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by
Dennis Hensley
FRIDAY,
JULY 9,2004
NBC STUDIOS, BURBANK, CA
10:00
AM
Though
the seasoned TV professionals at Access Hollywood deal with
famous people all the time, there’s still a palpable
sense of excitement in the air when Brittany Murphy shows
up at their production office, bursting through the front
door like a highly concentrated mix of sunshine and Red Bull.
“Hi, I’m Brittany,” she chirps to everyone
she encounters—from unpaid interns to on-air personalities--though
they all clearly know she’s the New Jersey-born actress
who turned heads as the gawky girl who got made-over in Clueless
before going on to star in Just Married, Uptown Girls, Don’t
Say a Word and 8 Mile. “It’s so good to meet you,”
she says, giving a brisk handshake to Access’s lovably
no nonsense executive producer, Rob Silverstein. “My
mom watches your show every single day.”
Murphy’s
mission today, apart from charming the socks off everyone
she meets, is to get a real-life taste of the world of TV
world her most recent film Little Black Book is set in. Though
Access Hollywood is far less salacious than the film’s
Springer-esque The Kippie Kann Show—on which Murphy’s
romantically-challenged character, Stacy Holt, toils as an
associate producer--the day-to-day struggle to maintain some
personal ethics while giving the folks at home what they want
to see is strikingly similar. And since Access’s beat
is show biz, today will grant Murphy—whose off-screen
love life has generated plenty of media coverage of late--a
peak behind the curtain of the celebrity news machine. For
one day, the reported on will become the reporter. The hunted,
the hunter. “I love that they’re just throwing
me in the middle of the whirlwind,” she says, after
tossing out her gum. “That’s the coolest way to
learn anything.”
And
Murphy’s clearly ready to learn. She brought along a
sticker-covered clipboard, on which a film colleague friend
lovingly scrawled an irreverent list of Things to Do On Your
First Day at Work. Items one through five, she blushes, are
“too dirty” too share. “Number 6,”
she reads, giggling, “Complain your feet hurt.”
Well, no wonder. Electric green Dolce and Gabbana platforms
hardly seem like sensible shoes for a day like today. “Height
gives me confidence,” says Brittany, as she winds her
way through the bustling newsroom to Silverstein’s office.
“These are my confident, comfy working shoes.”
10:15
AM
If
Access Hollywood were Oz, TK-year entertainment news veteran
Rob Silverstein would be the wonderful wizard. Today’s
show goes out over the national feed in less than three hours
and before then, Silverstein—who’s been here working
since 5:30 this morning--will approve every word, image and
piece of music in it. He’s going over today’s
show order on his computer when an associate producer enters
with an update on Courtney Love, who, it’s been reported,
didn’t show up for a court appearance today. “Now
there is a bench warrant out for her arrest,” the producer
says. “Her bail is set at $150,000.”
“Okay,
there’ll be a shot of Courtney Love being crazy,”
Rob instructs the producer, “and the headline will be
Crazy Courtney or something like that.”
With
that, Murphy’s big brown eyes widen, as if to say, ‘Should
I be privy to this? Do I want to be?’ Though she’s
never met Love, she clearly empathizes. “Is there another
word you could use besides crazy?” Brittany suggests
gingerly. “Maybe a play on words with court and Courtney.”
Rob
thinks for a moment. “We probably won’t use crazy,”
he assures her.
Next
on the agenda is a discussion about the Picture of the Day,
a regular Access feature that showcases a funny or provocative
celebrity snapshot. “We don’t buy invasive photos,”
Rob’s careful to stress. “If someone’s walking
out of a store and you can tell that they don’t want
to be photographed, we won’t buy that. If they wave
and they look friendly, we might buy it. It’s all a
matter of body language.”
To
illustrate his point, Rob shows Brittany a series of long-lens
photos he was offered of a grieving Michael Douglas and Catherine
Zeta-Jones taken yesterday at the funeral of Michael’s
younger brother, Eric. Though the service will be mentioned
in today’s show, Rob says he won’t use the unauthorized
photos out of respect for the family. “It’s a
private funeral,” he reiterates. Brittany, clearly impressed
by this show of discretion, pats his arm affectionately. “But
I assure you,” he adds, “you’ll see them
on Entertainment Tonight and Extra.”
“I’ve
had a couple of creepy experiences,” Murphy says, when
asked about her own run-ins with the paparazzi, “but
another way of looking at it is that your life is being documented.
You’ll have pictures to show your grandkids.”
Case in point: the Australian vacation she took a few years
back with her then-boyfriend, Ashton Kutcher. “A photographer
asked for a shot and we said, ‘Then can we have a copy’?”
she recalls, laughing. “He left the pictures at the
hotel and those were the only pictures we had of the trip.
The funny thing was they were numbered and there were shots
missing! What could possibly be on the ones that they didn’t
give us?”
“It’s
Moment Matt!” exclaims Rob, when a young man carrying
a video tape appears at his door. Moment Matt’s job,
Rob explains, is to find memorable clips from other TV programs
that might be suitable for Access’s show-ending “Garnier
Cool Moment” segment. Today’s Moment will likely
come from The Conan O’Brien Show, though Rob admits
he’s a little miffed at Conan at the moment because
of a recent Fahrenheit 9/11 parody Conan aired which poked
fun at the fact that Access personality Billy Bush is the
first cousin of President George Bush. “It was funny,”
Rob allows, “but Billy’s his own guy. It’s
not like he ever calls the president.”
Though
Murphy is nothing if not sympathetic, she’s also been
around long enough to know how the game works and can’t
help but offer up a friendly little reality check. You can’t
help but love her for it. “How could he not be picked
on?” she wonders. “He got away this long. Just
think of it as lucky.”
“He’s
great at what he does,” counters Rob. “He’d
be where he is regardless.”
“I
understand that,” replies Brittany, “but it’s
a miracle that it took this long.”
The
phone rings. It’s anchor Nancy O’Dell calling
from Beverly Hills where she’s just interviewed Matt
Damon.
Nancy
lists the various topics the actor discussed in the interview—his
new film The Bourne Supremacy, working with a pregnant Julia
Roberts on Ocean’s 12, how his pal Ben Affleck is doing--then
waits for her boss’s feedback. Though Damon was tightlipped
about his girlfriend, Luciana Barroso, Rob considers having
O’Dell mention her in the lead anyway. Then they can
show the footage they have of the couple canoodling at a recent
Red Sox game. “Our viewers don’t want to hear
somebody talking about their character in a movie,”
Rob says. “They want to know what’s going on with
them.”
“That’s
a fun, little difficult line to tread on,” observes
Brittany. “But you shouldn’t lead with the girlfriend.”
“You’re
right, it’s not good enough,” agrees Rob. Score
another for Brittany Murphy. “Lead with Ocean’s
12,” Rob tells Nancy, “then go to Bourne Supremacy,
then do the Burning Question tag.”
The
Burning Question, Rob explains finishing his call with Nancy,
is a new feature on Access where viewers submit, via e-mail,
the probing personal questions they want posed to their favorite
celebrities. “So instead of us having to ask the tough
question,” Rob says slyly, “we would hand you
our Burning Questions--we actually have them in a Weber grill
with smoke coming out--and you pick one. If you don’t
want to answer it, you can throw it away.”
“So
it becomes something funny,” applauds Murphy, adding
that she’d much rather take on a Burning Question than
entertain the faux-intimate “We’re best friends”
song and dance some journalists use to try and get at the
dirt. “That’s the Jann Carl,” Rob declares,
referring to a personality on Access’s chief competitor
Entertainment Tonight. “Like going up to Robert Downey
Jr. and saying, ‘How are you feeling’?”
Brittany
recalls encountering just such a tactic at the 2004 MTV Movie
Awards, which she attended shortly after breaking off her
engagement from talent manager Jeff Kwatinetz. “The
first thing everyone on the red carpet said was, ‘How
are you feeling?’” Brittany says, laughing. “And
I said, ‘I’m feeling great! I’m at the MTV
Movie Awards!’ And then they’d try to come in
at another angle, like ‘How is single life?’ It’s
so hysterical to see people dance around it.”
Suddenly,
Rob glances at his watch and jumps up. “We gotta rush
to the set!”
Brittany
grabs her clipboard and follows Rob outside. “This place
is like a well-oiled machine,” she marvels, hopping
into a waiting golf cart. “They don’t have time
to lollygag.”
11:00
AM
Rob
zips his across the lot to the Access set while Brittany rides
shotgun and reflects on her adventure so far.
“The
thing that I find the strangest is teetering the line of democracy
and morality,” she says. Speaking of which, does she
feel that the media have been fair to her so far in her career?
“You can’t classify the media as one thing because
it’s not,” she asserts. “There are people
that I’ve never met that have written things about me
that are completely false, but I’ve seen accurate things
as well. You have to take everything with a grain of salt.”
Does she regret being so open about her personal life in the
press? “Not at all,” she says without a moment’s
hesitation, “because I’ve learned from it. I’ve
learned to preserve my own privacy and there’s always
a way to do that.”
“It’s
like with the photographers,” she continues. “A
friend of mine once said that once they’re there, they’ll
always be there, looking for your worst moments and your best
moments. So I think one has to find some sort of peace somewhere
or else you go insane. And you have to have a sense of humor
about it all. What other option is there, to be unhappy all
the time? Being happy is a choice and you can make that choice
every day if you want to.”
Rob
and Brittany arrive and jump out of the golf cart. On the
way inside, a giddy young fan on an NBC Studio tour asks Brittany
if she will pose for a photo with her. Brittany happily obliges.
“I’m just honored that anyone would even remember
me,” he says afterwards then tears off after Rob.
11:20
AM
Brittany
takes a seat next to Rob in the Access control room and watches
the wall of monitors as hosts Shawn Robinson and Tony Potts
tape their stand-up segments for today’s show. While
reading over the anchors’ copy on Rob’s computer,
Brittany spots an ‘also’ she thinks is unnecessary
and points it out to Rob. He concurs and the ‘also’
goes.
One
of the segments in today’s show is a red carpet interview
with Bruce Willis conducted by Adrianna Costa, a fresh-faced
Jennifer Garner-type who is auditioning to be an Access regular.
After introducing Brittany to Adrianna, the three of them
watch the Willis piece together, then confer in private for
several minutes.
“Brittany had very good insight into what we should
do with her,” Rob reports after Adrianna leaves. “She
said, ‘Have her dress the way she normally dresses and
I bet she does great,’ so the next time out that’s
what she’s doing.”
“If
someone else is picking out your clothes and doing your hair
and makeup and you look in the mirror and it doesn’t
look like you, it’s not good,” says Murphy, clearly
speaking from experience. “When America gets to see
her as herself, they are going to absolutely fall in love
with her because she’s so spectacular.”
When
Brittany excuses herself to dash to the ladies room, Rob admits
that it’s a bit disconcerting to have someone his show
regularly covers shadowing him all day. “I feel like
I’m giving away trade secrets,” he says, laughing,
“but you know what? We’re not trying to hide anything.”
So what’s his impression of Brittany so far? “She
really goes out of her way to show you that she is as normal
as you get at the level she’s at,” he says. “I
mean, she’s killing me with kindness here. After the
stuff she’s gone through, with the relationships and
all that, it’s exciting that she can look at shows like
this and embrace them.” Anything else? “And I
think she’s absolutely gorgeous.”
1:30
PM
Murphy
has about twenty minutes to woof some lunch in the studio
green room before shooting some on-camera segments about Little
Black Book. Though the film has plenty of light-hearted romantic
comedy moments, it’s refreshingly honest about how messy
and crazy-making contemporary romantic relationships can be.
“I’ve realized recently that romantically, I am
an eternal optimist,” she says when asked what she knows
about love today that she didn’t a three years ago.
“And I’ve learned to never to lose track of living
for the day, living for the moment and to not forget to play
with the person that you love. Communication is overwhelmingly
important. If you’re talking about your relationship
to other people more than you’re talking about it with
the person you’re in the relationship with, then you’ve
got a problem.”
If
Brittany has any scars from her romantic travails she hides
them well. “Sometimes it takes what at the time may
be really challenging things, really crummy things to force
adverse patterns,” she says, before finishing off her
peanut butter and jelly sandwich, “but I think it’s
worth it. I feel blessed for all the bad experiences and all
the good ones. I feel the most comfortable within myself that
I ever have in my life.”
1:45
PM
With
today’s show wrapped, the set is free for Brittany to
tape an on-camera introduction to a segment about Little Black
Book, which will air next week. “I am just so glad to
be here to introduce my new film,” she says cheerfully
into the swooping camera. “Here’s your first look!”
When Rob suggests she up the bubbly-factor, Brittany teasingly
goes all Method on him, whining, “What’s my motivation?”
The next take is perfect. The gruff, seen-it-all camera operator
appears to have fallen in love.
3:30
PM
“Five
Day, Five Day, Five Day, Five Day…”
Back
in the office, Access segment producer and on-camera film
critic Clay Smith rounds up the show’s producing staff
for the weekly Five Day Meeting, where the events and personalities
slated to be covered over the next week are heatedly discussed.
“This will be an eye opener because we actually talk
about each celebrity,” Rob cautions as he and Brittany
take their seats at the conference table. “Some brutal
things get thrown out about people.”
Smith
brings the meeting to order then starts listing the stories
planned for Monday. “Kelly Clarkson is doing a new video,”
he announces. “Anything for Kelly Clarkson?”
The
staff shouts out possible questions, nearly all of which have
to do with the TV show Clarkson broke out on, American Idol.
“Why don’t we separate her from the Idols?”
Brittany suggests. As someone who’s managed to make
the tough transition from spunky sidekick to glam leading
lady, it’s not a surprise that Brittany’s keen
to support the creative evolution of her fellow artists. “I
think as a vocalist, Kelly will be around for the long haul,”
she adds.
Tuesday’s
possibilities include an interview with a well-known comic
actor who is soon going to be appearing on Broadway. Rob pooh-poohs
the idea instantly, not because it’s not newsworthy,
but because he can’t stand the guy. “He’s
a mean, mean man,” he says emphatically, “a meanie
meanie.” No one disagrees.
Next Wednesday, Clay announces, Access will be interviewing
Lynne Spears about the just-opened room in Boston’s
Onyx hotel that has been decked-out to resemble her daughter
Britney’s childhood bedroom. “How does she feel
about Britney getting married?” suggests one producer.
This, of course, is the obvious question for Lynne Spears
at this moment in history, yet there is a general feeling
among the Access staff that it’s going to be a tricky
subject to broach. “But why should it be?” wonders
Rob. “Come on, this is a great thing! Britney’s
getting married. It’s a happy thing. If she was getting
divorced, it would be different.”
“I can’t see a bad thing coming out of it,”
agrees Brittany, “unless you gave her the Burning Question
which I assume you wouldn’t.”
“We’re
not going to give her the Burning Question,” Rob says
teasingly. Though they just met this morning, Brittany and
Rob are now playing off each other like a seasoned comedy
duo. Look out Nick and Jessica.
As more celebrities are exalted and/or trashed, Brittany’s
face alternates between disbelief and delight. Brittany admits
that the staff’s unflagging energy and quick-to-laugh
camaraderie is pretty contagious, especially to a pop culture
junkie like herself. “No one here seems jaded,”
Brittany says. “I’m actually having a blast.”
One
of the meeting’s biggest laughs comes when a producer
asks Rob what quotes he should ask the attendees at a charity
event next Thursday. After hearing the rather lackluster line-up
of talent slated to appear, Rob suggests having the stars
tape on-camera well wishes to a relative whose celebrating
his bar mitzvah.
After
wrapping up the day-to-day rundown, Clay opens up the floor
for pitches. Brittany suggests Access do a story about a man
she knows called “Radio Man,” a eccentric but
well-liked New Yorker who has been hanging out on film sets
and befriending celebrities--like George Clooney, Whoopie
Goldberg and Drew Barrymoore--for years. “We’d
be filming Uptown Girls in Westchester and he’d drive
there on his bike in the pouring rain,” recalls Murphy.
“He’s a really nice guy with a really interesting
story. I have his cell number.”
Rob is visibly intrigued and after getting more details about
Radio Man from Brittany, agrees to consider doing a story
on him for November sweeps. “I can’t believe I
actually pitched a story that might make sweeps!” says
Brittany delightedly. “That’s pretty cool. I’m
using the word cool a lot today.”
The
meeting is winding down when an associate producer dashes
in. “Courtney Love was just taken away in an ambulance!”
he says. This means that today’s story on Love will
have to be updated…and fast. No one seems particularly
shocked or saddened but Brittany.
4:30
PM
The
Love ambulance update is still on Brittany’s mind a
few minutes later when she sits down at an outdoor patio table
to reflect on her day at Access. “There were moments
today when my heart broke and I said a quick prayer for somebody
that I didn’t know,” she reveals, “but for
the staff it was exciting because they’re in the news
business and it’s a big story. It’s odd, dancing
on the line of morality.” And tiring. “I’ve
worked much longer days than this acting but this was more
draining,” she observes. “It’s like making
a whole film every day. They’re telling their whole
story every day. Watching the show come together was a very
satisfying experience. I have so much respect for people that
do this for a living.”
Before
heading home, Brittany heads back inside to say thank you
and bid farewell to Rob and his team. “Next time I watch
Access Hollywood, I’ll think of every single little
thing I’ve learned today,” she vows. “I’ll
never view it the same way again.”
With
that, Brittany turns on her green platform heel and strides
confidently down the hall to the exit. If her feet hurt, she’s
not complaining.
END.
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