Sunday’s episode of E!’s controversial reality frolic Pretty Wild, showed Alexis Neiers’ bittersweet dance with fame and publicity. She was excited about getting a “spread” in the respected magazine:
Alexis: “I got an offer to do a spread in Vanity Fair just about me to explain my side of the story.”
Tess: “And there’s no way that could turn out bad?”
Alexis: “No.”
Famous last words.
So Alexis sits down with journalist Nancy Jo Sales, tells her about her love of shoes, and even cries in to Nancy Jo’s arms.
Later after she reads the article, she’s devastated at the results. She’s upset with the things that Nancy Jo wrote when talking about her, and also upset that the whole article wasn’t just about her, but also about the more prominent Bling Ring:
“I was not happy with anything that she wrote about me.”
Surrounded my her sobbing sisters, Alexis calls the Vanity Fair writer, Nancy Jo Sales’ voicemail.
“I opened up to you so that the world could potentially know what a great, amazing, talented, strong girl, that I am, not even a girl, young woman.”
Her mother Andrea kept interrupting with screeching wails, causing Alexis to direct her sobbing at her, and then starting over to rerecord the message.
Her biggest concern about the article? The lies, like the fact that Nancy Jo Sales mistakenly stated that Alexis wore six inch Louboutins to her court date when she actually wore four-inch shoes by another designer. The horror!
If you read the Nancy Jo Sales article, it’s really not that scathing. Sure, it hypes up Alexis’ love for luxury items, her connection to a ring of Hollywood thieves, the E! reality show cameras following her and her attention-loving family as they fight the charges against Alexis and try to become famous at the same time. Alexis’s alledged involvement with high-profile crimes are in fact the most interesting thing about the show, and the very angle they needed to get anyone to pay attention. And it does help tell Alexis’ side of the story: That she was only involved in any way with the Orlando Bloom break-in, which she claims she didn’t know what they were doing when they drove up to the star’s house. She was drunk and didn’t want to follow the others, but she did anyway. She says once she realized they were “ransacking” the place, she screamed at them “What are you doing? Get me the f**k out of here!” and ran out to pee and throw up in the bushes.
The article also points out what is painfully obvious when watching the show, that behind the scenes producers are often feeding the ladies their lines. Not too shocking, but the situation gets ridiculous when Alexis tries to fight back against the Vanity Fair article by making her own good publicity.
She settles on talking to school children about the dangers of falling in the with bad crowd, and follows up by talking to about four or five middle school children (only one girl was in attendance) with little evidence of press or publicity besides her own reality show cameras rolling.
She may cry and complain on camera, but the half-hearted visit to a couple of children isn’t what’s getting her noticed, it’s the Vanity Fair article, which makes her seem, spoiled, involved with a ring of thieves (whether or not she actually committed a crime), and when the light hits her right, kind of glamorous, in that scandalous kind of way. Just like they say, any publicity . . .
