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By Root 326 0

amazing girl. She’s just getting started in her career and I’m so happy for her. Any chance I got I talked to her, because she wasn’t the least bit jaded or affected. I’m like, “Look, Chelsea, I know you don’t need anybody, you don’t need a mentor in life, but I’m just letting you know this Hollywood life is not always going to go the way you want it to go. If you ever need anyone to talk to, I’m here.” I don’t want to see a young girl getting taken advantage of. It happened to me a million times and I never had anyone who said, “Call me if you get in trouble.” I wanted her to know that if she ever needed anyone, I’d be that person. I told her, “I’m not trying to be a therapist, but if at any time you get to that point where you look in the mirror and you say, ‘What am I doing? Who am I trying to be?’ call me. Just call me, because I will talk to you and let you know how I got through it. I’m here for you, girl. I want to see you succeed. You have so much heart and soul. You have so much potential.” It would have been nice if Wendy or someone was like that to me. Since the show ended, Chelsea and I have remained close. We talked about her coming on my show, and I even put her in touch with Hef, because who knows, maybe one day she’ll pose for Playboy and break out of the child star mold!

I also got to know Sugar Ray Leonard. He is one awesome guy. I picked his brain every chance I got because I’m a huge fan of his. Every single time I had the chance I wanted to sit by him and talk to him because he’s so interesting. He’s a world-famous legend. I’m sure he couldn’t care less about Kendra Wilkinson, but I was so into Sugar Ray Leonard because I relate to the life of a boxer—getting knocked down and having to get back up and bearing the scars of a million punches. He’s all about his prerogative and he’s all about “Mind your business and I’ll mind mine.” That’s a boxer’s life and that’s mine too. I’ve lived a very public life, and that’s why I was so interested in getting to know Sugar Ray Leonard, because he became famous for fighting and hitting people. I became famous because I was a magazine publisher’s girlfriend. The best advice he gave me was “Don’t listen to what other people say about you.” He told me about weathering the storm and how mean people are when you become famous. He said when he retired and tried to make a comeback, everyone called him “old.” They said he was too old to be boxing. He said that really hurt his feelings, and he reminded me that celebrities have feelings too, even boxers. It’s good to be reminded that there are a lot of normal, sweet celebrities out there with big hearts.

It wasn’t always easy with Louis, but I will say this: He taught me how to dance! (© Adam Larkey/American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.)

If you look at the cast you can relate it to a high school classroom with nerds and jocks and prom queens. I think that Wendy might have been the too-cool-for-school person. Take Kirstie Alley, probably the biggest star on the show; she was the prom queen. And yet she was just like everyone else, down-to-earth, wanting to meet my family. She loves the baby, and she’s invited us to her house. She was like, “When the show is done I would love for you and your son to come over and play with my animals.” We got along really good.

Ralph Macchio was like the teacher’s pet. Everyone loved him. He’s not really the nerd, he’s just as close to a perfect person as I’ve ever met. I always made fun of him because I knew immediately he was the front-runner, so I would say things like, “Ralph, I’m about to Tonya Harding your ass. I’m about to whack you.”

Hines Ward was really funny. We had the same view of this show, which was basically “What is this and why the hell are we doing it?” When we would watch a ballet, like a full-on ballerina ballet on the dance floor, me and Hines were like, “Haaaa!” and just laughing, but meanwhile all the other dancers were taking it so seriously. Me and Hines were like, “We just want to go into our trailer, drink some Patrón, and listen to some hip-hop.” He definitely