You're Wrong About - Quarantine Deep Dive: Jessica Simpson’s “Open Book” (Week 3)

Episode Date: May 28, 2020

We discuss Jessica's reality-show marriage and its painfully ordinary end. Digressions include "Showgirls," "The Notebook" and Adam Levine. "Hamlet" makes an appearance; Willie Nelson and Lynda Carter give sage advice. Mike apologizes for things out of his control. Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseSupport the show

And Rose, like, did marry some guy and have kids, but like, they don't really dwell on it that much. And it's like, they're panning over her, like, beautiful life that she had. And it's like, here she is on a horse. No husband in sight. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where we read celebrity memoirs to you as you drift lazily in a hammock or maybe furiously try to keep up with your hectic life. Hopefully the former, maybe the latter, I'm sorry. That's not good. I don't like that. That one was fine. That's no worse than any of mine. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where we take down low-rise jeans forever once and for

all. That sounds like we're pulling them off of her like they're stripper pants. Oh, no. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the show where we expose low-rise jeans for the hoax that they always were. You're wrong about shortening torsos since 2018. I just think that we should all wear exactly as much fabric as we feel like in all the places that we want to put it. Yes, exactly. I didn't mean for that to be topical when I started the sentence, but it is now. So here we go. Hot take somehow. I am Michael Hobbs. I'm a reporter for The Huffington Post. I'm Sarah Marshall. I'm working on a book about the satanic panic.

And we are on Patreon at patreon.com slash You're Wrong About and we're on PayPal and we sell t-shirts. And we finally got an actual podcast host for this podcast. We have been hosting it on my personal blog from the early 2000s. For two years. For two years. And so we finally gave in this week and got a real hosting service. So we're sorry. Some of our episodes went offline. Some of them went in the wrong order. So if you experienced this, we're sorry and we're trying to be professional. I'm proud of it. I feel like we've moved to our big, big headbed. Yeah, we're doing it. And today we are talking again about Jessica Simpson. I'm so excited. I really have been waiting for too long for us to get to this.

We have previously mostly talked about the music in her life, but today we're going to talk about the men in her life. I've been looking forward to this for so long because we're finally going to talk about something that I don't think we've ever talked about on this show. A normal ass divorce. Nobody gets murdered. There's no abuse. And no one runs off with their therapist. Nobody runs off with anybody's therapist. There's no fabrication of repressed childhood memories. It's just like people that got into a relationship at a particular time in their life and they grew apart. And that's most divorces. It's like no one is a terrible human being, but it's just the combination of these two people becomes more and more poisonous

over time to the point where it can't be antidoted. There's no solution for it at a certain point. And then they stay married for three more years and then they break up. This is very typical. I'm very familiar with that relationship pattern. Exactly. I know Jessica Simpson. I am Jessica Simpson. You get your arguments ready. You make sure that you know you're not happy and you never will be. And then you change nothing for two years. Yes. So I think it's actually good to talk about because we talk about so much extreme human behavior on this show and it's kind of nice to talk about like pretty everyday human behavior. I think I have a darker worldview because I would say that the murder and the abuse, it's extreme, but it's also very endemic to human relationships.

That's true. There's just so many common human behaviors and some of them are really abusive and some of them are like people are flailing around and doing things that are harmful to each other, but ultimately able to make safe choices for themselves and others. However normal that is, I'm excited to be discussing it on something like the 87th episode we've done. Yes. The gravitational pull that you feel is the galactic size of the air quotes that I am putting around the word normal. When I say a normal divorce, what I mean is a normal divorce. Yes. Thank you for the intonation with the air quotes on it. Yes. So today we are going to start with a clip as we often do. It is the infamous chicken of the sea clip. Oh my gosh. I've never actually seen this. There are

aspects of this that were not remarked upon at the time and I want to remark upon, but one of the memory hold elements of this is that there's like a football game playing in the background. So as a person who spends a lot of time trying to get ambient noise out of audio recordings, I just want to apologize for like the weird noises in the background of this. You're apologizing for the production choices of a 20 year old reality show. Yes. Okay. You want to do three, two, one, go. Yes. Three, two, one, go. Is this chicken what I have or is this fish? I know it's tuna, but it says chicken by the sea. That's stupid. What? Don't make fun of me right now. I'm not in the mood. You've never had tuna before.

I've had tuna fish sandwiches and stuff like this. Maybe you and I have eaten tuna like this before. Why is it called chicken by the sea or in the sea? Chicken of the sea is the brand. You know, because a lot of people eat tuna, it's like a lot of people eat chicken. It's like the chicken of the sea. Okay. I understand that. I read it wrong. Okay. So what I'm saying is that he's being a dick to her. Right. Oh my god. Okay. They have a beautiful plant behind them though, I have to say. First things first. Yeah. Walk us through this. Walk us through this clip. What were you seeing and hearing? Okay. So they're sitting on the couch looking like they're having an amazing night in with like bright overhead lighting glaring down on them sitting four feet apart on a huge

white couch and Nick Lachey is watching a basketball game. And so she's like kind of curled up and she's eating a bowl of like I assume tuna salad or something like that. And she says is this chicken what I have her is this fish. And Nick Lachey is silent for like 10 seconds. I know. And he like glares at her. Yeah. And then she clearly feels like he's being rude to her or like condescending to her, which in my opinion he is. Yes. It's like the scene inside dinnertime and so many unhappy relationships. Yes. And also what's so interesting to me is like this clip of course went whatever the version of viral was in 2003. But like we spent all these years making fun of her and nobody was making fun of him. Yeah. I say ditzy stuff all the time and like you can be nice

about that stuff. I feel like I know so many couples who are both like my partner is like has all these little quirks and idiosyncrasies and I think they're so adorable and we tell funny little stories about the time both of us were confused were very by very simple things and it's like if this were a different relationship that moment could be a chance for like him to be loving and appreciative and instead it's this. Yeah earlier this year I mentioned that I didn't know that Sia was Australian. Oh I didn't know that. Yeah see and like my boyfriend was really nice about it and he's like oh yeah like that's a thing. I feel like there's a lot of things that you don't know that like like you didn't like you didn't know who Anastasia was and I'm like right

you were never a very sensitive little bookish eight-year-old Sarah so like I don't expect you to know that. Your previewing next week's episode which is deeply embarrassing that I had to ask whether Anastasia was a real person or not. I mean she's also a cartoon movie so like it is hard to say at that point it's like is Ariel based on a real person I don't know. But yeah you were nice about it you were like that's an interesting question Mike which it isn't. So yeah so anyway it's fascinating to me that I remember there was a Saturday night live sketch about this like this was really a moment that saturated the culture and I remember nothing about how Nick Lachey behaved in this clip and it's fascinating because like he's the one who says

the most stuff and has the most screen time and is doing the most and like that is comfort of it kind of comes from him and yet we remember it being about her which is very interesting to me. And there's also one of the things I love about this book is that Jessica Simpson very much owns her what she calls ditsiness like at one point her dad says you know sales increased by 200 percent and she goes two percent go that high she's inviting us to laugh at that with her right like she's bringing it up herself yeah but the tenor is completely different when other people bring that up about somebody else and are inviting you to laugh at that person. Yes the worst one and the one that the record company gets really mad at her about is it's right after her irresistible

video comes out her second album is about to get released and every day she's at like a different shopping mall or good morning America or like she doesn't even know where she is or who she's talking to and so she goes to a tennis tournament called the Arthur Ashe tennis tournament and so she has no idea who Arthur Ashe is. And Arthur Ashe died when she was a child right. Yeah and he's I mean he's an African-American tennis star who came out as HIV positive in 1992 and she's at a tennis tournament with Andre Agassi and they ask her like well you know what does Arthur Ashe mean to you and she has to sort of filibuster and then she turns to Andre Agassi and she's like I just think it's so great that you hold a tennis tournament every year so she's mixed up Arthur Ashe and

Andre Agassi. Which makes sense they're both double A names. I mean how much prep time does she have for any of this and does she have like you know Tony Hale whispering in her ear because she really needs that at this point. My favorite one is that she eventually gets invited to the White House and she's chatting with this lady and she's like oh what do you do and the lady says I'm the secretary of the interior and Jessica looks around and she's like this place looks amazing you've done an incredible job. I love she's trying to be gracious and also like I don't know what the secretary of the interior actually does and if I had to think of like something small talky to say about their actual job I could not I would just be like I like your blazer. Yeah so before we get into her

relationship with Nick Lachey why don't you catch us up where where is Jessica where are we. Oh gosh okay so in the first episode about Jessica Simpson's memoirs we talked about her early life her childhood in Texas her auditioning for the Mickey Mouse Club and gradually becoming more and more of a professional child and into this growing career as we discussed in episode two uh walks Nick Lachey who is in the boy band although I guess he's like 25 so like the the man band the man band yes 98 degrees and she's like hey I'm saving myself for marriage and he's like cool I get it and so the last time we saw Jessica she was starting to get a ton of media attention partly because she did an interview where she was like I'm saving my virginity for

marriage and so she and Nick are like going on a bunch of interviews and things and and talking about their sex life so yeah that's uncomfortable and I bet it's going to get more uncomfortable. Yes and so we're going to pick up with Jessica and Nick around three years after they started dating she is now 20 which would make him 27 or 28 she wants to get married he wants to get married but her dad is really against it her dad thinks that she should wait and she does not say it in the book directly but her father and Nick have a tense relationship for the entire marriage and a really big reason is that her father considers him a competitive sort of manager because of course Nick is giving her career advice and Nick is giving her music advice

and Nick is saying oh you should do this show and not that show like the way that you do with other people in the industry and Nick is like I'm already a pop star I know what I'm doing and her dad's like hey hey hey exactly and that's one of the reasons she says that Nick is the only thing that her and her father fight about so basically everything else she does what he says but it's only when Nick's advice contradicts him that she'll push back against her father and so I think this is one of the reasons why her father sees him as such a threat I feel like Nick is almost like a transitional person between like her parents and freedom yeah so what's interesting is all of these things come to a head that she's really busy with her career her dad doesn't really like this

dude that she's seeing they're essentially their whole relationship is on the phone at this point because they're both touring and recording music so relentlessly and so they break up oh man and what's interesting is they break up over exactly the issue that they will eventually get divorced over which is exactly the dynamic that we saw in the chicken of the sea clip that he's mean it's basically I mean this is what she says in the book my childishness which seems so cute and sweet when I was first with him seemed to annoy him we were both concerned about our careers and our anxieties just seemed to feed off of each other so he likes the fact that she's sort of I mean in some ways subordinate to him like her career is not as big as his but he's also a bit frustrated

that she's not sort of as independent as he is like he's been doing everything for himself since he was young he's had control over his own career later on they fight about time zones because she can't figure out how time zones work like she's just not somebody who's very worldly I can't figure out how time zones work and so basically they drift apart during this time they're both doing career stuff they just start kind of calling less and less and then jessica's basically like well I mean we're kind of already on a break anyway so just let's just like be on a break and she takes this break from him to sort of focus on her career things are weird in that Tommy Matola the warlock at the head of Columbia Records who has been pushing her to lose weight and basically

micromanaging her entire career has been pushed out of the record company so this is also at the same time that Napster appears and file sharing appears and so she talks about how they're already seeing the bottom start to fall out of the music industry at this time and so she's like flying coach to like gigs like they'll just get her coach tickets to things and then she has like do her own makeup in the bathroom at these places the music industry is transforming extremely quickly and she doesn't have like internal support within the record company to like prop her up anymore so she's sort of left-nick to focus on her career but her career is kind of like uh it's a little it's on thin ice basically I also think that this line is very

important for understanding like everything that went wrong with her career I was trying everything to get on MTV a channel that was forbidden to me as a kid I do think so much of the reason why she sort of didn't go so far as a pop star she's much more comfortable doing christian music or adult contemporary or country western or genres of music that really speak to her whereas all this pop stuff she hasn't watched MTV she doesn't know who the pop stars even are yeah it's there's this paradoxical thing where like if you're minting pop stars in this management machine and then you're like you need to be like rebellious and fun and it's like well I'm working very hard to do everything you're telling me and I just I don't have time for rebellion and fun I'm

very sorry right I can't finish this Arthur Ashe biography that you've assigned to me I'm sorry yeah uh and then there's also this thing of the continuing corruption of her parents so listen to this passage I am not sure when my parents started to drink alcohol but they took to it the lines are so blurred in the music industry there's a need to be in the mix and so many meetings and events are at bars and restaurants they wanted to fit in we didn't go to church and I noticed my dad dropping f-bombs on the phone as he advocated for me wow so she's like her her parents are becoming these like Hollywood pod people I know and becoming like these capitalist balrogs that are just like pushing her into the music industry and echoing what she's hearing from

everybody else of like lose weight get in the newspapers show up on more of these publicity these random publicity stints forget Jesus what did that guy ever do for you exactly and she also talks about how their marriage is basically over at this point it's just a business arrangement wow they're fighting constantly and so it is actually really interesting to me that this is still 2000 and her parents don't divorce until 2012 oh wow yeah there's there are rumors that her father is gay because he brought a man with him like a young male model with him to her later wedding to the football player guy that we mentioned in episode one he says that like he's you know someone linked with my career so I brought her into my daughter's wedding we don't know and

Jessica says like that's not my story to tell I stand with Jessica yeah I like I think we should leave it there but that's like one of the that's like one of the theories of her parents marriage and their dad also this is nuts her dad is also making much worse financial decisions so remember how I mentioned last episode that like there's weird millionaires like bank rolling her career and like investing in her yes buying stock in Jessica yes so after like she's now made it right so like the stock has boomed and so it's time to pay back these millionaires and her dad just refuses to pay them back he's just like oh they won't even notice they've already got millions dollars why should I pay them back I'm amazed he didn't get kidnapped at some point I know

and Jessica little 20 year old like non-savvy Jessica is like uh there's a contract you should probably pay people you're like existing contractual obligations like I'm no expert but a promise is a promise dad so she eventually like convinces him but it's just like a weird move yeah wow so her parents are like going rogue I mean it's just she reminds me a lot of Ophelia from Hamlet you know where like you're just like this this innocent girl and that's what everyone likes about you and then everyone in the kingdom just goes nuts and you're like well I don't I was not raised to cope with this situation that's your English degree again yeah that's my women's studies minor also and so we get now possibly the biggest cameo we've gotten so far this is where she meets

Beyonce oh so this is what Jessica says Sony and Columbia decided to make a push for me in the youth market so during graduation season I did Disney grad nights in Orlando with Destiny's Child Disney would shut down the park certain nights and only allow high school seniors to attend we would perform at the end and I loved it it gave me more time to bond with Beyonce and Kelly Roland this was pre-michelle Beyonce and I had similar family dynamics so I think we understood each other well her father had left his business in his case Xerox not Jesus and her mother Tina became a group stylist our younger sisters Ashley and Solange were both our backup dancers and they too became friends we share failure stories to buck each other up hers was star search back when

the group was known as girls time mine was the Mickey Mouse club disaster so it's like it's nice it's like early Beyonce early Jessica just being like maybe this is gonna work out maybe it's not we're both working our asses off and here we are in Disney world I love the opening sentence of this too that it's like I guess we're doing a push for the youth market so I'm just gonna spend a bunch of time at Disney world right it's also who were they marketing her to before it's like if Taylor Swift started off being marketed as like adult contemporary and then they were like wait she's a teen so this is also the time when her and Nick end up getting back together because of 9-11 what it's actually very typical and like I get it on an emotional level I think there are a lot

of people who are texting their exes right now yes so I imagine this is similar so she's hearing rumors that Nick Lachey is seeing other women while they're on a break and she has been dating this guy Dan Karate who is her choreographer who was the cliffhanger last episode yes and so I tried to structure this as a reality show cliffhanger where the cliffhanger is ultimately meaningless she goes on like two dates with him and then it peters out good I think you have a future in this Mike so they're broken up he has a concert at Madison Square Garden and he's supposed to call her afterwards and then he doesn't and he calls her the next morning and she immediately picks up and she's like why the hell didn't you call me last

night and he just says turn on your TV and she turns on her TV and it's 9-11 and they're watching the footage of this and like everyone else in America they're like scared and they don't know what to think and just like emotional like chocolate fountain pouring out of them and he says I only want to be with you right now and she says come home to me wow and so what's interesting is they come back together to each other and it's just understood that they're going to get married so they're in Honolulu she's singing I think the national anthem at a football game in Honolulu and he takes her out on a boat and does the like down on one knee proposes the whole sort of very traditional thing and so it's just like very quickly they move into this like wedding

planning mode there is also very importantly a conversation a single conversation where he proposes getting a prenup because remember he is wildly more financially successful than her at this point and so he's like well you know my advisors lawyers whoever say that like we should probably sign a prenup and she explodes she's like are we not gonna stay married are you gonna cheat on me like what the hell is this she tells him to drop it and like he drops it oh wow so he just goes along with it and that's the last they speak of it until later so they start planning for the wedding this is really bad she starts dieting so aggressively they have to keep adjusting her dress because she keeps getting smaller yeah this is what she says I had upped my dosage of

diet pills and was eating even less to be super thin for the wedding speedy and hungry I was easy to set off Nick and I had developed a reliable cycle he would criticize me for something small and I would blow it up to make it about something larger in our relationship or the pressure I was under in my career he would feel attacked and raise his voice then I would say screw you and pout like a child Nick would then resolve the issue by being the grown-up rinse repeat they're both just under a tremendous amount of stress both of her parents are like against this marriage or like actively trying to sabotage it this is also super fucked up this is what she says about her mom it was a new thing for my parents to fight over since my mom always took Nick's side when he

would criticize me for some new thing what you have to understand about my mom is that she's a tough crowd my dad is a people pleaser but people have to work to impress her to this day I think a lot of what I do is to win her approval her backing up whatever cutting thing Nick said to me gave it more weight and gave him license to do more yikes oh so this just like gets worse her parents get in like a screaming fight at the wedding rehearsal dinner oh god in front of Nick Lachey's parents this is like one of the most fucked up things as her and her dad are standing sort of like at the end of like whatever the carpet that you walk down to go get married the aisle oh yeah the aisle I feel like this is like the thing we're like we didn't know what skycaps were like we're gonna get a

bunch of listeners being like I feel old Mike and Sarah don't even know what weddings are the aisle as they're like standing at the door about to walk her down the aisle and you know the door is still closed they're about to make their entrance her dad it turns to her and is like you don't have to do this it's literally happening in 15 seconds and you're telling her like uh you can still bail what the fuck dude read the room dad yeah so you know she talks with the wedding the wedding is great they're super like they're still very infatuated with each other and like wildly in love and she's beaming in all the photos and she often looks back at the photos later after the relationship starts a sour of like we really were extremely happy together then even though the cracks were

starting to show and so she also mentions very briefly like the wedding night all she says is that you know of course this has been built up and she's finally not going to be a virgin anymore and they've been dating for three or four years and what she says is what I didn't know then is that everyone's first time is awkward and that's part of it and that's okay but at the time it's tough to understand right yeah because when the entire culture builds up virginity as this huge fucking thing and then if you lose it you're like a giant skank it's like yeah you're actually putting way too much emphasis on that aspect of the relationship it also just feels so confusing because it's like sex before marriage terrible like as wrong as all the other wrong kinds of sex and then it's like

suddenly you get married and you're given permission and it's like it's fine it's great yeah it's you're sharing God's love with each other and a man and a woman who are married having sex is the most beautiful thing there is like I think it's like you just can't you can't switch from something being totally forbidden and described to you as poisonous to suddenly it's it's safe for you like it's just I just imagine that feeling so scary the only way to sort of make people afraid of losing their virginity too early is to make sex this perfect expression of love and to put all this emotional intimacy into the act of sex because if you're sharing that with somebody before you get married you're sharing this part of yourself with them but then once you've built

up sex to be this expression of love then once you're actually able to have sex and maybe the sex isn't that good then it's like well do I not love this person or do they not love me or you're like can I ask for more from the pleasure this person is able to give to me or from the chemistry we have together because we're sharing love with each other and that's the point and it doesn't matter if I'm not getting some stuff I would really like yes and it's like not something we can talk about openly as just like sexual logistics right right you can't talk about it in terms of like friction and angles or like yeah like maybe take your socks off or maybe don't it's harder to have those conversations even as someone who grew up really secular and who

like you know wasn't really taught by the authority figures in my life to see my virginity that way I still did it's still in the cultural ground water like I still personally had a hard time getting past the idea that I was like losing a part of myself yeah yeah and I blame the culture for that it's a perspective that makes no sense to me today and yet it's it's so hard to get away from even in secular culture in the United States so one of the things that's interesting is their show their reality show really is newlyweds apparently her dad starts pitching this show to MTV right after the wedding her dad thinks that this is going to boost her music career because there's really been no other reality show like this like this is before the Kardashians

the only thing that's been on in this genre is the Osborns and so her dad comes up with the idea that like we can humanize Jessica Nick Lachey wants to do it because he thinks it's going to give him a solo career because he's breaking away from 98 degrees at this time right so according to Jessica her dad tells her that it's more like a documentary I mean presumably if you're used to working with camera crews you have some sense of what they're up to and everything and like you can maybe see the goals of the production but I also feel like there's this weird thing where like you let a camera crew follow you around for however long they're gathering hundreds of hours of footage you don't really know oh yeah how they're going to edit it together what they're going to

use or what the tone is going to be like it's this I think it's always just this huge act of trust and I feel like a lot of people are probably told they're going to get something that that sounds better than what they end up and you know so much of that show is about like the editing and like what background music they use because of course the producers are staging like things for them to do so like the producers will be like well we're going camping in Yosemite and then like Nick has to kind of pretend that it's his idea he's like hey sweetie I think we should go camping in Yosemite and so also what's interesting is her dad is listed as a producer in the show and one of Nick Lachey's managers is also listed as a producer so I'm pretty sure they had approval over final cut

so all of the stuff in the show of sort of casting Jessica as like the ditzy one they knew about like they knew what kind of background music they were going to put behind her and they knew what they were going to edit out of the show and leave in and so what's interesting is she doesn't seem to really mind about her own image but she wants their marriage to look healthy but like she burps and farts on camera and like doesn't care she's like if they want to know the real me like this is the real me how are you gonna not burp or fart in front of a camera crew that's following you around for six or seven months like it's the but like I burp dozens of times while we record these episodes and we have to edit it all out you know

but so what's interesting is the camera crews start documenting what becomes the central conflict of their marriage which is that he had this idea of marriage that he was going to have this traditional wife she's gonna be at home she's gonna be cooking she's gonna be taking care of him unspoken is her career is not going to be going as well as his right so like I'm going to be having the solo career she is going to be supporting me and what ends up happening is this pattern of like her being away for like weeks at a time because she's touring she's working on a new album she's going on all these events and he's just like at home and kind of pouting you're not cooking for me you're not cleaning you're not taking care of

the house and I'm here alone it's such a fascinating thing for a rich person to be upset about because it's so weird the reason that wives do that is because it makes sense economically to have like a class of workers who just like each has a woman to take care of their needs and raise their children and then they can go to the factory and make a widget and so if you're rich if you want someone to cook for you and clean for you then there are people that you can pay a living wage for that and then your wife can be someone that you love and maybe you're upset that you're spending all this time apart that's an issue separate from yeah this whole thing of like a wife is someone whose job it is to provide unpaid labor for you and he specifically doesn't want them to have a

house cleaner that's so weird people have such hang ups about this it's fascinating and also watching this show their house is huge yeah like they live in one of those like big beige just those huge like kind of condom colored yeah like six thousand square foot place like they probably have rooms they don't really know what to do with yes here's what she says i was very aware that i was a mid-level celebrity still paying off her wedding and not in a position to say no to any gigs i would come home go grocery shopping to try to be the normal wife nick wanted and then leave again when i returned two weeks later the crew would get us in the kitchen with nick complaining about the bread that got moldy and the salad that went bad because i'd bought them two weeks before

as if everyone doesn't do that and it's like nick go to the fucking store man or like hire someone to go to the store it's chill or just like throw stuff out as it goes bad because that happens in every refrigerator and then what's also an interesting dynamic here too and this is what i mean by sort of the quote unquote normal divorce is that neither one of them sort of know how to like talk about what the real issues are that she's feeling like she's being asked to do all this extra work and he's feeling like this isn't the marriage that he signed up for like you can imagine two people coming together on this and being like we'll have a house cleaner but like you and me together will cook meals in two nights a week or something like you can imagine something in between

if they could talk about these things but one of the things that ends up becoming really poisonous is that all the time that she's traveling around he's got time to just like think about his career everything that she's doing becomes a reminder that he's not doing it yeah so what's going on with him like is he not like what does he want and what is he not getting i mean basically once the show comes out the show is a massive hit the show actually boosts her music career but it does nothing for his that's really why is that it's not clear like maybe his music isn't as good as hers or like i mean she's also just like a very attractive female and she's also working on a movie career at this time like there's other places that she's showing up in the culture i love

that you just said very attractive female you sound like a congressman who just got caught with his hand in the cricket jar but yeah i mean and also it's interesting to see what happens to a relationship where like someone's unspoken assumption that they were going to be the Vladimir Nabokov and their partner would be the Vera is upended and they're like wait am i not the protagonist of this marriage am i not the person whose whose work is being supported right he easily could have just become like a dope supportive husband my wife is crushing it and it makes sense for me to do more like project management he stuff but like that's not what he thinks he signed up for and he's not capable of like talking about it and she's not capable of talking about how she's noticing that that's

what's going on so there's just these like fights that blow up into these larger fights because neither one of them are capable of talking about what really the conflict is right because you have this kind of ever simmering conflict and you address the little issues that bubble up out of that but you never get it what's really going on so i guess it gets worse and so she starts getting gigs that used to be an invitation for both of them to like sing their duets but after her album comes out and does well and his album comes out and doesn't he starts getting left off of the invitations so there's like a super bowl halftime thing at one point that they're both supposed to open and then mtv eventually is like uh actually why don't we just have jessica do that and like

let's put a pin in it on nick and the infamous rolling stone cover where she's like holding a vacuum cleaner in her underwear and it's like the housewife of the year or something like that that was supposed to be both of them but at the last minute rolling stone was like i don't think we need nick for this one she becomes a breakout star of this show that they're doing together it's interesting too because it's like it feels like the show is is doing all the stuff to kind of undermine her and yet she still is the one who people find charismatic it is actually really interesting to me also the way that she really like owns the show and is happy with the show now because i thought she would describe it as like the show was embarrassing it picked the worst parts

of me they deliberately edited it to make me look dumb and she's like yeah i am ditzy and like that's fine right and i guess like you have to accept that yeah and just be like i accept what i'm like and i like myself and people can relate to that however they need to and i'm not in control of it because i've been famous for 22 years and so what's really interesting is they both separately talk about how after they're on the show for a while and they see the way that the show is received they both start acting out the roles that the show casts them in inevitably it's like i love lucy kind of dynamic where she's this like constant dits constantly fucking up things and then he talks about he is cast as sort of like the midwestern good guy like i'm just a simple man who just

like wants dinner on the table when i get home and who only wears tank tops from what i've seen like he talks about how like that's really not the person he is like he has a darker side he's struggled with depression he has anxiety like he is not the sort of aw shucks good guy husband but as the show expects him to be that and as he begins to play it more and more on camera because they know the kind of footage the producers will use and won't and they want to get it over with and like give them as much good footage that they can use as possible so they don't have to be there every day he starts doing it when they're not filming and she starts playing up her like i'm just a ditzy housewife and i don't know how to cook or clean and what are these pots and pans

do like she starts emphasizing that aspect of her personality that is weird i mean i think it's an interesting example of the way that other people's expectations shape who we are in ways that like we're not always aware of yeah and i think we do that in our relationships and in our communities and it's interesting to think how the experience of fame used to be something that so few people really went through that it was hard to relate it to daily life and now the problems of fame i think are getting more and more democratized and just sort of being known as becoming one of the more viable industries yeah more people are known like there's a larger supply of low level celebrities now yeah there's a larger supply of knownness and it's also like i don't know i think that economically

it's like there are many seemingly more reasonable industries that it's much harder to get into with any kind of a future than like become an instagram influencer and sell vitamin gummies somehow yeah you know like that's not that easy to do either because everything is is so scarce and so it feels like we have more cultural literacy around kind of the emotional problems that any degree of fame produces and it feels like one of the parallels we can see is like yeah if the public expects you to occupy a certain facet of your personality maybe to exclusion of all others like you will and you maybe won't even notice that that's why you're doing it until later right and what's interesting about the last two scenes of the show as they get more into their

roles is that their marriage is just completely falling apart behind the scenes i mean this is while that she's doing all this stuff to keep her body like as quote unquote perfect as it can be but he's lost all interest in sex they barely look at each other anymore they don't cuddle she doesn't feel attractive at all they have that quality in this show i mean i remember it's hard to put my finger on it but i i'm remembering like when it came out what i saw of it was kind of one of the first things that made me feel like i i don't think marriage sounds that great actually and they just they don't seem to have that much to say to each other like it it does feel like that thing where like you're on like a romantic vacation that you like you were arranged like

a long time ago and you're like well we're probably gonna break up but let's let's do the vacation and then you're there and you're like we shouldn't have done this yeah and also the fights are getting nastier so sometimes where they're sort of getting into it she'll throw that back in his face and be like well nick if you actually had something to do maybe you wouldn't be at home waiting for me all the time and then he will retaliate by saying things like oh were you on tour with your friends jessica your friends who are all actually your paid employees because he knows that's something she's really insecure about that all of her friends are also her employees and she's always kind of paranoid that like what if they don't really like me and so to me this is

a milestone of a lot of relationships turning really sour when people start saying mean things to each other not because they believe them but because they know it's the most hurtful thing they can possibly say there's also an interesting thing where she starts getting more paranoid as they they have become like huge stars now and the paparazzi has started following them around because the paparazzi has discovered that they sell papers it's interesting how like a show that is just endless sequences of them doing boring everyday stuff would create a market for more media about them you know going to the cell phone store or whatever yeah and so she describes this scene where because the paparazzi is reporting you know they're having marital

troubles he's cheating on her whatever so this gets into her head so she talks about how they're going to some nightclub in LA they're walking in the security person whatever pulls the rope back they go in and then she's like do you know that security person you just nodded at her and nick is like what do you mean nodded and she's like that's a different nod than you normally make I'll bet you know her and like maybe she's being paranoid maybe it's true but she says cue the cycle I would accuse him of having a wandering eye and he would rip into me making sure I knew I was the one causing the problems in our marriage everything was my fault in a real way I agreed there was something nick wanted from me that I no longer had an emptiness I couldn't fill and neither could he

they're just sort of going through the motions they actually tried to get out of doing season three of newlyweds but the contract like they had already signed the contract she's not allowing herself to consider divorce because of god and he doesn't want to go to therapy because he's nervous that the therapist is going to rat them out to the tabloids yeah well I mean which is a reasonable fear and he also thinks that they can work on it themselves and it's not a big deal sure and then once they're actually doing season three of newlyweds and like it's pretty obvious to everybody that like their marriage is on the rocks and like some of their little bickering show up in the footage and the paparazzi is catching them fighting the producers of newlyweds start trying to create fights between

them so at one point they're filming at some like Lodge Chateau whatever the producers are like hey did you see this in the tabloids apparently Nick Lachey was hanging out with like some porn star in like some city did did you happen to see this and Jessica's like it just dawns on her that like this is what they're doing right that it's like they've created the scenario where they're away from everybody else it's just the two of them and the cameras and they're just trying to pick a fight between the two of them it's like a social science experiment I know like here's the shitty thing that your husband may or may not have done and we're rolling so at this stage as her marriage is floundering this is when her movie career picks up and her love life picks up so she starts

filming the movie Dukes of Hazard do you remember this movie oh yeah I do I remember seeing a bunch of trailers for this for whatever reason do you remember who her co-stars were in that movie yes Sean William Scott yes of whom nothing is said in the entire book who I feel like he's like very of that time yes and then Willie Nelson yes and I believe Linda Carter yes who we're going to get to I have a whole thing on Linda Carter yes oh my gosh amazing but you're missing somebody was there another male lead there was and I can't remember who it was was it like Luke Wilson or somebody no it was Johnny Knoxville oh my god of course it was so what do you know about Johnny Knoxville tell us tell the children I feel like Johnny Knoxville no that's a name I've

not heard I know that's that's how I thought too he's also very like 2005 he's very 2002 I would say that's really his time he's another great tank top wear yeah Johnny Knoxville children had a program called Jackass which was about a group of guys doing dangerous and or gross things together yes and people loved it loved it they loved it I never watched it because I thought it was gross and it stressed me out that is why I didn't watch it either and so he was like a big legit celebrity and then he's he transitioned to acting and he did a bunch of comedy movies and like the early 2000s and then I feel like I don't know what he's been up to but I would love to know just tell me all about all about everything well he actually comes off as like a pretty good dude in

this book compared to other dudes we will meet later sure I can see that I can see someone who's like my professional career is going to be about getting in a giant shopping cart and being pushed off a cliff with my friends being like weirdly well adjusted because their professional life is like all id apparently she you know she's his co-star she goes to baton rouge where they're filming the dukes of hazard they do a scene together and afterwards he says great job lady which becomes his nickname for her and he goes in for a hug and she notices that he holds the hug just like a little too long and she's like oh what's going on hello yeah or Luke Duke so she starts filming this movie it's a nice break because she's away from nick and la and

filming newlyweds for three months and so it's sort of like kids that study abroad yeah I bet being on a movie set would be really nice because there's like the time when you do your scenes and then you're like cool I'm gonna go to my trailer and I'm gonna eat my tuna in peace and no one's gonna be rude to me about it she starts hanging with Willie Nelson who apparently just shows up with his tour bus like he's not living in a trailer and so she'll just go and hang out on his tour bus with his wife why not if you're Willie Nelson yeah and so they start singing songs together and just like hanging out all the time oh she gets to hang out with a real musician I know who's like really supportive and cool it seems like and his wife also seems really nice yeah importantly she

hangs out with Linda Carter who was in the Wonder Woman TV show in the late 70s who's just like a super dope lady she has been playing in bands and touring in bands since she was 14 really she was a waitress and she saw a band performing at the restaurant where she worked and she was like how much did they make and they're like $50 and she's like I'm joining a band fine so she was Miss Phoenix then Miss Arizona then Miss World wow then she bounced because she didn't want to like cut ribbons she was like reading a bunch of glorious dynam apparently and was like fuck this I don't want to do this so she just left the pageant scene because she thought it was gross and amazing she like takes Jessica aside and this is what she says this is what Jessica says in her book get ready

she warned me people are gonna want you to be in those Daisy Duke shorts the rest of your life putting on the shorts on the set and having a group of people lean back to see if my butt looked good enough Linda had been there fighting for our rights in her satin tights but she also told me to embrace playing such a strong fourth right character such as Daisy or in her case Wonder Woman there were times she said slowly I think she saved me yeah she as she's doing this she's away she's at summer camp she starts having what she describes as an emotional affair with Johnny Knoxville ooh according to her it doesn't go anywhere he is married he has a daughter and they commenced this like relationship where like neither one of them are talking about what's really going on

but they just start like having these intense conversations and just hanging out a lot and becoming really important to each other he's her camp boyfriend I know they're their camp boyfriends yeah and so in my notes for this part I wrote oh no they're drinking whiskey and talking about books because like they're talking about like his influences and his time in show business and his upbringing you know he's from Tennessee they both sort of ended up sort of feeling like outsiders as celebrities so it's not just a clever name she talks about how it's also funny how because she's in this marriage that has been so dysfunctional for so long he's basically clearing this extremely low bar right ask her about her day and you know what did you think

of filming today and she'll talk and he'll listen and just like no one has done that for so long that she's like oh my god this guy like we have this really intense bond and it's like no you've just been in like a really bad marriage for a long time and you haven't had a normal conversation with somebody well it's like she's been on the emotional equivalent of like her constant crash dieting Johnny Knoxville is like a bagel with hummus and yeah she's like this bagel is like the greatest thing yeah like you know it's just a bagel but like bagels are amazing and like you're in a state to really appreciate one yes she says this is so sad she says I could share the deepest authentic thoughts with him and he didn't roll his eyes oh like oh no no it's terrible it's bad

and I'm so glad that Johnny Knoxville was like this relationship angel for her that's so sweet I know it's wild he actually ends up leaving his wife a year after this so it seems like they're both going through the same thing like they're both doing the study abroad like I'm gonna explore something else thing at the same time one thing that is really interesting and like because I'm so interested in like friendship as an institution I think a really important thing that your friends do is tell you when you're being immoral yes and so at this time she's telling her friend Casey who worked for the record company and was sort of in charge of getting Jessica her GED and they became friends and so she's gushing about Johnny Knoxville to Casey one night and she's like I

think I think he's saving me and her friend is like you can save yourself you're building this up way too much and then Casey her friend kind of like takes her aside and is like you are being chicken shit if you want to leave your husband leave your husband if you want to stay with your husband stay with your husband but what you're doing now is this in between thing it's really inconsiderate to your husband and it's you're wasting everybody's time you know what you're doing is wrong because you're not telling your husband about it so you should probably just decide to do one thing or the other and not put yourself in the state of continual discomfort exactly of being sort of deceptive to everyone including yourself yes after this conversation

she's like all right you're right I'm gonna try to save my marriage she ends up spending $150,000 on a birthday party for him to be like a grand gesture to like maybe this will help fix us and then of course she says like ladies do not do this like don't spend $150,000 on someone thinking it's gonna like fix the fundamental problems between you because it won't eventually Nick moves to Baton Rouge to be closer to her he's like according to an album there's studios in Louisiana so he moves there and she says it's like it's the worst time because like she's a summer camp you know and then all of a sudden there's like her previous life and she's seen this sort of the possibilities of a world without him I guess I could have divided against herself cannot

stand yeah they're also they're fighting with the producers of newlyweds because they're trying to get footage and Jessica and Nick are fighting so much now that apparently it was a rule that they could tell the producers at any time like stop rolling like we need to have a real conversation right now and they're they're saying stop rolling to the producers so often that the producers are like we don't have any footage you're not giving us anything like if you keep doing this there's not going to be a show because like they cannot interact without fighting anymore it's becoming this thing where they're both just completely faking their way through this quote-unquote reality show yeah is it when uh what period is the chicken of the sea comment from is that from that season one

so that's when things are going well yes which is kind of dark wow yeah so that's like the high point yeah it's like it's still kind of cute kind of this point it's like not cute anymore or just like you know that you can tell when people have unspoken beef with each other yeah and so they try couples therapy I mean as we've talked about on the show so many times there's so few role models for adult conflict resolution yeah it's actually really useful for them to get like communication skills and yeah the therapist gives them like again like normal ass advice of like you need to listen to each other you need to like make eye statements try to say like I'm feeling this like what's a better way for us to communicate what are you really thinking about and so they start

working on it and she says he just stopped showing up for the therapy like literally he stopped coming like he literally stops coming and so I guess we're not doing this anymore and so apparently sort of she's in like desperation and she goes into Willie Nelson's tour bus and it's like Willie like my relationship's coming apart what's your advice should I stay should I go what should I do and Willie Nelson's basically like I don't know you I don't know the situation well enough like I can't tell you what to do but he picks up a guitar and he starts strumming and she starts singing will the circle be unbroken oh my god which is like this really beautiful like funeral song and so she's like crying and singing the song and it just sort of like clicks with her that like

wow she's gonna have to leave this marriage like that's kind of like what does it I feel like singing will the circle be unbroken with Willie Nelson is the kind of thing that would like make you have a break seriously wow it's like the song that sort of makes you feel buoyant to hear to sing and it is about death yeah about sort of acceptance of death as part of a larger story yeah and you know and I think you can kind of experience thinking about the death of a relationship that way I feel like Willie Nelson is like the Gandalf figure and he's I know I know what to do I know he's just like lies presence in her life yeah and so the movie comes out she moves back to LA apparently the movie's a hit and Nick sort of sees it as competition so he can't really be

as happy for her Nick be happy for her I know and then her and Knoxville end up getting in like kind of a fight because she sort of ghosts him because like she's not at summer camp anymore she's like I'm attending to my like grown-up life but yes a lot she stops answering his emails they stop calling and then he sort of confronts her of like that's really rude what you did to me like you could have just we could have talked about it and then she does the thing of like what are we doing here dude right we both know what this was right like what do you require from me yeah we have never discussed what is going on like we're both in failing marriages and we're both using this as a break from our failing marriages but we've never talked about it what what what do you expect from

me man yeah so the night of November 22nd right before Thanksgiving of 2005 she tells Nick that she wants to get a divorce hmm he later says that like he was blindsided and he wasn't expecting it what she takes to be is like a huge dig on her of like how the fuck were you not expecting this all we do is fight we have been to couple therapy we barely interact anymore we haven't had sex you're at strip clubs all the time with your boys you're in the paparazzi what did you think was going to happen dude yeah which I think is speaks again maybe to his expectation of marriage where there are a lot of people who are like yeah sure this marriage is like unpleasant and everything but like but it's whatever yeah and so apparently she tells her dad and her dad of

course is like oh I think this is the right thing to do it's like he's always wanted the marriage to be over so he's like yes I I agree with your decision only she has that support I guess and so the very next morning she says we should put out a statement saying that we're getting separated because this will help me stick to it like if we announce it in the press it'll feel real and I can't just like call a mulligan and get back together with him that's very smart yes and so she's getting on a plane from LA to go visit her grandparents in Texas and she's on the phone with her dad or whoever and she's like yep let's put out a statement like let's do it she gets on the plane and she's just like blubbering for the entire flight like we have all been in this stage of the

breakup like for most of us it's like crying on the bus but for Jessica Simpson it's like crying in first class but either way you're staring at some rain she also says this is again like very relatable and very unrelatable that the movie on the plane because this is back when flights are like one movie at a time the movie on the plane is the fucking notebook so she's like I have to watch the goddamn notebook like wow I'm in like the worst breakup and she also mentions like casually she's like it was also weird to be watching the notebook because they had actually offered me the role but I turned it down because of the sex like I didn't want to do a movie where with a with a sex scene and so and also it's like Ryan Gosling who like she knew when he was 11 in like the worst

moment of her life so it's like oh Jessica so like we all feel weird when we watch the notebook but like Jessica Simpson feels like triple weird when she watches the notebook yeah there is a story about Elizabeth Berkeley once sat in business class next to a guy who watched showgirls and apparently didn't recognize her that's dark yeah one of the weirdest details is she says by the time she lands in Texas like that's not that long of a flight she can see on CNN is reporting her breakup wow that's so weird and then it's like you land and you come out at the gate and the tv is like announcing your breakup and you're like I know because she comes from the super conservative family it's right before Thanksgiving right so

she hangs out with her grandparents who tell her to give it another chance her mom tells her to basically smile and get through it I wrote you about this margin her mom says you're America's couple get back with him it's gonna be fine yeah you indeed I concur it's like the apotheosis of her parents transformation these are the people that they are now of like oh for pr reasons no you should stay in this marriage that you're really unhappy in right and also I guess it's so weird for your mom to be like you're America's marriage sweetie and it's like well it's not like I'm leading the resistance or anything like is this really so crucial I need to sacrifice my personal happiness for it yeah tell me mother so she goes back to LA she moves out of the house she talks

about the house that it feels like a studio because that's where they film this fake ass show about their fake ass marriage right and she's like I don't I don't want to live in this house it's not really my house and so apparently she just like gets the dog and leaves huh and she gets a house in a gated community in Beverly Hills where Nicole Kidman Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz also live I wonder if they jog together ever I know but and because of when this is taking place I'm picturing them all in like juicy couture yeah jogging suits she starts dating other guys but she doesn't name any names or give any specifics she's just like I was dating a lot like a lot I just want you to know I saw a lot of guys for Jessica I know this is the first time in her life she's

been like single like she's hot she's single she's super independent there's a scene where she like goes to a bookstore and she buys a bunch of like old like Lord Byron and like Elizabeth Browning books like she comes up to the register with the stack of books and she's you know no makeup her hair's in a ponytail she's wearing a baseball cap and the checker's like ringing her up and the checker apparently is like don't take this the wrong way but did anyone tell you that you look like a smart version of Jessica Simpson oh my god oh and she's like thank you I get that a lot because ponytail equals smart and so her and Lachey sit down to like finalize the divorce at the time they got divorced she was worth roughly $35 million and he was worth $5 million

so a complete inversion of where they were at the beginning of their relationship and like much larger sums they spend months and like lawyers going back and forth and eventually Jessica Simpson's just like fuck it like whatever we need to give him to get this over with let's do it so it sounds like it's somewhere between 10 and 15 million dollars yikes that she gives him to just like get rid of him like half of her net worth wow and one thing that's very interesting is he's actually weirdly cool during this period in front of cameras like the public facing self he does some shitty stuff he makes a music video featuring his new girlfriend where she's like dressed up as Jessica Simpson kind of like the Crimea River video it kind of casts her as like

this ice queen yeah which is like don't don't do that but he also gives an interview to Rolling Stone in 2006 as all of this is going on and there's this interesting thing where like they sort of pushed him because there's all these rumors that Jessica Simpson was cheating on him with Johnny Knoxville there's apparently a rumor about Adam Levine is he in Good Charlotte oh he's the maroon five maroon five okay this is he's just like in my head in the category of like music I didn't listen to yes yes and one thing that Nick Lachey says that I appreciate like on grading on the curve of the other men that we have met on this podcast the journalist is like do you think that she was cheating on you and he says first of all I don't think she was cheating

on me and secondly if she was it's a symptom of a larger issue in the relationship oh Nick Lachey I love that it's like actually pretty mature oh totally and also he doesn't take the bait as an excuse to slam her right because they're just teeing they're teeing all these golf balls up for him and he's like no thank you you know they they present him with the rumor of like was she sleeping with Adam Levine and he's like you know what I was a some like whatever celebrity function thing Adam Levine was there too he says they weren't dating while we were married and I believe him and it's like again could have done like a petty you know uh his band sucks well it just speaks to how morally complex humans are that you can have someone who's like you know who really turns into

like no picnic to be married to but who still understands how to behave honorably yes once things you know are ending it also sounds like as this sort of like always is that like things hadn't worked out with Johnny Knoxville even though she's broken up now it's kind of like the shine is off the apple it was never really gonna happen right he was her camp boyfriend yes exactly and so the last time she sees Nick Lachey he's got a new album out apparently like all of the songs on the album are about her it's clear that he's like working through some stuff she sort of sees him giving these interviews in the Rolling Stone interview he's like crying a lot and like clearly not over it and so she kind of feels sorry for him yeah and so she gives him a call

and she's like hey you know hi holding up it's now been I think like six three six months since the divorce he's like oh you know back and forth and she invites him over she's like why do you come over we can like get some takeout and like chat and catch up whatever so he comes over and apparently he like plays her his album and she's kind of cringing he's playing these songs where it's clearly an attempt to work through his feelings about her and like maybe get her back and he's sort of singing along and being like yeah like wait for when the drums to kick in and he's just like being kind of a douche and she says like she doesn't sigh in the book but you can like hear her sigh where she's just he's doing all this and she's like so I slept with him

so he would stop singing yeah and it's like yeah you did Jessica yeah you know that's just sometimes that's just what happens it's your ex it's so easy yeah the food is there the music is there right you're like I remember this yes I like things I remember I have been both people in that exchange the person who sleeps with their cringy ex and I have been the cringy ex so I like on every level like this appeals to me the story oh yeah this is I mean I feel like this is pretty classic and then also very typically the minute they're done having sex he's just like okay see around and he's like he doesn't sleep over it's very clear to both of them apparently that like this is not rekindling something this is not us like let's give it another

shot it's like it's over it's like the sex you have when you both know whatever was there isn't there anymore yeah it's like setting Boromir's canoe on fire you know you just gotta send it off yeah and so what she says is when he walked out the door I knew I would never see him again goodbye Boromir yeah and uh that's it he's out of her life that's uh that's where we're gonna leave it okay what are we gonna talk about next time we oh my god what aren't we going to talk about yeah we're gonna spend some time with John Mayer your body is one of his personality is not a wonderland we're gonna learn this next week but I think yeah what do you think what are your Jerry's final thoughts oh what was the thing Jerry always said be good to each other yeah I mean that

always and just that I I don't know I like hearing this as the story of like someone's first marriage I think yeah or just you know like first serious relationship stories or decisive relationship stories this is a lot of people's first relationship stories totally it just makes sense that a lot of the time if you commit to something when you're young and aged or experience like that if things continue to go well in your life that you're gonna likely grow out of that relationship yeah and then it comes down to like people being able to be honest and constructive enough to figure out how to move on and yeah these people did and yeah it's really nice to be talking about one of those stories so I'm glad we did it and one where the people don't destroy each other

I mean they you know he acted terribly I think she was also quite inconsiderate to him but like there wasn't anything serious enough that's like really gonna break the other person as a person right you don't get into any rage we don't even technically have infidelity well it's just it's like two people who just were like jerks to each other for a few years you know is kind of the most severe thing you can say about it and you're like yeah and it sucks to waste time in your life with someone who doesn't make you feel totally appreciated and secure and loved and this is about the process of figuring that out yes with like a little patina of like weird like notebook script approval on top of all of it but uh yeah I think this is an important story to tell even

though it is an extremely common one I think that's why and yeah and I'm excited I'm just really excited honestly for having learned this much about Jessica's life hearing about you know what does she do after getting divorced how does she find her way to where she is now and then how does she arrive at writing the book what does the industry do to her yeah all of that yes very invested so that's that's all we have I think um if you're ever in a relationship go film a movie in baton rouge for three months and if it ever gets really bad find a guitar and really nelson just start strumming if you possibly can it's it's probably a good idea