#popentertainment

Adrianne Curry

It's Her Surreal Life

by Ronald Sklar

Copyright ©2008 PopEntertainment.com.  All rights reserved.  Posted: March 15, 2008. 

The last person you would consider having a clear-eyed take on reality is a reality TV star-slash-model-slash-two-time-Playboy subject. However, Adrianne Curry is finding the real and keeping it. 

Formerly of VH1's The Surreal Life and currently of that same channel's hit series My Fair Brady (co-starring husband Christopher Knight), Curry has become one of those rare outsized personalities that are hard to contain, even within an unscripted reality series. 

"When it comes to our reality, what you see is what you get," she says. "People are like diamonds. There are many facets to a stone, but people are only seeing the one facet shining at them. People perceive that as 'oh, that must be everything that person is.' And it's so far from it. 

"People think that reality TV must be so invasive, but when I see what they're airing, it's such a small aspect of myself that I don't even feel like I've been violated. I feel like people are only seeing me through tunnel vision. Reality TV is a bunch of over-edited sound bites." 

Her own sound is never, ever bitten; biting her tongue is an act she does not practice. 

Curry has made quite a name (and a face, and a body) for herself as an outspoken and memorable standout in an overcrowded and quickly forgettable TV genre. 

"I just know that our audience knows that I'm real," she says. "I'm not into scripted things. That can't be me, because that's a lie. And I'm not a good liar. I can act and be someone else, but I can't act and be me." 

The real her is what took her far from her humble beginnings in Joliet, Illinois. She hatched her persona more quietly than you would expect, shedding very little of that hard shell. 

She worked as a local model for the Midwestern fashion and commercial market. It was a far cry from the New York photo studios and European runways on which she would eventually sashay. 

"I had tried out for lame little modeling things," she recalls. "It was mostly to boost my self-esteem. I was heavily into drugs throughout my teens. I didn't have much thought or much of a future planned out. 

"Once I started cleaning up my act near the end, that's when it occurred to me. Everybody was telling me, 'wow, you're so tall and beautiful. You should model.' So I thought that maybe I should try for it. And if it wasn't for the lame-o modeling things I had done, I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to do what I eventually did."

That "eventually" was groundbreaking, as she became the very first America's Next Top Model, clenching the contest in a surprising upset and becoming not only America's next top model, but one of America's next top reality stars. 

"I came home from work one day [as a waitress] and my mom told me that she had seen the commercial [for local Top Model auditions] on UPN," she says. "And I believe I sat there for four hours waiting for it to come back on." 

She took herself – and that personality – to the audition and then to the series itself, helping to make it an instant hit. Still, she never expected to become a finalist, let alone win the whole sh-bang. 

"I had prepared myself so I wouldn't look like those loser beauty queens that would sit there and cry and look like an idiot," she says. "I had made sure that I was ready when [favorite Shannon Stewart] would win. I was going to be all cool and I was going to hold it together. I did not put in my battle plan at all." 

When the unexpected happened, she remained cool as a cuke.  And like the butterfly who still has a little bit of moth in her, she flitted off for more fabulous pastures. 

"It was definitely wonderful," she says of Top Model, "but of all the things I have done, it was definitely the most stressful thing I have ever done in my life. You don't eat on regular time. You don't sleep on regular time. It feels almost military-esque. People are telling you how to be, where to go, who to talk to. It's crazy." 

Her big break earned her some even bigger breaks in the industry, but her super-sized personality could not contain her as a paper doll. Her tendency to be opinionated often lost her lucrative modeling jobs, but gained her a new career on television, where mouths and natural-flowing outrageousness are more than most welcome. 

"There were times where I knew I would get the job if I acted the dumb idiot part and maybe did some things that I would never live with myself for doing," she says. "But I didn't. Then I ended up having everybody think I was fabulous, but not the kind of person you can tell what to do. 

"Models are meant to be nameless beings. The age of the supermodel is over. It's over. They just want ghosts walking around, and I wasn't that. Everybody said you need to go back to television. You've got a personality." 

She tried her hand at a number of TV projects, mostly misses (Rock Me, Baby;Hot Properties). However, the misses are what hit the bull's eye. 

"For me, every time I get knocked down, I always come back so much stronger than before," she says. "Every time I get defeated, I'll wallow in it for a second, and I hate to say this, because it sounds awful, but I have this revenge mindset. It's like, oh, this didn't work out? Well, I'll show them. I'll do something else. And I know that that isn't the most healthy, but that's what pushed me to where I am today." 

She got her revenge with The Surreal Life, where she had a second chance to turn heads. One head in particular that turned hard was former Brady Buncher Christopher Knight, with whom she has lived, married and co-starred in reality TV heaven. 

"We're normally happier when the cameras are turned off," she says of their very public relationship.  "However, I'm twenty-five and I'm going through my maturing phase, my soul-searching phase, asking-all-the-questions-of-life phase. Everyone goes through it. 

"At one point, I said to my husband, 'I don't think I can ever work with you again!' I don't think it had anything to do with Reality; it's just that I'm trying to find myself. At that point, I was kind of weak. I call it my Great Purge. Frankly, I don't give a crap what people think about he and I. I come home to somebody who loves me every day. And that's all that matters."

Although we are privy to a good part of their relationship, the most baffling and telling aspect of their dynamic may be that Curry has never seen an episode of the series that made her husband an American icon. Curry may be one of two people on this planet (along with, perhaps a pygmy tribe in New Guinea, but even that's debatable), who has never watched an entire episode of The Brady Bunch. 

"He asked me a few weeks ago, 'why won't you watch the show?'" she says. "I would rather wait until I have children that can really appreciate it. After being twenty-five-years old and seeing and doing the things I've done, it's like somebody coming up to me and saying, 'Barney rocks!' 

"I mean, you can be a Brady Bunch fan. That's fine. But if you're older, and you're sitting there laughing and you don't have a kid sitting next to you, then something is wrong. It's a children's show. It's for kids. It's wholesome and it's great, and I can't wait until I can sit there with my kid and say, 'dude, that's your dad!'"

It may not be as easy for her to share with her kids the two Playboy spreads she had done in recent years, but regrets? Negatory. 

"For Playboy, my only worry was if I do this, are people going to forget everything I've ever done before and think that I am only a Playboy girl?" she says. "It was definitely a good experience, but that was my only worry." 

In addition, she has made girl-watching history as one of Maxim's hottest women of all time. 

"Maxim I had absolutely no say in, but I was flattered," she says. "That came two years after being a waitress, I made their Hot 100. I was like, 'damn. Well, okay.' I mean, it's definitely flattering, but beauty is only skin deep and can only last so long. So at least I made it in my lifetime." 

With her lifetime checklist perhaps half-completed at such a young age, she is confident and determined in her next steps along life's catwalk. 

"For the entire duration of my career, people have been like, 'oh, her fifteen minutes will be up in three months.' It's now been five years, and I'm still here," she says. "I felt the good, bad and the ugly while I did it. But it was all worth it. Definitely all worth it." 

Her outspokenness, including frank talk about her bisexuality on radio programs like The Howard Stern Show, has left an even deeper impression on the public.   Curry chalks it up to growing pains. 

"I don't know if I regret what I said, but I regret I spent my entire teen years flushing [my feelings] down the toilet instead of learning, growing and maturing," she says. "Sure, there are things that I've said that now, in retrospect, I think, 'how stupid.' But it's all part of growing up. 

"Sadly, I've been documented going from being a juvenile delinquent to an adult. During that time, you're definitely going to have some slip ups, and I've had them. Sadly, they get written in stone and can be used against you at any time. And frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." 

True that, as she knows that she will always have a place to go if the dream ever dies. 

"I am always going home," she says of Joliet, Illinois. "My friends and family see me so much. Life to me is not material things. Because I have so much family back there and so many friends, if everything blew up in my face, if my marriage went into a shambles, my career hit the slopes, I would not see it as unrealistic of me going back to where my roots were.  

"I think I could actually do it. Would I want to? No. I'm working very hard to see if I could provide for myself and I long to be so wealthy some day that I can help anyone that I wanted charity wise, family wise. But if I hit hard times, I wouldn't think the world was over. 

"A lot of my friends back home can't watch my show, because a lot of them think they'll kill Chris if they see him being mean to me. It disturbs them and it's kind of scary to see me on TV. Sometimes it will come up like, 'whoa, man, isn't it weird that you're famous?' Other than that, everybody just treats me the same." 

For all of her bravado and charisma, she still longs for a bit of simplicity and common everydayness, if she can fit into that challenging size. 

"I'm saving money to go to college," she says, "so when this is all over, I'll have enough to support myself while I learn what I need to do," she says. "I'm probably going to start taking some on-line classes really soon, just to get the general stuff out of the way. I would love to counsel people, but who the hell would want to come to me for counseling? That's a little scary." 

Matt Czuchry

Gilmore guy

by Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2006 PopEntertainment.com.  All rights reserved.  Posted: March 3, 2006.

It isn’t easy to just jump into arguably the smartest long-running series on television – one known for its brilliant writing and strong ensemble cast – and make an immediate impression.  However, Matt Czuchry made it look simple.

Czuchry joined the cast of Gilmore Girls in the popular show’s fifth season.  At that point the story was in flux.  Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) had moved away from home to go to Yale.  This led to growing pains for her and her mother Lorelai (Lauren Graham), as both struggled to cope with changes in their relationship and their places in each other's lives.  Despite going off to college, Rory was still holding onto her past and having relationships with hometown guys when she met Czuchry’s character, Logan Huntzberger – a privileged, somewhat spoiled, brilliant-but-unmotivated, thrill-seeking publishing heir.  It was a case of dislike at first sight, however there was an undeniable attraction between the two.  As Rory and Logan have gotten to know each other, grown closer and tried to get past their differences and their problems, Matt Czuchry has become the latest breakout star from the series. 

As the sixth season of Gilmore Girls was winding down, Czuchry braved a cold to sit down with us and tell us about his career and theshow.

How did you first get involved in acting?

My junior year in college I took some Meisner courses outside of school.  I played tennis in college, so I didn’t major in theater just because of the time constraint.  I took some classes outside of college and really fell in love with those classes.  Then when it became to make the decision of what to do, I didn’t want to go to law school, so I decided that I would try to pursue acting in some form.  You know, when I first graduated college it wasn’t like, okay, I’m moving out to LA. 

Did you ever consider going pro at tennis?

You know, it was a very, very quick and brief thought.  But I just wasn’t good enough to play at that level. 

A friend of mine is a big fan of Dark Shadows, and he tells me that you were going to be in a new version of the series a few years ago.  How did you get that role and what happened to the show?

I did the pilot of Dark Shadows.  It’s been a couple of years now.  I played a character called Willie Loomis, who was – kind of what happens is he gets bitten by the vampire Barnabas and he becomes kind of his right-hand henchman.  I’m a big fan of horror movies and comic books and that genre.  It was a lot of fun to do.  The two projects that got picked up that year were – that was the year Jack & Bobby got picked up and The Mountain.  I think that during that period of time, it was kind of when The OC was really popping and I think that the decisions were made to go towards a younger audience with those two shows.  Whereas Dark Shadows, it was kind of a disturbing piece, actually.  It skewed a little bit older than the main demographic for the WB, and I think that’s why they went a different way.

Speaking of going for a younger demographic, the first time I remember seeing you was in Hack...

Oh, nice, man…

Which you were brought into on the second season to bring in some young blood.  I’m from Philadelphia, so I was a big fan (the show was filmed in Philly.)  At the time it was on I interviewed George Dzundza, who you kind of ended up replacing.  What was it like being on that show?

I’ve lived in LA for six and a half years.  Each of the stepping stones [leads] to the next.  Hack is a huge reason why I’m onGilmore Girls now.  I say that because just watching David Morse and Andre Braugher work, it was just…

They’re both amazing actors…

I was able to be around them and soak that up like a sponge.  It was incredible.  Both of them are so good and so successful and they’re both completely different in the way that – David kind of works a lot from the inside out and Andre works from the outside out.  (laughs)  Both of their styles work so well for them.  I was able to just learn as an actor around them.  Also, what I loved about them was they came to work every single day, prepared.  They have families and they would go home to their families.  They were great actors and great people.  Especially David, because most of my scenes were with David – he really became a mentor to me.  So my time there was wonderful. 

Gilmore Girls was already a well established series when you auditioned for it.  How familiar were you with the show and how exciting was it to get an opportunity to be a part of it?

I was very familiar with the show.  When I came on, it had already been on for four seasons.  I came in the fifth season.  I was very familiar with the show because it’s such a unique show.  So those first couple of days of work were very surreal, being a part of it.  It was a project that I had been familiar with as a fan and also had auditioned for several times before getting the character of Logan. 

Logan was originally only supposed to a limited amount of episodes.  When did you get the feeling that he may last longer?

Well, at the point where I came in, it had already been established that it was going to kind of be a year long thing.  A thirteen episode kind of thing.  So I knew coming into it that it was for that long.  Of course, for it being extended further than that, I had no idea.  But I did know that he was going to play an important part in that fifth season of the storyline.

The series is famous for its smart dialogue and fast quips.  Do you ever get a script and have to look up some of the topical references?

(laughs)  Yes.  Absolutely.  I have a dictionary close by when I’m preparing the scene.  I definitely have a dictionary close by to look up certain words, or references of certain people. 

In a lot of ways, Rory is such a romantic and Logan is rather cynical.  Why do you think they work as a couple?

I think that those differences bring them together.  We’ve seen this season how they’ve learned from each other with that.  Logan sees that romantic nature in Rory and wants a little piece of that.  I think Logan opens Rory up to a new side of the universe that she hasn’t seen.  So those differences bring them together. 

I know you mostly work with Alexis (Bledel, who plays Rory); what’s she like to work with?

I was thinking last night, it’s unbelievable how Alexis has been able to shoulder a TV show with so much of the pressure for six years.  She got the job when she was seventeen or eighteen. Alexis and Lauren – it’s their show.  They have to shoulder so much of the responsibility and pressures and demands of being on a TV show.  Just the amount of time and work and effort that goes into it.  She’s very, very inspirational to me that she can shoulder this burden.  She’s been doing it for six years and she’s twenty-three now.  That’s what’s most impressive to me.  It’s kind of a joy to watch just how she’s able to go from scene to scene and day to day and be able to shoulder the burden of the show. 

Now, I’ve only seen you in Hack and Gilmore Girls, and the characters of Jamie and Logan are very different in most ways, but one thing they had in common is that they had some run-ins with the law.  Obviously Logan is rich enough that he isn’t doing it for profit.  Do you think it was just boredom on his part that he gets into trouble so often?

I think that it comes from a place of – that he has all the means necessary to do whatever he wants.  You mentioned that, with the money.  It’s just a kind of a feeling of – he feels like he’s untouchable, in a way.  Anytime he’s ever gotten in trouble, he’s been able to get out of it.  So he doesn’t have a frame of reference where he gets into trouble and it really, really puts people in danger for any extended period of time.  He has these means to him, so he does whatever he wants because he can.  The difference – with Jamie is very, very much completely different with Hack.  A lot of those were because he was a troubled kid, he’d get into trouble and I don’t think that – Logan’s not a troubled kid.  He has all these means and he takes advantage of it.

In all of the episodes revolving around the newspaper, Logan is usually not willing to work hard but when he does do work it is pretty much acknowledged that he is a very talented journalist.  Then in the recent episode where they had to get the paper out in a few hours, he pitched in totally and it showed he knew a lot about the business side of publishing too.  Do you think he is avoiding working too much on it to piss off his father?  Do you see him getting into the newspaper business eventually?

You know, that episode was very telling as to the capabilities that Logan has.  It’s not that he can’t do it; it’s just that he doesn’t want to.  You saw with that episode that if he wants to do it, he’d be very, very successful at it, because he’s been around it his whole entire life.  I think that a lot of times it has to do with because he’s grown up with it and his father says you have to do this, it is a certain thing that he is just rebelling against his father.  That’s one piece of it.  The other piece, I also believe, is that at least at this point in his life, Logan wants to do other things.  It goes back to the other question you asked me.  He wants to experience life in a different way at age twenty-two.  He doesn’t want to be that responsible kid that he thinks would happen as an adult.  So it’s two-fold.  One, he is rebelling against his father, and two, he doesn’t want to live as an adult right now.  He wants to be a kid and take all the advantages as a kid.  Where he’ll go down the line, hopefully there are going to be some storylines come into play.  We’ll see as the season progresses.  I think it would be very interesting to see who he would be as an adult in the business world.  It certainly makes sense for him, if he is going to be an adult in the business world, to be a part of the paper in some fashion.  I’m hopeful, actually, that Logan at some point – when he decides, okay, I have to become adult – that is the path that he takes.

I know that you’re ahead of me as far as what you know on the storyline, but in the last aired episode Logan’s father comes down on him hard and tells him he’s going to have to spend a year in London.  Now I’m assuming since we’re talking now that Logan won’t be gone for that long, but did that whole turn of events surprise you?

I know that things have been building kind of to the end of the show and the last couple of episodes that have been on the air are kind of pushing the storylines towards where they want to finish the season.  So, I think that piece specifically was just to show that it’s not going to be smooth sailing for Logan and Rory.  They have issues to face – in their relationship and externally as well.  Those things haven’t gone away.  Those differences that they have are still issues, you know?  So I think that’s what that piece was about.  So I think it was kind of just setting up those ending storylines.  It didn’t surprise me, because I felt it was about that.

Logan and his family have had so many problems over the two seasons that you’ve been on.  Do you see there being a big blowout somewhere down the line?  As a trust fund baby who is so used to a certain lifestyle, do you think that Logan could ever just completely cut himself off from them?  Or do you think he’d sort of toe the line to stay with the family and the money?

He certainly has walked that line over the course of the last two seasons.  We’ve seen him walk that line where he’s able to – Logan is very good at understanding people’s limits.  Pushing them to their limits, but not over them.  That’s a characteristic that he has that’s very important with his family and his relationships.  So he’s able to push that family to the limit of frustration, but not cutting him off.  If at any point if somebody went to their limit and he went too far, I think he’d bring them back a little bit.  (laughs)  So that’s kind of how I’d answer that…

Speaking of turn of events, on this season’s episodes there has been a certain amount of controversy amongst the fans because for the first time in the series, the relationship between Lorelai and Rory has been rather strained.  Do you think it’s just a reflection of the natural tendency for college-aged girls to fight with their mothers?

I think it was strained in the beginning of this season because their relationship was going to go to a new place.  At any time, to have growth, it kind of becomes strained first.  That’s what we saw in the beginning of the season.  Rory was finding her own way – in a different light that was influenced a lot by Logan’s character and what we’ve talked about so far.  Their relationship was strained, because it was going to go through a period of growth throughout this season.  I think that they’re starting to talk together about different things.  They’re both – their relationship is now different.  I think that it’s going to be at a higher level.  The conversations that they have, the honesty that they have and the relationship that they have is going to be even stronger that it was in years past.  In order to get to that new place, they had to go through that strain.

When I was in college, big party weekends usually didn’t revolve around staying in heated tents, drinking fine wines, wearing ape masks and jumping off towers with umbrellas.  Do you think that sense of fancifulness is one of the charms of the series?

(laughs)  That was, you know – last season the Life and Death Brigade – certainly an element of storylines that the new character Logan brought to the show, which I thought was wonderful.  It was a side which you could see instantly who this guy was.  He has huge amounts of money.  He takes risks.  He’s going to spare no expense to have fun.  Those are three huge pieces that we’ve seen carried through last year and into this year.  Those storylines are going to come up again towards the end of this season, as far as the taking risks aspect was concerned.  So it was a perfect way to show in kind of a fantasy world and a heightened reality.  I mean, (laughs) certainly I never went to any of those kinds of parties.  That’s what Logan’s life is.  It is heightened.  It is almost a fantasy world that he lives in.  It was a perfect way to show a lot of his characteristics, but not force it on the audience.  That was a very fun episode for me. 

I read an interview with (series creator) Amy Sherman-Palladino recently in which she said that with the recent merge of the WB & UPN to become the CW things were a little up in the air for the show and it hasn’t been renewed yet.  That was kind of surprising to me, because in all the articles I read about the merger at the time Gilmore Girls was one of only a handful of series on both networks that were considered a given to return.  Have you heard any more news about how the merger is going to affect the show?

We have not been officially renewed.  I think most of those things happen in May timeframe as far as it being officially renewed.  With the talk of the merger, a lot of people are just looking at the top-rated shows for the WB and UPN.  And Gilmore Girls this season has been either one or two this year in the WB.  So I think that when they were looking at – as far as whether it would be television or news – where they’re talking about this merger, they looked at what the top-rated shows are on both of those networks and figured that those would be the ones that would be the flagship shows to start off the new network.  Although it’s not official, it certainly would make sense that they would keep one of their highest rated shows.  But it’s definitely not official and I think anytime you’re looking at something different it is up in the air.  Until, basically, they give us the official word that we all have jobs, then (laughs) it’s not official, you know?  That’s the way it is.  But if you could try and make an educated guess on things – and that’s what people have been doing – if you made an educated guess it certainly would seem that Gilmore Girlswould be back.  But at this point it is still just a guess.

Do you have any ideas for the show that you’d love to see them do – either about Logan’s character or more in general?

I would like to see if they could develop the business side of Logan’s character more.  Like those instances at the paper, but at an even higher level as far as in the business world as an adult.  He’s close to graduating, so if he is going to graduate, it would be interesting to see who Logan would be as an adult in the business world.  That would certainly be something that I’d like to see.

Ideally, how would you like for people to see your career?

When I first came to LA and I sat down with my dad, we were talking about a game plan.  It was the slow road to the things that I wanted to do.  Very purposeful.  I think that we’ve seen that in the six and a half years it’s been kind of incremental for me.  That’s very important to me; to build that skill set incrementally and to develop as an actor as I move forward.  And then taking that into the future, it’s just making choices that are challenging for me as an actor.  Trying to vanish into these different characters.  That’s the goal.  One of my favorite actors is Philip Seymour Hoffman.  I’ve followed his career ever since way, way back, and he’s been able to do that – whether it’s been Boogie Nights, Magnolia or The Talented Mr. Ripley.  That run, and of course now you see it with Capote.  It’s about the work that he does.  In order to answer your question very quickly that’s what it is.  I want it to be about the work that I’ve done and not about anything external. 

Are there any misconceptions you’d like to clear up?