Playboy's 20Q: Christina Applegate

Some Hollywood soothsayers predicted that Christina Applegate's career would live and die with the role of teen sex-pot Kelly Bundy on the long-running Married With Children. With her NBC hit sitcom Jesse, Applegate has proved her critics wrong. After Married With Children ended an 11-year run, Applegate stepped away from television for a few years, reemerging in such studio films as Mafia!, Wild Bill with Jeff Bridges and Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! Applegate also appeared in the independent productions Nowhere, The Big Hit and Claudine's Return, in which she returned to her sexpot image.

Despite her varied movie roles, the Hollywood native realized she missed television. Applegate and her producer-manager of 20 years, Tami Lynn, joined forces with the successful production team behind Friends and Veronica's Closet and came up with the most watched new show on NBC, Jesse, which Applegate co-produces. Although Married With Children plays worldwide in reruns, Kelly Bundy is dead. Jesse Warner lives. And that's the way Applegate wants it.

Robert Crane caught up with Applegate on the Jesse set. He reports: "Entering Applegate's dressing room is like walking into an ashram—incense burning, aromatic candles lit, music playing and Christina sitting on the floor, Robeks juice in hand. It took a nanosecond to adjust to the fact that, damn it, Applegate is not Kelly Bundy. Her first words to me were to ask if she could smoke. Of course she could. Everything else in the room was smoking."

1

[Q] Playboy: On Jesse you play a waitress. What is the proper way to treat the waitstaff?

[A] Applegate: Don't say, "Hey." Don't scream across the restaurant, "Can I have the check, please?" Don't raise your finger in the air to summon them. They don't like that. Do listen to them when they recite the specials, because they've been practicing that all day. Poor kids. I've never understood how pubic hair can get into your food. How does that happen? Where does it come from? I don't want to know.

2

[Q] Playboy: What are the unforgivable sins committed by a waitperson?

[A] Applegate: Spitting in the food. Let me tell you something that happened. My loved one and I went to a drive-in restaurant, and I had finished my drink and he had his sitting there. There was some left in his, and I went to drink some through the straw. It was really thick, and I then realized that he had hocked a load of spit in there. Having had a big gulp of it once, I know it's not delicious.

3

[Q] Playboy: What's a proper tip?

[A] Applegate: Somewhere between 15 and 20 percent, but I like to give 20 percent. Considering that I can't figure out any of that percentage stuff, I just go for 20 percent because it's easy. I mean, who came up with 15 percent? It's too complicated to figure out.

4

[Q] Playboy: When the history of comedy television is written, how will Married With Children fare?

[A] Applegate: Married broke the rule of sugarcoated television during its time. TV was so sweet then, it was giving me a cavity. Married changed all that. After us came shows like Roseanne. We definitely opened the door for profanity and vulgarity on television.

5

[Q] Playboy: It celebrated emotional brutality and postulated that women are sex crazed and men are stupid. To which part of the population did that series speak?

[A] Applegate: It appealed to all walks of life because even the people who found it offensive found it so only because they were shameful of the things they thought in their own minds. It gave people an opportunity to look at how not to be. They could sit at home and be grateful that they weren't emulating the characters in the show.

6

[Q] Playboy: Give us the Christina Applegate investment program.

[A] Applegate: Clothes, clothes, clothes. That's all that's on my mind right now. I'm going shopping after this. Actually, I've racked up a lot of property. But that's because I'm a pack rat. It has nothing to do with investments. It has to do with, well, I don't really want to get rid of anything. I'm going to move, but I can't let go of the property. I rent it out. It's not really a source of income because it just pays the mortgage. I don't like to take chances with the stock market or on anything except bonds. I lease my cars because it's a much better tax write-off. I go to Hawaii a lot. To me, a trip is more valuable than buying a brand-new car, because a trip gives me seven days of bliss that I can bring back to everyone here. Going on retreats with my church and things like that are investments of the soul. That's the one thing you're always going to have, so you might as well take care of it.

7

[Q] Playboy: Describe a perfect evening. Who cooks and who cleans?

[A] Applegate: Someone else. A perfect evening would be that I'm able to lie on my couch in my pajamas with the remote control in hand. My flannel pajamas and my big old slippers.

8

[Q] Playboy: Over the years, certain fashions have been cruel to women. What are the silliest (continued on page 173)Christina Applegate(continued from page 95) things men have asked women to wear?

[A] Applegate: Tight red dresses. I have never understood it. Red is the most unflattering color. Men like tight red dresses. Heels are the biggest sin in the world. After a while we're crippled. We wear those things just so we seem taller and our legs look longer. I had to do it for 11 years, but I was getting paid good money. Women in another profession get paid good money to do that, but I don't need to mention them right now. Miniskirts and hip huggers are horrible. Nobody looks good in hip huggers. I have a waist for a reason—that's where my pants are supposed to start.

9

[Q] Playboy: Your boyfriend, Johnathon Schaech, starred in That Thing You Do. When he says "that thing you do," to what is he referring?

[A] Applegate: That's a sex question, isn't it? I think he's referring to the drool coming from my mouth in the morning. Making up silly songs about anything. That's another thing I do. We wrote a little song that we sing sometimes about my eczema. It goes: "Eczema, my little girlie's got eczema." It's like a blues song.

10

[Q] Playboy: It must be tough to shake the Kelly Bundy image. What's the key to being taken seriously in Hollywood?

[A] Applegate: It's not something that I've ever had to fight for. I don't know what happens behind closed doors, but I never had to convince anyone. I'm different from the people who are their characters. They're limited because when they go out in public, they carry that image with them. Some people just are Kelly Bundy, and they can't help it.

11

[Q] Playboy: What is Kelly Bundy doing now? We see a limited number of career options—perhaps real estate or financial services.

[A] Applegate: Kelly's still living at home. There is no evolution, only regression. She's probably watching television as we speak. The future will always be bright because everything's new and shiny to her. She doesn't ponder the ways of the world, you know. She's just like, "Ooh, that's a pretty pen."

12

[Q] Playboy: Is spinning good exercise?

[A] Applegate: It's real hard-core exercise. A lot of people can't do it, and I'm proud to say I can. It's like a stationary Tour de France, and it's music driven. You have resistance levels that imitate what it's like to climb hills. Then the music changes and it's a sprint, so you take off all your resistance and pedal really fast. Everyone is focused and intense, and you burn more calories doing that than pretty much any other exercise. I do it for 45 minutes. It's a real cliquey kind of thing. Spinners share a camaraderie, a sense that we all go through it together.

13

[Q] Playboy: You have the most luminescent skin on television. Which skin-care products would you put your name on?

[A] Applegate: Sea Breeze, definitely. That's the stuff that works for me. I was going to say something really disgusting. There's a certain fluid that's been known to get rid of acne, and it's the first thing that came to my mind, if you want to know the truth. I know a guy who says that when he was a kid he had really bad acne and at night, after he finished doing "that thing you do," he would, instead of wiping it off, put it on his face. It dried up his acne.

14

[Q] Playboy: When was the last time you saw a scene with nudity that made sense in a movie?

[A] Applegate: The end of Boogie Nights is the only one I've ever seen that made sense. The payoff was Mark Wahlberg standing there with his schlong. To me, nudity usually isn't necessary.

15

[Q] Playboy: When actors do a nude scene for the wrong reasons, who looks more ridiculous—the man or the woman?

[A] Applegate: The man. If he's nude, oh, he definitely looks more ridiculous. I love the male body, but, you know, it definitely looks sillier.

16

[Q] Playboy: Play Mr. Blackwell for a moment. Who needs a makeover?

[A] Applegate: Anna Nicole Smith, definitely. She's a buxom blonde, and there's a way to be one that isn't, you know, frightening. Some colors you just don't wear—like bright turquoise. But I think she looks amazing right now.

17

[Q] Playboy: How high is your monthly cellular phone bill?

[A] Applegate: Pretty high. I have no idea of the exact amount, but I know it's high because I get on the phone just to get through traffic. I'm pretty much on the phone the whole time I'm in the car, which is not good. It's not like I call New York or anything, though I have called Hawaii. But I don't think my bill would shock anyone. I think it's normal.

18

[Q] Playboy: How do you signal your sexual readiness?

[A] Applegate: The signal is like, yeah, how inappropriate is it at that moment. What's the most bizarre place you can do it? How about in a church, which I have never done and probably won't ever, but I think that would be the most bizarre place to do it. A Catholic church, preferably in Rome.

19

[Q] Playboy: There's a waste of time and a total waste of time. Which do you still permit yourself?

[A] Applegate: Bikini waxing is a total waste of time. It hurts. Why do it? Just a waste of time would be grocery shopping. I don't do that anymore, either. When I had a lovely assistant, she used to do it. Laundry is a total waste of time. I refuse to have anyone else do my laundry, and I will stay at home for seven hours to do it. It's horrible and everyone knows that if it's laundry day, they have to come over and take care of me. It's the most miserable day of my life, and it's coming up on Sunday. I have a laundry chute, and the problem is that the laundry is hidden, so you don't know what's happening. I had a two-story laundry day two weeks ago. Six loads. Each load took an hour and a half to dry because it was so huge. I was at home all day.

20

[Q] Playboy: Let's say you have a daughter, and she sees Married With Children. Do you have a speech prepared?

[A] Applegate: They made me do it. They put a gun to my head. This is what bad taste is all about, sweetheart. That would be how not to dress. It's all about the clothes. It always comes back to that for me. Halloween every day.

Read, read, read, darling. You must always read. Keep learning. I don't even remember that show, it was so long ago. It's hard to even go back there. Not that it was a bad thing, but I don't even remember. It was years ago and I don't recall anything about it, really. I have one of those memories—I think it was affected by too much Equal or something. I just don't remember a thing about that time in my life.