Spelling It Like It Is by Spelling Tori

Author:Spelling, Tori [Spelling, Tori]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2013-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

Reality Check

The next time Patti came for our weekly session, Dr. J and Amy were keeping me company when she arrived. As they left the room, Dr. J said to Patti, “Move that placenta!” He’s a medical doctor, so he was a bit cynical about Patti’s spiritual mumbo jumbo, but Patti was truly helping me take charge of my emotional state.

I told her the good news from Dr. Silverman but quickly added that I was scared to get too excited. Patti always sees things from an angle I can’t anticipate. She said, “Don’t think about wanting an outcome or not getting the outcome you want. Just be hopeful in the moment. Stay present and have hope.” It was so simple, so clear and direct. By the time our session was over, I was brimming with hope.

Then I checked my e-mail. Sitting in my inbox was a message from my agent Ruthanne. It said, “I tried to call you but couldn’t reach you. I hate to tell you by e-mail, but I want you to hear it from me: Oxygen called. They said the network is moving in a different direction and the show is canceled. I’m so sorry. Let’s talk as soon as you’re ready.” I couldn’t believe it. Tori & Dean was over? The show had been our life—literally—for six years.

I flashed back to another time when bad news had come to me electronically. I was in Toronto with Dean when I got the news that my sitcom, So noTORIous, had been unceremoniously canceled. This was the same sinking feeling. A feeling of loss and powerlessness. All that work with so many people I loved uniting to create a show I was proud of. Then some executives made a decision and it was over, just like that.

Adding insult to injury, after all these years working together, sharing my life and family with them on-screen, nobody from the network had even bothered to contact me personally.

For six years Tori & Dean had followed our lives. It was a reality show. Having it rejected felt like our lives—or the story of us—was being rejected. Before I called Ruthanne, or Dean, or anyone else to process this news, I put my phone down and rested my head back against the pillow, crying silently, thinking about the journey Dean and I had taken in the course of making the show.

AS MOST PEOPLE know, the lines of reality in reality TV get blurred. Our lives might be interesting enough for TV, but there is still no such thing as straight documentary, ever, in film or TV. They can’t just turn on a camera, run it nonstop for hours on end, and then air the tape from start to finish. Everything has to be edited to have a structure. Everything needs to be given a narrative shape.

The very first season of the show had a really straightforward hook. Dean and I were going to open a bed-and-breakfast together, and I was pregnant with our first child.

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