Poor Jenny McCarthy, every
time we hear her name it always has some backhanded comment like "15 minutes
of fame" or "she's still around?".
Jenny
has said she doesn't regret anything she's done to get where she's at but
her actions seem to speak otherwise, and she seems to liken herself to
Rodney Dangerfield when she says "there's always been, throughout my life,
the people who just hate my guts." Her life seems the boilerplate of career
advancement that a feminist would cringe at. A young aspiring actress drops
out of nursing school and heads to Hollywood, she gets breast implants
but is told she's therefor too curvy for modeling. She then turns to Playboy,
who gave Jenny her breakthrough opportunity in 1993 when she posed nude
and was Playmate of the Month in October. The following year, Jenny McCarthy
was named Playmate of the Year.
Her boyfriend at the time
could have been her father, Ray Manzela, more than double Jenny's age during
nearly their entire relationship had pestered MTV until finally they offered
her a job as a wacky co-host on MTV's Singled Out. This seemed a
welcome role for a flustered McCarthy who was driven to tears when the
portly slimeball actor Steven Seagal attempted to get McCarthy to disrobe
to prove she was worthy of the part he wanted her in with Under Siege
2. McCarthy angrily told him "rent my [Playboy] video, you asshole!"
and stormed off the set. At Singled Out, she lasted two years doing
The
Dating Game of the 90's before she landed her own show on MTV, dubbed
The
Jenny McCarthy Show. The show was sketch comedy at McCarthy's goofiest.
Jenny was ready to graduate to the next level, and the battle for Jenny
from the networks was frantic, where executives at Fox literally rolled
out the red carpet and begged at her feet to join the fledgling network.
Playboy also still had an interest, her new found popularity prompted the
magazine to offer her $500,000 to get naked for them again, which she promptly
declined. She then made perhaps the biggest mistake of her career by going
to NBC, who unlike Fox, gave the quick trigger to new shows that didn't
immediately draw an audience. Her comedy, Jenny, which she played
an East Coast grocery clerk who inherits a Hollywood mansion didn't do
well. Unfortunately, NBC stuck it in a lousy time slot and the show bombed.
It was off the air in less than 6 months.
Jenny's career seemed to
fizzle as fast as it rocketed from there. Her only role in 1998 was
in the box office flop BASEketball, where she played Yvette Denslow.
She also decided that same year to have her breast implants removed, and
has urged other females in Hollywood to do likewise for health reasons.
McCarthy in 1999 got a role in the limited release of Diamonds,
but in the new Millennium she seems to have made a comeback. While her
Diamonds
role wasn't anything big, it did lead to a marriage... Not to Ray Manzela,
whom she'd been trying to dump for years according to reports only to get
sucked back in by his charm. Rather, Diamonds' director, John Asher,
who told the National Enquirer "Jenny and I fell madly in love, we've been
living together and I'm the happiest man alive." This time she landed a
man much closer to her age, being only two years her senior. After her
marriage, Jenny dyed her hair back to brunette, again as an attempt to
gain respect and not fall in the 'Sharon Stone' typecast. Jenny's new found
momentum landed her roles in Scream 3, where she plays Sarah Darling,
who she describes as "Sarah wants respect, and she's not getting it. I
like her because she's got spirit and spunk." One could see the character
is a lot like Jenny herself, in the pursuit of respect. McCarthy was also
on the short list reportedly for Charlie's Angels. While she may annoy
the hell out of many, Jenny isn't going away, as her move this year to
Fox signals the network still wants her in their stable. She will be co-starring
in a 20something sitcom that indeed sounds much like NBC's Friends. |
