Beneath the glitz a good old Newfoundland girl at heart

Work In Progress, by Ivan Morgan

It’s August. Rather than rant this week about the many problems we all struggle with, I thought I’d take a stroll down memory lane.

Twenty years ago, I had the good fortune to interview actress, model, TV star and Whitbourne native Shannon Tweed. Her reality TV series Family Jewels with husband Gene Simmons of KISS was a hit and so she was considered a “get” for media. Also, she had an autobiography out and wanted to promote it. Being with a Newfoundland publication, the Independent, I took a shot, asked, and she agreed!

I had arranged a time with her publicist for a 10-minute phone chat. I came to the office on a Saturday (no kid distractions) with a fries, dressing and gravy. I called at the agreed time, and she answered. We were paying for the call, and my editor had warned me no more than 10 minutes. Newspapers run on shoestring budgets, and this was a super long-distance call.

The interview about the show and the book took 10 minutes. Then we talked for well over an hour. (Boy did I catch hell.)

While I was supposed to be the interviewer, turns out Tweed had tons of questions for me about Newfoundland. Hands down she was the best interview I ever had.

At the time I wrote what her publicist and I had agreed on – the show and her book. Twenty years later here’s what has stayed in my head.

Many know her story: born in Whitbourne, her father had been badly hurt in a car accident when she was 13 and her mother moved the kids with her to Saskatchewan. As we talked it turned out we were roughly the same age, both growing up in Newfoundland at the same time.

She asked me about Bowring’s. When she was a girl, if she was good, her mom would let her come along on a shopping trip to St. John’s. Now very wealthy, Tweed said she shops at all the best stores in the world – L.A., New York, Paris, Milan and Tokyo – but in her mind the most elegant place she’d ever been was the perfume counter at Bowring’s in downtown St John’s.

“We used to park on the second floor – God we were so sophisticated!”

She asked me about my schooling; did I go to MUN? I did. She joked if her Dad had not been hurt, she would be married and living in Dildo with five kids. I said I found that hard to believe. Maybe not, she agreed. She said she probably would have gone to MUN. She dreamed of medical school. I said I knew people in the class she would have been in, and I could have seen her there.

We talked a lot about raising kids. At the time I was the single father of four teenagers, trying to raise them on a journalist’s salary. She said money wasn’t her problem – her challenge was their fathers’ rock star fame and the temptations of Hollywood. I confessed I wouldn’t trade with her.

She spoke of the values she learned growing up in Whitbourne and how, come hell or high water, she was going to instill them in her kids. She said Simmons’ public persona was rock demon but privately he was very old school.

“That’s why he had kids with me.”

I distinctly remember two things during our long talk. First, how much I liked her. Second, I remember suddenly realizing I was laughing and joking with a person who had been a guest star on Frasier! It was a surreal moment.

We talked about local food. I remember this quote: “Do you have any idea how hard it has been to teach chefs in L.A. how to make a decent fries, dressing and gravy?”

I told her that was what I was picking at as we talked.

Another great quote was cut from my story 20 years ago because it was decided it was a tad racy for a mainstream newspaper. I will try it again.

“I have been with Gene 23 years,” she said. “He is a very wealthy man. We want for nothing. Yet his most prized possession, the one thing he would grab in a fire, sits in a drawer on his night table. Twenty-three years together and I will still come into the bedroom to see him sitting on his side, holding it and giggling. To him it never gets old.”

What was it? Shannon’s Grade Six diploma for graduating from Dildo Academy.Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com