Going Off Script (18 page)

“Ah, roses!”

“How many can you get?”

“Enough.”

“Let’s do two dozen.”

“Okay, no problem, you going to like it.”

“No, can you do the centerpiece like the picture we sent you?”

“Don’t
-a
worry!”

When they faxed a photo of the centerpiece they had put
together, it bore no resemblance to what I had ordered. The menu was having similar ad-lib issues. Everything fell into place once we were in Italy and I could be hands on, with backup from Mama DePandi and my personal assistant turned wedding planner, who kept banging his forehead against the wall and whimpering, “I don’t speak Italian!”

Then Mama threw a curveball.

Only native Italians were allowed to actually get married in the Catholic Church on Capri, she informed us. Ummmm, had she thought to break this little bit of news to us before we had put down a $25,000 deposit on the hotel and sent out two hundred invitations to people, of whom 190 had RSVP’d “yes” and booked their nonrefundable travel to Europe? Presumably this “natives only” rule was set in place to prevent foreign tourists from booking up the church and forcing the locals to live indefinitely in sin, but I wasn’t foreign, strictly speaking, and as practicing Catholics, Bill and I didn’t want just a pretty destination ceremony. We wanted the church wedding. Mama consulted with her old parish priest in Naples and assured us she had a solution. We just had to do what she said. That alone should have made us nervous, but we were stressed enough already, so we just felt relieved and grateful. She told us we’d have to go to the government office in Naples and take some test.

Once we were there, a sour little bureaucrat handed us some forms in Italian.

“Si, si, brava!”
Bill said, pretty much using up his entire Italian vocabulary. The bureaucrat eyed us suspiciously and turned his back to run off some copies at the Xerox machine. Mama had told him we were all Italian. Scanning the documents, I assumed this was the Italian equivalent of filing for a marriage license, but judging from Mama’s cues, you had to be an Italian citizen to get one.

We’re screwed,
I thought. There was no way Mr. Si Si Brava
could pass as a native son now that he had opened his big Croatian American mouth. Mama sidled up next to Bill to help with his forms while the official’s back was still turned. The bureaucrat watched us leave with his arms folded and a scowl on his face. We made it out of the government office without getting arrested for wedding fraud and assumed the coast was clear.

Mama pulled me aside. “Giuliana, I know you’re leaving, but you have to fill out some important paperwork tomorrow in Naples. They said you have to do this before you can have the ceremony in Capri.” It was just a few forms, she said, and it didn’t mean anything. We hadn’t come to Italy planning to have the equivalent of a civil ceremony, and a legal wedding date a month before the one we had chosen, without our friends there to bear witness and help celebrate.

The next morning, there was a knock on our door. Bill opened it, and all my local relatives were standing there, holding plates of cookies and bouquets of flowers dyed green, for some superstitious Italian reason. They had been tipped off by Mama that we were getting legally married that morning, even though the supposed bride and groom had no idea at this point. I told Bill that the family just wanted us all to go to church together and that we needed to fill out some paperwork before our wedding in Capri. We set off, with Bill wearing shorts and me in jeans. A dozen Italian relatives surrounded us, and the uncles and male cousins tugged at Bill’s arm, trying to peel him away. I attempted to get between them, like one of those wildebeests on a
National Geographic
special who try to protect the most vulnerable ones when lions move in to separate them from the herd. It didn’t work, and Bill was carried away. Pretty soon, he called out.

“Jule, c’mere!” He understands Italian way better than he can speak it, and what he’d been able to put together from the uncles’ chattering alarmed him.

“Why do people keep saying ‘You’re getting married!’ and congratulating me?” he asked.

“Don’t listen to them! We’re just going to church!” I insisted.

Once inside the church, though, they suddenly split us up, and Bill had to go in the back. The priest was there with all these forms in Italian, and Mama was yelling at him to go. He returned with someone from the Italian consulate. Bill had to prove he could read and speak Italian. The guy spoke to me first, and Bill heard him say, “and William Rancica” so he said, “Mmm hmmm,
si signor.
”

We left the church, with the relatives congratulating Bill again and saying, “Let’s go celebrate and eat!”

Bill turned to me with a confused look.

“Did I just get married? I’m not understanding what happened.”

“I have no idea,” I said. “I’ll ask my mom later.”

Her explanation never did make sense to me, in Italian or English, but technically, we may have gotten legally married in shorts and jeans with a ragtag bridal party holding green flowers more than a month before our planned wedding date of September 1, 2007.

Bill bitterly refers to the incident as his “ambush wedding.”

When the real wedding weekend arrived, I was at the hair salon in Capri the afternoon before the rehearsal dinner when I overheard one of the customers say, “Finally, it’s raining!” I almost snapped my neck looking out the window and couldn’t believe my eyes. It was drizzling. “Four months without a drop of rain, and tonight we finally get rain. Amen!” the receptionist chimed in. Everyone was happy and smiling, but my eyes welled with tears and I raced back to the hotel to grab Bill.

I was still panting from the run when I grabbed him.

“It’s raining, Bill! It’s raining on our wedding weekend, and tonight the entire dinner is outdoors and it’s going to be ruined!”

Bill ran to the window, surveyed the sky, and put his hands on my shoulders.

“I promise you, the sky will part and the sun will come out. There will be no rain at the rehearsal dinner.” Lo and behold, he was right! At dinner, we watched great swaths of blazing violet and orange paint the sky as the sun slipped into the Mediterranean Sea. It was the most spectacular sunset I’d ever seen. A sneak preview, it turned out, of the gorgeous wedding day I woke up to.

There are moments every bride cherishes on the day she becomes a wife. For me, it was my first glimpse of Bill, waiting for me at the altar, so tall and handsome in a tuxedo my father the master tailor had made for him, his eyes filled with a love that I knew God had meant only for me.

Looking into those eyes, I began reciting my vows. It’s a bit eerie now when I watch our wedding tape and see the exact moment when it hit me how real this commitment was, how eternal this bond. Tears I couldn’t stop began streaming down my face as I spoke aloud those five simple words:

In sickness, and in health…

B
arely a month after our wedding, Ted Harbert, the E! Networks president who had made me anchor, approached Bill and me with the proposition that sparked our first philosophical disagreement as husband and wife. Our wedding special had drawn over three million viewers, a one-episode blockbuster that was Style’s highest-rated special ever. And that was before it re-aired domestically and aired internationally for five years following our wedding. Now my bosses wanted us to do a reality show. Bill, the practical one, was mortified. I was intrigued.

“Why would we even consider it?” Bill wanted to know. “What’s the upside?”

“Bill, why does there always have to be an upside?” I teased. “Do something just because it’s fun and an adventure!” I honestly thought it would be a lighthearted romp through the park. It
appealed to my impulsive nature and tendency to live life out loud, anyway.

Looking at it, as was his nature, from a business perspective, I had to admit it didn’t make sense, though. Or dollars. The only reality stars who get rich exposing their lives for the world to dissect are the ones ambitious enough to use the show and their newfound celebrity as a branding opportunity for an already viable business venture. Bethenny Frankel had managed to parlay her three-season
Real Housewives of New York
platform into a multimillion-dollar Skinnygirl Cocktail empire, but any number of Bravolebrities who’d stuck around for much longer runs on air worked their asses off to hawk makeup, jewelry, or accessory lines with very modest, if any, success. Far more have ended up in financial straits, not to mention divorce court, jail, or all of the above. The desire to be on TV can quickly turn aspirational people into desperate attention whores who will stoop to just about anything to stay on TV. I’ve seen them try to fake fights, affairs, and scandals to get on the cover of the weekly magazines in the hopes of keeping their ratings up and their shows renewed. It’s so pathetic.

Even celebrities who were accustomed to being in front of the camera have ended up feeling the pressure of public scrutiny and private manipulation and watched their marriages fall victim to the “reality show curse”—Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott, Bruce and Kris Jenner. In my years at E!, I had probably interviewed every big reality star at some point or another, though, and I felt like I had a unique perspective on this weird corner of pop culture. My belief is that reality shows accelerate your marriage forward in whatever lane it happens to be in. If you’re headed for divorce, you’ll get there faster. But part of me wondered whether the opposite could be equally true: If you’re solid and happy to begin with, would putting yourselves in a glass bowl make that bond even stronger?

“Let’s make marriage look cool,” I urged Bill. “What harm can come from that?”

Besides, I pointed out, he had already been on a reality show when he competed in and won the first season of
The Apprentice.

“That was all about business,” Bill objected. “They didn’t follow me into my bathroom and bedroom!”

I had no such qualms. Culturally, I was predisposed not to have any expectation of privacy whatsoever, thanks to my crazy Italian family. Case in point: my first period. I was thirteen, and it came in the middle of a big Fourth of July barbecue we were having, with all the Italian aunts, uncles, and cousins over. I was all freaked out, but Mama was busy with all the guests, so I went outside to sit on the brick wall lining our driveway and wait for Monica to come home. She was in the eleventh grade and would know what to do. My sister pulled up in her white Rabbit convertible with her cool friends.

“What’s up, loser?” she greeted me.

“I think I got my period,” I confided.

“What?!” She and her bitchy friends immediately ran to the backyard, and I chased after, hoping she wasn’t about to do exactly what she did:

“Mom, everyone!” I heard her crow. “Giuliana got her period!”

Everyone started applauding, the cousins started hooting, all the aunties and mothers dabbed at tears, and I was hoisted up onto a table. Uncles started handing me hundred-dollar bills. I ran inside crying.

It was even worse my second cycle, when we were in Italy for our annual August vacation. This time, it was ninety degrees outside and oppressively humid, and we were walking everywhere to say hello to all the relatives and old friends. I wasn’t allowed to wear tampons (“You’re Italian, you don’t wear tampons!” Mama had decreed) because they would steal my virginity
(and then what? I would be forced into a shotgun marriage with a box of Tampax?). Unfortunately, I had a really heavy flow, and I had to use four pads at a time, fashioning them into a bulky Kotex diaper that anyone around me could hear squishing as I walked. As we toured the town with me in my period pants, hot and miserable and crampy, I would look for the nearest place to sit down when we ducked inside the hair salon, bakery, or wherever Mama, the grand marshal of our little parade, decided to stop. When we went inside our family friend Maurizio’s clothing store, everyone was greeting each other while I sat off in a corner with my eyes half closed, mouth-breathing over my braces, my bad perm sticking out in ten different directions, and I overheard Maurizio suddenly ask, “But where is Giuliana?”

“Giuliana? She’s right over there!” my parents exclaimed, pointing to me like a zoo specimen.

“
That’s
Giuliana?” Maurizio said, remembering the little blond angel who had left Naples six years earlier. His voice dropped lower, but I could still hear him. “What’s wrong with her? Is she…” Political correctness hadn’t made it to Italy yet, and my eyes flew open at the Italian word. “…A mongoloido?” My parents seemed shocked and swiftly set the record straight:

“No, she just has her period!!”

Worried that I might leave the wrong impression elsewhere as I traipsed through Naples in my period pants, my family made it a point to inform anyone and everyone from then on that Giuliana was menstruating.

So there was no possible way I could end up embarrassed on a reality show. It’s pretty much impossible to offend me. I’ve been immunized for life.

“We can use it for good instead of evil,” I urged Bill. Honestly, we didn’t have any big issues to reveal, and we were both so committed to maintaining integrity and authenticity that the only way we would sign an agreement was if we were allowed
to produce the show ourselves rather than handing the steering wheel over to someone else. Granted, that would give us the power to refuse to air footage if we chose, but that wasn’t our motive and we never exercised that option: We wanted an ironclad guarantee that what viewers saw was our unaltered reality. No ginned-up story lines, and no major cast members except us. Friends we’d never met would not suddenly materialize to go on vacation and fight with us. Bill agreed to give it a go.

When we went to the semiannual Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, California, where networks present their new lineup of shows to over two hundred columnists, critics, and reporters at once, the very first question out of the pack was one we’d asked ourselves:

“Why would anyone watch the two of you?”

I said something along the lines of us feeling that people were hungry for something more positive, that this was just the beginning of a new trend, a whole wave of reality shows that were more down to earth and that people could relate to. “We want to inspire people, not disgust them,” I explained. The critics’ reaction seemed to waver between total disinterest and open hostility. When we walked off stage, Bill looked at me with something just short of terror in his eyes. “Maybe this is not such a great idea,” he said.

Back on stage, the press was gobbling up another new E! reality offering:
Leave It to Lamas,
featuring Lorenzo Lamas’s multi-divorced family and a story line revolving around his grown daughter’s attempts to reconcile Lorenzo and the son who no longer spoke to him. Mike Fleiss, who produced
The Bachelor
and was behind the Lamas show, was going on and on about the drama and scandal this family had to offer when a reporter jumped in and said, “The Rancics were just out here, and they said people are tired of that sort of thing and are craving positive reality shows.” Mike gave him a sardonic smile and replied,
“That show won’t last one season.” Funny thing is, the Lamases were gone in four episodes; we’ve aired over eighty. When it came to real-time drama, we would turn out to have more than enough to spare.

On the first day of filming, we were expecting two cameras, an audio guy, and a producer to show up. Instead, we opened the door of my one-bedroom Wilshire Boulevard condo to a traveling circus of fifteen people, including two executive producers, a network executive, and a director. Two trucks were blocking valet parking, people were loitering in the hallway because they couldn’t all fit into our living room, and building management was freaking out and telling us we needed various permits. We needed more than that. Some Valium, for example: Bill was ready to pop my head off my body. Our supposedly low-key little glimpse inside the life of two newlywed lovebirds was suddenly a Spielberg movie. Our little kitchen was overtaken by the day’s catered spread for the crew, while the rest of the condo was busy getting an unwelcome makeover. Big paper globe lanterns known as China balls were permanently affixed to the ceilings of our bedroom, kitchen, living room, bathroom, and closet. Filters were put over all the can lights in our ceiling, and our windows were coated with a dark tint. Sloppily, it turned out; Bill was super pissed when he saw all the bubbles left behind. It felt like we’d signed the wrong contract and had accidentally agreed to let moles flip our house.

“Um, so you take this all down at the end of the day and put it back again next time, right?” I said brightly.

“Oh, no, we’re going to leave it here for several months,” the producer replied. “We’re shooting ten episodes.”

After they called it a wrap that afternoon, Bill surveyed the muddy footprints, half-eaten sandwiches, empty toilet-paper rolls, and other assorted debris left behind.

“This is so invasive,” he complained.

It didn’t get any better, but I kept trying to make excuses until I ran out.

“Maybe we could live somewhere else and just come here to film,” I suggested. Bill looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and disgust.

“That’s not reality, honey,” he said. Integrity is one of Bill’s sexiest qualities, but it can also be one of the most frustrating when he feels like he has to examine everything so carefully under his personal microscope. Sometimes you just have to live life ad-lib. From the get-go,
Giuliana and Bill
was a major bone of contention between us, and we argued about it constantly. But you can’t break that invisible “fourth wall” on TV and talk about being on TV while you’re on it. So the very subject that was dominating our lives and causing the most friction was taboo when the cameras were around. Instead, we’d have to pretend we weren’t pissed off when the crews arrived, and sit and talk about our day.

External Me:
“So how was your day, honey?”

Internal Me:
Just be nice for the fucking cameras, Bill, is that too much to ask?

External Bill:
“Good! How was yours?”

Internal Bill:
Actually, I’m terrible, because I had no idea I was marrying a camera whore!

External Me:
“Good, I just found out I’m interviewing Angelina Jolie next week!”

Internal Me:
It’s not my fault you come across as such a stick-in-the-mud.

External Bill:
“That’s great, honey! So, I went to check out a new building I’m thinking of buying today.”

Internal Bill:
And maybe after I kill you for getting us into this, I’ll bury your body in the foundation.

External Me:
“Really? That sounds exciting!”

Internal Me:
Maybe I should’ve just held out for George Clooney, after all.

Every scene that first season, we’d watch and then second-guess afterwards. Did we say too much? Not show enough? Bill thought I was being too candid; I thought he was being too uptight.

“This isn’t going to work if you won’t open up!” I lectured him.

“Well, you’re acting like an over-exaggerated version of yourself!” he shot back. When we gave our separate on-air interviews—the ones they call “confessionals”—we would sometimes end up surprised by the other person’s take on whatever had just happened. Watching later, we would look at each other: “Really?
That’s
what you thought?” Bill would be surprised when I dissed some friend of his he thought I liked; I would be pissed when the camera caught him being curt with my mother and rolling his eyes behind her back when she was bugging him while he was trying to work.

“Why do you want to do this so bad?” Bill was getting exasperated. He kept issuing dire predictions about
Giuliana and Bill
hurting our marriage; I kept insisting that our marriage was stronger and bigger than our reality show.
Giuliana and Bill
were like some passive-aggressive clone couple whose sole purpose was to aggravate us to death so they could take over our life. It’s true that I was getting most of the attention. Reality shows tend to favor women more than men—shopping, lunching, and gossipy spa days are always good fodder for the cameras. Women make up the majority of the viewers, and they’re not interested in watching guys sit around and talk about Sunday’s big game or how the market is doing. There’s a much finer line for men to walk on reality TV: guys who participate too much will draw resentment and ridicule for being wannabe
Housewives
(witness
Slade Smiley from Orange County and Simon van Kempen from New York), but the ones who balk and just lurk in the background can end up vilified as selfish jerks or just plain shady. Producers loved it when they got me in some funny, relatable predicament like buying an oversized, overpriced sofa behind Bill’s back, but then Bill would end up the killjoy talking on camera about budgeting and finances. The straight guy never gets credit.