Special Coverage Pop Culture Classics (The EW 1000)Sound BitesSummer TVBox Office Game
Page 2 of 5

Manzella is not known for being a subtle salesman--one of his projects for Pamela Lee was Pammy soda, packaged in Pamela-shaped bottles--and his track record for McCarthy has been mixed. He scored with his Jenny McCarthy's Surfin' Safari CD, a compilation of her fave beach tunes that sold more than 100,000 copies last year. But his recent endorsement deal with Candie's shoes has been a public relations fiasco. The print ads that ran in more than a dozen magazines this summer, showing McCarthy on a toilet reading The Wall Street Journal, her panties rolled down to her fetching Candie's pumps, seemed more like Hustler humor than high-concept marketing. And her three Candie's TV spots--including one in which she passes gas in a crowded elevator, then asks directions to the bathroom--were such turnoffs, only MTV would air them (during last month's Video Music Awards).

"Look," Manzella says in defense of the ads, "when Jim Carrey farts in an elevator in Liar Liar, everyone thinks it's hysterical. But when Jenny farts in an elevator, it becomes this big scandal. It's a double standard. It's not fair." Of course, nobody wanted to buy Jim Carrey's shoes after his elevator scene, either, but never mind. Now that McCarthy is an NBC employee, even Manzella realizes the potty jokes will have to go. "It's a bigger audience, so we have to broaden her appeal," he says.

And there it is--the looming paradox of McCarthy's move to prime time. How do you market her to the masses without losing that certain Jenny sais quoi that got her noticed in the first place? "We have an interesting dilemma here," says Jenny creator and executive producer Mark Reisman. "On the one hand, we don't want to alienate the people who are coming to the show to see the girl from Singled Out. On the other hand, a successful half-hour network show can't survive on 2 million MTV viewers."

His partner, Howard Gewirtz, agrees. "Our Jenny can't just be the girl who makes faces and will do anything to be sort of loony and goofy," he says. "We've got to show her as a real person, someone people can relate to." Reisman again: "So we tried to stick to Jenny's own story--how a few years ago she was selling sausages in Chicago and now she's in L.A. That just felt more real."

At one point in her life--after running out of tuition money and dropping out of nursing school--McCarthy actually did sell sausages in Chicago, the city where she grew up with three sisters, and where her mom and dad, Linda (a courtroom custodian) and Dan (a steel-plant foreman), still live. But getting to L.A. wasn't quite the snap it was for her TV alter ego. For starters, there was her humiliating stint as a fashion model in the Midwest. "The agencies were like, 'You've got to be kidding. You're just too overweight. You look like you should be selling beer in a bar,' " says McCarthy. "I'm five foot six and I weighed about 140 pounds, but I was a happy 140."

Playboy, as it happened, was happy with her 140 too. One week after wandering into the magazine's Chicago headquarters, she was being shot for Miss October 1993. (Turn-ons: "Men who aren't afraid to cry." Turnoffs: "Guys who give you their business cards and say 'Call me, babe, I can make you a star.' ") She did it, she says, for the $20,000 fee. Three months later, she picked up another $100,000 as Playmate of the Year. "I was $15,000 in debt. I just wanted to pay my bills and get out."


Page 2 of 5

You Might Also Like