She likes us! Paula Abdul really likes us!

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/07/2002 (8688 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HOLLYWOOD — So, I’m standing beside the pool at Skybar, chatting over cocktails with Paula Abdul about music, TV and home-town connections, and she flashes her trademark Straight-Up smile and says, “Good people come from Winnipeg.”

(NOTE: This big-phony-self-indulgent-Hollywood-party moment is brought to you by Fox Broadcasting, the network that hired Abdul as one of the judges on its hit summer series, American Idol: The Search for a Superstar, and then organized its summer-press-tour stars-mingle-with-the-media party at Hollywood’s hottest Sunset-Strip nightspot.)

Anyway, let’s back up a couple of steps. The reason I’m here, as anyone who’s been following these pages for the past couple of weeks already knows, is to take part in the twice-per-year gathering of TV critics from around North America and the stars, producers and executives behind the U.S. networks’ new and returning shows.

During these press tours, folks who watch TV for a living get together with folks who make TV for a living to discuss and debate programs, trends and the general state of prime-time television.

The days are spent in an seemingly endless rotation of press conferences and interview sessions, and each network ends its two-day presentation with a cocktail reception or theme party that allows more informal interaction between journalists and stars.

Fox, which has established a reputation for throwing the most inventive and engaging star parties, scheduled this summer’s event at the Mondrian Hotel’s notorious Skybar, an open-air nightclub with a sweeping view of the Hollywood skyline.

Abdul, as mentioned, is at Skybar because of her involvement in American Idol. And she’s talking about Winnipeg because — as was reported in great detail in the Free Press when her tour rolled through town a decade ago — she has Manitoban roots that run very deep, indeed.

The singer/dancer/choreographer’s maternal grandparents, Bill and Sally Rykiss, ran a general store in Minnedosa for several years. Sally later moved into Winnipeg and boarded with a family in River Heights so that her two daughters — including Paula Abdul’s mother, Lorraine — could attend school in the city.

While visiting with relatives here in Los Angeles in the early 1950s, Lorraine Rykiss met a darkly handsome young gent named Harry Abdul. They were married in Winnipeg in 1953, and then moved to L.A. so Harry could continue to work in his family’s livestock business.

Paula Abdul was born in 1962, grew up in Los Angeles, became a Laker Girl, broke into the record business and the rest, as they say, is history.

When she learns that her latest interviewer at the loud, crowded Fox bash is from a Winnipeg newspaper, she smiles the aforementioned smile and immediately beckons her companion for the evening, a cousin (once removed, it seems) named Tara Riceberg who also boasts of her Winnipeg connections.

Before long, the conversation has developed into a recitation by Riceberg — a native Los Angeleno who owns a trendy boutique on Melrose Avenue — of Winnipeg names and places: Kelekis, Rae & Jerry’s, Gunn’s Bakery and all the usual cultural hot spots.

Abdul, for her part, has no firm recollection of the city’s eateries and other landmarks, but does carry fond memories of her 1992 tour stop, which included visits with several relations who still call Manitoba home.

“I actually sort of honeymooned in Winnipeg,” she explains. “I eloped and got married to Emilio (Estevez; the marriage ended two years later), and the next day I was starting the Canadian part of my tour. And he surprised me by coming to Winnipeg.

“I told him, ‘This better not be our REAL honeymoon.'”

Despite having distanced herself from her Manitoban heritage in her showbiz bios back in the early ’90s (her press materials then referred to mother Lorraine as a classical pianist from Montreal), Abdul seems perfectly content today to revisit her Canadian-Prairie roots.

“Absolutely, I feel a connection,” she says with the grin described in this column’s opening line. “Good people come from Winnipeg.”

She also confesses to being a big fan of another performer with a Winnipeg connection — rising R&B star Remy Shand, whose debut album she purchased recently during one of her regular visits to the Virgin Records Megastore on Sunset.

“I go there sometimes and spend hours just listening to things at random,” Abdul says, “and I saw a display (of Shand’s CD), and I listened to the entire album.

“He’s really cool and unique, a bit of a throwback to the music that I love.”

And as far as the recording-star wannabes who’ve advanced to the final few on American Idol are concerned, well, Abdul shares the widely held public perception that they’ve been given a pretty rough ride by snarky Brit judge Simon Cowell.

She adds that during her rise to the top of the charts back in the early ’90s, she never encountered anyone as judgmentally nasty as Cowell.

“Oh, no. Never,” she states. “And every artist who has come up to me and talked about this show has said the same thing: ‘We know it’s not like this.’ We, as artists, would never subject ourselves repeatedly to that kind of abuse. It’s hard enough to hear, ‘Thank you very much,’ at an audition, because as an artist, you know that means they don’t want you.

“My job (on American Idol) is to make sure these kids don’t quit. Simon will always create fear in these young, impressionable, vulnerable kids… (but) he’s not a musician, he’s not a writer, he’s not a composer.

“No matter what he says, he’ll never know the magical feeling those kids get when they’re performing.”

PHOTO