If you've ever been embarrassed by your taste for celebrity parent news (admit it, Babble's Famecrawler the first place you visit), you're going to get a kick out of Ali Landry.
Once a member of the People's Fifty Most Beautiful People List and the famous "Doritos girl" from the late nineties, Landry now has a weekly Webcast that's allowing every day parents (us) instant access to celebrity parents. And Landry, ahem, is just as interested as the rest of us.
Landry sat down with Babble to talk about her new show, Spotlight to Nightlight, and parenting daughter Estela (twenty months).
First way she won us over? She admitted her twenty-month-old has already hit the terrible twos. Yes, that's a real mom talking there!
Babble: What got you into actually talking about motherhood and doing Spotlight to Nightlight?
Landry: I am a researcher. Yes, I am a little bit of a Type A personality. If I'm going to do something, I want to do it as close to perfection as possible. (laughing). Even through the birth and the pregnancy, I researched everything. I don't buy one thing without researching it. Everybody I meet, I ask them questions. I'm in the aisles at Babies R Us . . . when I was trying to figure out what bottle to give the baby (you know, I nursed for a long time, but I also supplemented with bottles), I probably asked fifteen women which bottle they used. I was driving them all nuts! I love researching the products, and I read every book... you study so much in school and in college but no one really prepares you for being a mom.
Babble: Did you find the internet really helped you with your research?
Landry: The internet was really my go-to. People today ask me about Estela, where did you get that for her? And I tell them, I got it online. I go to all the parent reviews, I look at everyting. I compare notes. I look at probably fifteen sites on the same thing. I'm a little crazy on those kind of things! I'm the go-to person for getting the shower list together for everbody, the products they're going to register for. My friends, before they buy anything, they call me! So, anyway, I was sort of dabbling, writing my own show which was going to be a talk show for moms . . . and this opportunity came up online. I thought this could be a perfect accompaniment to the television show. No one has ever addressed that on televison. I think they're all afraid that moms are not their target audience which I think is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Who do they think is watching daytime television?
The show is cut into three- to five-minute interviews with celebrity moms (most recently Sarah Clarke of 24) interspersed with interviews with experts on parenting-related topics. In other words - it's not just the celebrity parents themselves. It's the whole world. And that means nannies, bailouts and more.
Landry: People in general are fascinated with the whole celebrity baby thing, but to me the show is not truly about that. It's about being a mom, period. Whether you're a celebrity or not, I'm trying my hardest to get that relatability factor between celebrity moms and every mom whose out there. Truly, yes, they might be a little more glamorous. Yes, they might be getting their hair and make-up done and walking on a red carpet. But at the end of the day, they're a parent first. We're all going through the same thing, the same struggle. We're all trying to be a good mom, a good wife, a good daughter, a good friend. That's why I'm really trying to accomplish, to get these women to let their guard down and talk about what really matters to them.
Babble: What makes you relatable? You're this girl from Louisiana, but you're also the Doritos girl . . .
Landry: I don't even see that side of me. That's what I do, but that's not even at all who I am as a person. So, anybody who talks to me or meets me forgets about that. That's also what I really want to do with the show - to show we're all moms, we're all going through the same thing. We're all women first.
The shows are short, but Landry makes us feel a little better about our obsessions. And, hey, a celebrity mom who can admit she's got a terrible toddler on the loose? Someone we can totally relate to! Catch the show - also available in Spanish over at Yahoo's OMG.
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