Misspelling with Tori Spelling and iHeartRadio Podcast.
How have we known each other?
Definitely by NB Like when we did NBC Upfronts, we were together because they did me, you, Russell Simmons, and Paris's show all together. They launched us for as like the Big what was the network? We were all oxygen, the Big Oxygen, like like power House Group. They launched us all at the same time to save that network and.
That we're going to do it rich a girl, it's a crime network.
Now, what do you mean?
We we killed it but for and.
We saved that net. We made that network. I feel like we did.
I feel like we did.
I feel like they too all crime, all crime. Every time I hear it was it.
Was like women empowerment.
I know, we don't even get reruns because we're you know what, I did see my Sewan Apple TV, So I guess they sold our shows to somebody. Yep, great, and tell my agent that I know, did you get back into on yours?
Yeah?
Oh good, look good.
But if I don't tell people like oh so, it'll be like one of my shows it was like on Hulu and someone told me about it and I was like, oh, didn't know it was on there called.
Yeah, they was just sitting in an account.
Hundred twenty dollars.
That's insane.
I was like, that's how I.
Feel about my music. I'm like, well, oday, somebody's going to tell me where it all is.
I just don't know.
How do you find that?
You know, everybody makes it sound so complicated. I think that's on purpose. So right brain thinkers aren't normally like especially like highly gifted artists aren't necessarily left brain thinkers.
To have both qualities equal out is rare, and so so many people just get into it, and the excitement of being able to create and being able to make art is so overwhelming that you're not checking on where your money is and what's your percentage on this and who's collecting and there's so many middlemen back in the day, Like we were discussing this earlier on this morning a group of my friends about like old industry versus new industry and how different it is and the adjustments that
it takes are so.
For people like us. I mean, I think probably a little bit.
After me is where the cutoff of celebrities stop me as in like Danity, Kane Era and after too, but it's like right around where it's this cutoff occurred and now it's Tiktoker's YouTubers and the lot and there are many that get millions of viewers, and so there's they're not necessarily looked at for network shows that bring people back, right, they're not necessarily seen as you can't go over to those network shows and say, hey, get this TikToker.
Maybe one or.
Two have been able to transition, but from what I understand from most of my agent friends, it's just they can do really well on this platform, but when we try to give them a cooking show or something else, they don't do well on the other platforms. They don't translate everywhere. But you know, a celebrity and old school celebrity. Before there were no gatekeepers and everything was just widespread,
and who are the gatekeepers? The gatekeepers are like the people that you had to prove yourself to in order to get through to be seen by the people. They can actually move and shake. In my industry, a lot of times it was like known that if even if they were talented, frankly, the girls would sleep with certain people in order to get in certain rooms. But this idea of gatekeepers very much was like, that's where it was.
No one ever asked me to sleep with them anything.
Well, you also, you grew up in something.
You grew up in a family that's so iconic that if they did, there probably would have been severe consequences for them, potentially.
Really, I just thought, I was like, why not me?
No, no, no, they wanted you. Everybody wanted you know, and by the way, you don't want to be wanted.
By those people. No, no, I know it's I wouldn't fuck.
I don't think anyone would want to fuck with you in a way where it would get back to somebody who's powerful in the industry. I don't know a ton. I mean, obviously I know about your life. I was a huge nineo two and zo I was telling you the other.
Day, I had a f Yeah you have a story, Oh my god.
Okay, So I didn't actually, because I was such an artist and I was so into creating for most of my childhood, I didn't really hang out.
With the popular kids.
I was on dance team and a cheerleader and those things, because they were talent based activities that you auditioned for.
But I didn't.
I wasn't cool or the pretty girl or popular or any of that. I mean, I struggled to like not get beat up and get through the day.
So like, which I'm sure is surprising for people to hear that. Maybe is that your perception or is that how it really was?
Well, because I grew up in it, that's all I know.
I think the perception of me is very different, and that's a perception. The first perception that was given to the world was kind of through Ditty's eyes or the eyes of the editors in the MTV editing base.
But but who I was?
I mean, man, I just came and was creative and whatever I did, and then how I was interpreted was what it was but or what it needed to be.
But in all of that, like, wait, where were we on with this?
I was going to Oh, Okay, So when I grew up, I didn't really like because I wasn't popular. I didn't go and date the boys or hook up with people or do anything. I didn't hook up with anyone. I wasn't like, I didn't care about boys. But you start feeling it as you get into like maybe I was probably later than everyone else because I had skip grades etc. But I started having those feelings of like, you know, liking a boy or whatever, but I never knew how
to act on it or how to do anything. And so I kind of resonated with you the most as a child watching the show because you were this good girl on the show and you weren't gonna be out there in the streets.
Like Brenda or Kelly.
But you fell in love with the one guy, and there was this boy that kind of looked like Brian Austin Green and like he was like the boy that I always liked during that time. And then when you and I swear, I want to hug you right now, bitch, because when you got cheated on when they played Babyface and that fucking limo during that concert when he was dating the burnette girl with the curly hair.
I will never forgive her.
If I catch her in this, it's gonna be fists up and on this.
I just saw her recently at a convention.
Yeah.
I was literally I remember like watching that with the TV this far away from me, with tears running down my eyes, feeling like I've just lost the Like all of this time I spent with you, be doing the right thing, loving the right guy ringing like and then it just flips when a little who she comes by at the concert and Babyface.
So now late years later, I was like.
Recording in Babyface's studio and I went in and I told him like, you're, you know, iconic, and you know how much I loved him, And I.
Was like, I have to be real.
The first time I actually really was put onto you was through nine o two one, and my first thought whenever I even heard I was coming to your studio to record or meeting you, was you were the song that took out Donna Martin.
When when Brian.
Hooked up with that fucking burnette with the curly hair and the Limo Ariel Ariel, that little fucking skeezy ass ho I put in my behavor. Yeah, I was fucked up over it for a long time time. But anyways, yeah that was my little funny.
Uh.
And then every time I see say was he like, I don't even know if he remembered. I don't know if he remembered. I try, I can't I know how to like, he's such.
An icon, I keep it at a minimum.
Have you do you see the videos recently where like two girls like We're talking to him at the Grammys, and then like moved him aside to get to somebody else, and everyone was like, these girls need to be fired immediately, which I agree, Like I even though I have a cheesy story to tell Babyface, I kept it at a minimum out of respect for who he is. But that is actually like the first time that I when will
I See You Again? Was the song that he was singing and Brian was in the limo, and anytime I get into a black limo, like I've always been nervous when a curly hair burnette gets around any man that I love, because you just don't know which it was so.
In what is happening right now?
It was impactful.
It was it was we don't have these things anymore in our culture. My goddaughter does not have a show that she watches religiously on a standard network that everybody turns on at night.
That it's not appointment TV anymore.
It isn't it's whim and watch on your phone quickly, or watch while you're on your phone, because we need constant distraction.
Right Well, it's affected me too, like I become like that and my friend to think.
Like that, I can't get through movies lately, and I'm like, what is wrong with me? If it's a documentary, yes, but an actual movie, I can't do it.
I'm just so we're being conditioned to adapt with the times, and it sucks. Aubrey's dog's here right now and he's eighteen.
He's yeah, he's an old Papa's old obi.
Oh my gosh.
So it's interesting, like you're saying this to me, and I'm thinking, like, you know me well and you know like I don't.
I don't know.
I never think anybody knows so I am, or like so I am or what I It's hard for me to recognize an impact I've had.
You're not you stay very humble.
You're not very cocky, which I that's probably the only thing about you that I would like amp up in you, is that that uh.
No fucks category.
I would amp it up a little bit more for you because you are so iconic, and I don't think that there's any I don't believe that staying humble is where somebody who's incredibly talented, who has offered their talent to the world and impacted generations of people.
I don't believe that they need to go and you.
Know, still self deprecate to the women and whatever in order for people to you know, see them as iconic. I think you can walk in bold and say, these are all the things that I've done. Now, let me tell you where I'm going and what I'm expecting to do with this room today.
You don't have that switch though, I don't have what's your sign? Taurus?
Oh god, I don't know enough about toros? Are you Aquarius?
So we very we very much are like we we say a lot of the things that most people don't say.
We're known to be those type of people. Were also like very like highly philanthropic.
We give, We're very aware and active in regards to causes, and so we stay informed. Usually so when I walk in places like if we're not speaking the same language and I need something to get done, I'm just very blunt about what needs to occur, whereas you don't necessarily do that. When I've seen you and been with you, and I wonder, I don't know exactly how you're growing up was so it probably is some type of conditioning that happened with your mom and dad.
I don't know, correct, Yeah.
And I don't even know if it was so much from them, just what I perceived from an early age, like being aware at even five, like, oh, I'm a representation of my dad. My dad is famous, and no one sat me down, no one told me it was like when we go out, I just was quickly tuned into this is probably who I need to be. And from that moment on, I watched myself to everybody else's eyes, and I've never watched myself through my eyes.
Do you want to know another human being that said the exact same thing to me, almost verbatim. Don Junior Really, same thing, same life, same understanding of never really being able to find his own identity because the pressure of being born into a last name is something that you never really get over it. I think you can. That's why I was trying to bring him down the path of glory in my opinion, but it didn't work obviously,
So I don't know if you can. But I understand that to degrees that without you even having to get into it, I understand what.
You just said very deeply.
It's just a life that nobody will really understand unless you've gone in depth and loved somebody that's gone through that or you are a person that's gone through that. It's very it's very strange to be born into an identity that you had no control. It's very som learned therapy and trauma therapy to somebody who gets assaulted at a young age or has abuse occurring at a young age because they didn't know any better, they didn't ask
for it. It wasn't a choice that they made, and they had to then after that see themselves through the eyes of it for the rest of time.
And that's not really fair, is it.
It's not what everyone's experience is with life, and so they kind of live a life that where they're a bit removed from every room that they're in because just nobody truly understands what that feels like except others that have been in it.
Absolutely.
Yeah, my therapist called it on some level and annihilation.
Of the soul.
Yeah, I agree with that, definitely, an annihilation of the soul. And if you don't correct it, it can get very extreme. I mean, drugs are incredible at helping things like that. I think all of us celebrities like no, at least I'm talking old school celebrity. I don't know what the young kids. Everybody's doing pink cocaine. Now I did it when it was white, but I yeah, there's.
Like pink colored cocaine.
Yeah, it's called something. Do you go. You guys are young? What is the pink cocaine?
Guys are young?
It's called something. But like, yeah, all the kids do pink cocaine. I'm like, I don't want my cocaine pink. The fuck is I would be scared to die.
But too sy Trey talks about it in music called to Sy to Sy.
Yeah, And so you'll hear rappers talking about the Two Sea, got the girls fucked up in the club on the Two Sea, Like the fuck, I'm too old for that shit. I don't understand it. And if I saw pink cocaine, I wouldn't. I would think we were doing a baking recipe or something.
I would not. I would not. I would not think to snort it.
But that's what I'm saying, is like back in that time, I noticed when trauma, when the trauma starts sitting in and you're at you know, fame goes.
Up and down.
If you're lucky, you get a lot of if you're lucky to stay. I mean I came in at like I think around seventeen, and I'm forty one now and I've not had a real job yet, so like I'm still in entertainment.
So it's there's spend time.
Around job god, real job, real life, real personality or care. I mean, everything I do is from my authentic self.
I think that's why I think you do.
Yeah, I create everything I do, So I think that's why I'm not I'm not able to move as high up as I would like a lot of the times. And why I've been around a lot of people who are very high up. I see what they're willing to compromise in order to get there, and I just can't. So when I show up to things, if it gets to a degree that is annoying at this point, just annoying, it's the word. But back in the day, it was like bending my integrity. I'm gonna have to say something.
And when you say something is when they ask you to go home and you're no longer there anymore. So anything that you've ever seen me on where I got taken out early and it was clear that I should have been there a lot longer, That's what really occurred.
I mean, everyone obviously knows making up the band, and that.
Was one of them.
That's when I can talk of There's a few others I'm contractually still under, but so.
That one you can talk about.
Yeah, I mean, I'll.
Talk about anything as much as I can. You know, some contracts are lower than others. But yeah, I think, like i've I saw a lot of integrity lines just operating lower.
And no judgment to those people.
They're doing a lot better, their bank accounts are bigger, they run the world. All the girlies want to be them, but I know what they were doing to get to where they got and there's just absolutely no way that I could have done any of that. And I knew it very early on. I really tried to become besties.
With all of the it girls to see what it was.
And every time I became besties with every single one of them, I realized, and after you know, multiple period of months or years or time, there's nothing really unique and special here. This is just a very big organization and it's all very worked through and there are.
A lot of people.
Yeah, it's almost like it's what our old manager, Johnny Wright, when we first got on making the band he said to me. At one point, when you know, there was turmoils that were starting to occur. We went out to dinner and he said, you know, you're the leader of this group.
You're the star.
And I'm like, no, we're all we all sing equal, We're all equal in this group. None of us would ever we sing equally, We danced weekly, we.
Do everything equally.
And he was like, yeah, that's cute and all, but the audience has decided, the world decided you were the star. And because of that, you now have this responsibility to make sure that this group stays together. And I want to tell you one important thing for you to always remember in that position. The manager, the agent, the head of the label, your directors at the labels, your A and R, all the way down to your lawyers, agents, managers, even your fucking CPAs.
We will all be here for the.
Next sixteen to sixty girl groups that come after you. We will still be here with what comes after you and what we make after you. You are the most disposable and at the time it felt so.
Real and the unquote leader, no, the.
Artist, the person making the creations that the whole world falls in love with, is the most disposable piece. And that's what none of us understand. When we get in and the first time that we're disposed of, it breaks our fucking heart, and it breaks our heart so badly, and sometimes the pain hurts so much that you need to go to a doctor and talk to someone or be seen. A lot of times, especially back then, they
were throwing pills around like crazy. That's why you have so many people and a little bit older and my generation all are taking pills a little bit younger on and off. Got some got into it, some didn't. I guess the new kids are doing toucy or nothing. I don't know what they're doing. They'll have to speak for themselves.
But there's a lot of hurt in this industry because, like I said, the trauma comes in and it comes out, and you're disposed of when necessary, you're brought back when necessary. We are literally like marbles that people toss around, and to us, we are so serious about the products that we make and the work that we do. If you really are a real artist, you go home and you
can't detach from your art. You think about it all night till you go to sleep, until you start becoming an insomniac and you can't fucking sleep anymore because you have so many thoughts. So then you have to go visit somebody and get something to take so you can so you could show up to work to do your job the next day.
It all is, how do you very?
I'm that sleep is still a very very hard thing for me. I mean, I thought that I moved to Bali because I was put on ambient at a very young age.
By somebody else's doctors. That is a horrible.
Drug, and I did not know in long term periods of taking it that it causes depression and a lot of like fits of crying and things like that. As I started to look up symptomatics of long term use, there was like a year where I cried so much. I think, I like, I'd be better off telling you the days that I didn't cry than that I did. It just got to be and the feeling that you get when you take it. I compare it only because
I've never really gotten into like hard drugs. But when I watch people on Intervention and they like shoot heroin and they go and they fall back, I'm like, that's kind of what ambien does. All that that weight that's on my chest.
And major drugs, but like that.
That one is that one's and no other thing that they've given me for sleep does that except.
Dancause it knocks you out.
It knocks you out, but it gets you high first and then long term.
Used to get you high. I just eat.
That's the high period when you concot the whole thing in your fridge. Yeah, I mean I'd wake up the next morning with like ramen noodles and ketchup and a bunch of things in a bowl, like what in the fuck happened last night?
It used to be kind of fun for me till it wasn't fun where I'd be like, oh, piecing the night together?
By what I Yes, piecing the night together is a big one with me.
I came up in the moment what I thought was the best recipes ever.
Oh yeah, I think I did too.
But then when you wake up an cookbook.
At some point, I wrote an entire book on ambien in the shower and I couldn't remember.
It to this day. And I'm so pissed because it was a winner. Yeah yeah, really it was a winner.
But what it does is it's horrible you lose that knowing how to almost going back to childhood, settling and putting yourself to sleep, which is a really important key thing. It's like a child just you need a blanket, that downtime winding down your brain to shut down, and it eliminates that because it just gets you from A to B super quick knock out.
Also, when you're in certain levels of sleep, it's correcting your body. It's fixing your cells. It's it's it's like do It's like when you go to bed and you're in real sleep and you're in a stage five or whatever, a deep sleep. Your body's in there working away correcting itself, fixing the cells that are abnormal. Like it's it's putting itself back together so that you can then wake up and knock your adrenal glens out the whole fucking day
with great stress. So it's like when you're not getting that, I think that's probably where the long term depression kicks in with that drug, because if you're never correcting it, then you're really always working in a state of what had a therapist one.
Time that said something to me that was so real.
They said, your entire personality is a trauma response based personality, and then I started thinking about all these wonderful things I know about myself to be true, but they all arose through a trauma based situation. I'm just very when I would go in and people would ask what my strengths are in any given situation, It's just like, if we have no budget, I can make it look like we did and I would impress the most impressive people. If there's problems, I don't really run around and talk
about them with everyone. I just am like, I'm solution oriented. What is the solution. I'm really good at self deprecating and maneuvering different types of personalities and doing what I need to do and never to hurt anyone. But I'm pretty good at positive manipulation. I got good at it and Danity Kane because there were so many different personality types and we all needed to be on one page, and when we weren't, we were a mess and we
were losing business. So I got used to knowing this one always needs to feel like, but he's in charge of positive I don't know there's probably an actual technical term for it that therapists used, but like positive manipulation, when people ask, are you manipulative. I'm thinking to myself, I have manipulated so many things to come to existence that have been incredible, Like every single Danity Cane tour after did he pulled us apart?
Like every single job I've ever gotten.
I'll go in one room and say, well I already have this, so if you don't want it, I'll go over here. Then they want me all of a sudden. That's manipulating, but it's for the positive. It's moving everything in a direction as well, right, yeah, for it. It's a positive direction for all, but it's still there's still factors of manipulation involved in it.
And I am just being able to into people and read people. I think when there are certain I do the same.
But I call it.
I'm really good at playing the game of chess in life, like I can't play the actual game.
Game of chess. Is a game of chess is manipulation. You're manipulating. I guess I compone it all the time.
I have a negative connotation where I think about but.
I know, and that's that's one thing.
Like that's why I love using words that scare people a little more than maybe other.
People do, because if you really get it.
First of all, when I was in Bali, I got down to a point when I arrived there, I was like, never saying any words that were negative. I wouldn't even curse because what about my life do I want to put.
A curse on?
And then I was taking it so seriously and as I was starting to really get into myself because there, I'm not a celebrity. There's no TV, there's no billboards, there's no entertainment, there's no nothing in that regard.
So I didn't ever think when.
I walked out of the house, if there's paparazzi on me right now, how bad are the fat photos going to be? How bad are the she's a fucked up plastic surgery nightmare or whatever the fuck they're gonna say this week?
Right?
I have to actively think about that every day, because the second you don't think about it, and all the people around you tell you you're doing too much, is when you end up on the cover of something looking a hot fucking mess, and you really wish you would have just trusted your instincts. If you've ever if you've ever been in that position and been like I said this to someone one time, my girlfriends. I was like, how many times have you guys felt just deep humiliation
in life? And maybe one most of them said not really. Ever, one or two said they accidentally sent like a nasty message about their a coworker with their girlfriend that they were sending to like everybody on the team, and the coworker saw it, and they got punished at work or fired or whatever, and it was I was fucking humiliating. It was a bad day in their life, right, that's the normal job, normal life type of humiliation. Our type of humiliation is very different, and it's on a world scale.
And they'll even it may not even be real. Most of the time. Most of the things that have been said about me are not. When I go through headlines, if I don't even I used to enjoy googling myself because I could see how much I had done. It got to a point where that flipped and that side of pr and that the way that they were moving for a while. Thank god, they're damn narrow, nonexistent and don't have jobs to do anymore at this stage time.
That's when that makes.
Me a little happy that the gatekeeping has died down, because those people had to go away, But the way they were able to just fully take people out at certain points in this industry were they had a lot of control. Certain people had a lot of control just taking someone's entire career out just with a publicity stunt, or make somebody an entire career just with a fake sex tape of this, so that like these things were being crafted in rooms with.
Girl.
I have all my friends that did it and are huge.
I that's one of those integrity things, So I wouldn't have been able to do it. And I know exactly how to do it and how it worked, and who the players were and how they got it stolen from their house and it was their private tape. So the world feels bad for them, but really they settle in Core. They sue the evil porn company, but porn companies don't care that if you.
Call them evil.
They don't care about bad reputations. They technically are a bad reputation, and then everyone settled, but no one talks about that.
They don't. I think for some people, I'm sure it was.
But they're initially, but I think I know who's were and who's weren't. So to you, because they're worse there worn't there There is somebody that did have one stolen, and we don't.
We want to be fair to that person.
But for the others that did the whole deal, you know, it's sue the evil porn company show the world how it's not it's not your fault, and how this was a personal, private experience. A lot of people do this, This is natural in relationships. But then this evil porn company released it and caused all this damage. And then they settle out of a court for the disclosed amount
that they basically did the deal for. And sometimes they did multiple versions of the tape until they were happy with how they looked in it.
I mean, that's how a career was built at a certain time.
And I was rising at that time, and I would be over here at Madison Square Garden and a couple paparazzi would call for Danity Kane every now and then. Then I would come back over here with my besties and they were climbing on the cars if we just went to coffee, and I started to realize, holy shit, like this super talented area over here is getting none and this area over here is where the fuck it's at.
Then I started going back to this area when the brakes were done, and that area then started to become more popping because everybody said, hey, So and So's best friend Aubrey, stay back, Aubrey, we want Aubrey, Aubrey.
Stay back.
And so then it started separating me from my very talented sisters. And there was already separations occurring with Puff and so on and so forth. So like the way that I watched everything almost transition in front of my face, I mean, I learned music through watching some of the greatest acts in the world making killer shows on the Grammys, but none of them Mike's were on. All that shit
was pre recorded for the most part. Then when I came up, it was like John Legend and Alicia Keys were front like the face of the Grammys, and everybody's mics were on.
Then, and I grew up in.
The industry with a man who made sure that the mics were on and made sure that every embarrassing fuck up that you do is shown so you can't fuck up. I mean, we were literally taught do not ever cover a song of a singer that is better than you. That was like golden rule, do not ever sing in front of people that are better singers. When I went on Celebrity Apprentice.
And I love her singer then well girl when.
They started when I was on when I did Celebrity Apprentice, and this is no shade to her because I love her like a sister.
Debbie Gibson would sing all the time.
And I can talk about this because I did shade her a little in the interviews, So we've already gotten past this part of our friendship. But she would annoy me so deeply and it had nothing to do with her. I didn't realize this till years after. I don't even know if I ever told her this. Hopefully she watches and sees, but she annoyed me so deeply on that show and people would probably just see whatever I.
Said in clip. But it's in the car when we would drive.
To set every morning, she just would sing, sing, si, sing, sing, sing.
Every which way.
Every type of artists Whitney, that's just when you don't sing unless you could sing like Whitney are better than her. She would just be belting it out early in the morning and I would just be sitting there.
She would grind my nerves.
So bad and I would literally be like even if you didn't buy tickets, you're getting no fucking show from Debbie Gibson. And even if you didn't want to go to the concert, you're getting it. Like that was the famous line. I sat on the show. But years later I realized it's not that I didn't love that she was singing things out of her ability or whatever. It's that she just had grown up in a time in the music industry where people just loved to see Debbie
Gibson do anything. She was so iconic, and the second she opened her mouth, they were just they just loved her. I mean music artists and especially people in pop music, which those rooms look a lot different than urban music, and.
I guess applaud you a lot differently than urban music. But she really thought it was it was cool. She was on the swirl night.
And day, and for me, she thought that though or she just enjoyed all of it so well.
All of it, all of it. I don't think she ever knew when she was off. I think she loves singing. I think, and she's she's genuine as fuck. I love Yeah, she's my sister for life. But but we've laughed about this, But like she just loved singing. She would do it all the time, didn't care if it was off key, didn't care if she was doing something and things. And
I didn't realize until much later. I don't even know that I'll ever get over this piece because I was trained so young by Diddy and he's so good at what he does. But I realized later I just really was annoyed by her because she had a freedom that I didn't. Oh wow, interesting, yeah, because I sing off key too, So what the fuck?
I don't sing off key as much as she does, but I've sing a key.
You are a condition that it wasn't okay.
It was not okay, And every time she did it, I was like, what music industry did she come in?
Who the fuck was producing? And we're how does she have what I have?
I had so many questions because it just was not ever okay to step outside of what.
Did He will let you know what you did. And by the way, he wasn't wrong. He made me a star.
He told the world I was one talented and all of the above in every area.
You made yourself a star. But he was instrumental