The problem was, if Nick lost, so did I.
WHEN WE STARTED FILMING SEASON TWO ON OUR FIRST ANNIVERSARY, we and the whole crew knew the stakes. Whatever we needed to do to keep that ATM spitting out money would be fine with us. The conceit was that my dad had booked me a gig that would put me in Atlantic City on our anniversary, so Nick would surprise me afterward with a weekend trip to New York City. I was supposed to believe that my husband arranged for rose petals to lead me from the hotel door to the bed and then a horse-and-carriage ride to Tavern on the Green. Oh, and he also had the top tier of our wedding cake re-created and sent to the restaurant so we could eat it, a tradition that neither of us had ever heard of.
Nowadays, we all know how much production goes into “reality,” but back then, people believed. Of course, Nick had nothing to do with any of that, but I wanted people to believe he was everyone’s vision of a leading man. The problem is, Nick could hit his marks, but he couldn’t improv any lines. While eating the cake, I asked him what song we were dancing to a year before on our wedding day.
When he hemmed and hawed, I tried to help him. “Baby, you don’t remember our first dance?”
He didn’t. I put my head in my hands, not because I was mad at him, but because I was frustrated that he couldn’t even act the part MTV handed to him.
“It was ‘Crazy Love,’ ” I said quietly.
We had become actors in our own lives, playing ourselves. Worse, we slowly started acting out our parts even when cameras weren’t rolling. When we did appearances, we didn’t want to disappoint people by not doing the whole act. It didn’t feel wrong, because it was just exaggerated, idealized versions of ourselves. Heck, I wanted to be that happy. Performing as Nick and Jessica became constant, because we had eighteen or so gigs booked for December alone. We didn’t even bother to get a tree, even though MTV probably would have decorated one for us. We went to Ohio first to see Nick’s family, then my Nana and Papaw’s house in Waco. Of course, we took the Newlyweds crew along to film every minute.
I couldn’t hide my sadness in Waco. Partly because the holidays always made me miss Sarah, especially when I was with her brother and parents. But I was also starting to feel detached from my real life, and seeing my extended family perform for the cameras made me realize how much I was playing a part. Nowadays, I see so many people performing their identities on social media, but I feel like I was a guinea pig for that. How was I supposed to live a real, healthy life filtered through the lens of a reality show? If my personal life was my work, and my work required me to play a certain role, who even was I anymore? I had no idea who I really was.
But fame and money are great distractions. When we hosted SNL together in January, timed to the premiere of the second season, my dad told us to think of it as an audition reel for other shows and film studios. We both wanted to do real acting and needed an exit strategy from reality TV, which we knew was about to lose the novelty. My dad came to me with more and more endorsement offers that requested me solo. Unless you’re an athlete, it’s a girl’s world when it comes to selling products. When MTV produced the Super Bowl halftime show in Houston, they invited me to kick off the show. Without Nick. Just as he was trying to build a solo career, his success became tethered to me.
He was proud of my success, but Nick also wanted somebody who could make him feel like I did when I was nineteen years old, fawning all over him. I don’t think he understood how to have the kind of relationship where I didn’t need him to tell me what to do. It was not a happy time for us, and people were no longer satisfied with just seeing us on Newlyweds. The tabloid industry realized we sold covers, and paparazzi began to swarm both of us, but especially me. This was before everyone had a phone in their pocket, so the paparazzi industry was incredibly lucrative. You just needed a camera and a willingness to run red lights to chase someone down.
As the frenzy built, the camera crew tried to shoot us as they always had. But soon, that became impossible. If they arranged for us to sit outside somewhere, people would pull up chairs like they were watching the show. It became impossible to hide. The simplest errand would lead to eight to ten cars following me and getting in front of me to block me to get a shot of me with my new Fendi bag.
Still, the fame seemed manageable. And then it wasn’t.
“YOU KNOW, THE ENERGY YOU PUT INTO HUFFIN’ AND PUFFIN’ AND TRYIN’ to get out of things, you coulda done them four times by now.”
I can’t tell you how many times I heard CaCee Cobb say that. I built my reputation in the industry for showing up on time on the back of CaCee dragging me places. In early 2004, Sony allowed her to keep her A&R job while she became my full-time assistant while Columbia relaunched a deluxe edition of my In This Skin album to capitalize on my new fame. By then, Teresa’s artistic leanings weren’t valued at Columbia, and she was now over at Jive Records. To help promote the rerelease, I was set to do signings in four cities around the country. Thanks to file sharing, the bottom had dropped out of the music industry, so the budget was miniscule. Like someone went through the couches at Sony to collect change for me.
On March 3, Sony flew us to Boston on a red-eye in coach because they were too cheap to pay for a hotel. We even did our own hair and makeup in the airport bathroom at Logan until a group of girls realized who I was and started to gather.
“I’m a celebrity,” I informed CaCee for the millionth time. I was joking, but she was there to check me as usual.
“Okay, crazy,” she said, “Let’s just get to the venue.”
The “venue” was a Walmart. Our driver was a very brusque, older Boston guy who had no idea who I was and didn’t care either. I whispered to CaCee in the backseat. “Doesn’t he think it’s kind of weird that he picked us up at the airport and we need to go right to Walmart?”
“Maybe he thinks we’re from corporate,” she said. “Career girls.”
“We’re here to discuss the numbers—”
A car behind us honked, and I realized we were crawling on the interstate. “I’ve never seen traffic like this,” our driver said.
There were stretches where cars just weren’t moving at all, and CaCee began to get anxious. “I’m calling them,” said CaCee. “We are going to be so late.” But there was no answer at the Walmart. She left a message, and I yelled so they could hear, “Don’t blame me, I’m tryin’!”
Traffic creeped and creeped until we finally got to our exit. CaCee seriously wondered if we should just get out and walk. When we got to the parking lot, we saw thousands of people waiting outside. “Oh, Lord,” I said. “What is going on?”
And then they saw us. We were just in a regular old car with clear windows. News reports said I was in a limo, but trust me, Sony didn’t spring for a limo. People rushed the car, literally climbing on top of each other to see in as our poor driver freaked out. CaCee and I screamed and dropped down to the floorboards, half in terror but also with a huge sense of amazement because it finally dawned on us that this wasn’t a zombie apocalypse we had stumbled into. It was for me.
“You’re like a Beatle,” said CaCee, and then caught herself. “I mean, your version.”