Ricki Lake
On her "good divorce" and very revealing home-birth documentary.
by Sara Cardace
May 2, 2007
What kind of mom are you?
Ricki: I hope a good one. I try to not make some of the mistakes
that my parents made. My kids are really well-adjusted, happy, beautiful children,
so I think so far so good. My ex and I did get divorced. We separated about
three and a half years ago and of course that was hard, but in the last year
or so, we've gotten really great together. We're really partners in raising
the kids. I tell people that we're kind of the positive example
of a good divorce. It's not ideal, and it's not what I would have hoped for,
but it certainly could have been a lot worse. I'm really proud of the two people
we brought into the world, who are the reason this movie came about for me
in the first place.
Abby: She's an amazing mom. She's so hands-on. She drives them to school, she picks them up, she schleps them to everything.
Ricki: I'm picking them up right now!
What are their current obsessions?
Ricki: My oldest son is a guitar prodigy. He's like Jimi Hendrix reborn.
He plays his own gigs around town. He's playing the Hermosa Comedy Club next
week and he just turned ten. He's amazing. And my little Owen is an incredible
artist; my ex is a beautiful artist and Owen seems to have picked up his talents.
They love basketball; we love the Lakers, and we still love the Yankees because
we're always New Yorkers at heart. It's such a privilege to be able to call
them my children. I've been laying low lately and that was a conscious decision.
I'm an actor, but I will never do anything to compromise my children's stability — their
social life, their schooling.
It was a big deal moving out of New York three
years ago, and I won't take a job if it's out of town for a long period of
time, because I won't take them with me and I won't leave them, so that kind
of limits the opportunities that come up for me. But that's the commitment
I made when I had kids. I had the show for eleven years and it was great for
a working mother. It was the ideal job. When I wanted to do other
Subject Jennifer Bruni with midwife Melanie Comer and a nurse in a scene from The Business of Being Born. things, there
was no way I was going to be, you know, Demi Moore or all these actresses that
are able to pick up and bring their kids with them for three months. I won't
do that. I don't feel like I've had to make too many sacrifices. It's easy.
It's just what I decided to do when I had kids. Like I said, I'm a Virgo, and
I plan everything to a tee.
And Abby, you're still working? Have you taken some time off?
Abby: It's been pretty non-stop since the birth, especially since it was all filmed and I was the birthing mom and the filmmaker all at the same time. Editing with the newborn was kind of nutso. I think I'm going to take a little rest after this festival, hoping that we sell the movie and everything goes well. And then we'll see. Ricki and I have a lot of little spin-off ideas.
Ricki: I think they're big ideas.
Abby: Yes — big ideas. Even politically, we've been talking to the UN. They have this division called the UN SPA that tries to call attention to the horrible infant mortality rates around the world and improving maternity care. We've been talking to them about making Ricki a visible spokesperson that might go around the world with our film trying to raise awareness about safe motherhood. And then we have more commercial projects we're thinking about, because it's really sort of a bottomless subject. I feel like our eighty-minute film just focuses on the U.S. and we just really break the first ground, but there's so much more to it.
Ricki, everyone's talking about the fact that you decided to include footage of your own birth in the film.
Ricki: Yeah, I guess I kind of expected that would be titillating.
Abby: Meanwhile, it's so ironic because there was literally a point when we were editing the film where we couldn't figure out where to put Ricki's birth in — just structurally, it was really hard! And Ricki was like, "You mean my birth isn't going to be in the film after all this!?" We've been living with it for so long that we forget, and now of course all the news media are like "Ricki Lake! Naked in the tub!"
Ricki: They're mean! They say Ewww. But I think it's important.
I believe in this enough to show an unflattering side of me. I felt like it
was necessary. I'm scared to death, but I don't feel ew about
it.
Abby: I hope not. It's gorgeous.
©2007 Sara Cardace and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Sara Cardace is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in New York Magazine, the Washington Post, and Interview. The baby pictured at left does not belong to her. |
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