Denise Richards: It’s Complicated Recap (Denise Strikes Back!)
Denise’s press tour is interrupted by vicious tabloid rumors.
We open at The Richard’s farm where Irv is nagging Denise about not being packed, because her limo driver is here. “He’s here already?” asks Denise languidly and Irv replies cutely “Yeah, you better hustle up.” She fannies around with some clothes on the bed, while Irv exposits “This is your big first press tour in a long time.” Gotta love Irv for getting the line wrong. “Big first” Heh. “I’m excited” Denise says unenthusiastically and then lists the shows on which she’s going to appear. This is the first of several times that Denise tells us how excited she is while looking and sounding bored, irritated and or/distracted .
Denise interviews basically what we’ve already learned. She’s going to New York to promote her show. But, she stresses she’s going to miss her girls “a ton.” I feel like she’s said that before, using precisely that wording, which makes the sentiment seem a little more rote.
She says goodbye to the girls at the door, both of whom are sucking their thumbs and holding security blankets. I have sworn to myself that I’m not going to Other Mother whatever nanny takes care of the children so I’ll let this pass. She tells them that she’s going to New York where they have the biggest toy store in the world and asks them what they’d like her to bring back. The girls are clearly confused about who this overly made-up woman is, so perhaps they’ve decided that she’s some version of Santa. The younger girl, cutely being held by Irv says “Um, a pink doll that pees. A pink pee…doll”. Santa’s helper leans in for a kiss and says “Okay, I’ll try and find her.”
Credits. Glamour Girl. Gold digger. Single Mom. Bitch. Sex Symbol. Husband Stealer. Paparazzi magnet. Daddy's Girl. Movie Star. Tabloid Queen. Denise Richards: It's complicated. I hate these credits more each time I see them. They’re slickly produced and cheeseball at the same time.
Denise arrives in New York and she’s talking about something or other but I can’t listen because there’s Old Blonde Friend Kim! Credited as Denise’s “friend and makeup artist.” Denise does pay her to be her friend! For some reason it’s totally unsurprising that Denise’s make-up artist would be her best friend.
They product place FAO Schwartz and roam around and buy dolls. The trip is wasted, however, if Denise can’t create a photo op so she and Kim prance about on that giant keyboard that was in Big while a few disinterested tourists look on blandly.
5AM the next morning, Kim is shooting the makeup gun (set to “whore”) at Denise as she moans about how nervous she is. She claims repeatedly throughout this episode that this is the “first” time she’s done press in three years. So I guess she just released a quiet press release through her publicist when she told Page Six “I don't want Charlie's prostitute-tranny-infested sperm.” Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s probably my favorite celebrity quote of the year. But, I do think that qualifies as “talking to the press.” Talking to the press like a totally self-destructive asshole, but, still.
Of course, as we’ll see, in Denise’s world talking to the press means being asked soft ball questions about things she wants to promote while not being asked about anything she doesn’t. I’m not sure what making random pot shots at your ex to the tabloids is then —drunk dialing?
Denise interviews that she’s nervous because she “realizes that she’s doing these talk shows that have talked very negatively about my personal life.” Well, I’m not in the mood to do an exhaustive research project as to whether or not The Today Show and the View etc. have taken cheap shots at Denise, but it’s hard not to feel like she’s actually done it to herself. I mean, if they repeat a quote you made to the press that makes you look like a vindictive bitch, that’s not really talking negatively about your personal life, is it?
The fact that she’s nervous here about what she’s going to be asked completely belies her later claim that she’s been “blind-sided” but whatever.
Kim sluts up the makeup some more while trying to comfort Denise. An accented older man, described as “Max, Celebrity hairstylist” fixes Denise’s hair. They exit the hotel. “Are you excited honey?” asks Makeup Artist Kim. Please Kim, don’t encourage her. “I am” Denise insists unconvincingly “I’m very excited.” I just cracked myself up imagining Denise during phone sex.
A group of white-uniformed sailors approach Denise and ask if they can get a picture with her. I’m willing to believe that they weren’t put up to it, because if USO shows are any indication, members of the Armed Forces have a pretty low threshold about who they’ll consider a celebrity. Denise comments on how hot they look in their uniforms while Kim snaps a picture. Denise says again that they look sexy in their uniforms. She gets into a waiting SUV and comments again to Kim how handsome and sexy they were. Okay, that got a little embarrassing. Denise apparently likes a man in uniform.
In the SUV they talk schedule before Kim asks again (seriously Kim, CUT IT OUT) “Are you excited?” Denise, unsurprisingly, answers without emotion that she is. They discuss the cuteness of Matt Lauer and Denise claims emptily to be excited again, to which Kim responds, as one would to an infant, with a quiet, baby- talk “Yaaaay!”
So the bulk of this episode is about interviews Denise does and her reaction to them. On the first viewing I was completely flummoxed as to why she gets so upset, because all we ever see is various interviewers asking the not-particularly unreasonable question about whether or not being on her show is good for her kids. There’s a bit of a bait-and-switch going on here and I didn’t figure it out until more than halfway through the second viewing when I looked up the full, unedited versions of some of the interviews.
Basically, this press tour takes place during May which was actually Sheen-Richards Spermgate 2008 – the whole mess about Denise sending an email to Sheen’s fiancé purportedly voicing her desire to use him as a sperm donor and the various nasty comments to the press from all of them that followed. The interviews she does here are actually part of these events and, although we don’t see it, there are some really tough moments. Larry King was especially harsh, running his interview half-frame, as he’s prone to, with the other half occupied by photos and video of Sheen. He played a mean video response from Charlie and then asked Denise, clearly shaken, to respond. And as much as I really don’t like Denise, she actually doesn’t handle herself too, too badly.
For whatever reason (I can think of a few) this show decides not the show the really upsetting parts of the interviews and pretend that Denise is upset because of a few relatively low-key questions about her kids. I think they actually do her a disservice here, which I don’t think was the intention, because she ends up looking like she over reacts, whereas, if you watch the interviews themselves, it’s a little bit more understandable why she’s so upset.
However the interviews aren’t actually breaking the sperm story – they’re just asking about something that was already all over the tabloids. So I remain confused about why she’s so surprised about the line of questioning. Did she really think that all of these relatively high-profile shows wanted her on so she could talk about her silly reality show?
So it’s hard to know whether or not to recap what we’re given, or what’s really going on. I guess I’ve decided to recap what we’re shown, but acknowledge that that’s not really the whole story.
It’s the Today show. Matt Lauer asks the perfectly reasonable question that after all the negative publicity surrounding her divorce and custody battle (which he refers to, diplomatically as “all the stuff that happened”) that while some people would assume she’d just want to cloister herself “in a cave”, she’s chosen to do a reality show – why? Denise answers ridiculously and with a rather angry scowl “Because I’ve been cloistered in a cave. ” I’m not sure that not getting any work as an actress counts as cloistering yourself in a cave. Also, I think a metaphor like “keeping out of the spotlight” or something would have been less weird. Matt then continues, reasonably and without venom, and asks the million dollar question, because, unlike Denise, he’s not actually a hack: “There are a lot of people out there who are saying, protecting your children, the best way to do that is to keep this out of the headlines.” Of course, hiding behind “people say” is a little cowardly, but I expect he’s actually trying to be nice.
Denise makes the point that the kids aren’t in the show very much, which happens to be true, but Matt looks mildly incredulous, because well, that isn’t what he asked her. “I prefer to keep all this private” Denise insists “and that’s why I haven’t done interviews like this in three years.” Lauer barely contains his eye-roll and manfully resists saying that she hasn’t done interviews like this because she hasn’t done anything to promote.
Denise interviews that it’s not fair that she has to deal with any of this. She gets into her car saying “well, I wasn’t expecting that.” Um, your ex-husband took you to court to prevent the girls from being on the show. Did you think they would just let you blab on and on about g- Kart racing with your brother-in-law and product placements for hotels in Hawaii?
Kim and Max, Celebrity Hairstylist say blandly supportive things to Denise in the car. She says that Extra has been after her publicist for an interview and perhaps she’ll have to do it now. I’m not entirely sure what kind of gravitas for her position she’s going to get from Extra that she couldn’t get from Matt Lauer, but I guess I’m not a publicist.
They go to the “CW11 morning show,” which, huh? No idea. Denise meets Spencer M. “CW 11 Talent Executive” who tells her “I very much enjoy the show. I have a 3 year old, so I’m in love with little girls.” Um, that was creepy. I mean, it’s guys like Spencer M. that are pretty much the reason you don’t want your kids on television.
Denise enters her dressing room and calls out for “Jilly”. Jill attempts to give Denise some decent advice to “continue to be clear cause every time you say something they’ll pull it out of context” and “focus on the show”. I gain some sympathy for Jill during this episode because it must be excruciating to be Denise’s publicist. I mean, Denise is pretty clearly kind of a hot-head who says vindictive and inflammatory things to the press that make her look horrible and then complains when people say negative things about her. Jill seems to give her reasonably good advice here, but she can’t really do anything if Denise doesn’t take it. Of course, there’s also the possibility that Jill knew exactly what was going to happen and that it would generate publicity and kind of just set Denise up. I don’t know how these people operate, but I do wonder how anyone could have thought this wouldn’t happen.
Denise interviews that Jill is helping her be prepared in case she’s “caught off guard again”. I think even if she was actually caught off guard the first time, she’d have caught on by now. The CW11 host starts with what I expect is the kind of question Denise wants to be asked, about how the show came about. To which Denise borings: “I thought this is a good time, and a good place, for me to just, be myself and do what I want to do and let people judge for themselves.” If, one assumes, they choose to judge favorably. Otherwise they can go to hell. Haters. “The best part about it is that I get to work at home and be home with my kids” says Denise, throwing open the door herself to a question she doesn’t want to be asked. This interviewer is even milder than Softball Pitcher Lauder saying “Yeah and with putting your daughters on TV, how do you deal with that?”There’s thumpety thumpety ominous music and Denise pulls a face. This is kind of ridiculous. Is that really such a harsh question to be asked or even that difficult a question to answer? Furthermore, if Denise doesn’t want to be asked about some of these things, then she’s going to have to come up with something to say instead that doesn’t sound like she’s reading a poorly written press release.
Some autograph hounds approach Denise outside the studio and she does some signing while Jill barks protectively before hustling her off through the rain.
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