My Reality (27 page)

T
ye and I were living in what almost felt like a weird fairy tale of a world, because everything we had both ever wished for had come true. Actually, wishes we didn’t even know were possible were coming true. I used to always say that the best writers in the world could not have written our story and made it sound believable, because it was just too unbelievable.

Things were great on the home front. We bought our first house together. We had expanded our family by one puppy (he was a wedding present from Tye!). Tye had his agency up and running. I had my steady slew of jobs. Things were really, really good. We started talking about starting a family in the next couple of years. And where we wanted to end up: if we would stay in Dallas, or if we would ever move to LA, or at least get another house in LA. We loved playing the game of wondering where we would be in five years, and ten years, and twenty years. Basically, we were enjoying being newlyweds and having a lot of fun.

I loved being a
GMA
correspondent. It was literally like my
dream job—making my living by traveling and meeting people—and I hoped I could do it forever. In early 2010 Deena called me and told me that she’d gotten a call from one of the producers for
Entertainment Tonight.
He told her he was a huge fan of mine and asked her if I’d want to come be a correspondent for sweeps week. He didn’t have to ask twice. I was in. One of my first assignments was to cover the
Valentine’s Day
movie premiere, which meant I got to meet Bradley Cooper and Julia Roberts. Um, absolutely! Count me in! It was a dream job—and a dream assignment! I was on the red carpet of a major movie premiere with some of the biggest movie stars around. I definitely didn’t fit in, but I was having fun playing in their world!

Again, the stories I did for
ET
were fun and lighthearted, which is definitely what entertainment news is all about. And the more I did it, the more I found that it was really, truly my favorite thing to do. I realized that if I could pick my dream job, it would be doing some sort of entertainment news. Like I’ve said, I don’t take myself too seriously, and I’ve never pretended that I could sit behind a news booth and give that kind of important information.

But becoming a correspondent for
Entertainment Tonight
and
The Insider
did come with some new challenges. As I learned when I did taped pieces for
GMA
, for some stupid reason, I get more nervous doing taped TV than I do with live TV. I know that’s odd, because you would think, with live TV, it’d be easy for me to psyche myself out with the fact that it’s LIVE TV. But I actually loved that feeling of only having that one shot, and having to think quickly on my feet—it kept things challenging and fun for me. Turn a live camera on me, and I’ll perform without even thinking about it.

Of course, the first time I was on the set of
Entertainment Tonight
,
I found myself sitting up there with Mary Hart! She’s a woman who is an absolute pro at her job, and it is
very
intimidating to be sitting next to someone like that!
Calm down, Melissa! You can’t keep screwing up your lines; Mary doesn’t want to sit on this stage with you for thirty minutes!
But it’s definitely not as easy as it looks. I know from an audience perspective, it looks like anyone can look into a camera and talk, but there’s actually a lot more that goes into it. You’ve got to know how to read a prompter (and how to make it sound like you’re
not
reading), know what camera to look at and when, interact with the other person with you, be aware of your face, and nail the delivery.
Phew!

My main problem has always been that I talk really fast naturally, let alone when I’m nervous. And so I knew every time I did a show like
Entertainment Tonight
that my note would be:
Do it again. Slow down.
I’ve learned to take deep breaths and count to three slowly in my head, to start a slower pace. Hey, whatever works, right?

I’ve found since working for
Entertainment Tonight
that I like to make fun of myself, and my situation, and laugh at people, and with people, and so having the chance to do that on the show was just the best. The job was supposed to last only through sweeps week, but then, the producers just kept bringing me back, one assignment at a time. They were linked with
The Insider
, and filmed on the same set, in fact, so they invited me to go start doing some stuff with them, which I also really enjoyed. What’s not to enjoy?

I had the opportunity to cover the awards shows—both the Golden Globes and the Oscars—and it was just so unbelievable. I got to go to a showroom to try on dresses, and then get all dressed up and get my hair and makeup done, which for me was like being Cinderella. Normally, I’d be at home in my sweats all day, with my hair in a ponytail. After I got dressed up all fancy, and rode in
the limo over to the theater, I found myself walking down the red carpet before the show started, with my shoes in my hand, to get to the place where the journalists stood.

The night that I covered the Oscars was a blur of the biggest celebrities, ever—Tom Hanks and George Clooney and everyone—and then I found myself talking to these people as if they were anyone else I might have met on the street. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would be interacting with Tom Cruise, and, surprisingly, I wasn’t nervous at all. It was just fun. I kept reminding myself that they were just people. So when I talked with them, I didn’t get quite as starstruck as I normally would have. I said
quite
as starstruck—I definitely still had stars in my eyes! I was so amazed that, a year ago, I had been a fan of these stars, and I had read about them in all the rag mags, and now I
knew
them. I’d talked with them.
And
it was documented on film that I’d talked with them. I really had!

By this point, with my personal and professional life both going so well, my time on
The Bachelor
began to feel very far away. I hadn’t had any contact with Jason since we exchanged those few emails the night “After the Final Rose” taped, and I was just fine with that. When I looked back at my time with Jason, my conclusion was that it had never been a real relationship. I thought that it was at the time, I really did, but outside the Bachelor Bubble, I could see the truth of the situation. We went on three dates on the show. We didn’t know each other well enough to know if we were in love or even compatible enough to get married. Afterward, because I had made this big, very public commitment, which I felt I needed to honor, I believed I really had to fight for my relationship with Jason. I actually think I fought harder for it than he did, especially if he had already realized that his heart was really with Molly. It
was when I could tell that he wasn’t going to reciprocate my efforts or my feelings that I finally gave up. I’m still not proud of that decision because I hate not seeing something through, especially something that important. But it’s obvious that it never would have worked out.

I look back at how I’ve always felt about Tye, and then how I thought I felt about Jason, and it doesn’t even compare. Tye has had my entire heart from the day I met him. So, in all honesty, Jason never really had a chance to steal my heart—because it belonged to someone else at the time. Even though I didn’t know it, and I tried to deny it, it’s the truth. And things ended up the way they should have: I married the love of my life, and Jason married the love of his life Molly.

And, yes, while Jason and I will always have this experience that bonds us, and we will always be associated together in the public eye—people to this day still come up to me and talk about how much they hate what he did to me. I’ve turned it around and can appreciate how much Jason helped me. Again, I wish it hadn’t gone down that way, because of how it made me feel at the time. But it had to happen as it did for me to be where I am now. Not only professionally but personally as well. And I wouldn’t change a single thing about how we ended up here.

Everyone seems to want me to feel this hatred toward Jason and Molly—him especially—and all of this anger toward both of them. But I just don’t.

I
did.
Or at least I thought I did. But how could I ever be truly angry about something that ended up so great for everyone? We all hit potholes in life—and mine were definitely made public—but I’d do it all over again if it led me to the same outcome.

Looking back at the whole debacle I realized that I don’t blame
Jason. Or Molly. It was going through the process and getting wrapped up in the behind-the-scenes maneuverings that led to a few lapses in judgment. But I don’t think he’s a bad person. I don’t think she’s a bad person. I’ve heard him say, even on that show, that he just followed his heart and did what was right for him. And I truly believe that. I don’t think that he picked me just to dump me on TV and pick the other girl. And I don’t think that Molly was the type of girl who deliberately set out to do everything she could to woo him away from me and win, after he had proposed to me. I don’t think it was malicious. If I saw Molly somewhere tomorrow, I would talk to her. If I saw Jason, let’s be honest, it would probably be awkward, but I wouldn’t shun him. I do think she’s a genuinely good person. I think he’s a genuinely good guy. They both just got wrapped up in a really complicated situation, and, unfortunately, made a bad decision on national television that affected me positively and him negatively. I hate the way it happened. I absolutely hate it. I’m so embarrassed and humiliated,
still
, by the way it happened. And I know that to so many people, I will always be
that girl
who got dumped on
The Bachelor.
But I thank the Lord today for the way it happened. That moment literally changed everything in my life for the better, so if I had to go through that anger and embarrassment again to get to the joy and fulfillment that is my life today, that would be great by me. And I honestly do wish Jason and Molly both well.

That said, I’ve learned through all of this that I cherish my private life. I’ve seen what making it public can do, and I think that both Jason and Molly would admit that their lives were not easy for a long time because of the limelight. It’s almost like their relationship was forced to survive because of how it all happened. A lot of people didn’t believe in the relationship. A lot of people got
mad at her for immediately taking him back, or got mad at him for dumping me, and then immediately making out with her on camera. But what I know from what I went through is that I’m sure the way it appeared on TV is not the way it really happened. I’m certain they had their own courtship, off camera, just like Tye and I did. I just don’t happen to know it myself. And neither do the viewers.

But, again, reality TV has this way of airing what it wants you to believe. And as the viewers, we tend to believe it. This caused a lot of backlash against Jason and Molly, and a lot of bad tabloid stories with headlines like “Most Hated Bachelor Ever.” I didn’t envy them for that at all. I’m sure their relationship is probably a whole lot stronger for them having gone through that bad period. But from where I’m sitting, I know that I wouldn’t want to put my relationship through that test. Tye and I have already been through the wringer, in part because of my time on reality TV, and if the only surefire way for me to guarantee that we’re going to be okay is to not let people in too much, I’m okay with that. I’m happy to have a career on TV and leave my personal life back at home. I actually prefer it that way.

It was in January 2010, just after Tye and I got married, that I first heard that the production company Warner Horizon was developing a new show called
Bachelor Pad.
Now, these were the people who made
The Bachelor
and
The Bachelorette
, and who had tried so hard to convince me to be their next Bachelorette. And, apparently, ABC was interested in having me cohost the show. I heard a little bit about the concept, but not really in any great detail, and then, I stopped hearing about it. I got busy with
Entertainment Tonight, The Insider
, and
GMA
, and I figured the opportunity had gone away. Then in early May of that year, I received the news that
the show was definitely on, and they did want me to cohost with Chris Harrison.

Wow! Really? What a great opportunity!
I mean, first of all, it was a prime-time hosting gig. Those don’t come along very often. Second, it was on network TV, which, again, is huge. And it was cohosting with Chris Harrison, who’s a franchise name that’s known by everyone. Careerwise, why would I not jump at an opportunity like that? I knew that the public might not understand why I would go back to a franchise that they felt did me wrong, but I didn’t (and don’t) feel like I had been done wrong by them. Again, I wouldn’t even
have
a career in this industry if it weren’t for them. So why the heck not give this a shot?

Come June, I moved out to LA again, for four weeks, to shoot
Bachelor Pad.
It was a crazy experience. I had never hosted a show before—and I had to do it alongside someone who had been hosting for years and years. Again, intimidated much? I basically just had to learn on the fly. I had a script to read, and tried to play off Chris and the contestants, but, again, it’s harder than it looks. The producers have a clear vision of what they want the show to be, and it is my job to deliver. And it was extremely intimidating!

When we started filming, it definitely felt a little bit awkward because I had just gone through the whole process from the other side, and now they wanted me to be on their side—the production side—with Chris. It almost felt like I shouldn’t be on their side because I wasn’t above any of these contestants I had just been with. Technically, I should have been living in the mansion with all the other contestants, right? What made me qualified to stand up front with Chris and take on hosting duties? I had no idea, honestly. But I was up to the challenge and excited to learn.