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  The clerk went on. If for some reason we felt we could not miss work for three or more weeks, we would have to show monetary hardship. She said, “We’ve cracked down on this. You have to really be able to prove that it’ll be costing you your income. Like you’d lose your house. Any questions?” She looked directly at me as if to say, “Don’t think you can get out of this just because you’re a spoiled, rich celebrity.” A few people raised their hands. Maybe one of them would have exactly the same issue and I wouldn’t have to ask my question. I looked around. I didn’t recognize any other reality TV star/producers who were worried about delaying season five. Reluctantly, I half raised my hand. “Yes, juror sixty-nine?”

  I suppressed the desire to ask to have my number changed and said, “What if my employment directly affects other people?” With a steely gaze, she handed me a form and said, “You have five minutes to fill this out.” She pointed me toward the hall.

  I hurried outside. I had five minutes. Should I call Oxygen, our network? My producers? My lawyer? If I was gone we wouldn’t make our air date. This wasn’t about me. All the crew had been hired; they’d passed up other jobs. Many, many people would lose significant income if I wasn’t there to launch the show. Time was running out. I scribbled that out as best I could explain it and submitted it back in the room.

  A few minutes later someone came out and said, “Juror sixty-nine and juror sixty-seven, please come with me.” A man in jeans and a T-shirt and I were led into a side chamber, where we were told, “You’re officially excused.” When we went back to the courtroom the other jurors looked at us enviously. They glanced past me, assuming I had undoubtedly played some holier-than-thou celebrity card, but they turned to the other guy and said, “What did you write?”

  I left the room maintaining a look of quiet respect for my fellow jurors, the judge, the great American judiciary, but the minute I got into the hall I did an air pump. Sorry, Camryn Manheim, Ed Asner, Weird Al, and Edward James Olmos. Sorry, Harrison Ford. This dumb blonde was off the hook. I had no more plane flights scheduled. I was free from jury duty. Malibu, here I come!

  Malibu Tori

  It was August. I still had three weekends left to enjoy Malibu. During the week Dean and I had meetings—about shows, websites, movies; the meetings always multiplied so fast that we had to put “free time” on the calendar if we wanted to make sure we had any. So we made sure to keep the weekends clear. Early in the summer I’d bought an inflatable pool for the kids at the drugstore down the street. One day when Dean was away racing his motorcycle, Mehran and I had blown it up. It took forever—turns out a lot of air goes into those things!—but finally we had a respectable (though not fully inflated) pool and the kids had a little dip. The next weekend I came out to the beach to find that Kathleen had put out an inflatable pool the size of a living room. An air hose was attached with an automatic pump. A pump! It hadn’t even occurred to me. Of course we upgraded to using Kathleen’s fancy inflatable pool for the rest of the summer.

  We went biking with the kids (and the ten paparazzi who always accompanied us) to a cute shake shop called the Vitamin Barn, where Stella was obsessed with reorganizing the vitamin bottles on the shelves. She’s a neat freak. We had playdates with my best friends Jenny and Sara and their kids, playing on the beach while Dean went paddleboarding. Dean grooved on Malibu’s work-to-live culture. Everyone was relaxed, tanned, and beautiful in a bohemian-surfer-meets-billionaire-mogul way. There was only one major obstacle to our good time: Malibu was completely infested with paparazzi.

  Over time as a celebrity you start to recognize the paparazzi who follow you. You come to know who’s the pushiest, who covers what part of town, and who’s going to be polite enough to give the kids space. The L.A. paparazzi are nice, in a fake kind of way. They’ll say, “Just one more picture, then I’ll leave, I promise.” It’s never just one more picture, of course, but at least they sound sensitive to the effect they’re having on our lives. In New York the paparazzi are straight-out aggressive and relentless. There’s no pretense of civility: they just attack. Come to think of it, the paparazzi on both coasts are pretty true to the caricatures of their cities.

  Malibu had its own paparazzi culture. There was a whole new group of photographers. Dean and I were amused by the culture difference: the Malibu paparazzi were laid-back surfer guys with an odd preference for hiding behind trees or walls. In L.A. and New York they never hide. But in Malibu they’d peer out sneakily with just a camera lens. Then one would jump out and start shooting face-to-face. As soon as the first photographer revealed himself, they’d all flood in to score their shots. It was a funny ritual.

  In our regular life, the paparazzi problem is for the most part contained and manageable. During the day, I avoid Robertson Boulevard, where paparazzi lurk to photograph boutique shoppers. I shop at not-as-trendy boutiques and eat at small restaurants. Night isn’t ever a problem. For me, anyway. I guess they disperse to chase down the underwear-free set as they hit the clubs.

  But in Malibu there’s only one marketplace to shop. There’s only a limited choice of restaurants. And the paparazzi didn’t seem to be spending as much time surfing as it looked like they did. Every single time we went out, a pack of ten paparazzi followed us. Knowing that the paparazzi were everywhere, I should have assumed I was being photographed on the beach. With no makeup. While talking or eating. Instead, more than once, I’d find out the next day when there were seventeen pictures of me on some website, all of them with my mouth open in one of those horrid in-the-middle-of-animated-conversation shots. Why do pictures of people talking look so unflattering? And why were those the ones they chose to post of me? I’ve seen millions of cute shots of celebs on the beach, but not me. I know I shouldn’t care, but I do. I’m compulsively compelled to look at every unflattering shot on my BlackBerry, thinking, This is forever available to anyone who wants to write a mean article about me.

  The most dramatic moment came when we went to Taverna Tony, a lively Greek restaurant in the Malibu Country Mart. Halfway through dinner Stella had gotten cranky so Dean had already taken her home. Liam and I finished our meal, and as we left the restaurant we were hit with a barrage of flashes. At home when the paparazzi follow us at night, it’s because we’re at an event, so Liam and Stella aren’t with us. They haven’t been exposed to bright nighttime flashbulbs. Even at the party for my book Mommywood, we knew what to expect, so we had Liam in sunglasses. This time, when the photographers burst out and began shooting right up in Liam’s face, he started screaming and crying, “Ow, my eyes! You hurting my eyes!”

  I said, “Buddy, you’re okay.” Then, holding my hand up to the paparazzi, I said, “Please, please.”

  Liam said, “I can’t see. Ow!” He was rubbing his eyes. My heart fell. The photographers didn’t give a shit. They wouldn’t stop. We pushed through to get to our car.

  When I tweeted about the assault, one of my followers tweeted back saying, “You’ll do a reality show, but you freak out about paparazzi?” Fair enough question, even if it was rhetorical, but all I can say is that it’s different. I’m a parent, and I have a job on a reality show. My children are involved, and I watch how it affects them and have control over it if it ever becomes a problem. The kids are perfectly comfortable with our cameras. There are no lights that flash in their eyes, but it’s more than that. When I came into the living room the other day and the two Tori & Dean camera guys, Mario and Ryan, were already here, Mario was throwing Liam up in the air and Liam was saying, “Again, again!” Ryan was pushing a stroller with a Cabbage Patch doll inside while Stella ran next to him saying, “Go! Go!” If Liam started to cry, Mario would put the camera down and comfort him. Liam says that Mario—he calls him Mo—is his best friend. When people speculate that being on a reality show is bad for our kids, what they don’t get is that these guys are like uncles. They’re almost as close to Liam and Stella as our friends the “Guncles,” Bill and Scout.

  People don’t know wha
t happens behind the scenes of our “behind the scenes” show, which allows them to judge, but this is what really goes on. Filming our show is not a cold business where everyone is disconnected. If it were—and I guess it could have turned out that way—I don’t think I could stand it. Especially if Mario weren’t there. Mario has been with us from the start. He’s known me since I was pregnant with Liam, so Liam doesn’t know life without him. Making the show is an intimate experience. We eat lunch and dinner together. When we travel, after we put the cameras away, we call one another’s rooms and all meet up for a drink at the bar. It’s not a formal working relationship. Our cameramen are like family members.

  The paparazzi are a completely different story. They are strangers to Liam, and they don’t care about him. If Liam were to cry in front of a paparazzo, the guy would never stoop down to comfort him the way Mario would. The paparazzo would just keep at it. Because a shot of me trying to calm an upset child is probably something he can sell to a tabloid, which will then use it to show that I’m “just like you” or that I’m a terrible parent, depending on what story they’re running about me that week. So while the reality cameras and the paparazzi cameras may look the same from the outside, they’re just not.

  Liam is also starting to notice when fans ask to take a picture with me. He says, “No pictures. No pictures of Mommy.” That’s a harder one. I want to have a relationship with my fans, and Liam’s not afraid, he just doesn’t want someone monopolizing my time. But unlike the mad rush of paparazzi, fans are polite and more human, and Liam can see that. There is room for us to talk about the situation and for me to help him through it.

  There was one paparazzo in Malibu who stood out from the rest. He was a guy in his twenties, cute, with rumpled dark blond hair. He was shooting video for TMZ. He had a dry sense of humor and impeccable timing. Instead of asking the same old stupid questions—“Hey, Tori, how’s your mom? How much do you weigh? Are you and Dean fighting? You gonna get pregnant again? Are you going back to 90210?”—he asked questions that, for whatever reason, happened to be relevant. When he asked if Dean was going to start surfing, the two of them got into a conversation about the waves. After that, whenever we saw him we referred to him as “our friend.” Dean would say, “We’ve got paparazzi to the left. Our friend’s here.”

  One day when I was on my way to Ralph’s, the supermarket, I realized that a paparazzo was following me. When I registered the car shadowing my every move, I felt instant road rage. I wasn’t in the mood. I just wanted to buy dinner for my family in peace, for once. I parked the car and saw him pull in behind me. I sat in the driver’s seat, trying to decide what to do. Dean and the kids were back at home, waiting for me to bring home dinner. We needed food, but I didn’t want to give him the shot. I knew it would be silly to let him affect what or how my family got their dinner, but I was angry.

  Then Brooke Burke’s husband, David Charvet, came out of the market carrying his daughter. For a moment I couldn’t help wishing that the paparazzo would shift his attention to him. No such luck.

  I pulled out of the parking lot, empty-handed and pissed. I sped down the street and veered into another market, a smaller, organic store called PC Greens. It was getting dark out, so I couldn’t tell for sure, but I thought I’d lost the paparazzo. Then, on my way out of the store, I saw the same car. He had followed me here. But then who should pop out of the car but our friend, the TMZ guy. When he saw my face he said, “What’s wrong, Tori? You don’t want to talk today?”

  I said, “Not really.” He asked why. I couldn’t explain all of it, how sometimes I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I just said, “I don’t have makeup on.”

  He said, “Oh please. You couldn’t look bad if you tried.” Aw. I wasn’t being chased by some faceless hound. This one was human.

  Another time when we were chatting on camera with our friend, he asked, “How’s the mother-daughter feud?” My mother had just written “An Open Letter to Middle-aged Reality Stars (like my daughter)” and sent it to TMZ. Our friend didn’t usually bug me with the worst, most gossipy questions, but I let it slide. I was holding Stella, so I turned to her and said, “Stella, are we feuding? When did that happen?” Our friend laughed and left it alone, but the next day when we had just gotten in our car at the Malibu Country Mart parking lot, there was a knock at my window. It was our friend again. He indicated that he didn’t have his camera with him and asked me to roll down the window, and when I did he said, “I’m sorry about yesterday.” I knew he was talking about the mother-daughter comment. He went on, “I hope I didn’t offend you. You guys have been really cool, but I have a job to do, and they want me to ask those questions.”

  I said, “You have to do your job. I respect that.”

  He said, “Cool, see you later,” and left. He didn’t ask for anything or shoot any footage. He’d come over solely to apologize.

  Dean and I were impressed and fascinated. Was there any way to do that job without being a jerk? He was trying.

  My final run-in with our paparazzo friend came at the end of the summer. We were having a small gathering at the apartment to celebrate Mehran’s birthday. I went out to pick up all Mehran’s favorite things: some rosé champagne, caviar, cornichons, a cake, and three flower arrangements. When I parked outside our apartment, a few paparazzi cars were stationed in front, as usual. I saw one of them getting out of his car. I looked over and it was our friend. He said, “Can you help me out with something? I’m supposed to get footage of celebrities giving their favorite hangover cures.” Dean wasn’t home; he had gone to drop Jack off. I had a carload of party supplies. So I said, “Will you help me carry this stuff in? Fair trade?”

  He said, “Sure!”

  So he raised his camera and said, “Hey Tori, what’s your cure for a hangover?”

  I said, “Oh, I’m a mom. I don’t know the last time I was hung over, but the best cure is sex.” As soon as it came out of my mouth I thought, Me and my big mouth. That’s definitely going to get me in trouble. I don’t know how exactly, but it will.

  Satisfied, our friend put the camera down, helped me carry all the groceries and flowers into the apartment, and stayed to set up a little. It felt so strange to have a paparazzo—someone I’m always hiding from, keeping at bay—in my own home. The place was a total mess. That’s right, Harvey Levin, I’m a complete slob. You heard it here first. And who knew what incriminating personal items inquiring eyes might find—Gas-X? Nail fungus cream? Odor-Eaters? Superabsorbency pads?

  Bringing a paparazzo into our place ran completely against everything I usually do. But somehow I knew that this one was human. He could have taken pictures or called in some tidbit about how we live, but he didn’t, and I knew he wouldn’t.

  I like to imagine that all the paparazzi are a little like our friend. We liked his personality, but even if they aren’t all so funny and charming, they all have jobs to do. They all have bosses pressuring them to ask certain questions. They all have lives to live, families to feed. I fantasized about putting together a “They’re just like us” photo essay showing the relatable lives of tabloid photographers as they pumped gas and bought coffee. With maybe just one or two unflattering shots taken while they were talking or eating French fries. If somehow the humanity shone through, maybe we could better coexist. Our friend found the balance between doing his job and respecting his fellow humans. And it made him better at his job. I think that’s true no matter who you are or what your job is: if you’re mindful of the effect you’re having on others, you create a better world.

  • • •

  Now that I finally had time to spend in Malibu, I found myself fascinated with my Malibu neighbor Kathleen. Liam and her son Luke would play together, and Kathleen and I would chat. I liked her; she was earthy and funny and full of energy. She picked up new hobbies easily. The first time we came out to the beach she said, “Look, I just put up these pictures.” She’d taken up photography. She started playing the guitar while we
were there. She took walks on the beach in a caftan at sunset.

  When I was in New York championing Q-tips as the summer beauty rescue of choice (sorry, I just love saying that), Kathleen had emailed me to ask if Liam wanted to have a playdate with Luke. I wrote back that I was in New York. She said, “Oh, what have you been doing?” When I told her, she said, “Oh, that’s amazing. I just finished my coffee and am wondering if I should walk on the beach or go paddleboarding.”

  Now, seeing how anxious I was even when we were walking on the beach, Kathleen said to me, “You’re stressed out because you work so hard. I remember what that was like. There was a time when I couldn’t not work. Now I’m the total opposite. I don’t want to do anything. I did nothing today.” I knew it wasn’t true; she was always busy. Maybe all she did some days was drive into town, get her hair done, meet her trainer, and play with her son, but she was busy living the life that she chose. Being a mother. Being happy. She looked really happy. And much as I liked her, I was seething with envy.

  While Kathleen was busy planning her Christmas cards (in August!), I was constantly jockeying for more time with my children. I could barely remember the first year of Stella’s life. How did she get so old so fast? Sometimes it felt like her childhood was flying by. Was this that clichéd feeling of “they grow up so fast,” or was I actually missing out on being a mother? It was a sensitive point for me. Although working on 90210 was an amazing experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything, I’ve never gotten over the feeling that it meant I missed my twenties. I never went to college. I always want to make sure that I’m deliberate about deciding how to spend my time and at what cost.

  Dean doesn’t seem to have the same inner conflict about how he spends his time. When Dean has free time, he spends some of it with the kids and some of it doing other stuff, whereas I feed all my free time directly to Stella and Liam’s hungry mouths. Maybe men don’t have the same connection to the kids or the same sense of responsibility or, most likely, the same unrelenting guilt.