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Interview with Chastity Bono

Chastity Bono grew up before our eyes. In the 1970’s, she was a regular guest on her parents’ The Sonny and Cher Show. In the early 1990’s, at the tender age of 21, she was outed by tabloid Star Magazine just as she was getting ready to launch a career in the music industry. She made one album (Hang Out Your Poetry) with her band Ceremony and during this time even appeared in a tiny role in the lesbian independent film Bar Girls.

She left the music biz for her next career move as writer at large for The Advocate, the national gay and lesbian magazine, and officially came out in 1995 on its cover. She later interviewed her mother for another cover story.

During this time, Chastity also began working as a high profile gay rights activist on behalf of the HRC, appeared as a spokesperson to promote “National Coming Out Day,” and campaigned for the re-election of President Bill Clinton and against the “Defense of Marriage Act.” Bono later made another career switch, becoming Entertainment Media Director for media watchdog group GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).

While at GLAAD she wrote (with Billie Fitzpatrick) the book Family Outing: A Guide to the Coming Out Process for Gays, Lesbians, and Their Families, her personal coming-out memoir mixed with others’ stories of coming out. After her stint at GLAAD, Bono wrote (with Michelle Kort) a second book, The End of Innocence about her outing, her experiences in the music industry, and the illness and death of her partner Joan Stephens from non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

But after a lifetime of high profile visibility, Bono dropped off the media radar for several years, reappearing this past January on season 3 of VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club.

I first met and interviewed Bono on the Fit Club set where the low and high ropes challenges took place at rustic Cali-Camp in Topanga, California. The second interview happened soon after the season ended with Bono phoning in from the West Hollywood house she shares with girlfriend Jennifer Elia plus four Sphinx cats and a dog.

During our two interviews, Bono, 37, spoke openly of how a past addiction to prescription painkillers led her to retreat from the media spotlight and contributed to the weight gain that drove her to compete on Fit Club.

Interview Part 1: 12/10/2005

AfterEllen.com: What made you decide to go on Celebrity Fit Club?

Chastity Bono: Temporary Insanity. No, it just kind of coincided with a time in my life that I was ready to deal with my physical self, and they called and it seemed like a good idea.

AE: Because on your own, you wouldn’t try to lose weight?

CB: I was starting to do it on my own anyway, but there’s more pressure involved than when you do it on your own.

AE: I would think that having people helping you and training you would be less pressure. What’s the pressure, doing it in front of cameras?

CB: First of all, there’s not as much support as one would think. Second of all, yeah, as a team you want to win. There’s a competition, you’re on TV, you want to do a good job.

AE: Are you pretty competitive, or is it just more self-competitive?

CB: I didn’t realize that I was that competitive until I did the show, but yeah I am.

AE: So had you gained weight recently?

CB: I’d been overweight for awhile, it wasn’t like a recent thing.

AE: Did you do any kind of exercise or eat healthy before the show?

CB: I had just started exercising and getting into that maybe a couple months before the show started.

AE: What was your moment when you decided it was time to start losing weight?

CB: I had just ignored it and let it go and getting into my middle thirties and knowing that if I was going to do this and try to live a healthier lifestyle, now would be the time to start.

AE: How did you get on the show, did they contact you?

CB: They contacted me.

AE: Were you insulted?

CB: No, hell no, I know I’m fat, it wasn’t like, “Oh my God, me?!” I just looked it as a good opportunity to do something positive and get paid to do it.

AE: What contributed to you getting overweight, a slow metabolism?

CB: Well that’s part of it but a lot of it was just drug abuse, and not caring about anything. When I got clean and sober, I just worked on the inside stuff for about a year, and then I wanted to start working on the physical stuff.

AE: So this is recent that you’re sober?

CB: It’s a year and nine months.

AE: So that’s also something you had to decide to change.

CB: Yeah, it’s similar degree of denial. And in that way, it was breaking down the denial of physically – not taking care of myself and how that affected me, and how it made me feel and how I felt about my body.

AE: Have you changed your diet?

CB: I got on a meal plan service, they deliver it, and it’s a combination of The Zone and also eating for my blood type (type O). There’s a book calledEating Right For Your Blood Type and it actually makes a lot of sense…I don’t eat flour, I don’t eat dairy other than eggs, and I eat mostly protein and vegetables and fruit.

AE: How were you eating before?

CB: Well oddly enough, when I was doing drugs, I craved a lot of sweets. Once I stopped doing that, my taste literally changed, what I desire. I don’t know if it was a lack of serotonin that I was just trying to get because I did prescription drugs – painkillers – I don’t know if I was craving sugar to give me kind of a lift, a high, a food high or what…I love to eat carbs, but they’re really not good for me.

AE: Do you have an actual weight-loss goal?

CB: I just want to get to a weight that’s healthy for me.

AE: You’re the captain of the Blue Team, how did that come about?

CB: They chose me and it was something that I told them I was willing before [I started].

AE: What does it entail?

CB: I call everybody a couple times a week, check in, see how they’re doing, deal with people having any personal problems. It’s just being supportive.

AE: Is that your personality?

CB: Yeah, totally. I think it’s totally my personality.

AE: Is that a nurturing…

CB: …It’s a nurturing, it’s kind of a white knight syndrome unfortunately. It’s been hard being the team captain, I didn’t think it would be as difficult as it’s been, but I think ’cause I naturally put so much pressure on myself, it’s just put more pressure on me. I feel like I have this responsibility to lead by example.

AE: While you’ve been in the public eye forever, people haven’t had this kind of access to you before. Is that something you wanted to do as an identity thing, for people to get to know you?

CB: My career kind of went to a halt because of drug abuse so this also seemed like a good opportunity to get back out there and get things going again, and to get some positive exposure.

(Bono’s lunch break is up and she leaves to participate in a high ropes course.)

Next page: the post-show interview

Interview Part 2: 3/7/2006

AE: Now that the show’s over, have you kept losing weight?

CB: I’ve probably maintained.

AE: I thought you came off really well on the show. You seemed to be the most compassionate, likeable person on the show, plus you were funny.

CB: I’ve never been in the media as just myself. Everything that I’ve done has either been for a cause or for something I was promoting, so I gave me a chance to just be, which was interesting.

AE: Some of the challenges were harsh.

CB: The challenges were all pretty difficult, and it was definitely hard going in on Saturday and having no idea what they were going to make you do (laughs).

AE: What was the one challenge where you thought, “Oh s–t”?

CB: The obstacle course.

AE: You had the biggest problem with climbing the cargo net – you got to the very top and then didn’t have the energy or the balance to get over it.

CB: When you’re climbing up, you get to use your hands and your arms and your legs. And then once you get to the top, the last thing is you have to lift your body weight up on one leg and I was just having a hard time doing that and then I started to feel shaky, so then I was worried about falling also. I was probably up about fifteen, twenty feet.

AE: You didn’t have a harness on?

CB: No.

AE: That seems a little scary.

CB: Yeah it was, and I don’t have any height phobia, but it was definitely possible to fall when your body starts to get shaky. So it was a combination of lack of strength and then starting to panic a little bit about, “Okay I’m up here and if I don’t make it and fall, I will hurt myself.”

AE: Jeff Conaway was in the first couple episodes and he seemed to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol and he eventually left the show and checked into rehab for prescription drug dependency. Do you think they should have even had him on to begin with?

CB: Not once we saw the shape that he was in no, but apparently he didn’t come in for his interview in that condition.

AE: Did watching him just cement your own recovery?

CB: I guess it made me grateful that I wasn’t like that, but I think after awhile it was just bothersome.

AE: When I was on the set in December you talked about being clean for awhile. What were you on, prescription painkillers?

CB: Painkillers. At the end, Oxy.

AE: All prescribed by a doctor?

CB: Yeah, yeah.

AE: So you were taking beyond the dose that you should have been taking?

CB: I actually wasn’t. It’s kind of frightening. It’s kind of frightening that one doctor would give me that much.

AE: So you were taking too high of a dose to begin with?

CB: You build up a tolerance over time.

AE: What was it prescribed for?

CB: I had endometriosis for years and years.

AE: Oh, man. Did they ever fix that?

CB: Yeah, I had my uterus removed last year.

AE: So how does the dependence play out?

CB: It’s just addiction, there’s so many components – there’s the physical component, the psychological component, there’s the things that start to come along with it – that whatever the problem that you’re trying fix, it ends up exacerbating. It’s a fairly complicated disease.

AE: When you stopped the OxyContin, did you have to go through treatment, or did you do it on your own?

CB: No, I went to treatment.

AE: And that was about two years ago?

CB: Yeah, it was two years ago tomorrow.

AE: In your bio it says you were on the meds for a very long time, was it a ten-year period?

CB: About that.

AE: So you were in your mid-twenties?

CB: Yeah.

AE: You had a career, and you were writing books and working for different organizations, but at what point did the pills change your ability to have a productive life. Did you just not get out of bed?

CB: All pain killers are depressants, so for me I was never loopy like Jeff was. It wasn’t like I couldn’t function because I was so loaded I couldn’t do anything, it was more the depression and also your life just starts to revolve around doing your drugs – that’s all you care about – it’s just a constant obsession that takes over your life.

AE: So now you’re pain free?

CB: Yeah, when I had that surgery last year, it finally took care of it once and for all.

AE: Now that you’re done with Fit Club have you maintained friendships with anyone?

CB: Oh yeah definitely. Tempest Bledsoe and I are very tight and Marvin (Young “Young MC”) and I are pretty tight. I talk to Kelly (LeBrock), unfortunately she lives far away. And Bruce Vilanch.

AE: Your girlfriend Jen was on the show with you, I didn’t realize until it aired that you just started dating really briefly before the show started.

CB: About a month, a month and a half before.

AE: Are you living together?

CB: Uh huh.

AE: Where did you meet?

CB: We met at my house.

AE: (laughs) That’s convenient.

CB: Yeah it was convenient. We got fixed up by mutual friends and she came over for a barbeque.

AE: And it was instant attraction?

CB: Yeah, we got along really well from the get-go, as soon as we were able to sit down and start talking one-on-one, we hit it off.

AE: What does she do?

CB: She’s an actress and a writer.

AE: At what point did you decide she’d be on the show?

CB: They asked if she would be on it. She would come with me to work so everybody knew her. So they asked at one point if she would do it and she said yes.

AE: Since the show has aired, what’s the reaction been from the entertainment industry?

CB: I’m working on different projects, I’m hoping that it’s going to translate into work, that was one of the reasons that I did it.

AE: What kind of work?

CB: I really like being on camera so I think that I would like to continue doing that kind of stuff. It’s a hard town, you gotta really push to make things happens, so that’s basically what I’ve been doing.

AE: As far as being on camera, do you mean as yourself, as a character, in a newsy kind of media role, as an interviewer, on another reality show? Where do you see yourself?

CB: I don’t really want to do reality, ultimately I want to do acting stuff, but I wouldn’t turn down the right type of talk show or commentary thing came up. That would be great.

AE: You went to the Fame (Performing Arts High) school in New York and the Lee Strasberg (Theatre Institute) acting school in L.A. When you took classes, what kinds of roles did you gravitate towards? What were you good at and what did you enjoy doing?

CB: I actually liked doing Shakespeare a lot.

AE: Men’s roles or female roles?

CB: Both actually.

AE: So you were good at acting with that kind of language?

CB: I liked it, it was fun and it was kind of something different and you could kind of experiment and do different things so I liked that.

AE: You did plays?

CB: It was very different from the TV show (Fame) where they’re performing all the time. You don’t actually get to perform ’til you’re a senior and you do one play that you actually have an audience that’s not your peers and your teachers.

AE: What play did you do?

CB: I did Midsummer Night’s Dream.

AE: Who did you play?

CB: I played Peter Quint.

AE: Do you ever wish that you’d gone to a conventional college and gotten more of an education, a liberal arts type of thing.

CB: Definitely….I kind of made a mistake because I got into NYU for film and for drama, and I ended up going to film school and really didn’t like it, and I think if I had gone into the drama program I probably wouldn’t have left school.

AE: What didn’t you like about film school?

CB: I’m not a very visual person, I realized, and so the idea of directing – it just wasn’t the right fit for me. I should have stayed with drama because I was really passionate about that. At the time it was ’87 and it was such a different climate, I really didn’t think that I would be able to work. It was one thing to be able to do experimental stuff in school and be good at that and play a guy or whatever but in the real world I thought I’ll never work so I should do something behind the scenes.

AE: Because you were too butch and you couldn’t pass?

CB: Yeah, because I was too butch, basically.

AE: You think it’s any different now?

CB: I do think it’s different now. I think that there’s a lot of independent stuff, there’s a lot of gay stuff that’s happening, and there’s more nondescript characters. And I didn’t really think about it at the time, I think that when you’re in high school you’re not thinking about being a working actor or something, you’re thinking about having this huge career. I think now that I’m older, I would be happy with a lot less (laughs).

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