So much has changed in the year since I first talked to Leslie Grossman, who plays Mary Cherry on Popular. Her publicist takes my calls now, for one thing. And although I don�t have her home phone number (a very wise move on her part, by the way), she has actually started to write me emails from her husband�s email account. She has also adopted a Chihuahua who is named Oscar. �Originally I named him 'Gorgeous,' but my husband put his foot down. He was like, �Look, I already agreed to own a Chihuahua, don�t make me run down the street shouting, �Gorgeous! Come to daddy!"��
Leslie told me I could ask her anything. Her only stipulation was that I wouldn�t let her swear. Last time I interviewed her, Leslie�s father found the interview while surfing the web and was shocked at the profanity.
Okay, you know those Vanity Fair puff pieces where a writer like Kevin Sessums or Michael Schnayerson just gushes about how Gwyneth Paltrow arrives at his door with take-out from Dean and Deluca -- because she�s so sweet and down to earth -- and they walk around Manhattan and shop and she smokes a lot of Marlboro Lights?
Oh, of course. Have you ever read that article in Brill�s Content about all those celebrity articles? Every single one of them is the same. The women are described as �down to earth� and �disarming� and the men are all �boyishly charming.�
Exactly. So what would you and I be doing if I were writing a cover article about you for Vanity Fair?
You�d come visit me in my trailer in Burbank which smells like a Porta-John. You�d go, �This isn�t glamourous!� And I�d go, �I know! It�s like living in a Porta-John.� And you�d go, �God, I never imagined it would be like this with this orange carpeting.� It would be really loud because there was this construction site nearby, and we�d eat Lay�s BBQ Potato Chips because that�s as fancy as Craft Services gets. And there�d be nobody bringing me a latte. I�d have to go and make it myself in the half-broken machine.
And then I�d write about how disarming and down to earth you are.
And how youthful I look in person despite the fact that I�m 29.
No way! I thought you were a precocious twelve-year-old.
Exactly.