Come Stay The Night. She'll Leave A Light On For You.
I’m all about business right now. My husband and I are doing a new reality show for Oxygen called Tori & Dean: Inn Love, and it follows us as we open a Bed & Breakfast. The idea came this past summer when Dean and I were filming a movie in Ottawa, Canada, and they put us up at a B&B for two weeks out in the countryside. It was the first time for both of us, and all the preconceptions you have heard about them—being old and antiquey and dusty—it was all pretty much true. But the house and the property were great, and it was kind of cool to be in an intimate setting where you have so much one-on-one attention and you get to talk to people. That really stuck with us, and we thought we should do something like this for a younger generation. In this day and age where everything’s an automated voice or a computer, it’s important to have human interaction.
Our bed-and-breakfast is a great colonial-style house down in Temecula, California, with pillars everywhere. It has a sort of modern vibe a la the Viceroy Hotel. Aesthetically, we’re redoing all the paint and the carpet with a color theme in each room, putting in modern furniture and making it very loungey. There’s four rooms—we wanted the place to be small for our first venture—and it’s on an amazing eight-acre property. Where are you going to get that in L.A.?
I’m definitely not a breakfast person, especially at, like, 7 a.m., so instead of Bed & Breakfast, it’ll be called Bed & Bites. Food will be served all day long, but in the form of hors d’oeuvres, which is perfect for me since I love entertaining. It’ll be all happy hours and mini foods. You’ll technically get full meals, but in the form of hors d’oeuvres. There’ll be theme nights, like Movie Mondays and Fondue Tuesdays. Eventually we hope to start a chain. I want to be like the Mini-Trump, or Trumpette. That’s a whole other show: Who will be heading up the newest Bed and Bites?
We’re doing the whole B&B thing, and then add another B, since we’re having a baby. So it’s more like a B&B&B. You can look at it two ways: We’re either opening two businesses or having two babies. In life everything seems to happen at once, and the best thing to do is take it one step at a time. When you’re on a roll, you’re on a roll.
The baby is due the last week of March. We have two names that we’re deciding between, but we want to see what the little guy looks like first. Dean has two kids already, so I’ve defi nitely gotten some experience as a stepmom, and I feel totally prepared to have a boy. I always thought I would have a girl because I wouldn’t know what to do with a boy, but now it seems totally natural since I’m so used to being with my stepson, Jack. Besides, Dean and I still have plenty of time to have a girl. Until then I still have my little Mimi LaRue.
My dog, Mimi, is the little princess, so I guess it’s good the first child is a boy and not a girl. There won’t really be any competition. Otherwise she would be extremely jealous—I know she was very worried about sharing her clothing! Now she won’t have to. No doubt, if it was a girl, they would have matching outfits. That’s the way I roll.
Actually, Mimi’s been good with the pregnancy so far. She recognizes that I have this belly, and she puts her head on it. She puts her little paws around it, and that’s how she lies on me now. Her little eyes flinch when he kicks. I think she knows what’s going on. It’s really important to me to make her feel wanted when he’s finally born. A lot of people ignore their dogs once they have a child, so I want to try to make her feel she’s still my little baby.
Being an actress has its own ups and downs, and is a lot different than being your own boss. You’ve got to wait for someone to give you a part, and you’re up against 200 different girls. Mainstream films are hard because there’s a certain amount of women that get the roles. I always feel like when I’m going up for a mainstream movie, I’m going to play the sidekick girlfriend role. And then they’re still going to offer it to Jennifer Aniston. That’s the reason why I love doing independent films—they cast who’s right for the part, which is so great.
On top of everything else, I’m writing a book. Well, actually, I haven’t started yet. I did close the deal, though—that counts. Whenever I tell people I’m doing a book, they say, “Oh, a tellall?” It’s the farthest thing from a tell-all. I call it a memoir, but I really want to write it in the vein of my show So noTORIous, the way I kind of conveyed my life in funny situations and flashbacks. I want to convey my voice and tell everything through my eyes. I think I’m a pretty good storyteller. I get that from my dad.
Tori & Dean: Inn Love premieres March 21 on Oxygen.
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