's It gets very interesting

6:31

that we're covering it before seeing the movie

6:33

because I wonder how much her position has changed.

6:36

This was written

6:38

in 2014, like pretty raw after her mother

6:40

passed. It goes up to basically

6:42

the year after her mom died when she has what she

6:44

feels is like her first real wave of

6:47

grief after a year of denial. She

6:49

kind of has a breakdown and in response to the breakdown,

6:51

she writes this book and oh boy,

6:53

are we processing? Oh boy, was this book a process

6:56

and a processing?

6:57

And I wonder how much the movie will be

7:00

processed. I think

7:02

that this was an incredibly sad and honest

7:04

and vulnerable book. But as you guys know, as is

7:06

a big core tenant of CNBC, there is

7:08

no truth. There's only what you know, you can

7:10

be as honest as you can be and still be

7:12

like wrong about your own life. And that's the beauty

7:15

of a memoir, baby. This is the

7:17

book that has left me saddest

7:19

for our memoirist. Well, that's I

7:22

know, that's tough stuff. I know because

7:24

I think a lot of the other ones, even though they've

7:26

had like objectively

7:27

harder, like if you're just measuring based

7:30

on like the number of sandbags tied to an ankle,

7:32

you're just like there are people who've had harder lives

7:34

that we've read about. But

7:35

I think this book, and

7:37

once again, I'm excited for the movie and this is the last time I'll

7:40

reference the movie. I love it, you keep calling it the movie.

7:42

Like the movie adaptation, like not the documentary.

7:45

Is that not a movie? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

7:47

yeah. Anyway, this book itself,

7:49

like as a completed work

7:51

has the least amount of hope. The

7:54

conclusion is like, and now the hope's gone. And

7:57

so at least I can't be heartbroken

7:59

by the lack of potential.

8:00

and you're like, that's as good as it gets.

8:02

No more hope. It's really depressing. This

8:05

book shows very little growth, very

8:07

little hope, very little getting

8:09

to the conclusion that you want her to get to. And

8:11

it makes you very sad.

8:14

So it starts with an introduction, which I think is one of the

8:16

best introductions we've read because it really sets you up for

8:19

what she's hoping to do. And what she's not

8:21

hoping to do. And so she talks about how

8:23

the days after her mother died, she paid for

8:25

the New York Times to run an obituary that she had written

8:27

about her mother. When the New York Times saw that it was Brooke Shields'

8:29

mom, they called her back and were like, hey, we'd love to put her

8:31

on the front page and ask some more questions.

8:34

And Brooke is like, I don't want to answer more questions, just run

8:36

what I wrote, treat her like a normal person.

8:38

And

8:38

they're like, well, we can't do that. We're gonna send you your

8:40

money back and we're gonna ask a couple questions.

8:42

And they're like, we just wanna know where her brother is

8:44

from. And she's like, all right, if that's your one question, that's fine.

8:47

So it gets moved, she gets her money back, she answers

8:49

the one question. And then the next day, the

8:52

article comes out, front page on the obituaries. And

8:54

the first line read, Terry Shields, who began promoting

8:56

her daughter Brooke As a child model and actress when

8:59

she was an infant and allowed her to be cast as a child prostitute,

9:01

died on Wednesday. What an opener. The

9:04

obituaries author highlighted completely out

9:06

of context the most salacious facts and quotes.

9:08

He painted her as a desperate single mom who sold her daughter

9:10

into prostitution and nudity for her own profit.

9:13

He even distorted mom's most famous quote,

9:15

mistaking her wry humor for deep abuse.

9:18

The quote is, fortunately, Brooke was at an age where she

9:20

couldn't talk back. And she contextualizes

9:22

the quote. She says, this was about me doing a soap

9:24

ad, not about me playing a child prostitute.

9:27

I also wanna say, I think that it's hard when you're

9:30

recalling somebody else's words and those are the

9:32

words they're using. That is what the

9:34

phrase of her character was. I recognize

9:36

that there is no such thing as a child sex worker. There's

9:39

only abuse. But that's what this movie that she was in

9:41

was about. As a child, I literally couldn't imagine my

9:43

life without

9:43

her. I used to think that if mom died, I'd die too.

9:46

Now I'm still here with two daughters of my own and this book is about

9:48

understanding what came before and what comes next.

9:50

So she wants to write this book to let you guys know that that's not all

9:52

she was, that she actually was a mother

9:54

that she loved. I'm not holding up on a pedestal

9:57

either. There's been so much written about my mom and most of it has

9:59

been quite negative. This

10:00

is by no means an attempt to idolize or

10:02

condemn her. It is simply my turn to tell this story as I

10:04

saw and felt it.

10:05

It's about the 48 years that I knew, yet never really

10:08

knew my mother.

10:09

Spoiler alert, this is the craziest book I've

10:11

ever read because it opens with that introduction being like, you got

10:13

my mom all wrong. She wasn't this horrible stage mother.

10:15

It's like, she was worse. She

10:18

was a horrible stage mother and an alcoholic. And

10:20

I'm just like, oh Brooke, I wonder if you read

10:22

this book back and you're like, I guess that bit was kind of right.

10:24

It's weird. She's like, I want to show you all the other sides of

10:26

her mom, but all the other sides were like, not

10:28

necessarily better. And I guess this

10:30

is a really interesting and heartbreaking book about

10:33

loving an imperfect person because

10:35

it is okay to love

10:37

someone who's hurt you. It is

10:39

completely understandable to have a longing

10:41

in your body to connect to your family

10:43

and to want to see the best side

10:45

of your parents and to excuse

10:49

certain behaviors and to like rationalize

10:51

certain behaviors.

10:52

That doesn't mean you can't love them, but that

10:54

doesn't mean they were a good person and a good mom. Yeah,

10:57

I mean, this book is about the fact that you want to go no contact,

10:59

how about one of them dies? You know what I mean? This

11:01

is a book about her mom passing away. The fact that even in her death,

11:04

you can never take away that part of you, that longing

11:06

always exists. Yeah, but I think

11:08

her longing also clouds the

11:11

right and wrong of her mom's behaviors.

11:13

What I see in this book is I think she spent

11:15

so much time defending her mom against these accusations

11:18

that she was this horrible stage parent who did essentially

11:20

sell her daughter into, she

11:22

did nudity at 11. She was

11:24

a child prostitute in a movie at 11. and

11:26

they like, for some reason, had to film

11:28

her naked, even though it was like shoulders up.

11:31

And I was like, well then why was she naked? I don't, why was

11:33

she naked? I could not for the life of me understand what was going on there.

11:35

I mean, this is like disgusting to read about. And she

11:37

is like, she wasn't a stage mom. That was fine.

11:40

It was art. We

11:41

were happy. I loved doing it. I was very mature for

11:43

an 11 year old, which I'm like, Brooke. But then she's like, the

11:45

real problem was her alcoholism. And

11:47

it's crazy the way that I think in order to be like,

11:49

you guys are wrong about her.

11:51

She was abusive in a way you don't even know

11:53

about her. she has to then say the

11:56

other accusations are completely wrong. And so that's

11:58

what I'm interested in in Pretty Baby, is I wonder.

12:00

she's come to a place of calm in herself where

12:02

she can say, no, also allowing me to do that

12:04

was wrong. Why didn't she protect me? Yeah.

12:06

So she talks about her mother. Who was my mother?

12:09

I believe I knew her better than anybody else did and I didn't know

12:11

her at all. I could wax philosophical and venture

12:13

to say that my mother never fully knew herself and that

12:15

the personas she created became her reality. But

12:17

basically at the core of it, vulnerability

12:19

equaled weakness in my mother's eyes. This

12:22

I think is such an interesting line. For

12:24

years I thought she was the strongest, most honest

12:26

and forthright woman ever. Looking back, I

12:28

see that she was the most truthful white liar I will

12:30

ever know.

12:31

And even this, there's certain little things that Brooke

12:33

says that I go, white liar. What is

12:35

that? She was just a liar. Yeah.

12:38

She wasn't telling white lies. She was inventing

12:40

realities to manipulate and control you. So

12:43

she goes into her mom's childhood, her mom,

12:45

of course, the generational trauma.

12:48

Her mom was raised by a mother whose mother had died

12:50

and had to raise all the children. Her grandmother,

12:52

it seemed like never really loved her mom. Her

12:55

mom's dad had a whole second family that they never

12:57

knew about until they found out in genealogy.

13:00

They were raised very

13:01

poor in Newark, New Jersey. She

13:03

says her mother eventually remarried and met

13:06

and married John Schman. Could

13:08

that be real? Could John Schman be a real

13:10

name? I think that Brooke was raised

13:13

believing John Schman was real. Brooke

13:16

cannot separate her mother's truth from

13:18

the actual truth. So I do believe

13:20

that her mom was like, ah, you know, she married some guy,

13:22

John Schman. And Brooke was like, noted?

13:24

And is that with the S-H or a C-H? Step-grandfather,

13:27

John Schmott. As

13:29

a child, mom was left on her own a great deal and learned to be

13:31

quite independent. And she was very beautiful,

13:33

she was super cute, and she always talked about how she

13:35

was imaginative and adventurous too, and her inventive

13:38

way of thinking ended up giving me confidence to think outside

13:40

the box and trust that my thoughts were unique.

13:42

She was also a troublemaker, everywhere

13:44

she went, she says she excelled at everything, she was very

13:46

beautiful. She would run away from home and sneak into

13:49

the movie theater and she just had an absolute love

13:51

for the cinema. She was said to light up every

13:53

room she entered, she was special in every way. Soon

13:55

my mother started setting her sights past Newark and across

13:57

the Hudson River to the bright lights and more cosmopolitan.

14:00

She wanted more, she wanted a big, fabulous life, and

14:03

I guess she felt Newark couldn't provide it. She was stunningly

14:05

beautiful and her laugh was infectious. She excelled at everything

14:07

she tried and she read people astutely. She

14:09

knew she was somehow different from her peers and wasn't the

14:12

type to want to settle down. This part's funny

14:14

to me. My mother wanted a more up-skilled career, but

14:17

she had no experience in education or sales or management, but she

14:19

didn't see that as an obstacle. She often said to me

14:21

growing up, Brookie, where there's a will, there's a way. Don't take

14:23

no for an answer and never let him see you sweat. Figure

14:25

out what you want and find a way. That's just every saying. saying

14:29

that was invented before 1991. And

14:32

it's just all the phrases. And

14:35

when it rains, it pours, Brookie. If I had

14:37

a nickel.

14:40

I was trying to think of another saying and that was all of them.

14:42

She came to New York City and she

14:45

was very beautiful and she loved

14:47

to be in every room. She's friends with the gays,

14:49

she's up in the theater. She had a fiance

14:52

that she loved and they would go out on the town and they had such

14:54

fun. But one day after they got engaged,

14:57

he was hit by a car. His body was thrown 30

14:59

feet, he was dead on impact, and by the time the ambulance came,

15:01

his watch and wallet had been stolen. I can

15:03

only imagine the sense of loss my mother must have experienced.

15:06

I believe that because she lost her dad as a kid and

15:08

then her fiance, a deep fear of abandonment,

15:10

began planting its roots in her heart.

15:12

Mom was a tough cookie in many ways, and she did

15:14

what she could to move forward. So this is her

15:17

really starting to like over-rationalize

15:20

all of her mom's thoughts and actions. Okay,

15:22

for me, this isn't even a problem because I don't disagree.

15:24

I'm sure that when she had a baby, She

15:26

was very like, okay, this is all I have. And like

15:29

so many people have left,

15:30

but then here's where I'm like, all right, Brooke says

15:32

who her life continued. And she found other studios,

15:35

but no proposal she want to accept. She wanted to date,

15:37

have fun, be entertained. And I'm guessing drink. She

15:39

was the life of every party. And I don't believe her drinking had done

15:41

more at this point, then help her maintain her fun girl status.

15:44

So interestingly enough, her mom's

15:46

drinking never became a problem

15:49

until Brooke was in her early tween

15:51

years and started noticing that she was drunk all the time.

15:53

And

15:53

I'm like, okay, Brooke. So is that the truth or is

15:55

that just when you started noticing it, your

15:57

mom died saying that she never once had a problem with.

16:00

that everyone else had a problem with her drinking. And

16:02

so for you to be like, and her drinking was never a problem,

16:04

she told me, until I forced her acknowledge

16:07

it was a problem. I'm like, no, I bet she was an alcoholic

16:09

back then too. I bet she was an alcoholic back then too.

16:11

All of her friends were bartenders who

16:14

were looking out for her. So one

16:16

time she was dating this guy named Murray

16:18

and one of her bartender friends was like, your

16:21

boyfriend Murray is here with another woman

16:23

who it turns out was Murray's wife. Murray was 20 years

16:25

older than her and like a rich Broadway producer. Yeah,

16:28

so she shows up naked wearing a

16:30

fur coat to this bar and just flashes

16:32

Marie in his date and then leaves. Brooke

16:35

tells it like, ah, another crazy story my mom, that

16:37

just tells you what kind of woman she was. And I'm like, okay, what

16:39

kind of woman was she? Cause that is crazy. And

16:41

she's like, that's how she was always getting one up on everybody. And

16:43

I'm like, who was she one uping there? When she walked into

16:45

that restaurant, who in that restaurant went, damn, she

16:48

won this round. Like

16:50

I don't even know what that was supposed to accomplish, but

16:52

it was something.

16:54

She says, it seemed that she was longing for craving

16:56

an escape from her roots. Yeah, she can never quite give

16:58

them up. And this is again, one of the things that I wonder

17:00

if Brooke has kind of revisited at all, but she

17:02

says a lot of why she was never fully accepted into

17:05

Brooke's dad's family and to like higher society

17:07

in New York is because she was from Newark

17:09

that she didn't have a college education, that she hadn't had

17:11

an accent that she couldn't get rid of.

17:13

And I'm like, was it the accent Brooke? Or was

17:15

it she was always drunk and showing up naked

17:17

to places? She has this way of being like people were so

17:19

hard on her just because of her upbringing. And I'm like, it

17:22

seems like they were hard on her because of her actions.

17:24

People do assimilate into

17:27

higher society when they're beautiful

17:29

and they get in there, but

17:31

you have to kind of let go of who you are

17:33

and where you came from a little bit. I mean, we see

17:36

that in movies all the time.

17:38

And so the fact that her mom wouldn't do that,

17:40

she's like, how insane is it that they wouldn't just accept

17:43

her for

17:43

her? Of course there's classism. I'm sure they looked

17:45

down on her to some degree, but she did not

17:47

help her case by showing up naked. And

17:49

I also do think the way that she got being like, people love

17:51

that she drank. That's what made her fun. The bartenders

17:54

loved her and I'm like, I don't know

17:56

Brooke, I have a feeling that she was in the same way you

17:58

were stressed to be around her all the time.

18:00

It was hard for other people to be around her. Mom

18:02

looks happy in the photos I have from this time. I believe

18:04

that during this period of her life, she might've actually been. There

18:06

was no sadness in her eyes yet. This

18:08

may have been the happiest I had ever seen her. Again,

18:10

she'd never seen her at this point. Brooke was even born yet. It's

18:12

just photos. I held onto the fantasy that one day I'd be

18:14

able to help mom return to that feeling of happiness

18:17

in her life. She's not alive yet. She doesn't

18:19

know her mom at this time. And there's just like this

18:21

never ending uphill battle and like desperation

18:24

in Brooke Shields where she's like, I have to help

18:26

my mom get to this point. And it's like, what point?

18:29

This is a never ending dream because

18:31

you don't even know what version of her existed

18:33

then. And also this is not something that ever came from

18:36

inside her mom. She acknowledges this a lot.

18:38

And I think

18:38

she references a lot that she's very much like

18:40

the textbook case of an adult child of an alcoholic,

18:43

always hoping that if one thing had been different,

18:45

if Brooke had just done something differently, if she made a little bit

18:47

more money, if she had been able to save her mom in this way, if she

18:49

hadn't sent her to the wrong rehab the first time, that

18:52

maybe things would have been different. And I think that

18:54

that is very symptomatic of

18:56

that kind of codependence. And

18:58

I think that this is another symptom of it, this idea that

19:00

there was a past and that is what fuels the

19:02

hope. These imagined situations where things were

19:04

better that you never saw with your own eyes, but if you

19:07

could only be better yourself, maybe you

19:08

could get her back there. Yeah. And I

19:10

think that that's like the heartbreaking part of this. If asked,

19:12

mom always boasted that late 64 and 65 were

19:15

a very good and busy time. Over the course

19:17

of a year, my mother met my father, got pregnant,

19:19

married my dad, had me and got divorced.

19:22

Her mom, Terri Terrific, I don't think we've actually

19:24

said her name yet. She goes by Terri and Brooke

19:26

calls her Terri Terrific. It's very terrific,

19:28

meets Brooke's dad. He's six

19:31

foot seven.

19:32

That is hot. He

19:36

has a Roman nose and

19:38

rich ancestry. Yeah,

19:40

his mom was like a princess from Italy

19:43

and his dad was a famous tennis

19:45

player. And so his dad had like married into

19:48

the society of New York city, but her dad had

19:50

really grown up Upper East Side, House in the Hamptons,

19:53

very waspy,

19:55

typical rich guy. So they're

19:57

dating, her mom gets pregnant and

20:00

And his family pay

20:02

her mom to get an abortion and she has

20:04

no intention of getting an abortion. So she just takes the money

20:06

and goes shopping. He did not seem to have any

20:08

qualms about my mother's age. She was eight years older

20:10

than he was. And this was not common in the sixties.

20:13

When my mother originally told me the story, she had altered it

20:15

entirely and decided to tell me that my father had left the country

20:17

during this time. So what Brooke had been told was

20:19

that, you know, she got pregnant. She told

20:21

the father, the father like left town,

20:23

went back to Europe. And when he came home and saw

20:25

that she had kept the baby, he fell in love with her and and they

20:28

got down to a knee and said, please let me be your husband,

20:30

let me help you raise this baby. But what had actually

20:32

happened was the grandfather

20:34

had paid off the mom to get an abortion, Terry

20:36

had not gotten the abortion, and the dad was in New York

20:38

State the whole time and they just weren't together. When Brooke

20:41

was born, they got married and tried to make it work.

20:43

Yeah, and they did not make it work for very

20:45

long. Immediately he went to Europe, that

20:47

is true that he went to Europe, and they were corresponding

20:50

by letters, and it's weird because Brooke has all

20:52

the letters that the father sent, but none of

20:54

the letters that the mother sent.

20:55

So she can see in the letters that, He's like, I don't

20:57

know if it's going to work. I don't know. And then suddenly he's like, no,

21:00

can't we just be separated? Like I don't want to divorce. I want to try to

21:02

make it work. And so from what she can tell

21:04

the father was like, maybe we should take a break and see how it goes.

21:06

And the mom was like, fine. We're divorced then don't

21:09

come home.

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23:02

I mean, she tells a lot of little aside

23:05

stories that I think she thinks paint like

23:07

a bigger, better picture but are really just

23:10

not important. Like her dad forgot to bring

23:12

an ID to the city hall when

23:14

they got married. I don't care. I do

23:16

think that that is the telltale sign that you are

23:18

not done thinking about your own life in

23:20

a way that you should tell a memoir. I think a good

23:22

memoir is one where you've reflected on and

23:24

processed the contents of what happened. This

23:27

is like a processing memoir. Like she is

23:29

figuring it out as she goes. And although

23:31

I found this to be very honest

23:32

and well-written and like I had a lot of compassion

23:35

for Brooke, I think a non-celebrity memoir

23:37

needs you to have finished the thinking because it's

23:39

almost like a hoarder memoir. Like every moment is there.

23:42

And it's because she's trying to think of every good story about her mom to

23:44

explain her mom's behavior, to explain why

23:46

she was so scared. And she's like, well, you have to know this and you have to understand

23:48

that and this thing. And she also did this thing, but then you

23:50

can't tell what's like the important part because it's just

23:53

like a lot of stories. There's a lot of stories, because I think you don't

23:55

know what story you're trying to tell. grow

23:57

up or every moment is in crisis you almost become

23:59

none to what was really important. Yes, it

24:01

all feels equally important because you're like every minute you think

24:04

your mom might get into a car crash and die is equally

24:06

stressful.

24:07

She also tells the story of her own birth where

24:09

after she was born, there was some

24:12

medical issues and she was taken away.

24:14

And I can't see how this could be true,

24:16

but she says days passed before her mom

24:18

was allowed to see her. Back then they used to

24:20

knock women out and you'd wake up and they'd be like,

24:23

by the way, the baby was born. They were like insane

24:25

back then to women who gave birth. So she began to

24:27

get suspicious as to why her baby was being kept

24:29

away from her. She started experiencing late night paranoia

24:32

that it was all a lie and there was actually no baby. She

24:34

feared the baby had died and that people were not telling her the

24:36

truth. I would not learn

24:37

until much later why mom had such a fear of

24:39

me dying. So this is the first part where

24:41

I don't think we need to get into it every time, but she

24:44

much, much later, like on her mom's death

24:46

bed, finds out that before she was born, her

24:48

mother had

24:50

given birth to and lost a son. Yes,

24:52

he had died 24 hours after he was born.

24:54

So her mom is in the hospital not seeing the baby.

24:57

She's absolutely paranoid and freaked

24:59

out. She runs to find this baby and

25:01

she says she goes into the room with all the incubators and cribs.

25:04

And at the time the company who made all

25:06

of those was called Shields and Company. So

25:08

she has this surreal moment where she hasn't seen her

25:10

baby in days. She's on medication, she's out

25:12

of it. And she's looking and every single crib

25:14

has her baby's name on it. And so she's freaking

25:17

the fuck out. She finally finds Brooke and

25:19

Brooke is like

25:20

to the side with the other babies who

25:22

are about to be put up for adoption and she thinks that

25:24

they

25:24

were trying to put Brooke up for adoption. And so she

25:26

grabs her baby and is like, we have to get out of here. And from

25:28

then on, she straps Brooke to her

25:30

chest and like never lets her go. They never part

25:32

ways. Mom and I became obviously

25:35

physically bonded and my dad remained seemingly

25:37

less knowledgeable and comfortable with his baby. So

25:39

he like doesn't really know how to raise her. He's traveling

25:42

a lot for work. As we said on one of these trips pretty

25:44

early on within the first year of Brooke's life, her mom

25:46

just gets a divorce. And from then on, Brooke's

25:48

dad is almost like a distant relative

25:51

who she sees once in a while, but they're

25:53

not very close. The deal they come up with is that he'll

25:55

always pay for her schooling, but her mom doesn't

25:57

want any alimony. Yeah, and

25:59

she- He

26:00

does spend summers with him at

26:02

his family's house in the Hamptons. I

26:04

think she spends like weeks or weekends. Do you

26:06

know what I mean? I don't know if it was entire summers. Like she definitely visits

26:08

them. They live in the same city. They

26:10

live like blocks away from each other. So she

26:12

tells this story of her mom used to sometimes

26:15

just go to her dad's office and

26:17

they would wait outside. And then when he came

26:19

walking out of his office every day at five o'clock

26:21

or whatever time work gets out, whatever time the work

26:23

bell rings, she would just like push Brooke and

26:25

be like, go run and hug your dad. And so he would just be

26:27

coming out of his office his daughter would come running

26:30

up and they would spend three minutes

26:32

together and then the mom would just take Brooke and they would leave.

26:34

That is odd.

26:36

This book was 400 pages. It could have been 280.

26:39

It's so repetitive at times and you can feel her

26:41

convincing herself of things.

26:42

The most obvious example to me is an example

26:45

we'll get to later about Tom Cruise where she says the same thing like

26:47

five times in a row. She convinced herself.

26:49

But

26:49

one of these, it reminds me of the Daily

26:51

Mail. She has a photo of herself as a baby with her two parents

26:54

and she does two full paragraphs describing

26:56

every detail of the photo. And you're like, yeah, I know. I

26:58

can see. And she's like, there's

27:00

a photo where we look like a perfectly normal family. And then

27:02

she goes through to describe what everybody's wearing in the photo.

27:04

And you're like, you could have just said there's a photo where we look

27:06

normal. Although my mother managed to stay in

27:08

contact with many of the friends she made while with

27:11

my father, she also maintained the friendship she'd cultivated

27:13

outside his Waspy circles. She made new friends as well.

27:15

I mean, she talks about how her mom was just

27:17

like effervescent, a woman about town, but

27:19

like all to say that she had a lot of photographer

27:22

and like art friends, which is how Brooke

27:24

ends up making her way into modeling

27:26

at 11 months. Yeah, she had a friend

27:29

who the baby wouldn't blow a kiss or something

27:31

and they called her up and said, everybody loves your baby,

27:33

can you bring her down? And that was her first gig. I

27:35

was not with any agency, so we had no percentage to give

27:38

away and the money from this first job went solely to my mother

27:40

and me. Mom had periodically worked part

27:42

time at Runtano's Brook store, but the salary would

27:44

not cover the childcare and living expenses. Though

27:47

not required, dad did help out with the rent, but the chance

27:49

for additional revenue being generated by us

27:51

was clearly appealing. They found a manager for

27:53

some time, but eventually they fired her And her mother

27:55

for almost all of her career into her 20s was her

27:57

sole representation. No agent.

28:00

know nothing later,

28:02

we'll get into it. But she's like, I had no idea that people would

28:04

negotiate better deals for you.

28:05

And she talks about her with young years. You know, it's very easy

28:08

to romanticize your childhood years because

28:10

I think one, they're not even your own memories.

28:12

They're memories that were more often than not told to you

28:15

by your parents. I'm sure a lot of these were like her mom

28:17

telling her what a great Halloween they had and look at this costume.

28:19

And it's true, she's like, she made me costume. She loved to sew. This

28:22

is like a lot of self-awareness, but she talks

28:24

about how she was so bound to her mom

28:26

that her mom's opinions would influence

28:28

her taste buds. Like her mom would say, oh,

28:31

I don't like that food. And she'd like, oh me either. And

28:33

now it like tasted waxy to her. Everything

28:35

her mom

28:35

said had such a hold on her. Mom

28:38

and I were really apart from each other and I'd do anything to

28:40

make her happy and get her attention.

28:42

She really like lived solely for her mom. And her mom

28:44

was kind of her sole person. I don't think she's going to school. She

28:46

was going around to all these adult things. It was just her and her mom.

28:48

And where her mom was tended to be bars and stuff.

28:51

So she grew up the baby in these social

28:53

circles where often there weren't babies.

28:55

She remembers calling her dad and saying, dad, I just

28:57

learned how to shoot pool from behind my back. I remember him

28:59

saying, where are you? At a bar, I said, Jesus

29:01

Christ. I'm sure dad wasn't thrilled with any of this,

29:03

but I was seemingly safe and having fun and my mother seemed to

29:06

control. The argument was tough to have. And she

29:08

also does give you these moments of

29:10

her mom just being like a intense

29:13

standout. That's my mom. So

29:16

at one point she and her mom used to travel quite a bit.

29:18

She had this toy that she was obsessed with and she left

29:20

it in an airport terminal and her mom got

29:22

a taxiing plane to turn around so that she could

29:24

go get her toy. there was an intensity

29:27

and a care about her. It's

29:29

good and it's bad. She really believed that her mom

29:32

made the world turn. She talks about one time she had

29:34

a raincoat she wanted to wear

29:35

and it was beautiful outside. Her mom

29:37

was like, well, I'll make it rain. And as soon as they stepped outside, it

29:39

started raining. And Brooke really believed that. She was like, my

29:41

mom makes it rain. And in the more modern sense,

29:44

it was Brooke who made it rain. During

29:46

these years, my modeling career really began to take

29:49

off. Mom was my manager, but she was hardly the

29:51

typical stage mother one would have expected. She

29:53

would ask if I wanted to go in for a job

29:55

and then simply let me do my thing. She never grilled

29:57

me on how it went inside the rooms and instead waited

29:59

for for

30:00

me to volunteer information.

30:01

So this is a belief

30:04

she truly sticks by. And

30:06

I think it is a different negative

30:08

thing that she forgot to even cover for. I

30:11

think obviously your mom being a hovering stage

30:13

mother who's forcing you to dance and jump

30:15

when you don't want to is a bad thing,

30:17

but being negligent and leaving your child

30:20

alone in a room full of adults and not being

30:22

cared for is also a negative thing. Again,

30:24

this is one of those examples where she repeats over and over

30:26

again. The very next paragraph was, My mother would never

30:28

brag me or force me to audition or work on things

30:30

or on days where I didn't feel like it. And then like, she

30:33

just gives me like, she never made me do it. It was all me, it was

30:35

all me.

30:35

And then later in the book, she'll talk about how her mom never

30:38

was violent or slapped her or hit her or anything,

30:40

but it was like a mind control from the inside.

30:42

So here she has being like, my mom never forced me to do anything.

30:44

It was totally me. I was the one who wanted to do

30:46

it. And it's like, yeah, well, where did all of your desires come

30:49

from? Making your mother happy. I mean, your

30:51

mom influenced how much you liked

30:53

mac and cheese. Yeah. Was it

30:56

all you? And then she goes on to be like, was a really

30:58

good mom, you know, she only let me work after

31:00

school because I was supposed to miss any school.

31:02

But then by the time she gets to-

31:05

Yeah, that's when she starts posting a ton of school. She has

31:07

one line about it. She goes, ironically, in high school when school

31:09

is important. That's when I didn't really go. So

31:11

she like kind of talks about being up to about

31:14

eight, nine and things are great. And of course at eight, nine

31:16

is when you start realizing the world. I

31:18

wouldn't say it's a coincidence. And she's like, suddenly around eight or

31:20

nine, somehow as time went on, I began thinking there was something

31:22

wrong with my mom's drinking. We

31:24

were so busy that it was easy to overlook, but looking back,

31:26

I see that although I would not have had the vocabulary

31:28

articulated at the time, I realized that mom was a highly

31:30

functioning alcoholic. She says a few times

31:32

my mom never passed out from drinking, but there are

31:35

two or three stories in this book of her mom passing out from

31:37

drinking. One time was in church, she says,

31:39

we never miss church on Sundays, but one time my mom fell

31:41

asleep in church and there was this really funny moment where

31:43

she started clapping when we were supposed to be praying

31:46

and she played it off like Lucille Ball. And it's

31:48

like, oh, okay. And then she's

31:50

like, but there were times it wasn't so funny, like

31:52

the time her mom fell asleep on Christmas

31:54

Eve and Brooke was at an age where she

31:56

did all the Christmas decorating for their family and

31:58

she was starting to have a suspicion that Santa

32:00

wasn't real. And she did this thing where she's

32:02

like, she saw her mom pass out and said, okay, I'm not

32:05

gonna wake her up.

32:06

That way, if she doesn't wake up and the presents

32:08

are under the tree, I know Santa's real, but if not, I know it was

32:10

her all along and it's a test. And she also

32:12

was like, I hope that if I wake up and go, you're

32:14

drinking ruins Christmas, she'll stop.

32:17

But of course she woke up, there were no presents on the tree. Christmas

32:19

was ruined and her mom didn't miss a beat.

32:21

She just kept drinking. I can't imagine having an

32:23

addiction so powerful that a comment like this from a

32:25

child would leave me unchanged. I felt abandoned

32:28

by her when she drank. Mom was a drunk, there

32:30

was no Santa, and Mom's drinking ruined Christmas,

32:32

and in a way, everything. In the meantime,

32:35

she has this weird double life

32:36

where her father is very wealthy, has

32:38

a house in the Hamptons, and he eventually

32:40

has a wife who brings in three other

32:43

children, two other children. Two other children, and then they have,

32:45

I think, three more daughters. And

32:47

they are just living a very normal, rich,

32:49

abre side lifestyle, parallel to her. And

32:52

she says it was bizarre because she felt comfortable in

32:54

both worlds. She would go to Patterson and Newark with her mom,

32:56

and then she would go to Southampton with her dad and hang out at the Meadow

32:58

Club. And she said it was weird being in all these worlds

33:00

that she felt like her mom was not really allowed in. There's

33:02

something tragic in the thought of my being

33:05

introduced into and accepted by a part of

33:07

society in which my own mother existed solely

33:09

on the periphery. It feels like a

33:12

choice though. Okay, I

33:14

agree. But I think it was alcoholism. Yes,

33:17

which I guess isn't a choice. Which isn't a choice. And

33:19

that's why I'm like, I don't think it was what Brooke is pointing to. Brooke

33:21

is like, you know, once you're born in Newark, you're scarred

33:23

for life. You can never, listen, I beat it, baby.

33:26

I was in Jersey, I got it out of me. She

33:28

talks about her mom actually one summer rented

33:31

an apartment in Southampton so that Brooke could hang out with

33:32

all her friends and all the moms and daughters were playing

33:35

together one day and Brooke's mom got so drunk that

33:37

she went to pet a little girl's hair and accidentally

33:39

tripped and ripped a clump of it out. Her

33:42

ring got stuck in the hair and it yanked

33:44

the hair out and the mom was like, why the

33:46

fuck did you just pull my daughter's hair out?

33:49

And they got kicked out of the play date. They

33:51

were like, Brooke, do you wanna stay? And she was like, no, I have to go with

33:53

my mom. And she maintains that

33:55

this was her mom not being accepted into

33:57

society because why would a woman pull?

34:00

a girl's hair, why would a grown woman do that?

34:02

She's like, of course it started out as a moment of affection,

34:04

she just tripped. Okay, I have

34:06

a couple things to say. One, it doesn't even matter. It

34:09

doesn't matter how much you love somebody. If you're so drunk

34:11

that you're hurting children, you can't be in that house. Right.

34:14

But also, she has like paragraph after paragraph

34:16

about being like, she was just saying that the girl had pretty hair. She was

34:18

just trying to be nice. Because the mother kind of accused her of being

34:20

jealous of the hair. And I don't think that that's completely

34:22

off base, to be honest. Brooke is obsessed with

34:25

in this book being like, oh, my mom didn't care if I was

34:27

a star. She barely brings up being

34:29

beautiful. She does like once or twice in passing cause

34:31

like it technically was true that she was considered

34:33

the most beautiful woman of the day but she never

34:35

explicitly brings it up. She does one time

34:37

be like, and at one point there was a magazine that said I was most

34:40

beautiful face, so weird. But she

34:42

never explicitly says how important this was to her mother.

34:44

If anything she says the opposite, she's like, my mom didn't care if I was famous

34:46

or not. She just like wanted me to keep working

34:49

or whatever. And that is so fucking not

34:51

true. And I would not put it past her

34:53

to drunkenly get jealous of another little

34:55

girl who might've had one thing over Brooke because

34:58

Brooke said she wasn't getting a lot of gigs

35:00

at first because she didn't have that blonde,

35:02

blue-eyed, all-American look that was the norm

35:04

in the 70s. She was quote unquote,

35:07

two European looking. Yeah. Two

35:10

European to be white. So

35:12

I don't know, like to me, either way, it's

35:14

not a good story and I understand where the mom was coming

35:16

from, but the way that Brooke is like, she would never

35:18

be jealous of a little girl. She would never be jealous of another little girl's

35:21

beauty. Anyway, she was obsessed with making sure that I

35:23

was known as the most beautiful woman in the world. I'm like, yeah, sure.

35:25

Okay.

35:26

She has a little bit of anger towards her stepmom that

35:28

she really only brushes up against.

35:31

And she really takes a lot of pride in the fact that one of her stepsisters,

35:34

Diana, loved her

35:36

own mom so much. She's like, Diana basically

35:38

came over to our family and viewed my mom as a second mom,

35:41

but my stepmom, Dee Dee, was not

35:43

my mom. And it's like, okay. She was like profoundly

35:46

jealous, I think, of Dee Dee was the ultimate

35:48

Upper East Side Hampton's mom. She

35:50

was neat, she was quiet, she seems teeny

35:52

tiny, she was beautiful, and

35:54

there was a ton of order there, and they had

35:56

nannies and help and dinner was at six

35:58

and everyone made it and didn't matter what happened.

36:00

She talks about the difference of the two worlds.

36:02

It's so funny, she spends like pages being like,

36:04

I love that I'd go to my dad's house and it'd be super

36:06

organized and orderly and there'd be structure and I knew exactly

36:08

what was coming next and then I'd get a break and get to go to my mom's house

36:11

where, you know, we were eating what we found on the street whenever

36:13

we woke up and I was like, it was

36:15

kind of fun to have both. Meal times, what's

36:17

a meal time? That's crazy, that's no fun.

36:20

The duality, however, would create confusion later.

36:22

Not clearly adopting any one side would later prove

36:24

to be perplexing. Where did I really belong? It was as

36:26

if I was living two parallel lives. The environment

36:28

my father provided the antithesis of that which I lived

36:31

with my single mom. So she starts doing

36:33

movies.

36:34

She never really talks about making

36:36

a decision of any kind to start auditioning

36:38

for movies or to go in for anything

36:41

other than modeling, but at some point

36:43

that must have happened because she all of a sudden

36:45

is in a lot of movies. So her

36:47

first movie she dies pretty quickly and

36:50

she's like, oh, it was fun because me and my friends

36:52

used to always act like we were suffocating. And so it was

36:55

really easy for me to act like I died, even though in the

36:57

audition I farted. And

36:59

then she does Annie Hall where Woody

37:01

Allen asks her mom out on a date. Well,

37:03

first of

37:04

all, the joke is that all the

37:06

other children are ugly and she's supposed to be so

37:08

beautiful and she's like the object of Woody Allen's

37:10

affection. I'm sure it's like in a past tense, but still

37:12

he's such a creep. They cut it completely.

37:15

But yeah, they went on a date. She said he was too neurotic. My

37:17

father was uncomfortable with my fame and was intent

37:20

on it not being a part of my life with him.

37:22

I find it so interesting whenever

37:25

we have these

37:26

celebrities and I think we see a lot were

37:28

there divorced parents of a child

37:30

star where obviously one of them is driving the career. There's no

37:32

child star without a parent intently driving the career.

37:34

But

37:35

the other parent is kind of against it.

37:37

And I'm like, well, how against it were you? Because

37:39

they still are famous. I don't think you're gonna

37:41

say the fucking thing she did. Yeah. She's

37:44

always like trying to tell stories that make her mom look good.

37:47

So one of the ones we get is that when she was young, they

37:49

went to some play where before the play

37:51

started, I think it was Grease, they had a hula-hooping competition.

37:53

And everybody up there was an adult who had hula-hooped

37:55

in their childhood. And Brooke had never hula-hooped in her life. but

37:58

if you won, you get to meet the cast.

38:00

And so she went up there and was like all the grit

38:02

in the world, she fricking won.

38:04

And her mom uses that throughout her life as like, remember

38:06

the hula hooping competition, like you can do anything you

38:08

set your mind to, just go out there and try

38:10

it. And she's like, see, she was always encouraging me to try new things.

38:13

Oh God.

38:14

So then she gets the movie Pretty

38:16

Baby. I did some commercials

38:18

and I had two movies under my belt, but we had no idea if I

38:20

was an actress, a model, or a spokesperson for

38:22

good causes. What causes? My

38:24

mother never had any clear plans regarding a career path

38:27

for her daughter. kept rolling along with whatever

38:29

came our way. One day I could be doing some print

38:31

ad for an epidemic of young pregnancy, and the next I could

38:33

be doing an amazing ad for the Inside of Life

38:35

magazine, standing in a bathing suit next to Lizanne,

38:38

a fellow model and close friend. I think one

38:40

thing that's really interesting is that she can't

38:42

decide if her mom's aimlessness

38:44

with her career was a good thing or a bad thing.

38:46

I think sometimes she posed it to be like, my

38:49

mom wasn't an overbearing stage mom, we

38:51

were just taking opportunities as they came. It was

38:53

just like a cool thing that I got to do.

38:54

And sometimes she's like, my mom had no direction

38:57

for my career, and that's why I was never like a

38:59

celebrated actress and I was just a

39:01

child star that like never really found direction.

39:04

Yeah, I mean, even here she talks about the time she auditioned

39:06

for Pretty Baby and she went in the audition by herself,

39:08

which is already like so scary. She wasn't even in the

39:10

room. I've always been under the impression that mom never wanted

39:13

to be thought of as a stage mother who hovered in her field.

39:15

She wanted to be the unstaged mother who was part of the team.

39:18

In

39:18

actuality, mom was much more of emotional

39:20

hover who affected me internally.

39:22

And

39:22

this of course is in direct contrast to earlier, she's

39:24

like, it was totally driven by me. My mom didn't even care if I

39:26

went. Yeah, and then she goes, she'd never really

39:28

consider nurturing my talent or pushing me to study

39:31

acting. Rather, it seemed that success was measured

39:33

by property and popularity. So

39:35

she talks about shooting this movie, Pretty Baby.

39:37

I honestly don't wanna give a lot of time to it because

39:39

she does not condemn it, and

39:43

it's really horrifying. I

39:45

don't remember the question of nudity came up in the meeting, but

39:47

I was later under the impression that my mom had discussed it with

39:49

the producers, and they had agreed on no explicit

39:51

nudity. She was promised

39:52

it would be filmed in a way that I was protected. I

39:54

honestly didn't give it a thought. I think I assumed

39:56

it would all be okay. Somehow I had no qualms about any

39:58

of it. I was 11. I'd go to the bathroom with the

40:01

door open in front of people and have full-on conversations. I

40:03

was not conscious of my body. Never young, but somehow

40:05

youthful." So she has this whole thing where it was

40:07

okay for her to be naked because in her mind, it was very

40:09

innocent and she did not feel sexually about her

40:11

body, so she did not care.

40:13

Again, she is a kid.

40:15

She's 11 years old. Her co-star is a

40:17

man. It's an adult man who falls in love with her and

40:20

they kiss.

40:21

For some reason, they have to take a photo of her naked

40:23

and she was supposed to wear a thong at one point

40:25

and they decide because the thong wasn't even in she

40:28

should just take it off entirely.

40:30

Does that make sense to you? Did I read that

40:32

right? I like don't understand what happened

40:34

here, but this was really appalling. Her mom was

40:36

not even on set. I'm sorry. First of all,

40:38

this never should have happened. Like the fact that this

40:40

film even exists is horrifying, but

40:42

the fact that this was the content

40:44

of the film and there was no guardian

40:47

on set protecting her is really

40:49

just, I like can't even talk about it. And she keeps talking

40:51

about how she was fine cause she was not like other 11 year

40:54

olds. She was very mature for her age. She was both mature

40:56

and immature in a way that made this perfectly acceptable. So

40:59

on the one hand, she was very

41:00

mature in that she understood that it wasn't pornography,

41:02

it was art. She kept being like, it was really important

41:04

to me and my mom. My mom loved art films and this was an art

41:06

film and it was important to both of us.

41:08

No 11 year old loves an art

41:10

film. Let's start there. She's like, I loved Fellini.

41:12

No, you didn't fucking not. How do you pronounce Fellini?

41:14

Brooke. You

41:17

got 11 year old Brooke. And so she's like, it

41:19

was art and I was very mature. So I understood that. And

41:21

then also I was very immature and unaware of my body and my body

41:23

wasn't at all sexual. So to me it wasn't sexual and that's why

41:25

it was totally fine for me to be naked. The

41:27

thing about being a child is it doesn't

41:29

really matter how you feel.

41:31

It matters about the danger that you're being put into. It just

41:33

doesn't matter that you didn't care. In the same way that you can't

41:35

ask a child, oh, are you sleepy after staying up all night?

41:37

You just cannot let a child make that decision. Right.

41:40

So we got that moment earlier where she's talking about the way her mom creates

41:43

these white lies, this other version of

41:45

her story that she exists in. And I think this

41:47

book is Brooke telling the white

41:50

lie version of her life while also

41:52

recalling the real version and not knowing how

41:54

to reconcile the two. I loved having this

41:56

entirely separate family and life to the one

41:58

mom and I lived together. felt

42:00

safe and fun and we all had a common goal. But

42:02

things began getting difficult and I was becoming run

42:04

down and tired. Like back to back, that is

42:06

not two pieces that I tied together. Back

42:09

to back she talks about how much she loved being on

42:11

set, how invigorating the experience is, and

42:13

then immediately says I was so run down and tired.

42:16

She has this thing that she does, where whenever she talks

42:18

about these situations that have been criticized as

42:20

overtly sexual, and this is not like, oh well in 2023 we

42:22

think it's bad to have sex with 11

42:25

year olds, they didn't know back then.

42:26

The minute this movie came out it was highly criticized. Like

42:29

people knew. And she does this thing where

42:31

she talks about the genius of the men

42:33

that created it. She talks about the director, he

42:35

could be difficult with me, but he was never mean or overtly

42:37

demanding. I learned to navigate his often distant

42:39

manner, and even though he seemed removed, I came

42:41

to trust that no words were good words.

42:44

I never fully knew whether he was ultimately happy with my portrayal

42:46

of his lead character, but I had to believe he was getting what he wanted

42:48

from me. At times I craved more direction and felt awkward

42:50

not being constantly told what to do. But

42:53

I began the movie by asking questions or if I was okay, but as

42:55

time went on, I too quieted and trusted my instincts

42:57

a bit more.

42:58

Sadly, this would be one of the last films in a long

43:00

while during which I was learning my craft and experiencing

43:02

hints of self-confidence. I believe it was

43:04

because of the quality and artistic caliber of the director.

43:07

He

43:07

had a vision and he expressed himself quietly and without

43:09

unnecessary chatter. The cinematographer

43:11

was a genius, a gentle beautiful soul whose art came out

43:13

through his eyes and his heart. I just feel like these

43:15

are all adult men who were like, no,

43:17

the story that needs to be told is one where you find the most beautiful

43:20

11-year-old girl and get her naked. That's so genius

43:22

of them.

43:23

So she talks again, back and forth, saying

43:26

the costumes were gorgeous, but her feet

43:28

would bleed in the period-specific

43:30

shoes. And so she's like, it was so fun to get

43:32

dressed up and I loved it so much, but also I was in agony

43:35

the entire time. And because the corset was

43:37

all old-timey, they used actual antique clothes that gave her

43:39

a rash. Yeah. And then they

43:41

also, for some reason, were not going by union rules. So

43:43

they were working like way longer than they were allowed

43:46

to, not even just by child labor laws, but by like regular

43:48

laws. They were working insane hours.

43:50

And finally, her mom couldn't get the director

43:52

to stop,

43:53

I guess there was all these stories about how her mom was so intrusive

43:56

and she was like, no, She just thought we should be working no more than 15

43:58

hours a day. So as soon as she

44:00

brings up that she's exhausted and her feet

44:02

hurt and her body is breaking out to her

44:04

mom. Her mom will step up and say,

44:06

you have to fix these hours.

44:08

And she paints this like her mom being

44:10

a hero. And it's like, why were you in this position

44:13

at all? Why didn't your mom notice until you said

44:15

specifically, hey, I'm bleeding

44:17

constantly from these costumes.

44:20

Why didn't anyone notice?

44:23

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46:12

So she talks about when this movie came out and

46:14

the press was so awful about it. Just as

46:17

an 11 year old shouldn't have been in this situation, the press can't

46:19

be mean to an 11 year old about it. But she talks

46:21

about the process of getting the photos taken and she was

46:23

like, it was a direct copy of the

46:25

photographer in real life's photo.

46:28

There was a scene adapted from the actual historical photo

46:30

where Violet's image was to be taken where she lay

46:32

naked on a Chez lounge. I had been given a G-string,

46:34

but it was determined by all of us. What do you mean by all

46:37

of us? You're 11. That it wasn't necessary.

46:39

My legs were slightly crossed and Louis did not

46:41

want it to be pornographic in any way. The shot was

46:43

quick and represented the snap of Bullock's lens right

46:45

before my character jumps up to petulantly destroy

46:48

some photo plates. And so

46:50

she's like, I put the G-string back on once I was standing.

46:52

The photograph was only from the shoulders up. I

46:54

had not yet learned how to use my sexuality as

46:56

any type of tool and was therefore able to play the scene

46:58

with the calm quality it called for.

47:00

Her mother wasn't there, as we already said. So then she talks

47:02

about the press's reception of it and how they were very

47:05

upset about it. When the movie came out a year later,

47:07

the press was up in arms about the whole thing. There was a sense

47:09

of fury and a need to assume that I was a victim

47:11

in this circumstance.

47:12

The press wanted me to have shame and regret and could

47:14

not handle my being cognizant and wise

47:16

and self-possessed. There was a firestorm

47:18

and mom took most of the heat. My poise, whether innate

47:21

or earned, gave me a certain adult perspective

47:23

and remained clear in my convictions of the scene and

47:25

the film in its entirety. What do you mean

47:27

you were a wise 11 year old? You were a self-possessed,

47:30

cognizant, wise 11 year old? How could

47:32

you as a mother of two little girls look and think

47:34

like, yeah, at 11 years old, there is any possibility

47:37

that a child could be wise and

47:39

cognizant and self-possessed enough to decide

47:41

to do a nude scene? That is so

47:44

crazy. And that is why I'm actually very happy

47:46

that we read this book before the Pretty Baby documentary because

47:48

I assume that documentary will be about this

47:51

movie in some way and the way that she was perceived in the situation

47:53

she was put in. And I wonder if she's changed

47:55

her opinion because this feels so directly in

47:57

defense of her mom. Like, of course my mom made the right choice

47:59

to have me. I

48:00

was wise. I was wise. She

48:02

says, my daughters, I would never let them do that, but this was different.

48:05

It was also a really short scene. What are you talking about? It

48:07

is really stressful and sad to me the way

48:09

she can't separate. I

48:13

would never ever in a million years let my daughter do this. But for me, it

48:15

was fine.

48:15

I mean, she has to say a lot of the things she went through

48:18

on this movie were okay. Otherwise, her mom did like sell her

48:20

into essentially child pornography. Yeah.

48:24

So then Susan Sarandon was on this movie and

48:26

she starts talking about the weird talking about the

48:28

weird relationship between them and how her mom was like, she's

48:30

jealous of you. I guess she was, but

48:32

what was allowed to happen to 11 year old

48:34

Brooke Shields? Susan Sarandon was supposed to slap her

48:36

across the face and she says she could not

48:39

fake the slap so she had to slap

48:41

Brooke across the face. And I guess I

48:43

had to do this shot so many times that there were fingerprints

48:45

on Brooke's face. They had to reshoot it nine

48:48

times to get every angle correctly. What

48:50

the fuck was happening on this movie?

48:52

They were just like beating up a little

48:54

naked 11 year old. And Brooke is like, but I get it.

48:57

It was for the film. And she's like, my one come up in was

48:59

when I watched the film, you can still see some red

49:01

outline on my face because they hit me so many times.

49:03

So that kind of ruined the continuity of it all. And I'm like, yeah,

49:05

you got them Brooke. And she's like, but anyway,

49:07

it was for art. She's like, I don't regret it. I'm happy

49:09

I did it. It was one of the last good movies I ever did.

49:12

And I was like, okay. So when her mom calls

49:14

the union, because she's like, these hours are insane

49:17

and this is illegal, I think, I guess the mafia

49:19

was involved in funding the movie. Well,

49:21

the mafia is often involved

49:22

in unions. Okay. Somehow

49:25

the mafia is involved and they cut

49:27

her mom's brakes as a warning. And

49:29

so she and her mom are leaving a bar. Her

49:31

mom gets pulled over and gets a DUI. And she's like,

49:34

listen, my mom was so good at drunk

49:36

driving. She was drunk, but she

49:38

wouldn't have been that reckless. It was definitely

49:40

tampering.

49:42

And somehow she did get a mechanic to come and say that her brakes

49:44

were cut.

49:45

Brooke has this thing where she lives in constant fear

49:47

that her mom is going to die drunk driving, but also will defend

49:49

to the death her mom's ability to drunk drive.

49:52

Like even when I turned 16, she was a better drunk

49:54

driver than I was regular driver. So she just

49:56

kept driving us around. I mean, it's hard.

49:58

She needs this in her.

50:00

but I don't think it should be on

50:02

paper for the people. Yeah,

50:04

I mean, I find it interesting to read, to

50:06

see this perspective, and I think this is probably healing for

50:09

her. I'm excited to see if things

50:11

have changed. If things have changed, because this really feels

50:14

like a first draft of looking at yourself. You

50:16

know what this feels like, the Jeanette McCarty book, the

50:18

first time she went to therapy and was like, my

50:21

mom was a really good mom. She gave me bulimia

50:23

as a gift.

50:24

Exactly. After this movie wraps, once

50:26

again, she's insisting that this was an incredible

50:28

experience, despite the fact that

50:31

the people behind the production tried to kill

50:33

her mom, despite the fact that she was bleeding

50:35

and in pain in all of the costumes, despite

50:37

the fact that she was exhausted and starting to go insane

50:40

and Susan Sarandon kept slapping her and

50:42

she had to be naked on film. Besides all of

50:44

that, she loved the experience. However, as

50:46

soon as the movie wrapped, she asked her mom

50:48

if she could go to a salon and just cut all of her hair off.

50:50

And she says subconsciously, this was because she

50:52

did not want to have to be called back for reshoots. I'm

50:55

sorry. To see those things all together,

50:57

to be like, I actually loved this. I just needed to

50:59

cut all my hair off just in case. It's

51:02

very sad.

51:04

Together, mom and I made the decision that we were

51:06

done. I would not be filming any more movies.

51:08

I think she makes another movie less than one year later.

51:11

She at one point made five movies

51:13

in two years, like a year after that, after

51:16

she was done making movies.

51:17

So she enrolls in regular school on the Upper East

51:19

Side because her dad's paying

51:21

for school. And she does not do well. And

51:24

she says she's happy on the one hand that she got to have like a normal

51:26

life, but on the other hand, This book is

51:28

written from a place of her feeling like she had a failed career,

51:30

that after her teenage years, she never got it back. And

51:32

it's funny because we don't think of her as a child star because

51:34

right now child star is so synonymous with Disney,

51:37

Nickelodeon, et cetera. But she was

51:39

somebody who is still being carried by

51:41

the celebrity that she built as a child. And

51:43

she very much feels like a failure. Yes. And

51:46

a lot of this book is like, if

51:47

only I had made this career decision or that

51:49

career decision, maybe I would have been a successful actress.

51:51

I loved acting.

51:52

She says there didn't seem to be a great deal of thought put into

51:55

any of it, any of her work beyond the

51:57

question of money and the possibility of adventure,

51:59

it seems that my mind-

52:00

made many of my career choices based on everything

52:02

but the creative factors. One of the only

52:04

things that she'll condemn her mom for is

52:06

that she didn't make choices

52:08

with her future in mind. And she says

52:10

one of the things that was confusing to her mom

52:12

was because so many people loved that Brooke was a raw talent.

52:15

And so her mom was like, well, you can't go to acting school. What are

52:17

you gonna become a studied raw talent? That's crazy. And

52:20

I'm like, no, no, no, you start with a raw talent as a child and then they mold

52:22

it into talent. Yeah. She

52:24

does another movie, a pinball movie. She says the movie

52:26

itself sucks and doesn't do well, but it was a fun

52:28

movie to make, which which was a nice relief

52:30

from, you know, when she was an 11 year old

52:32

kissing an adult. Yeah, she says that she

52:34

just played pinball all day and her mom got to drink all day

52:36

and they were both so happy.

52:38

I'm rather conflicted by all of it. I appreciate that my work

52:40

did not take precedence over my young life, yet this attitude

52:42

also seemed to keep me from committing to my work in a way

52:44

imperative for growth and to cause a lack of clarity

52:46

as to what I really was. She does another movie

52:49

where they have her in the car with

52:51

Eric Roberts doing car stunts

52:53

and they have to crash and they

52:56

just have her in the car. I don't understand

52:58

what the fuck was going on on all of these sets. She

53:00

is in danger so often,

53:03

and not just emotional danger

53:05

and trauma. They're putting her in physical

53:08

danger. She's in another movie with Susan

53:10

Sarandon, where they're supposed to be Romanov

53:12

gypsies. And so they make everyone dye

53:14

their hair dark, and Susan Sarandon's mad because she has

53:16

to permanently dye her hair dark. And Brooke's mother

53:19

insists that they only temporarily dyed Brooke's

53:21

hair because she has such beautiful natural coloring. And

53:23

she's like, see, people don't look at the good things my mom did for

53:25

me. She protected my hair. And I was like, ah, yes,

53:28

a true love. The hair that you chopped

53:30

off to try to get out of doing any other movies. When

53:33

Pretty Baby premiered at Cannes Film Festival,

53:35

it was like- Maligned. It was maligned,

53:38

but also people were obsessed over her. She's had someone try to cut

53:40

a piece of her hair off to keep that

53:41

she has never in her life been grabbed at that way.

53:43

I wonder if it was worse because of her perspective as a

53:45

child, it felt even worse, even if it would

53:48

have been the same as an adult, but she like didn't

53:50

go back for 20 years because it was such a horrific experience.

53:53

When it gets to her, her mom goes, fuck them if they

53:55

can't handle it. Are you proud of what you did? Well then fuck

53:57

them, that's all you need to think about. another great thing.

54:00

She never let Brooke read her own reviews.

54:03

And she said it was to protect her, but then Brooke later regretted

54:05

not reading with the reviews because she was like, I was

54:08

so protected from the outside world of what people said to me that when

54:10

it started trickling in, I had no emotional antibodies.

54:12

I hadn't built up a defense against the public. And

54:14

she says, people either decided mom was the enemy or they

54:16

appreciated her courage and her ferocity when it

54:18

came to protecting her daughter. I'm sorry, raise your

54:20

hand if you appreciate her courage

54:23

and ferocity when it came to protecting her daughter. Who

54:25

here was like, now that is a mama bear. She does

54:27

another movie where they're

54:29

filming it in the desert

54:31

and so they're moving from area to area to

54:34

film on mules. And

54:37

at one point her mom, because of her asthma

54:39

and her drinking has to get air lifted out and

54:41

she is embarrassed that her mom caused

54:43

a scene. And her mom is pissed because Brooke

54:45

could have gone on the helicopter with her. Brooke chose

54:48

to keep riding the mules with everybody else. And

54:50

to her that was like the first of all betrayals. Like

54:52

you weren't there for me. Brooke says, I was always worrying

54:54

about mom's safety. I never wanted anything to happen

54:56

to her and I always felt I had to protect her. And she tells

54:59

this story about one time they were on the George Washington

55:01

Bridge driving and the brakes and their

55:03

Jeep went out because like the

55:05

Jeep had to be recalled later, it was just a malfunction.

55:08

And her mom says, get in the back, buckle your seat,

55:10

like protect yourself. And Brooke stayed in the front and said,

55:12

no, if you die, I die. And that was like such a moment

55:14

of pride for her mom.

55:16

That her mom was like, she doesn't even wanna live without me, that's how much

55:18

she loves me. That's love. I still felt

55:20

incredibly connected to her, but her drinking had become

55:22

scarier and more difficult. Mom would not

55:24

stop drinking for me. I could only believe I wasn't

55:26

doing enough to make her stop. It took me about 30 years

55:28

to realize that nothing I did could make her stop if in

55:31

fact she did not want to or could not fight

55:33

it herself.

55:34

I realize now that I did an incredible amount of work at

55:36

this time, five movies in two years, but

55:38

it made sense for many reasons. I was popular

55:40

and directors and producers wanted me,

55:41

but on a personal level, it was just the easiest and happiest

55:44

way to live with my mother. And she talks about like the

55:46

safety of being on set when there are

55:48

drivers for the most part and it's like a closed

55:51

situation so her mom can just get drunk every

55:53

day and they're stable and in one

55:55

spot. And it also feels like vacation

55:57

where it's like not real life where everything's different. maybe

56:00

this could be a new version of you. It feels like she

56:02

was constantly looking for a fresh start where things would change.

56:04

The problem of my mom's drinking became worse and worse

56:07

over the next few months. It's ironic, but I believe

56:09

that if it were not for the entertainment industry, I would

56:11

have been a train wreck. I would have crumbled if I did

56:13

not have a place to hide.

56:14

I had to be professional because it was my job and I

56:16

was getting paid. I couldn't fall to pieces. So

56:19

around the age of 13, she realizes that her mom's drinking

56:21

is out of control and she finally learns with the

56:23

help of a therapist and specialists how to

56:25

stage an intervention.

56:27

And so she is able to sneak up and she

56:29

goes, It's my belief that you only get one shot

56:31

at an intervention because after that they're watching

56:33

you and she's like, they can see it from a mile away.

56:35

And so she gets a place at a Minnesota

56:38

rehab all set up. She gets her friends, she gets specialist

56:40

Colin and at 13 years old, she leads her

56:42

mother's intervention and she says, her mother has this way of when you're

56:44

ranting and raving, she just lets you finish and then

56:46

goes, are you finished? And then like comes at

56:48

you and is like, how dare you?

56:50

So they have this intervention and Brooke is like, please do it

56:52

for me. Like I love you. I just

56:54

want our relationship to be better. Making it all about

56:56

how much she loves her. I think the way you're supposed to. And

56:58

the specialist is like, I'm just here to help Brooke. And then she's like,

57:00

we'll help her because I don't have a problem with drinking, but if you

57:02

all have a problem with my drinking, I'll go for you guys.

57:05

And this I think is really interesting. I had low

57:07

self-esteem, not because I was a model, but because

57:09

I was a daughter. The

57:10

movie business kept me afloat and sane. My mother's

57:12

drinking suspended my stardom. I

57:14

think it's very interesting. The

57:16

way that these two things have to exist

57:19

in opposition, she has to

57:21

say being a child actor was good.

57:23

It was the drinking that

57:25

was bad. there can't be flaws in

57:27

her career.

57:28

She talks a lot about how much her

57:31

life was dissected and taken by the public,

57:33

that every single part of her, even when she goes to college, she's being

57:35

hounded by paparazzi. I feel like it's hard to imagine now,

57:37

but at this point, she was on the cover of TMZ. Her mom was

57:39

constantly selling stories. It was very important to her mom that her

57:41

face always be out there, that she be known. Her first

57:44

period was talked about. So much of herself was given to

57:46

the public that I almost think it's nice for

57:48

her to be like, you have this decision about my life. You don't

57:50

know my mom. The one thing you can't take from me is an understanding

57:52

about what was wrong with my mom. Yeah. Like,

57:55

you have no idea, you're actually dead wrong. It was her

57:57

stage momminess that actually saved my

57:58

life.

58:00

going into high school, her mom just like compiles

58:02

a bunch of letters and photos of her and just publishes

58:04

it and calls it Brooke's book. I mean, there's a

58:06

lot that her mom just sells to the public.

58:09

So she has this intervention. Her mom

58:12

goes, Brooke is like the minute she left, one,

58:14

I knew it was too easy. The fact that she didn't

58:16

go down with the fight meant that I didn't win at all.

58:19

And two, she immediately regretted it. She missed her. She

58:21

said, I wanted to call her and have her come back. They would talk on the phone. They

58:23

sent letters. She went to visit her for family week.

58:25

And she was like, it was a horrible, depressed place. And she goes, I was really

58:27

worried when my mom called me and said, I'm actually

58:30

the leader of group therapy. I get all these extra responsibilities.

58:32

And Brooke says, that's when I knew she had tricked them.

58:35

I don't believe she ever committed authentically and therapy never

58:37

fully registered with her. The recovery catchphrase

58:39

is like a dutiful student, but all the while she was

58:42

scoffing at how they didn't actually apply to her. Like a

58:44

man. She beguiled the staff with her humor

58:46

and her street smarts. She was incredibly intuitive about the way others

58:48

behaved and what their needs were. She could outwit

58:50

almost everyone, but sadly she was still an alcoholic and

58:52

hardly two steps closer to recovery. This is

58:54

a theme that she recognizes with her mom, that her mom doesn't

58:56

ever help herself cause she always thinks she's superior.

58:59

You know, in New Jersey, she thought she was better than everyone. In

59:01

rehab, she thought that she was better than everyone. Later

59:03

when she gets dementia, she thinks she's better

59:05

than everyone at the retirement home. And it's so

59:07

funny because Brooke sees it very

59:09

clearly that her mom never got the help she needed because

59:12

she refused to like admit that there was a problem.

59:14

And then meanwhile, here's Brooke going, you don't understand,

59:17

I'm not like other 11 year olds. I love

59:19

doing nudity.

59:21

I also think it's very interesting that she talks

59:23

about how her mom was too smart for

59:25

the therapy. I mean, she falls for

59:27

it. She's like, you know, my mom believed she was better than everyone and

59:29

that's why it didn't work on her, but she was better than everyone

59:31

and that's why she was able to beat it essentially.

59:34

And that is not true. It's just

59:36

therapy can only work if you want it to work.

59:38

And I wonder how much these people

59:41

at the rehab, like they're not your family.

59:43

Like sure they wanna help you and it's their job to help

59:45

you, but they can only do so much if you don't want

59:47

to. She wasn't outwitting them. She was just saying,

59:49

I'm not gonna do this.

59:51

They can't change your brain for you. Everyone

59:53

loves to say, I'm too smart to be

59:55

happy. I'm too smart to be helped and

59:57

blah blah blah. You know what's smart?

1:00:00

having a good healthy life. That's

1:00:02

smart. I've had this where I thought like, oh,

1:00:05

what could therapy do for me? I've had exes that

1:00:07

are like that where it's like, what could therapy teach me that

1:00:09

I don't already know? And it's not even that it could teach you

1:00:11

anything. It's just making the agreement

1:00:14

and the decision within yourself that you want

1:00:16

to change.

1:00:17

So she comes back and she does become kind of

1:00:19

a dry alcoholic, which is when

1:00:22

you haven't really committed to figuring out the underlying

1:00:24

problems. You're not really working on yourself, but you are

1:00:27

at that time not drinking alcohol.

1:00:29

even though the addiction still rules your life and

1:00:31

your behaviors. And Brooks says, I couldn't

1:00:33

stop being nasty to her. She neither fought me nor began

1:00:35

drinking just yet.

1:00:37

It was also awkward and foreign and I realized I had no

1:00:39

idea how to act around her when she was sober. I was so

1:00:41

used to navigating her drinking and being sad, angry, or afraid

1:00:43

that without the existence of trauma, I was floundering.

1:00:46

I hated her drinking, but at least I knew what to expect. The

1:00:48

protocol of being the child of an alcoholic was second

1:00:50

nature to me. So without it, I was again, slightly

1:00:53

lost. I also realized that in a way I saw

1:00:55

myself as a better person than she was when she drank.

1:00:57

This is so interesting. This is exactly what Rachel

1:01:00

Finley says, that all you want is for your

1:01:02

mom to get sober and that your mom comes up sober and for some

1:01:04

reason you're angrier than ever at her. It

1:01:06

makes sense, it's just not, it's not what you would hope

1:01:09

because it's not helpful.

1:01:10

So then she does a movie called Blue Lagoon, which

1:01:13

is another destination on location

1:01:15

shoot. She goes to live on an island

1:01:18

for months, her and her mom. And

1:01:20

of course her mom relapses almost immediately. At

1:01:22

first she's like, oh, we'll be on this deserted island

1:01:24

with just the crew. So how will my mom even get alcohol?

1:01:27

And then she's like, oh, we're on a deserted island with a film

1:01:30

crew. Of course there's a fuck ton of alcohol.

1:01:32

Yeah, so she's on it. She gives her mom a lot of credit

1:01:35

for making sure she has a body double for nudity. She

1:01:37

has to tell every story about a time her mom did something

1:01:39

nice, like the time her mom gave her per diem

1:01:41

to the nuns on the island.

1:01:43

Okay, I don't care. And she talks

1:01:45

more about her mom relapsing and about

1:01:48

how her mom would be mean

1:01:50

to her when she drank, which is

1:01:52

contrary to what we heard earlier.

1:01:54

Her mom was very cruel to her, but she says

1:01:56

to her mom, It didn't matter because in

1:01:58

her mom's heart, She knew she loved her. So

1:02:00

it's okay that she was saying these mean things

1:02:02

because she's like, well, that's not what I mean. And it's like, but

1:02:04

it is what you're saying to your child. She

1:02:07

had no idea how deeply her mean comments,

1:02:09

whether representing her true feelings or not, cut into

1:02:11

my heart. So if you don't know, Blue Lagoon was

1:02:13

kind of her breakout role. It's about two cousins

1:02:15

deserted on an island who end up banging. Sexy

1:02:19

stuff. This was just her and this teenage boy

1:02:22

carrying the entire movie. And

1:02:24

she says, I find it interesting that once again, I

1:02:26

was able to uphold a certain sense of innocence in what

1:02:28

had been considered a provocative environment.

1:02:30

My mom was with me on the island, but I was older than

1:02:32

I was and pretty baby, and I was rather self-assured. People

1:02:34

really loved my mother on this movie. She was not viewed

1:02:36

as a threat as she had been on Pretty Baby.

1:02:39

I love that like the mother of an 11 year old is seen as

1:02:41

a threat. Thank God there was anything

1:02:43

there threatening. By the end of August, I'd hit a limit with

1:02:45

island life. As much as I had submerged myself

1:02:48

in the sandy oasis, I was ready to go home. Mom

1:02:50

was equally ready to leave.

1:02:51

She never went in the sun, and I don't remember her even going in

1:02:53

the water. We were both ready for some of the tastes

1:02:56

and comforts of home. we had become an incredibly

1:02:58

tight-knit team who experienced and suffered a great

1:03:00

deal with one another.

1:03:01

I mean, she has this way of saying these sentences

1:03:04

that weave in and out of being like, I was so happy

1:03:06

and it was the worst thing I'd ever experienced.

1:03:09

We'd become so close because we had

1:03:11

trauma bonded.

1:03:13

She talks about how much she hates the press junkets. They're

1:03:15

so boring. She feels very grateful that her mom

1:03:18

was able to negotiate flying out a single friend for

1:03:20

her. Meanwhile, you know, most people are

1:03:22

flying with an agent, a publicist, a manager, an

1:03:24

assistant, or going to high school

1:03:26

instead. I'm sorry to be like,

1:03:28

I actually hated the press and I hated the filming and I

1:03:30

hated everything about it, but I knew that

1:03:32

this is how we were gonna make a living together

1:03:35

is heartbreaking.

1:03:37

She didn't like filmmaking.

1:03:39

I think as an adult, she wanted to be an actress, but

1:03:41

only because it was taken from her. The Blue

1:03:44

Lagoon was a huge hit that year, but

1:03:46

the reviews were mixed. And she says, thinking about it now though,

1:03:48

I'm a bit conflicted about the fact that I did not read reviews.

1:03:51

Perhaps if I had read the reviews, I may have chosen to steer

1:03:53

my career differently. Perhaps I would have made better

1:03:55

choices or might have given it up all entirely. I will never

1:03:57

know. It remains the most successful movie

1:03:59

she has ever.

1:04:00

and the film with which she is most identified.

1:04:02

I'd never heard of it. They,

1:04:03

together with Brooks Money, buy

1:04:05

a house in New Jersey, and a big

1:04:07

suburban house in New Jersey that immediately

1:04:10

gets broken into, and so then they have to sell it and

1:04:12

buy a different house in New Jersey, and she starts high school.

1:04:15

So she goes to this normal school, Dwight Angle would

1:04:17

actually know it, because I'm a Jersey girl.

1:04:20

And at first, nobody likes her, she has no friends,

1:04:22

and she's like, it's not because they were being mean to me, it's that they were so standoffish.

1:04:25

She's like, I think they were told to leave me alone

1:04:27

and not give me special treatment, but she ended up being very lonely.

1:04:29

But her mom actually helped her by like inviting

1:04:32

and integrating her students into her famous life. So

1:04:34

she would get a deal to have a skate

1:04:36

park birthday party where she got to go for free

1:04:39

and have a party for free. All she had to do was take photos

1:04:41

and she invited the whole class and that really broke the ice. And

1:04:43

she started to have friends and she actually has lifelong friends with some

1:04:45

of the people she met in high school. And she's like, no

1:04:48

one ever gave my mom my credit for that. The fact that she was

1:04:50

really smart about always having them come to premiers with me and

1:04:52

stuff so that it was a little bit more normal. And she's like, and

1:04:54

I think my friends really appreciated it cause they could see that

1:04:56

all these things I was doing were really for them because I had to work

1:04:58

the whole time. So I wasn't enjoying it. I

1:05:00

was like, ah, yes, it is good. And then she talks about how her

1:05:02

mom started Brooke Shields and Company, which

1:05:05

was the hired help to help sift through her

1:05:07

fan mail. Her mom had no concept of

1:05:09

being a career as an actress. Her mom was like a prototype

1:05:11

of the influencer, but she didn't know how to make it work.

1:05:14

Yes. So she knew it was important to have people

1:05:16

love Brooke and to keep Brooke's name out there and to keep people talking

1:05:18

about her. But there was no sense of direction in

1:05:21

what she was doing or why, it was just did it pay. And

1:05:23

she kept saying, work begets work, you need to make your audience

1:05:25

love you. So her mom would make Brooke hand

1:05:28

write thank you letters to every single piece of fan

1:05:30

mail that she received. And then it got to the point where they

1:05:32

had to hire a staff to help sort through it. And

1:05:34

anything that was deemed crazy or scary would be sent

1:05:36

to security to keep a monitor on. But

1:05:39

like, imagine there's multiple threats on

1:05:41

your daughter's life coming in every day. You have an entire security

1:05:43

team dedicated to protecting your daughter because so many people have

1:05:45

sent insane letters. Scary stuff and

1:05:47

you're like, all right, well just put them in a different pile. Put

1:05:49

them in a different pile and let's see what other movies

1:05:52

we can make.

1:05:53

It was so strange too that on the one hand, mom

1:05:55

fought for my integration with kids my own age. on the other

1:05:57

hand, she craved for me to become single

1:05:59

d-

1:06:00

and put on a pedestal by the world. Even

1:06:02

though I achieved fame at a younger age, I was guarded

1:06:04

by my mother and allowed to face celebrity in a surprisingly

1:06:06

nurturing environment.

1:06:08

Even if my talent had not been protected, I somehow

1:06:10

was. Mom's drinking was way more damaging to me

1:06:12

than fame. And then she says, mom made me

1:06:15

so conscious of my fans that I began dreading being anywhere.

1:06:17

There seemed to be no boundaries. I understood mom's philosophy,

1:06:20

but the sense of obligation and the fear of losing a fan's

1:06:22

devotion were often too much for me to take. I could

1:06:24

never say no, to the point where she like couldn't go out in public,

1:06:26

because if anyone ever asked for a fan autograph,

1:06:29

her mom made her do it.

1:06:30

Yeah, and she said that if anything, her mom's

1:06:32

only boundary was not while she's eating

1:06:34

her meal. So if you wait till afterwards, then

1:06:37

she'll sign an autograph for you. So Brooke

1:06:39

dreaded eating meals because there would be someone

1:06:41

just standing on the sidelines waiting for her to finish.

1:06:43

And she felt like she had to finish quickly so that she could get this person's

1:06:46

autograph out of the way. And meanwhile, she's like, my mom

1:06:48

really protected me and that didn't hurt me at all.

1:06:49

Because of her hypervigilance towards my public, I

1:06:51

felt as if the world owned me. It was the feeling that

1:06:54

everybody wanted to take a piece. That's

1:06:55

like a horrible thing to instill in your child.

1:06:57

Yeah. She's like, she protected me so

1:06:59

much. She didn't let me read reviews. She only let it every single human

1:07:02

being come up and physically touch me. So

1:07:04

then she does some movie called Endless Love, which she thinks is one

1:07:06

of her best performances. And I only bring

1:07:08

this up because one of the men in it is Tom Cruise.

1:07:10

He has a small part. And this is the part where she says

1:07:13

six times in a row, how much her mom

1:07:15

protected Tom and how much Tom loved

1:07:17

her mom. And she says it over, she's like, she was very protective of Tom.

1:07:19

Years later, Tom remembered how protective she was of him.

1:07:22

He felt bad for what she did for me because of the protection of him. Like, I'm

1:07:24

like, we get it. Your mom was a good person to other people.

1:07:26

Anytime someone complimented her mom, She has to put it in

1:07:28

this book to let you know that she had good qualities.

1:07:31

But it's interesting because her mom had gone out

1:07:33

of her way to help Tom Cruise as a young man.

1:07:36

And so that's why she was like, it was so crazy when he singled me out to

1:07:38

be so mean, but he apologized later, so I forgave

1:07:40

him. Brooke

1:07:41

Shields had bad postpartum

1:07:43

depression and it was incredibly brave

1:07:45

of her and helpful to other women for her to come out and

1:07:47

speak honestly and openly about the help she got and

1:07:49

the depths of it all. And for Tom Cruise

1:07:51

to then speak against it was actually like really

1:07:55

fucked up. And the way that she just was like, Tom apologized.

1:07:57

So it's okay. He added that he basically felt concerned

1:07:59

and I- I

1:08:00

was the scapegoat. And then she kind of moves

1:08:02

on. I'm like, Brooke, you're allowed to be mad at Tom Cruise.

1:08:04

What he did was fucked up, not just to you, but to other

1:08:06

people. To women as a whole.

1:08:09

So then she does this Calvin Klein's ad that once again

1:08:11

becomes very controversial. She says, nothing

1:08:14

comes between me and my Calvin's. And it is implied

1:08:16

that that

1:08:17

means she's not wearing underwear in the ads

1:08:19

and everyone goes fucking crazy. And

1:08:21

I guess there's also the double entendre of like, come,

1:08:24

but I don't hear that one as much. I just assumed she is

1:08:26

like, kind of has her hand in her pants. and there's this idea

1:08:28

that she's not wearing anything.

1:08:30

And she's 15.

1:08:31

And again, she does this thing where she goes, we filmed many

1:08:33

different spots for this campaign and they were all unique and fun

1:08:35

and amazingly clever. They all had smart historical,

1:08:37

sociological, political, and biological references.

1:08:40

It was ridiculous and insane. Mom

1:08:42

was attacked for allowing me to verbalize such smut

1:08:45

and I was once again perceived as both a lolita

1:08:47

and an abused daughter. We laughed it off at first,

1:08:49

but the controversy continued.

1:08:51

Okay, you cannot have it both ways. She's like, first

1:08:53

of all, they were geniuses. You don't understand, this was the most

1:08:55

groundbreaking, incredible genius ad. they found a

1:08:57

pun on jeans. She's just going on and on

1:08:59

about how they were geniuses for coming up with this ad.

1:09:01

This ad is just a hot girl wearing jeans. I mean,

1:09:04

this isn't groundbreaking advertising or anything, but

1:09:06

she can't stop talking about how brilliant they are. And she goes,

1:09:08

but I don't think they would have ever thought that there could

1:09:10

be a double entendre and nothing comes between me and my Calvin's.

1:09:13

And I'm like, okay, well, which is it Brooke? Are they so genius

1:09:15

that they needed to do it for the art of

1:09:17

advertising? Or were they too dumb to pick

1:09:19

up on the thing that everyone in society picked up on

1:09:22

immediately? And it's always like both

1:09:24

ways. And she defends it completely because it was

1:09:26

completely honest. And not only was it honest, but it was high

1:09:29

art and she was happy to be a part of it.

1:09:31

She's constantly talking about the way her mom

1:09:34

is defending her innocence and

1:09:36

protecting her innocence by like making sure it's

1:09:38

obvious that she's a virgin, but also she's doing

1:09:40

all these overtly sexual movies

1:09:43

and ads and things. And it's like, yeah, your mom

1:09:45

was a genius. We've been doing that for

1:09:47

decades. I'm not sure if my mom

1:09:50

knew how conflicting the images of me she was protecting

1:09:52

were. When I was young, I was looked at as a provocative

1:09:54

young woman, I became the virginal America's sweetheart.

1:09:57

I went from doing movies like Pretty Baby and Endless Love to working

1:09:59

with a woman to with

1:10:00

George Burns and Bob Hope and having a doll that made

1:10:02

it my likeness.

1:10:03

Then she talks about having this Barbie doll made of her where they actually

1:10:05

had to send it back to the factory and make the boobs smaller because

1:10:07

Brooke was so flat-chested and it needed to be more accurate

1:10:10

to her and relatable to teens. And she was like, yeah, it's weird

1:10:12

on the one hand where we were selling teens, this like young, virginal

1:10:14

image of me. And then we were selling adults, this sexy image

1:10:16

of me. And I'm like, yeah, look at Jessica Simpson.

1:10:19

People love to covet the sexy virgin. I mean, why

1:10:21

did we spend years obsessing over whether

1:10:23

or not Britney Spears was a virgin only to like collectively

1:10:26

lose our shit when she said she

1:10:28

wasn't? I mean, the Jonas Brothers wore purity

1:10:31

rings.

1:10:32

I mean, it's just the oldest trick in the book and- And

1:10:35

she's like, she had no idea the conflicting images.

1:10:37

Yeah, she's like, it was weird, the way that she sold me to

1:10:39

everybody she could. Whatever anyone wanted

1:10:42

of me, she would give that version of me to them. Yeah,

1:10:44

I mean, this is what made the book so sad. So

1:10:46

her mom is drinking Escalade. She says, when I was in high

1:10:48

school, her drinking got much worse. I

1:10:50

adored my mother and she adored me. And this young daughter

1:10:53

was mature enough to save her own mom from the jaws

1:10:55

of alcohol and everything had turned out well. So

1:10:57

the story in the press was that her mom

1:10:59

had gone to rehab because Brooke

1:11:02

said, I need

1:11:02

you to get sober for me. And everyone kind of like

1:11:04

ate up the story of her newfound

1:11:06

sobriety and Brooke being the caring, loving

1:11:09

daughter. I felt terrible upholding what was

1:11:11

now a lie. This dilemma would only get worse.

1:11:13

So she's always giving these interviews about how her mom

1:11:15

is sober and it's so great. And of course it's not true. She

1:11:18

is wildly famous at this point. It is the 80s. She

1:11:20

is the face of the 80s. She's determined like the

1:11:22

look that everybody should wanna have. She's in

1:11:25

movies, she's in campaigns, She's going to high school full-time.

1:11:27

She's partying all the time. Her mom would bring her to

1:11:29

like Studio 54 till midnight every night

1:11:32

from New Jersey. This

1:11:33

period in the 80s had a fast and furious pace. Although

1:11:35

I wasn't personally experiencing a carefree life

1:11:37

filled with promiscuous sex and rampant drug use, I

1:11:39

was engaged in my own personal high energy race. I was

1:11:42

burning the candle from both ends. And

1:11:44

instead of it being a negative thing, I was met with success.

1:11:46

I was working extremely hard at school with four or five hours

1:11:48

of homework per night. And I was either filming or modeling

1:11:51

in the other hours. I did not need a great deal of sleep

1:11:53

and I drove myself harder than anybody else did. I

1:11:55

believe it was during these years that I began to be a perfectionist.

1:11:57

I saw how much I could get accomplished and how I could have

1:12:00

two equally full lives. I felt motivated

1:12:02

by it all. It worked for me.

1:12:03

She drank and was social. She could easily drink while

1:12:06

out and then go home and finish half a bottle of vodka while

1:12:08

getting ready for bed. I ran out of ways of asking her

1:12:10

to quit. Tears didn't work, rage didn't work, pleas

1:12:12

when sober didn't work, and the letters didn't work. Other

1:12:14

people tried, I prayed.

1:12:16

So then her high school graduation comes

1:12:18

around, Brooke gets drunk herself,

1:12:21

and she gets really fucked up and has to have

1:12:23

her mom come pick her up, and she's like throwing up,

1:12:25

and just a teenager who gets drunk for the first

1:12:27

time. She's a mess. she says,

1:12:29

are you mad at me mom? And her mom says, no, I'm

1:12:32

just disappointed. And so she is now

1:12:34

disappointed in herself, not for getting

1:12:36

drunk, but for not being a good drinker

1:12:38

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So she ends up going to Princeton. Everyone

1:13:36

told her she wouldn't get in. Her own college advisor was like,

1:13:38

you don't have the SATs, but she

1:13:40

applied. And again, it got leaked to the press. It was this whole

1:13:43

thing because she was a celebrity

1:13:45

attendee and she's like, I can't believe I got in. And it's

1:13:48

like, well, you're a celebrity. She said she wanted to go to Princeton

1:13:50

so that she could stay near her mom subconsciously

1:13:53

and she gets in and she was miserable the whole

1:13:55

time. She was going home every weekend, Friday

1:13:57

through Monday, and her mom had to come every Wednesday to take our.

1:14:00

to

1:14:00

dinner.

1:14:00

She eventually gets involved in the

1:14:02

plays at school. She figures out

1:14:05

how to get through and she gets a boyfriend,

1:14:07

but she hates college.

1:14:09

I think she just never really liked it. It gets better.

1:14:12

It's never like the highlight of her life, but she does

1:14:14

fit in and she gets really good grades. Interestingly

1:14:16

enough, she says the students all respected her privacy and

1:14:18

would tell security whenever they notice a paparazzi, but

1:14:21

the real turn for her is she got an A on

1:14:24

a test where only like three people got A's and some

1:14:26

huge 300 person lecture and everybody started

1:14:28

being like, oh wait, you're smart. We want to study with you."

1:14:30

And she had

1:14:30

some boyfriend who was the captain of the football team, and they

1:14:32

were really like a beautiful couple. And she has had

1:14:35

a life for herself, but she's forever tied to her

1:14:37

mom. Well, her boyfriend, the captain of the football team was Dean Kane.

1:14:39

Who is that? Superman.

1:14:41

For years, people attacked my mother for holding me down

1:14:43

and for not allowing me my freedom. The press painted

1:14:46

me as frustrated and bound, but the truth was

1:14:48

I didn't want freedom. Being bound was just fine. It

1:14:50

was all I'd ever known and I felt safe. I was not trying

1:14:52

to escape. She writes another book. Her

1:14:54

second

1:14:55

publication comes out when she's in

1:14:57

college. She wants to write like a

1:14:59

in-depth tale of stardom

1:15:02

to trying to fit in at university. And they

1:15:04

hire a ghostwriter who's like, these are the leggings that

1:15:06

Brooke wears at university. When I film my best

1:15:08

is when I have a high ponytail. And the only

1:15:10

chapter that anybody actually cares about is where they say

1:15:12

officially she's still a virgin and she is. She's still

1:15:15

a virgin at this point. She's a virgin all through college. And

1:15:17

that's all anybody cares about.

1:15:18

Looking back, I think it was actually sad that there was so much

1:15:21

access to my life for the press and consequently the public.

1:15:23

I mean, one of my orthodontist appointments was filmed. I

1:15:25

guess it was all in attempts to paint me as a regular kid.

1:15:28

That's not what it was. It was your mom selling you

1:15:30

out any chance she could get.

1:15:31

Before she dated Dean Cain, she also dated George

1:15:34

Michael briefly. Her mom was obsessed

1:15:36

with having her be associated

1:15:38

with other celebrities. And she's like, my mom wanted

1:15:40

me to date someone like George Michael or John

1:15:42

Travolta or Michael Jackson. Those

1:15:44

are all gay people, right? Yes. She's

1:15:47

like the only men that she liked are men like George Michael,

1:15:49

Michael Jackson, John Travolta. Because I believe

1:15:51

she was impressed by their genuinely sweet natures as well as

1:15:53

their level of fame. And they said they didn't want to

1:15:55

have sex with you. Don't touch my daughter,

1:15:57

but get a photo with her. she dates.

1:16:00

When she's 22, she loses her virginity

1:16:02

to Dean. He was amazing to her, she said. She

1:16:05

was like, if I could go back, I would have been different. I would have fixed

1:16:07

it. She's like, I shouldn't have made him wait so long. He was so respectful.

1:16:09

He was so kind. His family was amazing. It was

1:16:12

the happiest she ever was. But she says the minute she

1:16:14

had sex with him, everything turned because she felt like this

1:16:16

huge betrayal to her mom, that by having sex

1:16:19

with her partner, having a life that her mom was on

1:16:21

a part of, and she felt so guilty because her mom

1:16:23

was a Catholic, and she really used her needing to stay a virgin

1:16:25

to control her, because she did not want her to have these

1:16:27

relationships outside of herself, of herself outside of

1:16:29

her own mother.

1:16:30

I didn't know where I began and where my mother ended

1:16:32

and that meant I didn't know how to fit Dean in.

1:16:35

I think that that is like a very honest and

1:16:38

sad realization.

1:16:40

I feel sad for these two young lovers. I feel sad for

1:16:42

myself and for him and for us.

1:16:44

I wish I'd had the strength to revel in our relationship

1:16:46

more even from the very start. I gave what

1:16:48

I could, but I remained tethered. The leap was too

1:16:50

much for me to handle. Going to college was in a way and

1:16:52

ending to the first major era of my career. And

1:16:54

it was a closure to the first and longest chapter of my mom's and

1:16:56

my relationship. So she graduates

1:16:59

college and she heads back to the industry.

1:17:02

She assumed she would pick up right where she left off, but

1:17:04

it was not going good. At this point in my career, I did not

1:17:06

have the luxury of not working and not earning. We

1:17:08

had so much overhead. We had an office staff

1:17:10

of five women, a handyman, a cleaning lady and a part-time

1:17:12

driver. We had four homes with mortgages and bills seemingly

1:17:15

everywhere. So she goes to ICM

1:17:17

and chats with a respectable agent. And

1:17:20

he says, I want to turn you into a real

1:17:22

actress. Like we need to rebuild your career from the ground

1:17:24

up, but in order to do this, you have to fire your mom.

1:17:27

And she says, no, I cannot

1:17:29

do that. Looking

1:17:30

back at this now, I get a pang of regret. I start

1:17:32

to think about the what ifs and feel anger and

1:17:34

sadness. For so many years, I did not feel valid

1:17:36

as an actress. Having been deprived of the opportunity to

1:17:39

become a respected actress pains me.

1:17:41

I think obviously reestablishing

1:17:43

her career with a team that knows what they're doing

1:17:46

would have been smart. But I always struggle

1:17:48

with the people, like the Jennifer Grey's,

1:17:50

the Rob Lowe's, the like, I was

1:17:52

a very talented actor. No one ever gave me

1:17:54

the chance,

1:17:55

you know?

1:17:56

Also, she did pretty well for herself. She did pretty well

1:17:58

for herself. I do think her mom r-

1:18:00

into her career, but at some point it's like it

1:18:02

couldn't have been a different way. Because it wasn't a different

1:18:04

way. Yeah. I had no power at the box office.

1:18:06

I was not the skinny exotic woman child I had once

1:18:08

been. I'd been marketed as a commodity

1:18:10

that was obtainable to do whatever song and dance

1:18:12

asked of me. She didn't have any direction

1:18:15

for her career and she had nowhere to

1:18:17

go. She had gained 20 pounds in college, which I

1:18:19

assume is just like how her body was supposed to be. I'm guessing she

1:18:21

probably got up to 120 pounds in college. Yeah, I think

1:18:23

when you're a teenager versus when you're in your 20s,

1:18:26

your body just is a different shape. And

1:18:28

her mom is still our manager, just getting her

1:18:30

like whatever money and whatever thing she can.

1:18:32

So she does this weight loss commercial in Japan and

1:18:34

on the flight out there, her mom meets these businessmen

1:18:37

on the plane and brings them over at like 3am.

1:18:39

The hotel makes Brooke meet and entertain

1:18:41

them. It turns out they work for Nescafe. So then

1:18:43

she's doing this ad for Japanese

1:18:46

instant coffee and she goes to pairs with her

1:18:48

mother and has like a fucking breakdown

1:18:50

and is like, how dare you let my career get

1:18:52

so bad? I am Brooke Shields. I was was the face

1:18:54

of the 80s. How am I now doing instant pour

1:18:57

over coffee for Japan? How is this the best it could

1:18:59

be for me?

1:19:00

And her mom gets really fucking drunk and almost misses

1:19:02

her flight and Brooke just leaves without her. Yeah,

1:19:04

she's Rhett's even leaving her mom with her

1:19:06

passport. She's like, I should have stranded her internationally.

1:19:09

I put a call into Betty Ford herself. I explained the situation

1:19:12

and she promised that if I could get my mother to go to the Betty Ford

1:19:14

Center she would have a bed ready for me. I would just have

1:19:16

to get mom to commit to going back to treatment.

1:19:18

So she does another intervention. Her mom absolutely refuses

1:19:21

to go. She's like, I don't have a problem.

1:19:23

And she goes, but mom, I really love you. Yeah,

1:19:25

and Peter really loved Jesus. Where to get him? She

1:19:27

had this cocky expression on her face when she said it. That

1:19:29

was what she would always say, that she was just like Peter,

1:19:32

that she would deny her one day, just like Jesus.

1:19:34

It was crazy when she chose to pull out the religion card

1:19:37

and how hypocritical she remained. She says to this

1:19:39

day, the ACOA, the adult child

1:19:41

of alcoholic kid in me, thinks that if only Betty

1:19:43

Ford's had been available the first time, maybe it would also have

1:19:45

been different. I don't think it would be, but I

1:19:48

understand needing to hold on to that hope.

1:19:50

So then she starts dating Liam Neeson, kind

1:19:53

of randomly, they have this whirlwind romance where

1:19:55

within three months they're engaged and then

1:19:57

he has to fly to LA to check in

1:19:59

on like a

1:20:00

flood in his house and she

1:20:02

says, call me when you get there. And he says,

1:20:04

it'll be late. And she says, well, I'll stay up until

1:20:06

you get home. I wanna make sure you're safe. And he just

1:20:08

never calls her. He just like fully ghosts

1:20:11

her ass. Our mom liked Liam

1:20:13

cause she's like, yeah, he was just like an older alcoholic.

1:20:15

My mom really got it. Yeah. So

1:20:17

then she of course needs her mom again cause she's just

1:20:19

been dumped hard.

1:20:21

That sucks. I feel like an old fashioned ghosting

1:20:24

is tough stuff. You know, we're pro

1:20:26

ghosting first, maybe second

1:20:28

date. If the conversation can fizzle,

1:20:30

it's okay to let the conversation fizzle. I think

1:20:33

that if you're like in the middle of a conversation, if I

1:20:35

say, hey, I'll see you tonight at six, and

1:20:37

then you ghost, if there's

1:20:39

anything set in the future, you have to cancel those

1:20:41

plans. Yes. Even if they're

1:20:43

just like, hey, are you around this weekend? Yeah,

1:20:45

like I'll let you know this weekend what I'm up to, that's

1:20:48

the plan. It's a plan to let someone know what you're up to.

1:20:50

After she gets ghosted, she crawls back

1:20:53

to her mom, she cries, her mom takes care of

1:20:55

her, and then she books another on location

1:20:57

shoot because that really helps her clear her mind. And she's

1:20:59

very happy when she's just out there on set

1:21:02

acting. But on

1:21:04

this set where she's in Africa shooting this

1:21:07

project, her friend is like, you would love my friend Andre

1:21:09

Agassi. And she's like, I am pretty heartbroken

1:21:11

right now. I can't really handle talking to someone else. And

1:21:13

she's like, well, just fax each other. She's never

1:21:15

single for a minute, huh? I guess not. So

1:21:18

they start faxing and they really get

1:21:20

each other. Andre is in a very similar boat where

1:21:22

he had a super controlling abusive father.

1:21:25

He's also really famous. that's not a weird

1:21:28

dynamic in a relationship and he is down

1:21:30

to devote himself to her.

1:21:31

So her mom and Andre butt heads and I think

1:21:34

it's just because this relationship had an

1:21:36

intensity to it and her mom felt displaced.

1:21:39

They talk constantly when she goes out to Las Vegas

1:21:41

where he lives. They like really fought for each other. It was not

1:21:43

clouded by passion or fear but fueled by respect

1:21:45

and fresh perspective. It felt like a safe respite

1:21:48

from the life that had been beating me down. I felt like I'd

1:21:50

finally found a relationship in which I felt totally understood.

1:21:52

We were somehow grounded and individually intent on

1:21:55

self-improvement. and I wanted to thrive, not

1:21:57

just survive. She also gets foot

1:21:59

surgery very.

1:22:00

early in their relationship and he gets wrist surgery

1:22:02

very early in their relationship. And one thing that we

1:22:04

have learned through years of research is that celebrity

1:22:06

relationships thrive on injury

1:22:09

because everyone is so running around all the

1:22:11

time. You're always on tour, you're on location, you're traveling

1:22:14

for tournaments and whatever kind of celebrity

1:22:16

you are, there's an enormous amount of travel involved.

1:22:18

And so if you are down and out having to recover,

1:22:20

that's the only time that you can like quietly

1:22:23

not work and get to know each other.

1:22:25

And also he comes to help her. So her own mom

1:22:27

was supposed to be her ride to from the hospital and

1:22:29

as always her mom gets very drunk and Andres shows

1:22:31

up and goes, let me take you. And then he insists on taking

1:22:33

care of her. And she says, he's the only man that was ever

1:22:36

to stand up to her mom respectfully, that

1:22:38

everyone else she'd ever dated either wanted to ally with Brooke

1:22:41

against the mother or was a coward

1:22:43

to the mother. She said, Oh, you can't sleep in Brooke's

1:22:45

room. And he goes, I want to make sure she's okay all night.

1:22:47

He put couch cushions on the floor and just slept next

1:22:49

to Brooke's bed all day. Things like that, where he

1:22:52

just said, no, y'all listen to your rules, but I'm going to look after Brooke.

1:22:54

Her mom was

1:22:55

very threatened, but he wasn't

1:22:57

doing anything wrong. And she really respected that he

1:22:59

understood the dynamic and was very comfortable with

1:23:01

what they had. And Brooke was just in awe

1:23:03

that so she ate up everything he said. I

1:23:06

didn't question the thing he suggested. I wanted to keep

1:23:08

breathing the fresh air of contentment. I also

1:23:10

highlighted that I find it so interesting because all of her

1:23:12

child is colored by never questioning

1:23:15

her mother. And

1:23:15

it's just so funny the way the people can change

1:23:18

the object of your addiction can change,

1:23:20

but the pattern and the behavior remains the same.

1:23:23

If you have power over Brooke, you have all the power over

1:23:25

Brooke. Yes. And I guess part of me

1:23:27

viewed this as not even a bad thing because

1:23:29

I will say like the years of detanglement

1:23:32

that it takes in order to like get someone

1:23:34

to change these patterns by her changing

1:23:37

the object of her addiction. And like

1:23:39

switched it up just enough that she could run free. Yeah.

1:23:42

I agree with you. But then the other problem is this entire time

1:23:44

he was addicted to crystal meth and she

1:23:45

did not know he was on crystal meth going, no,

1:23:48

I'm not. And she was like, well, you said she never

1:23:50

even asked. She never, I don't think she even,

1:23:52

But like that's how out of touch she

1:23:54

is with everything going around her. Because he

1:23:56

stands up to her mom, she is able

1:23:58

to sort of realize

1:24:00

that a detangling needs to take place.

1:24:02

It was supposed to be a sensitive but firm declaration of my

1:24:05

independence, easier said than done. So she, working

1:24:07

with his business manager, decides

1:24:09

that they need to fire her mom as

1:24:11

her representation.

1:24:13

And her mom is just like obsessed with the fact that

1:24:15

this business manager, Perry, is controlling

1:24:17

her.

1:24:18

And really it's like, yes, in

1:24:20

a way he is, but in a way that needs to

1:24:22

be done. Like she's not gonna do this independently. She

1:24:24

needs to do this under someone else's control.

1:24:27

So with the help of Andre's team and

1:24:29

his representation and everyone that he

1:24:31

has under his umbrella, she is able

1:24:33

to just fire her mom, liquidate

1:24:35

the offices,

1:24:37

and find new representation.

1:24:39

Yes, but also no. So she goes

1:24:41

and she tells her mom, and she's doing what she thinks is the mature

1:24:44

thing to do by telling her mom first,

1:24:46

but then she does it like both ways. So on the one hand, she goes

1:24:48

and tells her mom, and she says she had to fight the urgent

1:24:50

side of herself to get approval from her mom.

1:24:52

Like she wanted to go and say, mom, I don't think you're the best

1:24:54

representation for me anymore. in a way where her mom

1:24:57

goes, you know, you're right. You need someone better. And of course her mom's

1:24:59

never going to do that. But at the same time,

1:25:01

Perry is telling her you have to go cold Turkey. Something

1:25:03

like this has to be cut off clean. I

1:25:06

see both sides. I do think she was so enmeshed

1:25:08

with her mom that it would have been very easy for

1:25:10

her mom to guilt trip her out of doing it.

1:25:12

But at the same time, she's like the way

1:25:14

I did it was so cold. I do love my

1:25:17

mom. She says that my situation was very different than Andre's

1:25:19

where Andre's dad had total power over

1:25:21

him, but he didn't love his dad

1:25:23

the way I like loved my mom.

1:25:25

Yeah, and she says to this day her mom has not forgiven

1:25:27

her for the way that she went and just like cleared out

1:25:30

the offices Over a weekend when her mom

1:25:32

wasn't looking. Yeah, literally She went

1:25:34

and shut down the whole office and when her mom bit back on Monday

1:25:36

Not a thing was there and

1:25:38

she's like I regret that She says the

1:25:40

conversation went relatively smoothly and she

1:25:42

knew that was a red flag and her mom fought her on things

1:25:44

for like Four or five years legally. Yeah,

1:25:47

and Brooke had said let's just split everything down

1:25:49

the middle 50-50

1:25:50

which is insane. And that was not good enough for her

1:25:52

mom. Her mom fought her own every step of the way.

1:25:55

So then she gets a show called

1:25:57

Suddenly Susan. She also guest

1:25:59

stars at a super.

1:26:00

episode of Friends, which is a huge deal. And of course

1:26:02

she has a giant fight with Andre on

1:26:04

set because she has to be sexual with Joey Tribbiani.

1:26:07

He says you made me look like a fool

1:26:09

and then broke all of his trophies

1:26:12

he had ever earned.

1:26:13

Which is insane. Suddenly, Susan was the

1:26:15

best thing that had happened in my career since being cast

1:26:17

by Lewis in Pretty Baby. I mean,

1:26:20

I mean, that is really heartbreaking

1:26:22

to say that that was a career highlight. In

1:26:24

many ways, both good and bad, I had basically allowed myself

1:26:27

to be overtaken by Andre and his enterprise. It

1:26:29

was such a relief to breathe for a change. So

1:26:31

she's doing Suddenly Susan. Things are going great.

1:26:34

She loves doing the sitcom. Comedy was in my

1:26:36

veins and it unified us all. Her dad

1:26:38

likes the show. And she also meets a

1:26:40

man named David who becomes her absolute

1:26:42

best friend. He's

1:26:43

her co-star on the show and they spend every

1:26:45

second of every day together. They love each other. Here's

1:26:47

something suspicious though. So David becomes her absolute

1:26:49

best friend. He's on the show. He struggled with

1:26:51

addiction himself and his bipolar, but he helps her understand

1:26:54

her mom. She understands him. She

1:26:56

mentions briefly that her best friend from high school, Lisa, who

1:26:58

to this day is one of her best friends still, they were

1:27:00

on the outs because Andrei didn't like

1:27:03

the way that Lisa was close with Brooke's mom and is like,

1:27:05

how could you be friends with anybody who's even nice to your mom

1:27:07

after the way your mom treated you? And

1:27:09

Brooke was like, yeah, he had a way of just cutting people off cold turkey.

1:27:11

So Lisa was just out. So I only had two friends and it

1:27:13

was David and Andrei. Her friends are David

1:27:16

and Andrei. She and Andrei get married.

1:27:18

It hit me all of a sudden. I knew I'd made a mistake.

1:27:20

I did not I

1:27:22

wanted to have a wedding because I wanted everyone I loved to

1:27:24

be together. I loved Andre, but I wasn't sure I wanted

1:27:26

to live the life we had been living. I wanted to be a bride,

1:27:28

but I should not have been married yet. I feared

1:27:30

that if I had not said yes to his proposal, he would have cut

1:27:32

me off emotionally and it would have been over.

1:27:35

They have sort of like a precarious

1:27:38

marriage where they are technically married, but

1:27:40

I don't think they ever spend any married time together.

1:27:42

So for two years, they never see each other and

1:27:45

things come to a halt. He's based in Vegas. She's

1:27:47

based in Los Angeles. They're both working very busy

1:27:49

schedules. Life on the show continued For the next two years,

1:27:51

Andre and I saw very little of one another. I was working

1:27:53

so hard on the show and he was working really hard at playing

1:27:55

various tournaments. He alienated me when

1:27:58

he lost and was on to the next tournament after he won.

1:28:00

She said, overall, the marriage was existing,

1:28:02

but it felt as if somehow that is not what it was supposed to be.

1:28:04

It was easy to avoid dealing with it.

1:28:06

I maintained that it was not due to the lack of love as much as the

1:28:08

lack of life.

1:28:09

So she also gets a dog at this point. And at

1:28:12

one point the dog gets lost on the Warner

1:28:14

Brothers lot and this will become important

1:28:16

later.

1:28:17

A man comes over to her and is like, hey, is

1:28:19

this your dog? And she says, it's my dog, not my husband's

1:28:21

dog, but I have a husband and this is my

1:28:23

dog that my husband also exists

1:28:25

in our lives. And he's like, okay, I don't really care

1:28:27

that you have a husband. I'm just trying to return this dog. But

1:28:29

that was her projecting because Andra was big

1:28:31

about being like, this is your dog, not mine. Yes. The

1:28:34

marriage ends when he had won like a yacht

1:28:36

trip in a charity bidding and

1:28:38

he comes to LA to pick her up to take her to this yacht

1:28:40

trip for a vacation. And she's like, I don't know that we should go on

1:28:43

it. Things haven't been going very good. And I was like, damn, if you hate

1:28:45

someone so much that you can't be on a yacht,

1:28:47

that sucks, dude. Like

1:28:49

take the yacht trip.

1:28:50

So he comes home and packs up his things.

1:28:52

I don't know what things he could have had there. They never spent any time

1:28:55

together, but he drives off and she

1:28:57

was like, where are you going? And he's like, I'm leaving

1:28:59

because you don't want me here. And she's like, I would

1:29:01

be lying if I said I wanted him to turn around, but also

1:29:03

I feel like we had to try. And it's like, no,

1:29:06

you don't. So he drives off into the storm. The storm

1:29:08

is so bad that he has to pull over. He pulls over to a hotel

1:29:10

and he's like, listen, I got to tell you something.

1:29:12

I've been on crystal meth

1:29:13

the entire time. He's like the whole beginning of our relationship.

1:29:16

I was addicted to crystal meth, but I've been clean since

1:29:18

the wedding. And then she's like, I read his book and

1:29:20

I don't know that that actually is true. Also,

1:29:22

I know we mentioned the crystal meth earlier.

1:29:25

we get less than two pages

1:29:27

about it at all.

1:29:29

It is a little cliff note on her story

1:29:31

being like, you know, I love addicts. Why

1:29:33

couldn't you tell me you were an addict?

1:29:35

So they break up. It takes eight days for them

1:29:38

to get the divorce done. I guess, look at his split,

1:29:40

prenups were good.

1:29:41

And then it seems like their friend, she says she was with him the

1:29:43

day he went on his first date with Steffi Gaff and

1:29:45

helped him get dressed for it. And I was like, how did you

1:29:47

guys go from not seeing each other once

1:29:50

as a married couple to like doing the pre-date

1:29:52

pregame? best paleo is when you're

1:29:54

dating other people.

1:29:55

So she's going through this divorce, things are horrible.

1:29:58

Her friend David calls up and he's like, Hey, why don't you come out? to dinner

1:30:00

with me and my fiancee. And she's like,

1:30:02

I'm not feeling enough to it. Why don't you just come over for

1:30:04

dessert? And he's like, my fiancee has a early

1:30:06

call time tomorrow. We can't do it.

1:30:08

And then she says the next morning she got a call and he had

1:30:10

killed himself. Yeah.

1:30:12

Which is like horrific. So now she's going through this divorce.

1:30:15

Her best friend is dead. And I think she just starts to

1:30:17

spiral. And then she finds out her father

1:30:19

has cancer. Yeah, it is a horrible, horrible

1:30:22

time. The show is over. She doesn't even want to do it

1:30:24

without him. Meanwhile though, it turns out she'd been

1:30:26

falling in love with that guy who found her dog.

1:30:28

So within a year of breaking up with

1:30:31

Andre, she gets a quote unquote promise

1:30:33

ring from Chris. And she's like, I'm not really gonna engage right

1:30:35

now. And he's like, I know this is a promise ring. And then the next year

1:30:37

they get engaged. Yeah, so Chris is the guy that

1:30:39

found the dog. And when she had met him

1:30:41

on the set, she was like, this guy

1:30:42

seems handsome and cool and nice. So

1:30:44

I'm gonna set him up with my friend. And so then

1:30:46

she sets him up with a friend. And while he's dating

1:30:48

the friend, she is fresh off the divorce, fresh off of

1:30:51

her best friend dying. Her dad

1:30:53

has cancer.

1:30:54

And she's like, that guy though, I liked

1:30:56

him. So they start going

1:30:58

on dates and she like will not call

1:31:01

him her boyfriend for a long time.

1:31:03

Finally, she has to get another surgery

1:31:06

and

1:31:06

she has no one to come pick her up and Chris comes in to

1:31:08

help her and she's like, okay, you're my boyfriend.

1:31:11

So they get married. I can't even get it. This

1:31:13

is like a service like one after another. She

1:31:15

gives the whole rundown of their wedding weekend.

1:31:17

There was a lot of debacles, believe it or not, her alcoholic

1:31:19

mom and his mom didn't get along well.

1:31:22

Her mom called the other mom a cunt for like

1:31:24

no reason. I think the other mom was like, is there anything

1:31:26

I can help you with? then her mom goes, no, you fucking

1:31:28

cunt.

1:31:29

I also wanna give quick background to who Chris is.

1:31:31

He is one of the co-founders of Funny or Die.

1:31:33

He's a comedy writer and he's written a

1:31:35

bunch of Will Ferrell movies. So he is rich.

1:31:38

At the wedding, her mom is a drunk

1:31:40

mess. I just wanted it to be over so she would not

1:31:43

embarrass herself. I wasn't angry, but I was humiliated

1:31:45

for her. I was so pained to see mom doing this in front of my

1:31:47

father and Dee Dee. So Brooke also really

1:31:49

projects

1:31:50

her mom feeling displaced in

1:31:53

her dad and Dee Dee's relationship.

1:31:55

So they have this fancy wedding. The money thing is so

1:31:58

weird. She's like, we didn't have a wedding planner we were trying to save And

1:32:00

in retrospect, that was a regret. Cause people kept pulling

1:32:02

me in all directions the day of my wedding. And I was like,

1:32:04

why didn't you spend money? Why didn't you have a fucking

1:32:07

wedding planner? That's like the least of it. Her

1:32:09

mom makes a great impression at the welcome lunch

1:32:11

for the wedding. And then obviously as a

1:32:13

drunk mess at the dinner and at the wedding, she's

1:32:15

so disappointed. She says, why hadn't mom allowed her last

1:32:18

impression from lunch to be her new image? Thank

1:32:20

God mom didn't mention my father's wife who remained

1:32:22

reticent and graceful as usual. Like she

1:32:25

creates these things of like mom had one

1:32:27

good lunch. why didn't she let that redefine

1:32:29

her? Well,

1:32:31

can I say, and it doesn't sound like her dad's an angel

1:32:33

either, he shows up to her wedding and this

1:32:35

is what he does. I was getting ready and putting

1:32:37

on my big princess wedding dress, I was getting the veil adjusted

1:32:39

and my father awkwardly came up to the room and said he had to

1:32:41