Review
It's Been a Minute
Review
It's Been a Minute
BRITTANY LUSE, HOST:
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luse, and you're listening to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
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LUSE: I love celebrity memoirs. They can be glamorous and full of gossip or phenomenal time capsules of a bygone era, and a select few are impressively written stories that tell us something deeper about the construction of fame and celebrity. And 2023 was a big year for celebrity memoirs. There were the heavy hitters like Britney Spears and Barbra Streisand, but also Julia Fox, John Stamos and Laura Dern.
CLAIRE PARKER: Can I say...
LUSE: What?
PARKER: ...We started the year with Prince Harry from "Spare," and I just realized that sitting down to you.
(CROSSTALK)
PARKER: And I just went, this year has been too long. We must get to the next one. I can't take it anymore.
ASHLEY HAMILTON: We had Paris Hilton. We had Pam Anderson.
PARKER: Oh, my gosh, Werner Herzog.
LUSE: It was nonstop, nonstop.
If you're a loyal listener, you'll recognize those voices. It's Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton, hosts of the "Celebrity Memoir Book Club" podcast. We had them on the show in October to discuss Britney Spears' bombshell memoir, "The Woman In Me."
She really got into the woman in all of us, honestly.
PARKER: I was going to say, now she's a part of all of us, I believe. I think we're all right there with her. If you read that book, it stays in you.
LUSE: The woman in us.
This time, we're bringing Ashley and Claire on to examine this watershed year for the celeb memoir and what the best memoirs this year can tell us about the machinations of celebrity.
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LUSE: Ashley, Claire, welcome back to IT'S BEEN A MINUTE.
PARKER: Thank you so much.
HAMILTON: Oh, my God, it's been a minute, but I'm so happy to talk to you.
(LAUGHTER)
LUSE: So as we've discussed, it's a big year for the celebrity memoir. But do you guys have any ideas why it was such a big book year for the rich and famous?
HAMILTON: First of all, I think that the idea of a celebrity memoir started to, like, reemerge as something our generation of celebrity could be doing right before the pandemic.
LUSE: Yes. Yeah.
HAMILTON: Mariah Carey announced her book in 2020, and Jessica Simpson came out in 2020. So then I think the pandemic started.
LUSE: Yeah.
HAMILTON: Everyone had nothing to do, so a bunch of celebrities sat down and finally wrote their memoirs. There's been enough time that, like, the memoirs that came out in, like, 2021 got enough attention that people were like, I got to get my memoir out. And so it's, like, crescendoing (ph).
PARKER: It's much like the skincare industry. If you're a celebrity...
LUSE: (Laughter).
HAMILTON: Yeah.
PARKER: ...And you thought about writing a book - you have skin. Surely you wash it. Tell us how.
(LAUGHTER)
PARKER: You were a kid once, imaginably. Why don't we delve into that?
HAMILTON: And I think it's only going to just, like, go crazier because we had SAG-AFTRA's strike this year.
LUSE: Oh, my gosh.
HAMILTON: And when [expletive] have time they give us books.
LUSE: I totally see why celebrities would get in on that, but like, why do you think audiences are eating them up? - because I mean, I'm audiences. I'm eating them up. I'm talking about them.
PARKER: I think we live in a stan (ph) culture moment right now, and I also think we're living in an interesting PR culture moment right now. And everyone's desperate to know what's really going on back there. And I think we are all like, how much power do these people really have? Are they so special? Are they so different? They're being so exalted right now by, like, the stan culture on Twitter, that I think to bring them down as people and, like, find out the truth - I don't know.
LUSE: Yeah.
PARKER: I just think there's so much speculation that to hear it from them, we're, like, chomping at the bit to find out.
LUSE: That's a really good point. You know, speaking of which, what do you think makes a good celebrity memoir? Ashley, what are your thoughts?
HAMILTON: I mean, we overall tend to look for growth more than acknowledgment, I think. I think that if you are going to, like, write out your life experiences to, like, know the story that you want to tell and to be able to, like, show the way you've developed as a person over time I think is kind of all we're looking for. Take ownership of your actions and, like, explain to us how we got from point A to point B and, like, be a little honest about it.
PARKER: I would also say empathy.
HAMILTON: Empathy, yeah.
PARKER: I think something that we have had a hard time with celebrities is their ability to be like, well, this was a bad thing that happened to me, and because of that, I shut down. And everyone thought I was being a diva, but in actuality, I was just very nervous, and I was scared. And you have to understand, I had my agent who was really being kind of toxic to me, and so because of that, I came across this way. And that's what I want you to know about what was going on behind the scenes.
We completely have compassion for that. But what's hard for us is when they turn around and say, but I worked with this other girl, and she actually was a diva. And she was so quiet, and she didn't talk to anybody. And you're going, could you potentially maybe expand your mind to think that she was going through the exact same thing you were going through when you were both on the same set with the same toxic director? I think Jamie Lynn Spears is...
HAMILTON: A really good example.
PARKER: ...Maybe the No. 1 guilty party of such a problem of - she's sitting there being like, you have to understand, I was going through something horrible, but then what happened to Britney, that had to happen.
HAMILTON: That was her fault.
PARKER: She deserved it. And you're like - yeah.
LUSE: Yeah. You grow enough to be able to see the ways in which you're imperfect, but you can't extrapolate that to other people. OK, I want to get to some of your recommendations now. So today we have each brought two of our favorite celeb memoirs for 2023. And I would love to get into some of them, starting with Claire. What was your first pick?
PARKER: I think I'm going to go Minka Kelly, "Tell Me Everything." She is known for her role in "Friday Night Lights" and honestly not much else besides, like, an incredible dating history. This woman has quite the roster. And I think when her book came out, a lot of people said, what could she have to say? She was just in this one show. But she has a lot to say. She is somebody who came from tough background. She was with her mother who struggled with addiction, who struggled with having a stable income and employment. They were sometimes unhoused. And then it's a lot about the work she has done on herself to try to heal the relationships in her life and work on, like, the relationships she builds with the people around her, understanding that her, like, foundation might be cracked.
LUSE: I wonder, what did this book change about your perception of her?
PARKER: I knew her as a pretty girl, and I just went, oh, she's just some hot girl in LA who - it worked out but not necessarily because of talent. And I think one of the most shocking facts about her is that actually, before she even started acting, she was a nurse.
HAMILTON: She had a - like, a hard time in school. She was never, like, top of the class and, like, really set out to be like, I need to prove to myself that I can graduate from this program. And she gave it her all and did it, and then worked as a scrub nurse for a couple of years because she was fascinated by surgery and bodies and science. I found that very moving and down to earth because that was a really hard thing for her to achieve. And it was something that she's so proud of. One of the most unlikeable things that celebrities can do in their memoirs is write about celebrity as if it's something everyone in the world should want to achieve.
PARKER: I think that's something that really I got from the book - is a lot of times we're so, like, mean to women who are beautiful that end up in Hollywood, that we feel like, oh, that's all they have. Her story really showed, yeah, she did happen to be very beautiful, and that got her a more stable opportunity. And who are we to begrudge her that?
LUSE: That's a really good point. Ashley, I want to hear from you. What's your first pick for your favorite memoir of 2023?
HAMILTON: I am going to go with "Thicker Than Water" by Kerry Washington. I'm a big "Scandal" girl and - I don't know. There was something about Kerry Washington that I, like, really followed through a good portion of her career. And I really admire how private she is about her personal life. Another thing I always talk about is, like, you can play the game or not play the game. Like, if you want to strictly act, you can do that. But if you want the awards and the magazine covers and certain levels of publicity, there are certain nuggets that you have to allow the public. And I think that she does a really good job of telling you about herself and sharing...
LUSE: True.
HAMILTON: ...The part of her story that she wants to share without violating her personal boundaries of privacy.
PARKER: She does what I think is more important than the gossip, which is the humanity. She shares a deeply intimate and vulnerable story about her family and her upbringing that has a plot twist, which is - not everybody's life has a plot twist at 40.
LUSE: True. She finds out the father that she grew up with is not her biological dad, and in fact, her biological dad was a sperm donor because her parents were having trouble conceiving naturally.
HAMILTON: And she's never able to find him because the records had been destroyed at that point. I will say another thing that I give her - she does know what the readers of her book are likely fans of, and she does, like, just enough career stuff that you're never sitting there wondering, well, like, how did you get from that apartment in the Bronx to being a celebrity?
LUSE: (Laughter) Right. I think that the release of the recent Beyonce concert tour documentary has had me thinking a lot about celebrity privacy, how, like, I certainly can't understand some of the mechanics of it. Some people I feel like are inconsistent, where they're sort of like, respect my privacy except...
HAMILTON: I agree with you. I think people can either be consistent about what they want to share, or they need to be a little bit more protective in putting some walls up. I think that's different. When they waffle - I mean, the way the Kardashians waffle back and forth...
LUSE: That's who I was thinking of.
HAMILTON: ...The way they put their entire lives out there for consumption, and then they'll say like, oh, actually, can you respect my privacy during this time? And it's like, no, actually, the reason you have this audience is because you went up to this stage and said, everything that I do - good, bad, ugly - is open for discussion. And that's why people follow you, like...
PARKER: My feeling is, have you sold it to us? Have you made money on...
HAMILTON: Yeah.
PARKER: ...This part of your life? If so, then you do owe us answers. I think especially I look at influencers who are, like, dating influencers and using their own perfect relationship as proof and evidence of how much they know what they're talking about. If you and that perfect boyfriend broke up and you've been giving me advice on how to find a similar boyfriend, then I kind of think you owe me a little bit of information. However, if you are a nail art person who every day gets up...
LUSE: Yeah.
PARKER: ...And shows me how to do nails...
LUSE: I don't need the details of your divorce.
PARKER: Yeah, that - your divorce is not my - you can say, oh, I'm having a hard time right now. I don't get to pry and say, well, what's custody like?
HAMILTON: (Laughter).
LUSE: I'm glad you all are bringing up this point, though, about whether or not someone has, like, sort of, like, made money or really made a strong effort to garner attention for themselves through their relationships and how you expect them to be honest about that to a certain degree in their book. That makes me think of my - one of my picks.
PARKER: Oh, yeah. Sorry, we have to...
LUSE: No, it's all right.
HAMILTON: Ooh, yes.
LUSE: One of my picks for this year as far as my favorite celebrity memoirs - OK, this person in some ways was not honest about their relationship...
PARKER: I know who it is.
LUSE: ...Which is one of the main reasons that you wanted to come to read it. But I still really enjoyed it. It was Jada Pinkett Smith's "Worthy." I deeply enjoyed how much she shared about her young life growing up in Baltimore and navigating her early years in Hollywood. I hold the criticism that parts of the book that focused on her relationship with Will Smith were, like, vague.
PARKER: Oh, my gosh, there were so many things that I go, I hope I'm not really in love because apparently being in love makes you so silly. It makes you say some really - I don't ever want to have to say, my man noticed that in a mirror your left hand is on the right side. Isn't that wild?
LUSE: Sometimes I'm, like, reading the book, and I'm like, I don't know, girl. Like, I don't know if this was a psyop on you, but like, I feel like maybe...
HAMILTON: I have been a staunch Jada Pinkett Smith defender.
PARKER: Yes, we defend her.
HAMILTON: Was it a perfect book? No. Is she being completely honest about her relationship? No. Is she wading out there to do the best she can in a very toxic environment that is obsessive about convincing the world that every time she tilts her head to the left, she's signaling for demons to come curse Will Smith.
LUSE: Oh, my gosh. Yes.
HAMILTON: Like, the way that people are so crazy about her, I'm like, yeah, I don't know. She's a little nutty, and you guys drive her crazy.
LUSE: Right. Exactly. And also, like, her husband got to write his entire book. He said a lot of the same things that she said in her book.
HAMILTON: A lot of the things that I found most horrible about Will from Jada's book are the things he wrote...
LUSE: In his own book.
HAMILTON: ...In his book. Like, the way that she was going through, like, a horrible depression...
LUSE: Yes.
HAMILTON: ...And then he, like, insisted on throwing her birthday party, even though...
LUSE: She wanted - yeah.
HAMILTON: ...That was the last thing she wanted - like, that is from his book. She just, like, adds one element of her perspective to it...
LUSE: Exactly.
HAMILTON: ...Which is basically the same thing that was in his book, which is that she had been down and then he wanted to throw this big party. And she said, please don't.
LUSE: He did it anyway.
HAMILTON: And then he said, I'm going to.
LUSE: Yeah. And she didn't like it. And that, again, was also in his book. And he reflected on it because he realized, oh, I kind of was being selfish then.
PARKER: I always say, I don't want the memoir that someone else in the room could have written. If someone could watch you and write the same thing you wrote down, then what is your added perspective? Only Jada can explain to me why - after she did that YouTube video with Will saying that she had an entanglement with August, and her entire team begged her not to put it online because everyone was going to come after her and it was going to make her look really bad - only she can tell me why she went forward...
LUSE: And did that.
PARKER: ...With that video that he crashed and wasn't even supposed to be a part of.
LUSE: Yeah (laughter).
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LUSE: Coming up, Ashley, Claire and I give our second picks for our favorite celebrity memoirs of the year. And later on, we get into the way celebrities have used their platforms, for better or worse, to shed light on important issues.
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LUSE: Claire, what is your second pick for your favorite celebrity memoir of 2023?
PARKER: So I would recommend Pamela Anderson's "Love, Pamela." It was initially an epic poem she wrote - a 60-page poem - that her editor said, I think you need to add sentences.
LUSE: (Laughter).
PARKER: And she went back, and she obliged, thankfully, because I will say the poem alone wasn't really everything I was looking for. It is a perfect recommendation. It's a perfect - I don't want to say beach read 'cause it's quite heavy in some parts, but it's easy to consume. It has both the glamour but the honesty of what it's like to be a sex icon in America who's hounded and adored and built up and then ripped down. And it has nothing but hope and love and a beautiful story of someone's attempt to do good in this world.
LUSE: I feel like Pamela's book really explains a lot about, like, the machinations of fame. It's hard to describe to people who may not remember or who were not sentient yet at the time that "Baywatch" was on TV, but it was, like, everywhere. The show was huge. I think, between, like, her Playboy bunny status and her "Baywatch" role and being this rock 'n' roll wife and having this very famous sex tape when sex tapes were really a huge deal back in the day, like, there was so much lore around her that it was very interesting to hear from her perspective how to be a person in the middle of all those projections. And I feel like that, to me, is also something big that, like, a memoir can do - is explain to you, as the reader...
PARKER: Yeah.
LUSE: ...Intentionally or unintentionally, how fame works.
PARKER: It's hard to remember when people become just tabloid stories - and I'm guilty of it, too - that these people who seem to have everything - like, you go, how could you have 1 billion superfans on the planet? How did you get in a bad situation? How did you find someone who wasn't treating you right? How do you get...
LUSE: Yeah.
PARKER: ...Cheated on when you're Pam Anderson? And you can know it. You could be like, of course they're still human. But when you read their stories, you go, no, a human being gets their heart broken, and it sucks.
LUSE: So true. Yeah. I also feel like Pamela Anderson, with her memoir - I felt like it was ushering in sort of a renaissance of reevaluation of, like, her public persona in a way that I also found really interesting and also felt very, like, 2023. But Ashley, I want to hear from you. What is your second pick?
HAMILTON: OK. I'm going to say, like, kind of a crazy one...
LUSE: OK.
HAMILTON: ...For a reason - not that it's a good book - the best book of the year.
LUSE: OK.
HAMILTON: And I think it got made fun of a lot more than it needed to, even by us.
PARKER: What are you going to say?
HAMILTON: It is "Spare" by Prince Harry.
LUSE: Oh, my gosh (laughter).
HAMILTON: I...
PARKER: Ashley, what kind of wild card...
HAMILTON: Yeah.
PARKER: ...You - what are you talking about?
LUSE: Let's hear her out. Let's hear her out. I got to hear this reasoning.
HAMILTON: Because I think that this is one of the funnest books to discuss of the year. Like, I think that if you are looking for, like, a book club book - a book to like, read and, like, you want to yammer about - like, there is a lot in here. First of all, I do think it was pretty well written. Almost everything that you want to read from his book is in that book. Like, there is very little that I wanted out of it that I didn't get out of it.
PARKER: It is true. You're like, what did Kate say to Meghan? And he's like, here's what she said, and here are the texts.
LUSE: (Laughter).
HAMILTON: There's so much that he says where you're like, does he understand, when he's like, it wasn't fancy - the fact that you're like, and all I wanted to do is play with my Pa, but the butler said we had to stay in the room. My childhood wasn't different than anyone else's. And I'm like, oh. I think that a lot of the issues with Prince Harry's book are the inability to examine his self, and I think that he is as vulnerable as he can figure out how to be.
LUSE: Hmm. Hmm.
PARKER: I'll agree. He does not know the difference between what he's saying and what - how he comes across. And I think he's been so insulated his whole life.
HAMILTON: Yeah.
PARKER: And also, I think when you've been attacked unfairly by the media, you develop, like, a guard around you where you truly can't tell the difference between valid and unfair criticism.
LUSE: I feel like just reading a large amount of memoirs - like, books that people are writing about themselves - shows you just how differently men and women are socialized to think about themselves and talk about themselves.
HAMILTON: I will say another thing about him is he at least knows that the way things have always been isn't right.
LUSE: Yeah.
HAMILTON: Do you know what I mean? He doesn't know how to fix it, and he won't try.
PARKER: He doesn't do the hard work of unlearning what you take for granted. He's like, I would love to speak out against these causes, but I'm not allowed 'cause I'm royal. And I'm like, well, who has the gun to your head?
LUSE: (Laughter).
PARKER: Like, I mean, I don't know.
HAMILTON: Yeah.
PARKER: They didn't want you to write this book either. It's interesting where you break the rules and where you're willing to push yourself outside of the boundaries and how interesting that it's to defend yourself and not to defend the other people.
LUSE: All this talk about using your platform is bringing me to my second pick. My second pick for one of my favorite memoirs this year is actually written by a man...
HAMILTON: (Gasps).
PARKER: (Gasps).
LUSE: ...And actually - written by - actually written by a man - and written by a man who actually had lots of interesting things to say and also who had something really important that he wanted to share and talk about. And that is Elliot Page's memoir, "Pageboy."
PARKER: I was - OK, I realized - I was like...
LUSE: Yes.
PARKER: ...What? OK, I caught up.
LUSE: Yeah, you were like, what man had something interesting to say this year?
HAMILTON: And I was like, I swear to God, if she says John Stamos...
LUSE: Yes. No, it was not going to be John Stamos. I chose this one because of how considerate and how thoughtful it was.
HAMILTON: Yes.
LUSE: Like, Elliot is an actor I admired for a long time, and someone who had already been thinking out loud about his identity and his place in the world for, like, a long time and had used his platform to speak up about issues that he cared about, especially with respect to the LGBTQ+ community. And I really appreciated this book because he talked about everything from, like, growing up as a kid in, like, Nova Scotia, basically, to having people question his sexuality when he was in his early adulthood, when movies like "Whip It" and "Juno" were really popular and how harmful that was. But I also really appreciated his reflections and insights on his journey as a trans man. The sections about navigating, like, his dating life post-transition and figuring out what kind of masculinity he wanted to embody and - his book was definitely the kind of celebrity memoir that was, like, written as a means of talking about an important issue or experience. Like, I could see this being a book that people add to a syllabus or something like that. What did you think?
HAMILTON: Celebrity doesn't protect you from certain things. The way that Elliot Page was at, I think, peak fame and having just horrifically homophobic things screamed at him at a party...
LUSE: Yeah.
HAMILTON: ...I am just - and it was public, and people were witnessing it.
LUSE: By another celebrity, yeah.
PARKER: And, like, presumably liberal people who would all get out there and win a GLAAD award.
LUSE: Yeah.
PARKER: And it seems like nobody stood up for him. And so when you...
HAMILTON: Yeah.
PARKER: ...Really realize how deeply entrenched these, like, biases are - and this idea that we've come so far, and then he can say from the top of the fame mountain - what you would think would be one of the safer places to be - that he is getting abused there too, it really forces you to reckon with how much more work there is to be done.
LUSE: Yes. And I mean, lots of different celebrities have used their memoirs as opportunities to sort of, like, shed light on important issues. I wonder, which celebrity memoirs do you feel like have done that effectively?
HAMILTON: Yeah, I was going to say, I think Jeanette McCurdy was a really good example of childhood abuse and eating disorders as well. Like, I think a good line about it is like, where is it, like, someone is telling their story that is just also a story that many people can relate to - they just don't have the platform to tell it - or a - I have this experience, and you can't relate to me? Like, those are the ones where they - it just doesn't translate to me. I think we see that a lot with addiction. A lot of people write about their addiction in this way where they think that they are, like, the only person to have ever experienced it.
PARKER: I will say it's - I think that something like addiction or an eating disorder are these, like, lifelong battles that you fight, and it's hard sometimes when you're in it to even know where you are in that battle. And I think we've read books of people who feel they're having a good phase and they can write, and then later realize they were not as healed as they thought they were. And then therefore, they're sharing this "healed," quote-unquote, perspective from a place that's still struggling, and so what they're projecting out there is actually not useful. But it can be harmful because they're saying, oh, this is a healed thought that I have, when really, it's actually someone who's just in a different phase of their problems.
LUSE: Claire, Ashley, you gave me a lot to think about today. Thank you so, so much for joining me.
ASHLEY HAMILTON AND CLAIRE PARKER: Thank you so much for having us.
LUSE: As we've discussed on this show, we are currently living through the era of the celebrity-funded and celebrity-directed celebrity documentary. And in this time, there is something kind of refreshing about the nakedness of intent with the celeb memoir. It doesn't try to be a textbook. It doesn't try to win a Pulitzer. It's just a book where a celebrity tells you about their lives. Sometimes they're great. Most of the time they're OK. And sometimes they're just straight up godawful. But it's kind of nice how a celebrity memoir doesn't try to dress itself up as something else. And then on the rare occasions where a story like Jeanette McCurdy's or Mariah Carey's breaks through and makes an impact, it has all the more value.
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LUSE: This episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE was produced by...
ALEXIS WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Alexis Williams.
LUSE: Our editor is...
JESSICA PLACZEK, BYLINE: Jessica Placzek.
LUSE: Engineering support came from...
MAGGIE LUTHAR, BYLINE: Maggie Luthar.
LUSE: We had fact-checking help from...
AYDA POURASAD, BYLINE: Ayda Pourasad (ph).
LUSE: Our executive producer is...
VERALYN WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Veralyn Williams.
LUSE: Our VP of programming is...
YOLANDA SANGWENI, BYLINE: Yolanda Sangweni.
LUSE: All right. That's all for this episode of IT'S BEEN A MINUTE from NPR. I'm Brittany Luse. Talk soon.
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