PASADENA, Calif. _ Actress-singer Debbie Gibson knows what it's like to be a world famous recording artist at 16 and nearly forgotten at 20.
In her youth she sold more than 16 million albums. Her very first single, "Only in My Dreams," jetted to the top of the charts almost overnight.
"I never just wanted to be a pop star because you have to be a strategist," she says. "You have to be ahead of every trend if you want to have hits all the time. And you just instinctively made music, and if it happened to be what was gong on at the time, great. But I wasn't looking to be Madonna. Madonna's a genius at having a hit in every decade. To me just talking about it is exhausting."
Like so many trends in music, the tide turned against her. "There was a huge backlash against my kind of pop music," she says. "I had this big burst, and then Seattle grunge came in, alternative rock came in, and people were suddenly calling MTV and saying, 'We don't want to see that "Electric Youth" video anymore.' Quite literally. It was a love-hate flip, and it happens in pop."
So Gibson scooped up her platinum records and headed to Broadway, where she started a whole new career in musical theater. Today, at 48, she's enjoying a resurgence as an actress. She portrays a pop star who explores fulfillment as a music teacher in "Wedding of Dreams," premiering on the Hallmark Channel Saturday. The movie marks her second in the same role for Hallmark.
But the transformations haven't been easy, she admits, and the ravages of that early fame still cling. "I seemed older because I had a command of my craft, but emotionally I was even younger than my years," she recalls.
"I was a late bloomer. I was like the girl who won't grow up, which kind of happens in show business ... professionally I was wiser than my years, so it was kind of confusing. I was signing 100 checks at the age of 17 on the road. There's this 'arrested development' thing that happens. Like one time in my 30s I took over my business management because I wanted to make sure I knew enough.
"I said, 'I don't want to be this blonde chick singer who doesn't know anything about the business side of my business.' But there are certain things I didn't do. I started my adult life with a lot of money _ that has its perks and its downsides," she says.
"At some point in my life I started normalizing a bit more. I had a lot of undoing to do, physically and emotionally. One of the biggest traits of young stars is you become a people-pleaser. You think you have to say yes to everything. You think people are not going to like you. Now, if you don't like me because I'm not superwoman, sorry," she shrugs.
"You think whoever has all the power _ and you forget that they can't do anything without you. You're the artist, and they're going to use you up and wring you out."
Her struggles have been exacerbated by her battle with Lyme disease. She's not sure how she contracted it, but says traditional medial advice wasn't much help. "Lyme was a wake-up call _ it could've been Lyme, it could've been anything," says Gibson.
"Why was my system broken down so much that this disease was able to take me over? ... I always prided myself on being healthy, but I wasn't really emotionally healthy and always pushed myself too hard," she says.
"I pace myself now. I don't have to fill an itinerary with 15 things in a day to feel good about myself. I feel better doing one quality thing a day and then resting."
She's invested in a 10-year relationship with her sweetheart, Rutledge Taylor. About that she says, "We're together right now, but we're going through a transition of sorts and figuring some stuff out. So it's a little bit of a challenging time."
Although she never married, she says she's not afraid of marriage. "What I realize is that life sometimes takes you on paths you don't expect. Essentially I've been in a marriage of 10 years, without the piece of paper. Without registering for a toaster oven," she smiles.
She extends her hand, displaying a ring Taylor made especially for her. "For some reason this relationship felt like the commitment we had was enough, and kids in the context of the relationship, didn't feel right in the beginning. Then I was dealing with the health stuff, and I needed my body to just be there for me. I've always thought about adoption anyway, so I'm very open right now."
HOGS RIDE AGAIN ON FX SERIES
For those who care, Kurt Sutter blasts off another motorcycle drama for FX, "Mayans MC," premiering this week. Sutter was responsible for the seven-season run of the "Sons of Anarchy" and says this show picks up four years later. "The stories that I like to tell and the characters I like to create are damaged, right? And they live outside the parameters of perhaps the norm or what's expected," he says.
"So as a result of that, there's a rogue component, an outlaw component. And obviously, that's the case here. But I never write these guys or these women from a point of view of them being dangerous or bad. I write them from the idea that they're human beings with complex feelings, complex external pressures, complex relationships, right?
And people didn't show up for 'Sons' because it was about f __ outlaws, right? People showed up for 'Sons' because it was about a f __ family. And I feel like we're able to do the same thing here."
JIM CARREY IS 'KIDDING' ON SHOWTIME
Jim Carrey is leaping back to television in Showtime's "Kidding," premiering Sunday. The series is about a longtime Mr. Rogers-type TV host who is skidding toward a nervous breakdown. Carrey's character, Mr. Pickles, has one mission in life: bringing joy to his rapt kiddie audience. Carrey says when he was growing up it was his dad who brought him joy. "My father was an amazing character, an incredible character," he says.
"So I'm always drawing on my father to play, especially a character like this. He was the kind of guy that if you talked to him for five minutes, you felt like you knew him for 50 years ... I would watch him performing and holding court in the living room and be sitting back. This was before I even understood what a joke was, but I saw the connection. I saw the connection between my father and whoever was in the house, and they invariably always left holding their bellies and going, 'Percy, you missed your calling. You missed your calling.' So it was his calling."
'THE MINIATURIST' MIMICS THE MASTERS
It's hard to believe the latest PBS "Masterpiece" called "The Miniaturist" was actually filmed in modern day. The production design is so precise you'd swear the characters and sets just leapt off a Flemish painting.
"Some of the people who worked on this production had worked on 'Wolf Hall,' which was also, again, a remarkable art direction production design show," says Susanne Simpson, deputy executive producer of "Masterpiece." "I think the British come from a craft system, and filmmaking is a craft for them. They have a system by which people apprentice to more experienced people, and that's true in production."
"Producers have assistant producers who learned that job, and then they have associate producers that learn research, and then they're beginning to produce their own film. And the same is true in the production design workshops. I have been very fortunate to meet Michael Howell, who did the production design on 'Victoria,' for example. And he came up through the system, and he was absolutely teaching those around him that system."
Production designers on the three-part "The Miniaturist" were Taff Barley and David Roger. The show, which premieres Sunday, was also filmed in mostly candlelight, lending it that chiaroscuro effect.
