With a house full of cameras, did Nick and Jessica include a split screen?
By Renee Graham, Globe Staff | October 11, 2005
Hey, Nick and Jessica: Never forget you invited us in.
Married all of six months, you flung open the doors to your bland McMansion in Los Angeles and allowed millions to scrutinize what was clearly -- and yes, hilariously -- your less-than-blissful marriage on MTV's reality show ''Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica," which premiered in 2003. It was highly entertaining because, despite the fancy cars and video shoots, the show was really about the daily foibles of a relationship. Week after week, we witnessed your fights, the professional competitiveness, and the poisonous jealousies.
And eventually, we also saw a young couple so desperate to revive their faded teen-pop fortunes that they would pimp out their private lives.
As ''Newlyweds" quickly evolved into Must-See TV, you ascended from manufactured pop also-rans into A-list celebrities. You got rich (especially Jessica), you got famous (especially Jessica), and you sold millions of albums (well, only Jessica). And as much as you tried to remind folks that you were singers with inevitable acting aspirations, the fact remained that your real career was being a married couple.
Nobody cared about Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson until they became Nick and Jessica, the first couple of reality TV. And when they exploited their marriage as their business, it was only natural for people to wonder whether that business was falling apart.
Relentless speculation about their family business is again running high with celebrity glossy Us Weekly standing by its story that the much-watched marriage is kaput, and the couple has separated. Of course, Nick and Jessica did what they always do when questions arise about the health of their marriage -- they issued a denial.
So while Jessica has been spotted out and about without Nick, or her wedding ring, and Nick is fending off claims by a 19-year-old Ohio State University student that she shared a passionate kiss with him last month, their publicists maintain, ''Nick and Jessica have not separated. Rumors to the contrary are simply not true."
Meanwhile, Janice Min, Us Weekly's editor-in-chief, countered, ''I expect an announcement" of the couple's separation.
Even the most obnoxious celebrities can sometimes engender sympathy when they're being hunted by money-grubbing photographers and gossipmongers. After all, just because someone releases a best-selling album or stars in a big film or TV show, their private moments shouldn't instantly become tabloid bait.
Yet, having completely blurred the line between their private and public selves -- and that'll happen when you willingly outfit your home with video cameras and a TV crew -- Nick and Jessica deserve no such largesse. By 2003, everyone had forgotten them and their stalled music careers. Certainly, few were paying attention when they got married nearly three years ago.
But once they put their fledgling, warts-and-all marriage under the klieg lights, they eliminated any chance that fans -- or haters -- would turn away from the twists and turns of what seemed like public property. Now they're treating the world like irritating guests who crashed their party.
Even after their show overstayed its welcome -- the first season was a classic, the next dreary, the last unwatchable -- Nick and Jessica continued peddling their couplehood, and punting rumors of their marriage's imminent demise. Yet, who among those who watched the show couldn't see the potentially fatal fissures? Episode after episode, one often came away with the feeling that these weren't people who especially liked each other.
By contrast, whatever Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown's problems -- and yes, they seemed countless -- it was hard to deny what appeared to be an enduring love between them on the appalling Bravo reality show ''Being Bobby Brown." True, it was an often-disturbing, dysfunctional kind of love, but yes, 13 years and counting, one could call it enduring.
So now we await what may well be Nick and Jessica's final chapter. If the end is nigh, their strangely resuscitated careers may fade as quickly as their relationship, and they'll again be a blip on pop culture's capricious radar. Unless, that is, Jessica's creepy-crawly father, Joe, is already negotiating a 10-episode deal to turn their rumored marital collapse into ''Divorcees: Nick and Jessica."
Renee Graham's Life in the Pop Lane column appears on Tuesdays. She can be reached at
graham@globe.com.
With a house full of cameras, did Nick and Jessica include a split screen?
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