LOS ANGELES — If you caught the new Christmas TV movie Santa Baby 2 (it started airing Dec. 13), how did you feel when stars Dean McDermott and Jenny McCarthy did that long onscreen kiss?
The American media wanted to know how McDermott’s wife, Tori Spelling, took it. But we in the True North prefer to know how McDermott squared it away with fellow Canadian actor Jim Carrey, McCarthy’s longtime live-in love.
“What was it like kissing Jim’s girl?” I got to ask McDermott in a recent interview.
“It wasn’t easy, since he was there looking at us,” he admitted.
McDermott said Carrey didn’t set foot on the set — it was filmed in Canada last spring — for the six-week shoot, except, unnervingly, for that scene.
“He was suddenly free so he came to the set that day, and that was the day of the kissing scene,” recalls the handsome actor who famously swept his current wife off her feet while they made the TV movie Mind over Murder a few years back in Ontario, leading Spelling to dump her husband Charlie Shanian.
Knowing of McDermott’s charms, Carrey stood with his arms crossed, looking at the pair shoot the scene through a monitor.
“It was an awkward moment,” McDermott recalled. “Jim was joking around about it, but mostly I was the one who felt weird.
“Jim Carrey is like a god and I was totally star struck and I had to kiss his girl. First it was like, ‘Oh no! I have to kiss Jim Carrey’s girlfriend, but then I was like, ‘Oh yes! I’m kissing Jim Carrey’s girlfriend’. ”
Thank you for remembering; he’s one of ours: There’s been a lot of talk in Hollywood about the splendid work of director Jason Reitman. Everywhere you look, in the paper, local TV, radio, they’re gushing over the 33-year-old’s new film, Up in the Air, starring George Clooney.
The reviewers mention the director of Thank You for Smoking and Juno grew up in Hollywood and his father is Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman.
So let us remind them of a key element that has yet to be discussed — Jason Reitman was born in la belle ville of Montreal, moved to Hollywood because of his father’s career as a kid — and remains a loyal Canadian.
Tiger, Tiger everywhere, other sports players beware: Now that golfer Tiger Woods has admitted to philandering, other sports stars are starting to comment. So I asked Luc Robitaille, president and business manager of the Los Angeles Kings, if he would talk about it.
Gentleman Luc declined to directly comment on Woods’ behaviour, but offered this glimpse into his private life with wife Stacie.
“I’m a happily married man. Why would I ruin it? I wouldn’t.”
Linda Massarella, a Canadian writer in Los Angeles, writes every Sunday about notable Canadians living in L.A.
