It's nine O G Engine with Jenny Garth and Tory spelling there Hi, Oh my gosh, this is wild.
Yeah, I'm a little grayer than last time. We probably saw each other.
A silver fuck I've seen you.
You have. I don't say this was I that was like five, six, seven years ago. I don't know. I can't remember. I think I was. Yeah, I think I was great, great, pretty gray.
It looks so good on you.
Oh, thank you, thank you. So it's like you.
Weren't an actor, like I came in and took a meeting with you producing.
That's right.
The roles were reversed. It was awesome, it was great.
It was great.
Michael Dets. You still look the same you do. You look exactly the same, but you have a great wing on. It's weird.
It's kind of yeah, a little older. God, I mean, what are we talking.
Like thirty twenty thirty years it's twenty eight.
I don't know.
You were in season six.
Yeah, so that was yeah.
Yeah, you were a doctor or not a you were a resident.
I was a I was like a med student, med student something.
Yeah, they like kept mentioning that, right, Yeah, don't you.
Think it's a little unethical for a med student to hit on one of his patients.
I think, so, yeah, I'm going to go with yes. And you were in for cocaine, weren't you.
Right, I'm a great catch.
At that point, you're like, oh, I think they're like, we got to throw it in. He's not a doctor, so maybe this storyline is okay. Yeah, exactly, he's in training.
Well.
It was crazy because I may have mentioned this back in the day, but like, really quick, I was at Penn State my second year, watching nine to two and on a black and white TV in my dorm room. Never it acted, and uh, and I watched it. It was almost coming up on and I was like, first of all, I had a crush on a little crush on Jenny when I was watching it, and I was like,
Beverly Hills. I had never been to California, and I was like, it looks like a great place to live, and these guys look like they're having fun doing this show. And I called my mom, and long story short, she got me crush. She's like, what are you doing? I knew one guy in Newport Beach I ended up staying for the summer Meta manager. It was Lee Daniels, who now directs Lee Daniels The Butler, and he was like my first manager stayed. My stepfather at the time was like,
you can always go back to school. You may as well give it a shot. And like four three four years later, I was standing with you. I remember on the scene we were about to have a kissing scene, and I think it was when Tar, her name was the character Tar was watching like from the window, and I just remember like thinking, I literally stepped through the television.
Set and now I was in color. Oh my god, you never told me that.
Yeah, that was that true story. It's a really like one of the reasons I drove to California. I'm currently on the East Coast through the holidays, but the reason I drove to LA was that show partly and then ended up just staying and then ended up being on that show. Was just so bizarre. Still one of those stories I tell because it still gives me goosebumps that I can't believe that that actually happened.
That I just got goosebumps too. That's like a like a dream come true. You like, should we say you're welcome. I think we didn't have much to do with it.
That was just like weird, No, but it was.
It was I hadn't saw you and had a little crush. Maybe he never done it, that's.
Right, so right, I never.
I never.
Yeah, I never got creepy crush vibes from you.
So that at that point, Yeah, that was years and years, but yeah, the true true story. And then from there, I think there was a couple of things I did before and then I remember you guys, we had seen Blockbuster that dates it, doesn't it a Blockbuster on Wilshire, and I remember toy You and Jenny were like everybody that's done the show goes on to like work or do soaps, and you were naming like all these people.
And then sure enough I ended up, you know, doing soaps for six years I think after that show or seven years.
So it all kind of just what was your like, your acting experience prior to doing the show.
I think I did. I want to say, I did a bay Watch where Pamela Anderson saves me from the ocean from a gator.
Long story and there's a gator in the ocean.
Yeah again, long story came out of a sewer sewer drain and Hasselhoff picks me up and puts me in the truck and.
Was this a dream sequence some other one of your dreams?
It was real?
It was real, and oh my god.
So yeah, he puts me in the back of this truck. And that was I think my first first thing. And then right as I found out, I got and I think I got the call to test for Guiding Light, like I think it was within like I think it was pretty close. And then Guiding Light was like my first year on on soaps.
Wow.
But I remember being in your your dad's office toy, and I was just I was so nervous. I walked in. It was down to the final callbacks, I guess, and I look and there's David Chokichi sitting them like, oh god, like what, I like, what am I doing here? Like
all these people. There's like about four or five guys, And I just remember recognizing David and and went in and your dad was there, and I was just like, oh my god, I can't believe I'm in I'm in the office here, and and uh and I did the audition. I just remember the Steelers were playing in the Super Bowl like that that following Sunday or something, and your dad was like I knew I was a Steeler fan. I was talking about it and he's like, you want to place a ben And I just remember saying, you
mean my dollar to year like millions? And uh. And that was like the last last thing I said. And I ended up leaving the office and got a call I want to say later that day, or like a couple of day later or two days later that I that I booked it, and I was so excited.
I mean, back then, David Chokichi is still mad at you.
Wait, but did you know that your role was going to be key?
I think that's a really good question. I honestly, I don't know how much they gave us. I can't remember like if it was a you know, just two pages, or if there was any context.
To what one of those fake scenes reads, you know, what's going on.
And especially then, it was probably pretty under wraps. I would imagine with the story, you know that the popularity and the storylines and stuff. So I don't know, but I just remember getting the call and I was like, oh my god, I can't I can't believe that that this is happening. So and I remember the first day Tory, I just remember you walked by. I was in the dress room. I just gotten like acclimated, I got sent and I just remember you coming in. You were the
sweet as you were like him. So I'm like, yeah, I know who you are, and you're so kind and sweet and made me feel so at home. And I always remember that that was like my first, you know, first impression, my first experience being like on set.
And and then well we all got to hang out. Like I never had scenes with you, but like we all went out and we're friends in real life.
And during that time, yeah, and I remember, yeah, you lived on I think Wilshire, someplace on Wilshire, yeah, yeah, And I remember we ran into each other a lot. And then Jenny, I think I ran The last time I ran into you was like in a Ralph's, like fifteen years ago, the one on Ventura by the across from the old Maxwell Maxwell's Drugs, Maxwell Drugs, whatever that one is. And I think that was the last time.
Oh my god, Why don't I remember that because it was like it was literally like I, oh my god, and then like it was like two minutes was it Ralph's? Okay? So we were groceries?
Ralph you were, Yeah, you were shopping, and it had to be maybe it could be twenty well maybe twenty years ago, because I'm trying to think, Yeah, it might have been fifteen.
And did we say hello to one another?
We did? We did? Yeah?
And did I reckon? Did I know who?
You realize? Really are?
You probably remember people?
We chatted? And then I think that was it. It might have been the only time I saw you after Oh my god, anything since the show. But and then you know, I know Randy's on it, but then you know, obviously Randy's son, Colton became my son on Poor Charles on My Soap, which was.
So You've got to work with Colti.
I did. Now he's so growing up, it's so weird. But I loved it. It was It was a great It was great. I saw some of the scenes, like a couple of years ago, I pulled out a VCR tape and and there were some scenes of me and him. Was so sweet, he was so little.
I just realized, you and mister Showbiz have the same hair, exact same hair.
I've seen it recently in some of the posts.
But do you wear tank talks because he wears going really well.
I'm not. I'm not. I'm not doing it. I'm not doing the cutoffs with the tank tops yet. But Randy, maybe you got a you know, he can show me some style.
Oh he will.
But you're still iconically known in the soap world in a good way. I'm obsessed with soap operas like Live for Them. Do people ever recognize you from now two? And oh?
Though, I mean it was only four episodes.
And I made mistake or not mistake, I guess, however you look at it, going down to Tijuana Rosa Rito maybe spring break with some friends and it was like wow, one of them while they were still airing, and so definitely it's like the one time I remember it was like wait then we'd be sitting at the bar and I kid you not, there'd be like a preview coming up and you'd see it flash. Wait after that, I think for a bit, and soaps very rarely now long ago.
I mean, the last show that I did well, I think I can say this because I saw it online. I'm not going to say anything else. But I did a very short stint recently, the first time in twenty years in front of camera, and that respect on on days. But I'm not saying anything else because I'm not supposed to say it. But I did see it online, so
they I think talked about it. I saw my name like a couple days ago, so anyway, but it been it's twenty we're talking about twenty years since I did Port Charles, Finish Port Charles, and then I did Bold and Beautiful was the last one, and my daughter was born, so that was twenty one. Yeah, it was twenty one years ago since I did I'd left a soap opera, which.
Is crazy, but no one forgets soap operas.
No one ages on soap operas.
No one does. And you know, I've done I hosting, I did a couple of things, and then you know, as you know, I got into producing fully, like twenty three years ago. I kind of right when Bold and Beautiful was over and just realized how much I loved it.
How did that happen?
Like?
What was the reality? TV? Unscripted was kind of starting, and I remember thinking, God, you know, I should I should pitch some ideas and come up with some ideas that I have for different shows and things like that, and so basically started kind of putting my own stuff together and pitching and and then through that a friend of mine that worked on Big Brother and was one
of my favorite shows. My friend Sean was like, you know, you'd be great like creating games and doing competition shows for for like these type of shows, and I was like great. He got me an interview at Big Brother. My resume was like course, guys like you produce TV. I'm like no, But I went in and I knew the show well enough that I pitched like all these games.
And he called like a week later, and I remember him saying, you know, I've got people with like resumes like this, but you're you know, the meeting was so great. And so I came on as a producer on Big Brother and then have been kind of working since. Yeah, and I just love everything from Apprentice to Minute to Win It to a Big Brother to Food Network shows too, I mean pretty much everything.
And you did House Civilains? Correct?
Did How Civillains last?
First season?
Yeah? First season? And then Generation Gap I did that same year with Kelly Rippa and uh. And then I do a lot of you know, developing stuff for for
networks as well in production companies. And then my wife and I started pitching a lot of our own stuff as well, and so we currently have seven projects in various stages of development with you know, we've so I've sold option shows like Fox and Sony, and we currently have one with Reese Witherspoon's company, He'll of Sunshine, And so we we found we really enjoy that and kind of doing our own thing and pitching our own stuff. So it's been it's been a lot of fun.
And yeah, like.
Literally we're so we're you know, it's funny because we're now Our daughter's twenty two, she's in her final year at Duke and we only have the one and we were empty nesting. So when she went, she was very supportive too. She's like, I'm excited to see what you guys are gonna do when I go, you know, go off to college. And so I kind of feel like it's that moment back in you know, college, watching something on TV that it's kind of the next chapter. And so I keep joking like I feel like a lot
of ways we just got to La. It's like what are we going to do now? And you know, there's so many opportunities, as everybody knows. The last couple of years, I think in entertainment in general, especially unscripted and but but yeah, we've we've enjoyed it, and we're currently we did a couple of months on the East Coast now through the holidays. My wife is here with her mom, who's not not doing great, and so we're spend some
time here. My mom's up in Pittsburgh. We've kind of been bouncing all around the East Coast the last last couple of months and hopefully back in La soon.
Are you laying in bed at night and you're just like, wait, I have this idea and then you just like, is it the pileon?
Yeah? Absolutely, Sometimes it pops in. I have to write it down immediately or I forget it, and yeah, And a lot of times it's been like around somebody or a talent, right we base it on and then and other times, yeah, it's just format. So I'm kind of the majority of the stuff is kind of the competition game formats that I've done a lot of, you know, and it's obviously very competitive. It's not just as easy as going out the first thing I sold years ago.
You were asking how I got into it, like write around right before Big Brother I started, I actually sold a scripted show to NBC and we were in. The script was written the weekend that it was going to be decided to go into series. A lot of people got let go at NBC and the Project Fill apartment. There was like a Hollywood Reporter article like this is going to be lightning in a bottle this series. And I was like, oh my god, amazing. And it just didn't. It just didn't turn out age. By the way, my
wife was on episode. She was in. She was with rick Hurst in an episode or two after me. They wanted to say, hey, hey, I I think.
I did do a scene with both of you in Spring Breakdown. It was many many moons ago.
What yeh.
Rick Hurst played a manager and Tiffany and merheessim was managing her boyfriend and there was a movie premiere and I was the the bimbo actress that kind of entered in.
So I thought, I was like, wait, did he just say she was on an episode?
Wait?
What?
No?
Spring Breakdown?
It was one Wait and Palm Springs. Were you on location though?
No? No, no, no, no, it was in, It was in, It was in town.
Wait was it after you were on?
See? I was six or eight? Was it eight? I feel like, oh later and seven seven.
Yeah, okay, we're gonna look.
Yeah, because Tiffany and Thesim was on it at that point. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I don't know if she was on yours and all, but.
Would you say you played a bimbo? She played a bembo.
Tiffany and we all pretended like Cameron Crowe wanted to meet me, and so she just showed me away so that I wouldn't be near her handsome actor boyfriend that.
She was managing on the show. Oh my gosh, Jen We was that when?
Yeah, he was Sex in the City, Jason Lewis, who went on Sex and the City, Kim Katrell's boyfriend, actor boyfriend, he played another actor exactly.
I love it. Oh, this has been fun. We're going to keep an eye out for you. Then you both look lovely. I'll let good to.
See you by. Thanks son.
Wait, that was fun to get to meet her and and hear that story.
Yeah, we watched. We watched them recently. I think we're families and pulled them up and saw.
Okay, so you've done a lot of shows, a lot of reality shows. Of all of them, what would you say, like was has been your most challenging or the most difficult.
Wow, that's a great question. They're all challenging in their own ways. I'd say, you know, we did. I did. I was a co executive producer on a show called Stars earn Stripes. It was with Burnett and Dick Wolf. Actually even though he scripted and it was there showing. It was celebrities like shooting live ammo and guns and jumping out and yeah, we had like Nick Chet like all these celebs and it was it was intense. I mean it was real. They were shooting machine guns, they were shooting.
Like everything that sounds like Special Forces now it's.
It's very much. It was very much like like Special Forces. But it was this was yeah, you were first, Yeah we were first, and that just logistically with the safety and everything. It was. It was a lot and the celebs alone. Right then you've got and you've got all the military consultants and experts on set all the time telling how to do stuff. You know, I mean a lot could go wrong and show like that if you're not careful. I was one of the biggest I think, and then one of my most fun was the best
time ever with Neil Patrick Harris. It was a live show on NBC and it was just just a blast, I mean live on network TV. Wow walk like out of New York.
Will we talk us through that one?
Yeah? So it was It was based on it a UK series called Saturday Night Takeaway. There's these two guys and Deck that are like super popular in the UK and it's a show that they had and so we, not me, NBC took it and wanted to do its own version. We called it Best Time Ever. But it was based on that show. So it was like what do you call it? A show with a bunch of different what's the thing?
Variety show, variety show.
Thank you? Like there was a lot of Neil kind of always had like a live bit he would do. We had some remote stuff that I also produced if we were on like in Chicago and other places during the episodes, but it was basically a variety show. We had celebrities come on do bits. There was challenges that we did. There was you know, like I said, Neil singing and dancing and people came on as guests. MC's Kelsey Kelsey Grammar like we had you know, one of
the baldwins. We had Reese Switherspoon on the show. They had it like kind of everybody it was a really.
Fun Hey this sounds great. What happened to that?
Did one season? And I think probably the budget and everything else. I mean, who knows. That's the one thing I've I've learned to kind of not trying to figure out. I never know what you know, you think something's gonna not go, and it goes and vice versa. It's just there's so many, so many factors involved in it, especially if it goes for a long time.
You've you've been in it for a minute, I mean, all the ups and downs. I'm sure your adventures are interesting.
Yeah, it's been. It's been great. It's take some great places and you know stuff that I've shot in Ireland and Australia and all over the place, and it's been it's been really fun.
And you said you prefer being behind the camera instead of in front of it.
I do, I do?
You know, I always kind of there's a question mark there.
Yeah, I could. I wouldn't want to. I'd want to host if that opportunity came up, I think, but to go back full time acting again, I don't know. I don't know. I I just I get so much out of producing and creating, and that it would be it would be a weird transition. And now that said, if I was something recurring and I could do it while I'm producing, for sure, like one hundred percent, kind of
like I just recently did. And but hosting, I always love hosting, and a lot of times with the reality shows, I'll kind of host the run throughs and things like that before we get our hosts on board. So I enjoy that. But producing is just like I just loved at My wife will say I got to stop when I get help, but my nature is just always producing things. Yeah, and I do have to let it go sometimes when I walk in the door because it's like, well, wait, let's do that. We gotta do this, and what time
are we doing this? It's like gott to let it go.
Well, she is your life partner and business partner, So where do you leave now?
Yeah? Now I really have to be careful. But even my daughter wud be like, Dad, stop producing us. You cannot.
Oh, I love that.
So but it's been great, you know, and look, if it's the right thing, and maybe as I get older, you know, I end up coming back to it. I keep thinking there is a chance I end up bookending, you know, my my career and somehow I'm acting because it's I'd much rather be sixty five seventy on a show acting than running around putting out fires at that age, so you never know.
Yeah, producing is hard work.
It's a lot. It's a lot.
Acting is a lot easier. Just go get your makeup done.
It's not easier, right, Well, I don't want to say that to any action because it's really it is hard. Obviously the lines. By the way, this recent thing I forgot, like you forget that muscle, I'm like, can I do this again? Well, i'd be able to retain this, like and what happened? I did, just like getting back on a bike.
I was like, soap operas are different, Like how many pages a day?
Do you guys? Typically what?
Well? I mean, if it's an hour show, you could you could have twenty pages.
Imagine Jen like would be screwed with like eight pages. We'd be like, oh my god, we have so much dialogue today.
I would feel the same exact way, Like if I was having to memorize something and go act right now, I'd be like, oh my god, I don't know if I can do it.
I was blessed to luck out on with the exception of Guying Light. It was only a year, but a port Charles and Bold and Beautiful were half an hour shows, so it was the same deal, but half the show. You definitely didn't have as much Jay. I got to ask you, Jenny, do you remember.
Because I was laughing, I'm just gonna say no.
When we both I think I went out and got a car when I was on the show, and you went out to the same lady and got a car. And there's the joke about lipstick. You don't remember any of that to you. Probably not lipstick in a cart a BMW from a woman on Wilshire and we had this joke that she always kind of had some lipstick on her and we would be on set and you got like who I was like, oh my god, happened to go to the same lady within like a couple
of weeks of me, and we chance No. I think I got it first, and Jenny's like, where'd you get that? And I said you should go talk to this lady and then.
We have the same car. Did I get the same car as you.
No, you got something different anyway. I just I just remember that, like I love.
That you remember that. I wish I did.
Well now that you brought it back around. Can we talk about Resident Greg for a second, because our fans really a ka us what happened. We weren't as fans rewatching the show, as viewers were perplexed. We're like, he never comes back, He's just gone the whole tear.
I think Tara. Tara's shared the crap out me.
Why didn't he try?
Sorry?
Yeah, I don't know, right, it was weird.
She said that Kelly wasn't up for a relationship, and she.
Planted that seat in my head and then I just kind of backed off and then it just kind of and that was it.
We never see you again.
You're never mentioned again. We're very upcited about it as yours.
Yeah, me too, because I remember too. I was like, maybe this goes, maybe this something happens. I'm still waiting, guys, by the way, So yeah, I don't know. It was a weird. It was a weird ending. Yeah, I watched them again reboot.
On the reboot.
On the reboot, we got your number, We'll book it. Into your acting career with that.
There you go, that would be funny. Twenty fifty.
Nine O two one old.
So yeah, it was a weird ending. I just you know that that whole thing. I mean, it was obviously the single white female storyline, which was which was crazy. And yeah, I watched it recently and I kind of forgotten some of it, and I was like, oh, yeah that she totally tells me, like, you know, she's just getting out of you know, the rehab, and she's trying to get her life together, and you know you should
probably just give her some space. And and so I will say I was probably taking the high road as the med student.
Yeah, you got your like scruples back for a moment, the high road.
I shouldn't be dating a patient. But now I'm going to let her, you know, become her best self by me not being part of it. And yeah, and then that was that was the end.
Very Yeah, Very you made a big impact. We liked Kelly and Greg together and we wanted to see more of you.
I wish I would have and I wish I wish I would have thought through my hair back in the day on that I watched it. I'm like what was I thinking. It's like this crazy weird but I guess that was.
The thinking the same thing. Yeah, my hair, you look back, geez. Yeah, what was it all?
Yeah, yeah, it's great. I yeah, I lucked out because it was all so nerve wracking because I had obviously, we had our scenes Jenny, but then I had some party scenes where I had to walk in and it was the entire cast and I was just like, oh my god, oh my god, it's such a dork. But I remember it's when your brother Tory, well, when Randy Forget his character got and passed out, and.
Oh when you come through the door and somebody makes you say a poem or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brian had the camera and he's filmed me on like he goes, I have a message, and I was, and I forget. It was like rose and revelized it was something something and you have birthday to you or something.
I don't know you, but happy birthday to you.
Yeah, And then I just remember being unsetty. He got yeah he was drunk. He was drinking off the side, and then I came over. I go, is the way I'm a med student?
Right?
You did? Thank god you were there, Kelly call nine one one.
I think you said I didn't been the guy. It was helping out there. But and I remember, yeah, we had the bulling scene that we shot down in the valley and then yeah, and then that's when Tara kind of started also kind of like grabbing my arm, and you know, it was getting a little a little weird and creepy with her Page was her name, I think page Page.
Yeah.
Yeah, we had fun though, I think that that even though it was weird and icky, we had fun doing it.
It was a great I mean a great story for back then. I mean that was such a great, you know, lifetime, single white female kind of story. Yeah, it's just everybody loved and but yeah, I just kind of faded off. I'm trying to even think the last scene like that I was even seen. I don't remember the exact last time on camera, but it was probably that Tara saying something to me, because I don't think I do you remember, Jane. I don't know if I called, like I didn't have I didn't have a formal.
Like flowers to be bye. Well, I didn't send him flowers, Tara. Tara sent him flowers from me. Oh, saying it's over, and then he sends her flower. She sends Kelly flowers from him. It says it's over. Yeah, yeah, so it's a double flower.
By the way, I remember this very clearly, exactly what you're doing now. We all did Tara, Tara, tart We did it all we did. Do you go so Tar, No, it's Tara, Okay, try it again, Tara No, Tara.
There was something about that name. I cannot get it right.
Every time ye had we had many retakes because I either somebody was saying it wrong.
We just say, Tara, Tara, What you just did? I think it was Tara. I honestly don't know. I said I think it was Tara, and I instantly thought it was Tar.
I definitely did some taras I think in the mix.
Oh my god, it's such good memories talking to you and seeing you. This is really fun.
Wise, miss you, guys, miss you, Randy.
Come back.
I'm hopefully we'll be back in the in the next couple of weeks. We'll get back. But we kind of put it laws. We we kind at least this amazing place for like twelve years, and the landlord was like, you know, I want to move back into this this home. I love this home. I'm getting a little older. We're like great, So we put everything into storage. So it's all sitting in LA. We're just waiting now to come back and pull it right back out and figure out where we're gonna where we're gonna go.
But what's up for you? Yeah, what's next? What's your next chapter? It's so exciting being an energy chapter.
Hopefully with that there's a there's a job that there's something more of a long term thing that I that I hope to get that. If that happens, then for sure I'm back very soon full time. So we'll see.
We're sending you good energy.
Thank you, thank you, and then hopefully a couple of these shows to get on the air.
And we love a good challenge killing keep us in mind.
Thank you. It's so great to see you guys.
Really good to see you too. Thanks for coming on of course, by bye bye.