TV Cover
Lifetime’s ‘True Confessions’ has a universal message
Let’s set the record straight: “True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet” is Valerie Bertinelli’s Lifetime debut.
“You would think it was my millionth,” the actress says of her first Lifetime original production, which premieres at 9 p. m. Saturday. “Every movie I have done has been on Lifetime. I think they have had marathons of my movies throughout the decades.”
And while the cablenet has a reputation for weepy films, this isn’t that way at all. In this movie, directed by actor Tim Matheson, Bertinelli plays the grounded family friend, referred to as an aunt, of a Hollywood starlet on a downward spiral. Joanna Levesque, better known as the singer JoJo, is terrific as Morgan, a thinly veiled Lindsay Lohan. She looks a lot like her, though Levesque shrugs off comparisons.
“Sure, we both have freckles,” she says. “This is not a biopic of Lindsay Lohan, and I was not channeling her. Morgan, to me, was a stereotypical Hollywood starlet. I wanted to be totally stereotypical, and when it got more into the Claudia character I wanted to show a bit of vulnerability.”
Morgan, though 17, is a handful, passing out drunk in the back of a car, dancing on tables at bars and thinking the world exists to serve her. Her flighty mother is more concerned with her looks and parties than with being a mom. As happens when starlets become better known for their antics than their acting, her career screeches to a halt.
Morgan is trotted off to rehab, and when that doesn’t work, her mother ships Morgan off to her old college chum, Trudy (Bertinelli). Trudy lives in Indiana in a house painted in fun colors, loaded with sweets, and her no-stress job is watering plants at offices. Trudy’s husband left her, and she long ago abandoned her dream of becoming a doctor.
Morgan takes on an assumed identity, Claudia, who must shop at discount stores — horrors! Her mother gave Trudy $500 for Claudia’s new wardrobe, which Morgan wants to blow on a pair of shoes. Morgan calls her mom with the teen mantra: “I need more money!”
“What do you mean no?” she whines. “I earned it. I’m broke. I’m stranded in a flyover state with no stylist.”
Trudy takes her to lunch and under her wing and puts up with far more nonsense than most moms would. Attending a regular school is difficult for Claudia, and because she’s now a brunette instead of a Hollywood blonde, no one recognizes her — a la Hannah Montana.
Claudia deals with jealousy over magazine articles trumpeting that Lohan is assuming Morgan’s movie roles. The film pokes fun at Hollywood but also recognizes its dark side, especially for impressionable young women. Both of this film’s stars could have fallen prey to it, but strong families kept them in line.
“Although I have grown up in this industry, I have a fairly normal upbringing,” Levesque says. “I’m still with my mom, still in Massachusetts.”
Five months shy of 18, she’s talking about colleges and recently made the honor society through the distance learning program in which she’s enrolled.
“I am only 17, but at the end of the day, I think that the root of those problems and the place it arises from is insecurity,” Levesque says. “And, of course, we all have insecurities. I am certainly not immune.”
Bertinelli, who as a teen became a household name on “One Day at a Time,” says she has “a really terrific family. My job wasn’t any more important than my brothers’ football games.”
The movie, which ends far better than most Hollywood starlets’ careers, relays a universal message, Bertinelli says.
“It sends the message we are all human beings, and no one is more special than anyone else,” she says. “And you find when you make yourself more special than anyone else, you are going to be miserable. And the more we stay grounded, the happier we will be.”
On the cover: Joanna “JoJo” Levesque and Shenae Grimes star in “True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet.”
