Interview with Chastity Bono

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).