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Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen get it on
from new york times
Can This Hookup Survive?
By BAZ DREISINGER
Published: January 9, 2005
PPOSITES attract, yes, but they also bicker like third graders sometimes. When the 5-foot-8 rapper Flavor Flav whose group, Public Enemy, emerged as the Black Panthers of the hip-hop generation in the late 1980's met the 6-foot-2 former action-film star Brigitte Nielsen, a battle of bling versus brawn began. He balked when she tried to touch his gold teeth; she towered over him, swiped him with her makeup bag and proclaimed that she would wear the pants in the house.
The house in question was the set of VH1's reality show "The Surreal Life," Season 3. Flavor Flav, Ms. Nielsen and four other C-list celebrities were settling in for what appeared to be a fraught 12-day stay, which was shown last fall.
Not long after their arrival, though, Ms. Nielsen, 41, had a few drinks and began parading in pint-sized skivvies and an apron, and Flav, 45, toned down his irritation. He brought her dinner in bed, where she lay in a drunken haze, then joined her under the covers. The next morning, as he watched her serenely cooking breakfast, he said he just might fall in love.
And if Flav, Ms. Nielsen and VH1 are to be believed, that is essentially what happened. Within two months of the "Surreal Life" September season premiere the most watched show in VH1's history the channel announced the new couple would be getting their own reality series: "Strange Love." It begins tonight.
The show is part ebony-and-ivory clichι, part believe it or not: the outspoken rapper who once epitomized black power dating the Nordic giantess who used to embody, well, blonde power.
Even devotees of "The Surreal Life" and its always strange interpersonal dynamics were taken aback by this oddball couple. Grousing about the spectacle of "the original public enemy" canoodling with the bleach-blond Ms. Nielsen, whose former husbands include Sylvester Stallone, one viewer wrote on the VH1 Web site, "What a sellout."
Another viewer, SnowflakeGirl, wrote on FansOfRealityTV.com that the hookup "seems as unnatural and unlikely" as that between a giraffe and a house cat.
But VH1's audience could not seem to turn away as Ms. Nielsen flirted with other men and Flav called her "loose"; as Flav promised he would give up his gold teeth if Gitte (Ms. Nielsen's given name) would marry him; as Ms. Nielsen proclaimed her love for "William Drayton" (Flav's real name).
More recently, as Flav and Ms. Nielson have appeared together to build interest in "Strange Love," some fans suspected a setup. The image the two project of an over-the-top caricature of an "it" couple began to seem too deliciously (or horrifically) odd to be true.
"VH1 must think I'm a fool to believe that," said Tommy Smith, a D.J. in Los Angeles and a longtime fan of Public Enemy, with evident disgust. "At what point can we stop calling it reality TV?"
A viewer using the name Deny predicted on FansOfRealityTV.com that the "new show will be a fake."
Is it? Mark Cronin, a producer of "Strange Love," said that Brian Graden, the programming chief of MTV Networks, VH1's parent company, had asked him exactly that when the idea for the new show came up. Mr. Cronin's reply? "Well, producers see Flav and Brigitte when the cameras aren't around, and we can tell you: it is real," he said.
Dave Coulier, who was Flav's roommate on "The Surreal Life," is not so sure. He has no doubts the couple were once an item. "They called me from a hotel room the day after the show ended, obviously feeling no pain," he said. By now, however, their relationship has become "a cartoon of itself," he said, "at which point I don't think it's believable."
Viewers of course are well aware that reality television manipulates reality in its casting, editing and coaching of cast members. But there is a line between inflating reality and inventing it, and suspicions about the Flav-Nielson romance raise the possibility that "Strange Love" could backfire on its producers.
Fans, especially on the Internet, are quick to ridicule reality shows that seem to be hiding something, like Fox's recent "Who's Your Daddy?," which reunited with her biological father a woman who was linked last week by the Web site Gawker .com to a soft-core porn film.
Ben Silverman, a producer of reality shows including "The Restaurant," said that "Strange Love" should not be taken too seriously. "Like Paris Hilton," he said, Ms. Nielson and Flav "are so larger than life they're almost caricatures of themselves. Any sense that their show should be real should already be dismissed."
Ken Mok, a producer of "America's Next Top Model," said he sees "Strange Love" as "a hybrid show, a reality sitcom" with the right to take liberties.
But don't tell that to Flav. On a recent snowy afternoon in Manhattan, he showed up at the Viacom building in Times Square, home of VH1 and MTV, to set things straight. Strutting through the lobby, he wore the accessory that has been his signature since the 80's, a colossal clock necklace. His euphoric zest for approaching fans who gawked as if he'd risen from the dead evoked Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard" revisiting the Paramount lot, site of her long-gone glory days.
"Whatever y'all saw between me and Brigitte was all real, nothing phony," Flav declared in an interview in a VH1 office. "That's why they call it reality TV." He paused. "Well, O.K., there's a lot of people that do act phony on reality TV, but not me and Brigitte."
As for his claim in a music magazine that the televised affair is merely a vehicle with which to resurrect a stagnant rap career, Flavor Flav, who is working on both a solo album and a new Public Enemy release, says there's no contradiction. "Just 'cause I'm using it as a vehicle, that don't mean our love is fake," he said.
To prove it he placed a telephone call to Ms. Nielsen in Milan, where she lives. She picked up at her apartment, which, as she acknowledged during the conversation, she shares with a 26-year-old bartender named Mattia Dessi. VH1 has promoted "Strange Love" as a kind of obstacle race by Flav and Ms. Nielsen to the altar that climaxes in Las Vegas. "Viewers will have to see if they get hitched or if one of them gets ditched," a press release declares. But whatever happens on the show, which was taped in October, Mr. Dessi, who has been Ms. Nielsen's boyfriend for nine months, has clearly not been thrown over.
For the benefit of a reporter Flav put the call on speakerphone. It was apparent he and Ms. Nielsen had not spoken in some time. "Hi, Foofy Foofy," Ms. Nielsen said brightly, using a pet name. But he would not be sweet-talked. "Where have you been?" he barked. "How come everybody else can get hold of you but I can't?"
Ms. Nielsen played innocent. "I'm here," she said. "And you said you were going to get your butt over here, and you didn't."
"Don't believe the hype!" Flav shouted. "You've been an untouchable."
"Well, I have been in Switzerland for a couple of days," Ms. Nielsen acknowledged. "And then I'm going to London soon. I'm filming `Big Brother' there." (Flav has not been the only one to turn the couple's recent exposure to career-reviving advantage.)
"But Mr. F. never calls me, ever since he left Milan," she continued coyly.
The conversation turned to a subject that is clearly a sore spot for Flav, namely Mr. Dessi, whom he referred to with an expletive. "I just live with him," said Ms. Nielsen, who has four children and four ex-husbands. "Just like Mr. F. has all his girls around."
"All my girls?" Flav protested. "Besides you, I only got one, and she's sitting right there." He gestured across the room at Beverly Johnson, a curly-haired woman who says she is Flav's ex-girlfriend and current best friend. She let out an exasperated sigh and said she loathed her cameo on "Surreal Life." (She was shown having a dinner at her Bronx apartment for the happy couple and an uninvited "crew of thugs from the neighborhood.")
"I know it's reality TV," she said, "but I couldn't do what I really wanted to do: curse them out."
On the phone the conversation moved on to one of Ms. Nielsen's children, who, yes, loved the sneakers Flav had sent him; to Ms. Nielsen's trip to church with Flav's mother; and to New Year's Eve, when the couple promised that they would speak again.
And did they? The question, and the larger one of what is real on reality television, may best be left for students of "celebreality," as VH1 has labeled its planned future barrage of other celebrity-centric reality programming.
"Celebrities are extreme versions of real people," said Mr. Cronin, the "Strange Love" producer. "They're more upset when they're upset, more in love when they're in love."
Casting them in reality television may yield a new kind of extreme reality: at once unreal, surreal and, every now and then, a tiny bit real.
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Originally Posted by AmeliaG
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