The former 'Beverly Hills 90210' star says she struggled to maintain her portrayal as 'America's sweetheart couple' with Dean McDermott as she witnessed his different side.
- Jan 31, 2016
AceShowbiz - In an interview for Lena Dunham's Lenny newsletter, Tori Spelling talked about her marriage woes with Dean McDermott and their reality shows. On their first TV show, she admitted to cutting any damaging footage to conceal her husband's temper from viewers. She didn't want to ruin their portrayal as a perfect couple.
"On Tori and Dean, I was the executive producer," she opened up. "I looked at every edit. I basically protected our relationship through that. At first, it was fine, but it was a new relationship for us. We started the show when I was pregnant with Liam, when we had just gotten married."
"We had this thing that was fairy tale, amazing, newlywed period, honeymoon, unbelievable. All of a sudden, we got pregnant, and then I saw a different side of him. Not that I didn't love him. But I thought, I didn't sign up for this. [I said] 'Wait, you didn't show me this.' He said, 'If I had shown you that side, you wouldn't have been with me.' That's not fair. It's like, 'Can I go back and sue you now?' "
Spelling continued, "I was controlling it as best I could. I was being real, but I knew not to let it go to a certain place. I knew Dean had a temper, and I didn't want that on camera, because that didn't serve us well. We were like America's sweetheart couple. Why would I do that? There were some things where I'd be like, 'You guys have to cut that out.' "
She recalled her first reaction when news broke out that she was cheated on, "Everything about me was stripped away with one magazine cover. That was it. It was that Us Weekly cover [which revealed Dean had cheated]... Then when it came out, I didn't know what to do. This wasn't going away."
They ended up filming a new reality show, "True Tori", that focused on their marriage problems. "It was honestly my decision [to do the reality show]. This was affecting me on many levels, not just the personal level. This is my career; this is, I hate saying it, my brand. All the lines blurred at that point," she explained.
"I obviously ran it by Dean, and if he had been adamant that he didn't want to do it, I would not have done it. I would have respected that. He just said, 'Do what you have to do.' He was at that point where he just was at the lowest point. He was in rehab, and he was just like, 'I f**ked up. I'll do whatever I have to do to maintain our relationship.' "
