Stori Telling Read online

  Every year we renegotiated our contracts. When the time came to renew my contract for an eleventh season, I couldn’t summon much enthusiasm. Donna was one of the most popular characters on the show. But I was more than ready to take my career in another direction. I’d done the independent movie Trick, which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, and Fox had made an overall deal with me to develop my own sitcom. My manager told Fox that I wasn’t coming back to 90210.

  To my surprise this caused a huge fuss. The year before, Jason Priestley had done the same thing, but the show went on, and I figured the same would be true in my case. First my father had the VP of his company and the guy under him take a meeting with me to encourage me to stay. Needless to say, he never mentioned the first word about my departure to me in person. Not a phone call. Not a single word. Yes, nonconfrontation was a family issue.

  When my father’s efforts failed, the then-chairman of Fox Entertainment, Sandy Grushow, took me out to lunch at the Polo Lounge with my manager to convince me to stay. He said, “If you don’t come back, the show’s not coming back. There’s no show without you.” Hearing those words, I felt pressure to return, but I also couldn’t help but feel proud. No show without me, huh? I was the girl nobody thought deserved the part. I was a side character. I was, as Variety had once decided, “attractive, if somewhat limited in the talent department.” I only had the part because of who my father was. Okay, we all know my dad’s name got me in the door, but hadn’t I made the most of the opportunity? Wasn’t it ironic that a decade later the head of Fox was telling us that the life of the show hinged on me? My manager and I didn’t really buy that they’d cancel the whole show if I left. We figured it was just a negotiating tactic. 90210 was an institution. It wasn’t going anywhere. So for once I stood my ground. I knew what I wanted.

  The next day Fox made the announcement. The tenth season would be 90210 ’s last.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Build Me Up, Buttercup

  A pattern has emerged in my life. It goes something like this: Just when I’ve given up all hope (in my career, my love life, my hair—you choose), I get an amazing opportunity. This amazing opportunity gives me new hope. I’m determined to make the most of it. I throw myself into it. I try really hard. My efforts seem to pay off: Looks like this will really lead to something! And then…nothing. It all goes to pot. Like I told you about getting the lead part in the third-grade play: The parents mutinied and the play was canceled. Or when I was so excited to do my bit part on 90210 and got terrible press even though I barely had any lines.

  The movie Trick, an independent gay romantic comedy, was released in 1999 when 90210 was coming to a close. A couple years earlier I’d been in another indie, The House of Yes, which was also nominated for Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize. There was one scene in Trick where I did a rambling monologue of which I was particularly proud. And the critics took notice. They went from calling me “TV movie queen” to “indie movie queen.” And then…you guessed it. Nothing. It just went away. Interviewers would ask me, “So why didn’t you do more movies like Trick?” and I’d say, “I don’t know. You tell me. Why didn’t I do more movies like Trick?” But that’s what being an actor is about. No matter how much success you’ve had, you’re always jockeying for work. I’d had great fortune with 90210 going on so long. I wasn’t daunted. I was determined to put in whatever time and effort it took to keep my career going.

  Not long after 90210 wrapped, I went in to audition for Scary Movie 2. Scary Movie, a parody of teen slasher flicks, had made $150 million the summer before. The sequel was bound to be huge. The whole thing was so hyped and top secret that they wouldn’t release the script for auditions. I was dying to do comedy—in this case, a very out-there comedy. Like any actor on a long-running series, I was typecast from doing 90210. With a movie like this, I could escape Donna Martin in a big way. So I went in to audition in front of Keenen Ivory Wayans, the director. They handed me a monologue on the spot, and I loved it. That night I found out that I’d been called back. They gave me another scene that I was expected to perform the next day. I thought it went well, but then…nothing.

  I kept pestering my manager about Scary Movie 2. I was so hungry for that part. Finally the feedback came in: I wasn’t in the running anymore. They thought I was over the top in the second scene I’d performed. Um, yes, I was over the top. The character I was playing, Alex, has sex with a ghost and then stalks him. The ghost is scared of this nutso stalker lady. In the audition scene I was supposed to be anticipating sex with my ghost-lover. The stage direction was Alex on all fours getting herself primed for sex. It was all physical comedy. I’m not exactly sure how you can go over the top with a scene like that.

  Disappointed, I was in New York with my mother for Fashion Week when I got a call. It was about Scary Movie 2. The movie was to start shooting in two days, and they now wanted me for the part. I don’t know why they decided at the last minute. My guess is that the studio was initially reluctant to cast Tori Spelling. At any rate, they said, “We need her to show up at rehearsal tomorrow.” Rehearsal was in Los Angeles. I was in New York. This was my post-90210 big break. Of course we cut our trip short. But I have to hand it to my mother. She had all sorts of shows and parties planned, and she abandoned it all because I was too scared to fly home alone (a fear I inherited from my father).

  The next day when I landed in L.A., there was a car waiting to take me to rehearsal. The driver handed me a script. I had no idea what to expect—to that point all I knew about my character was what I’d seen in the two scenes I read in auditions. As we drove, I flipped through the script. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Page after page, there was my character’s name, over and over again. The part was huge. I was one of the six main characters in the movie. I was doing a major movie, and my dad’s name wasn’t on it. This was it. I was going to be a big star.

  The first day we filmed, I shot the big monologue that was my audition scene. Afterward I was sitting in my director’s chair, and Keenen came up to me. He said, “I had no idea you were this funny.” I said, “I love doing comedy, but nobody knows because I was on a drama for ten years.” Then Keenen said something I didn’t anticipate: “You need your own series about what your life is like. Like Roseanne. Then they can’t say, ‘I can’t picture Tori Spelling being a waitress.’ You need to give them what they expect from you, but at the same time give them yourself and show them who you really are. That’s what’s going to make you.” It was great advice. Years later I would remember it when I came up with the show So NoTORIous.

  I was thrilled to work with the three Wayans brothers. Shawn and Marlon wrote and starred in the movie, and, as I said, Keenen was directing. A week after we started filming, Keenen called me over and said, “I’m going to let the camera roll. Just improv.” Just improv? Those are two of the most frightening words an actor can hear. But this was part of the Wayans brothers’ method—Shawn and Marlon improvised half of their scenes. They knew what they wanted but left things up in the air and changed scenes daily. I was terrified I’d be a disaster—either I’d stand there frozen and silent, or I’d take the scene in some direction they hated. Keenen said, “Trust me. If I didn’t think you could do it, I wouldn’t ask.”

  When you first see her, my character, Alex, seems sweet but a little out there, then as the film progresses, you realize how crazy she is. The Wayanses liked the idea that I was this little white girl in pigtails with a filthy mouth. Keenen asked me to improvise a scene when the ghost rapes me. There was absolutely no script, so I went with it. I’m slapping my ass as he rapes me across the ceiling and saying things like, “Who’s your daddy?” and “Say my name, bitch!” When Keenen finally called “Cut!” he had a huge smile on his face. “How hard was that?” I went home that night feeling really proud. They thought I was funny!

  That day was a turning point. From then on the filming took a completely different route. I’d have a day off, but I’d get a call in the
morning and they’d ask me to come in as soon as I could. When I arrived, they’d say, “Keenen wants you in this scene. Just play it how you think it should go.” One scene took place at a dinner table. We all had our lines, but twenty minutes before we started shooting, they told me to say grace. They said, “You’re a nutjob. You stalk everyone. You have a beef with God. Go with that and start to say grace.” Another time Marlon said, “Just try to say ‘raw dog style.’ You saying that will be funny.” So I said to the ghost, “Remember when you were all up in me, raw dog style?” This turned into our regular process. They kept adding me to scenes. None of it was scripted. They’d say, “You’re a natural-born writer. Just do your own stuff.”

  I started calling my manager to report how well things were going. I said, “I’m getting even more scenes. They keep adding me to scenes!” The first movie was such a big hit that the Wayanses had the money to work on their own time line. Scary Movie 2 was supposed to take two and a half months to film but ended up taking five. It was an amazing experience, but there was one glitch.

  When my deal was made, the studio, Dimension, said there wouldn’t be any nudity. One of the horror movies that Scary Movie 2 spoofed was Entity. There’s a scene in that movie where Barbara Hershey is raped by a phantom. She’s lying in bed when he pulls her shirt up and grabs her boobs. The entity is invisible, but you see the indentation of his grabby hands on her chest. When I first got the script, I saw that I was supposed to play that scene. One of the stage directions was He pulls her top up. I brought it up, but a producer at Dimension told my manager not to worry. I wouldn’t have to do nudity. They promised the scene would be cut.

  Near the end of shooting I heard talk about getting a prosthetic build of my chest so they could show the indentations when the ghost grabbed my boobs. This wasn’t exactly cutting the scene. It didn’t matter that they planned to use a body double. I knew perfectly well that nobody watching the movie would know or care that it was a body double. And no matter how amazing that body double’s boobs were, I knew I’d never hear the end of it. It wasn’t worth it—maybe for an intense scene that was a critical dramatic moment in a serious movie, but I wasn’t into doing it for a spoof comedy. Dimension kept assuring my agency, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), that the scene would be cut, and CAA kept saying that I wasn’t going to shoot it. It went back and forth like that for a while until it escalated to the point where the head of the agency—I believe Kevin Huvane—had to call Miramax, the company that owned Dimension. Miramax was run by the Weinstein brothers. Huvane made it clear to them that they couldn’t use a body double without my consent.

  At some point during all this back-and-forth my manager suggested that I ask my father whether he thought I should do the scene. It wasn’t like, Oh, you’re at a tough point in your career, ask old Dad what he thinks. It was more in the vein of He knows this business as well as anyone else. He’ll know what to do. Still, this was the man who’d kept my character a virgin for seven long years. I called, assuming he was going to say, Oh my God, no! Not my baby Tori! But my father must have had his producer hat on that day. I can’t remember his wording, but he said for a big movie like this he thought I should do it. He said, “If I know the Weinsteins, they’ll cut you out of the whole film if you refuse to do it.” I should have marked his words, but by that time we were too deep in battle to back out. My representatives fought tooth and nail, and in the end the scene was cut out of the movie.

  All that negotiation happened behind the scenes. Meanwhile, everything on the set was still going smoothly. When the movie wrapped, I couldn’t wait for its release. My part, which started out bigger than I could have dreamed, had only grown. I hadn’t seen the finished product, but a friend of mine saw Keenen’s cut of the movie in a private screening and reported back that I was in every scene. He said, “You have a filthy mouth, but it’s funny.” The movie was opening wide, and it was going to change my career path.

  The publicity tour was two to three weeks away. The lead girl, Anna Faris, was still relatively unknown. So for the publicity I had several solo appearances since I was the biggest name and one of the leads. The itinerary was set and it was impressive. I was scheduled to go on the Late Show with David Letterman—I’d never been on Letterman. Then, out of the blue, my publicist and manager called. They said, “Apparently, they don’t want you on the publicity tour anymore. You’re not one of the leads in the movie.” Then they told me that the Miramax publicists were pitching my role as a cameo! I couldn’t believe it. There had to be some mistake. I said, “What are you talking about? I’m a lead in the movie. I’m in every scene!” And my publicist said, “Well, they’re willing to do a screening for you. They want you to see the movie so you aren’t surprised when it comes out—your part was cut considerably.”

  I went to the screening at the Miramax offices. It was a small audience—just my team. They’d cut my scenes, all right. They’d cut so much of me from the movie that there were places where it didn’t even make sense. There is a scene where five of us are in a room. We’re standing in a line. I’m standing at the end of the line. Originally, I freaked out, held a gun on them, delivered a monologue, then ran out of the room. But they cut my freak-out, my monologue, and my exit, so all you see is that one moment I’m standing in the line, the next I’ve disappeared. Maybe I was also supposed to be a ghost? Whatever the case, they were right. I was no longer one of the main six characters. I’d spent five months improvising a cameo.

  My manager at the time was kind of conservative and overprotective. She was always trying to sell me as young and innocent, the girl next door. She even had me dye my hair brown to fit that image. When I was cut from the movie, all she really said was, “It sounds like good news in disguise. It’s an R-rated movie, and the Miramax publicist said that your part was very dirty. You wouldn’t want that image on screen anyway.” What?! The whole movie was dirty. Of course I wanted that image on the screen. I was proud of my work. I’d been so close to that brass ring, and now it was gone. (And I’ve still never been on Letterman. Dave? Are you reading this?)

  I was embarrassed to go to the premiere, but when I recovered from the initial shock, I thought, Well, who do I think I am? It’s better to have a cameo in a big movie than to have nothing at all. But to this day I still don’t know why my part disappeared. Keenen’s cut—the director’s cut—supposedly had me in it. I wish I’d had the balls to call Marlon or Shawn to find out what happened. I wish when I’d seen Keenen at the premiere I’d had the courage to ask, What went wrong? Why is my entire part gone? When I saw him, that conversation went through my head. But instead, I just said, “Hi, it’s so good to see you.” I gave him a hug and walked away.

  After all that excitement when I’d seen the script, after all the compliments I’d received on the set…I’d even dared to hope that 90210 and being Daddy’s girl were forever in the past. What could I do? I wasn’t about to sit around and mope. I had to focus on what was next. I was back at square one.

  One thing I’d gotten out of Scary Movie 2, besides the feeling that my life was just a recurring lesson in disappointment, was the chance to exercise my comedy chops. I was still trying to focus on comedy after a decade of being on a drama. Every year after 90210, I auditioned for the new comedy pilots. Before a network decides to put a show on the air, they cast and produce the first episode—the pilot. Then, based on how those pilots turn out, they decide which pilots they want to order as series. When you’re a new actor in L.A., just getting an audition for a pilot is a big deal. But when you’re a “name” (even if it’s a name like Tori Spelling), you can find yourself running all over town auditioning for two or three pilots every day during pilot season. A few years after 90210, I went in for a comedy for UPN called Me Me Me, which was supposed to be a modern-day Laverne & Shirley. It was about two young girls living on their own, broke, trying to make their lives work. After my audition my agent called, as she always did, with the feedback from the casting director. I
wasn’t right for the part.

  But then, a couple weeks later, the producers of Me Me Me called me back in. Later one of the writers would tell me that they auditioned four hundred girls and kept coming back to me. This time after the audition word came back that they liked me. To land a role, you generally have to leap through three hoops. I’d just made it through the first. Now they were sending the tape of my audition on to the studio in New York: hoop number two. Again, the news was good. The studio liked me. Now they asked me to audition for a third time to make a tape for the network (hoop number three)—this time with some direction and notes from the producers. But after that audition my agent called with feedback worse than anything I could imagine. They didn’t say I was wrong for the part, or that I didn’t take notes well, or that I just didn’t nail the character. No, the producer—yes, we were back at hoop number one—said, “I’m watching this tape, and I can’t get past the fact that she’s Tori Spelling.” He didn’t want to send the tape to the network. I can change a lot. If you don’t like my delivery, I can change how I say a joke. If you don’t like my tone, I can work on my character’s attitude. If you don’t like my nose—just kidding. Mostly. But what I can’t change is the fact that I’m Tori Spelling. That’s the story of my life: My name opens doors for me, but before I can cross the threshold, it slams those same doors right in my face.

  I wasn’t about to let that one slide. I asked my agent to tell the producer I wanted to come in again to audition in person. He agreed, so I went in for a fourth time. By now the other girl (the Shirley one—obviously, I was destined for Laverne: blond and spacey) had already been cast, so I read with her. And, I swear, I saw it happen in the room. At some point the producer raised his head and started watching me intently. When I was done, he walked me to the door and shook my hand. He said with surprise, “You’re fantastic.” I got the role. The pilot didn’t get picked up, but that’s how it goes in TV. Unless you’re Aaron Spelling. From what I witnessed growing up, all pilots went to series, and all series stayed on the air for at least a decade. It was a harsh awakening.