Kristen Johnston, who starred in NBC's Third Rock From the Sun, recently appeared on The Wendy Williams Show to promote her new sitcom, The Exes on TV Land. But besides talking about appearing on the new program with Seinfeld's Wayne Knight, Scrubs' Donald Faison and Three Sisters' David Alan Basche, Johnston dished about appearing in the tabloids in July with Octomom Nadya Suleman of La Habra.
Wonder of wonders, the actress says the rags got it wrong.
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The actress and wannabe actress agree on this: Suleman was flying with 10 of her 14 children (including the octuplets) on a plane that was stuck on the tarmac for two hours before departing from New York to Los Angeles. The little natives grew restless and loud, prompting Johnston to go to Suleman's seat in search of order.
An Octo-rep related the following exchange (encapsulated from “Octomom Nadya Suleman Hates Her 14 Kids”):
SULEMAN: “How would you like me to keep eight 2-year-olds quiet?”
JOHNSTON: “Get more help!”
SULEMAN: “Why don't you grow a baby and get a life!”
Johnston
eventually returned to her seat. Suleman later explained she did not know Johnston was an actress, adding, “I guess there's some people that don't like kids.”
Speaking to host Wendy Williams, Johnston said the racket behind her on the plane “wasn't like children screaming and crying, it was like, they were just
unhappy and loud.” She didn't rise from her seat and go to Suleman until it sounded like a “Beirut kindergarten had been bombed.”
What Johnston said she found was Octomom reading a magazine and ignoring the noise while one of her very young daughters tried to get control of the toddlers. The actress characterized their exchange as a discussion.
“Do you know when you shush someone in the theater? That is exactly what it was like,” said Johnston.
She conceded suggesting Suleman “get better control of your kids or get
better help” but denied that was met by the line, “Why
don't you grow a baby and get a life!” The actress claims Octomom simply
looked up and asked, “What am I supposed to do?”
Asked by Williams if she had any kids of her own, Johnston joked, “No, which is why I
yell at them.”
Give Nads credit for having a more direct damage-control line to the tabloids than a TV sitcom actress.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.