November 24, 2022 • 39 mins
For decades, iconic supermodel Paulina Porizkova had a picture-perfect life: world-class beauty, the largest modeling contract in history, a rockstar husband, and two beautiful sons. For the first time, Paulina is opening up about her separation from The Cars lead singer Ric Ocasek, his untimely death, and the betrayal, heartbreak, abandonment, and grief she faced behind the scenes. Now, at age 57, Paulina is bravely exploring the dating pool.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, fam I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the
Red Table Pop podcast all your favorite episodes from the
Facebook Watch show in audio produced by Westbrook Audio and
I Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review
on Apple Podcasts. She's an iconic supermodel. Paulina poor Riskova
was the highest paid supermodel in the world. Her glamorous
(00:22):
marriage to Hall of Fame rocker Rick Okasseck made them
the ultimate a couple. She says she spent a lifetime
being seen, but has never been heard until now. For
the first time, Paulina is revealing what happened behind the
scenes of our picture perfect life. I was waiting for
him to leave his wife and then a few months in,
Oh yeah, there's children involved. All the lie started as
(00:44):
soon as we met. I opened an envelope that says,
this is the will in the testament. I will not
provide for my wife because she abandoned me. He wanted
to hurt me one last time. My parents abandoned me
when out three. Abandonment still is I think my greatest fear.
(01:05):
So let's talk love life. O love life. Men willing
to sleep with women our age have slept with all
my girlfriends already you sleep with him yet, Yeah, don't
don't bother a raw revealing an emotional RTT you won't
want to miss missing but was probably some of the
worst things that has ever happened to me. I know
that the day he passed that you found him. She's
(01:35):
an iconic supermodel who says she spent a lifetime being seen,
but has never been heard until now. Legendary supermodel Paulina
Poritzkova was just eighteen when she made history as the
first Czechoslovakian woman to grace the cover of the sports
(01:59):
illustrated Swims suit issue. Vogue Australia declared her the face
of the nineties and she landed the most lucrative modeling
contract at that time. When she was nineteen, she was
in the music video for the band The Cars iconic
ballad Driven, where she met lead singer Rick Ocassock. The
(02:26):
glamorates couple had two sons in Paulina and Rick were
in the process of ending their thirty year marriage when
Rick unexpectedly died. A shocked and heartbroken Paulina found his
body days later. In the midst of her grief, Paulina
discovered Rick had cut her out of his will, leaving
(02:47):
her feeling betrayed and in deep financial despair. Now, in
her new memoir No Filter, Paulina is opening up about
it all. She's ready to talk no filter. Welcome, Paulina, welcome,
thank you. That is a going to color. The color
(03:09):
is specific. I wanted to Yeah, nice to me, look
like already red table. Yeah you look beautiful. Well, thank you.
So so let's talk about your book cover no filter
(03:30):
and there's no filter the picture, right, Yeah, no filter.
I make a point of not using filters ever, because
that's kind of my thing by you know, trying to
represent a woman my age fifty seven without filters. I
am so delighted when I see a woman my age
(03:51):
that looks like I do. I'm like, oh, look, you
have the same wrinkles where you have the same little
weird goobbly bits here, and I find it BEAUTIFU full
on them. So I'm kind of hoping to do for
other women what some of those women do for me.
I was really excited to talk to you, specifically for
that reason. I just turned sixty nine a couple of days.
(04:12):
What a beautiful sixty nine. So much, but that's the
thing it really has made me rethink, like how much
of this am I gonna do? Like how much botox
am I going to get? And when will I be
comfortable enough to let that all go? How did you
get comfortable? I am not comfortable with and I'm still
like struggling with it on a daily basis. And I
(04:34):
think that that's kind of where a lot of women fall.
It's like I have fourhead wrinkles, and I have wrinkles
here and and all the stuff that comes with being
lucky enough to live. So it's kind of a precarious
balance because we're in the public eye all the time
and people will take hot shots at you constantly. The
amount of like hey Grandma, that I get it's plenty.
(04:57):
It hurts my ego a little bit. But at the
same time, it isn't a part of the beauty of
becoming older that we acquire more confidence because we know
who we are and we are a little easier with
telling people to just piss off. All right, So let's see,
if you know, if I if I pushed back my
next botox supportment exciously. The moments where I feel the
(05:23):
least secure about myself is when I am modeling. One
day of modeling will set me back, like confidence wise,
Like a few can totally get that. I've been a
model for forty two years, since I was fifteen, and
so I'm just kind of used to stepping in front
of the camera. And then I see the pictures and
I go, WHOA, wait, this is not how I remember
(05:47):
it looking the last time I did it. And so
it's just the comparisons between like what I remember myself
as and then you know, being faced with the reality
of what I look like now, and it's beautiful. I
think we need to switch the thing of like, oh,
there's something wrong with me. So there's something wrong with
the world. You said it perfectly, So, Paulina, you had
(06:10):
a traumatic and offensive incident with a photographer early in
your career. You talk about that a little bit. Okay,
So I'm fifteen years old, like freshly fifteen years old.
I'm in Paris. Getting hired for any kind of a
job was such a big deal because I thought that
every job would be my last, and you wanted to
be the nice little girl and the line everybody. And
(06:32):
so I'm sitting there and there's a you know, makeup
mirror in front of me, and there's a makeup artist
doing my makeup. There's a hairdresser on the side, and
then the photographer walks in from behind and then I
feel something on my shoulder and it's like how warm
and heavy? And he's laughing at me, and the makeup
artist is laughing at me, and the hairdresser is laughing.
Everybody's laughing, and I'm like, what what is that? Don
(06:57):
It looks like a brown flower or but it feels
like Penny who's stuff was mashed potato. It was like,
I could not for the world figure this out. And
it wasn't until he retracted it and zipped up his
flight that I realized it was Spenish. So were the
were the makeup artists and the other people that were
in the room where they all men not women. This
(07:20):
was his little joke that he did two young girls.
And it's kind of culture in that. I mean that
modeling World, Paulina, Was that the first time you ever
saw well, yes, it was certainly the first time I
saw it. That's so disrespectful. And you were on these
sets alone, right of course. I remember Carl Lagerfeld telling
(07:45):
me with you, he was like, I love that you
don't leave her alone on the set, and he said, never, Jada,
never leave her alone on the set. And he didn't
go into detail. A lot of sexual harassment going on,
and if I saw that being done now to my
granddaughters or my nieces, I'd be horrified. And I want
(08:05):
to go and kill somebody. So let's talk love life.
Oh love life. Oh great? But you met Rick when
you were nineteen and you said it was love at
first sight. It was kind of love even before first sight.
Because I had just gotten my MTVS, like Night four,
(08:27):
and I had accidentally seen this video and I thought,
oh God, that guy's really hot, and his name came
up and it said Rick Okasseck. And about three months later,
I was called to do an audition for a MTV
video for a band called The Cars that I had
never heard of because I was from Europe, so I
didn't know the American bands and the band we're going
(08:49):
to take me out to dinner before we did the video.
So I showed up at the Four Seasons and the
door opens and the guy from the video walked out
and it was literally like one of those like teenage
wet dre So I was like, right, yeah, I can't breathe.
It's like magnets drawn across the room to each other,
(09:09):
and it's like, yeah, that was history. So he was
he was married at the time. Didn't tell you that, No,
not not right away, obviously. He told me that after
a couple of weeks had gone by, when we had,
you know, already made out and I was like passionately
(09:32):
love with this guy. And then he sort of came
up with I like, oh, yeah, by the way, I'm there,
and I was like what this bombshell came While Paulina
and Rick were making out. At some point between the kisses,
I asked him to tell me something secret about himself.
I meant a little confidential snippets, something only I would
(09:52):
get to know. And that's when he told me he
was married. It was a glass of cold water thrown
in my face. But quickly, with my nineteen year old reasoning,
I figured it always took two to be unhappy in
the relationship, so clearly his was not a good marriage.
But that was that we resumed kissing. I just thought, okay,
(10:15):
so they'll divorce him. You know, I'll leave my boyfriend,
he'll leave his wife, and that's good and then so
I left my boyfriend, and then I was waiting for
him to leave his wife. And then a few months in,
oh yeah, there's children involved. That one was a little
harder to take. I was in too deep at that point.
I was maddeling in love with him. And when he
(10:37):
said that he needed time because there were two small
children involved, on went, he's such a good dad. Yeah,
And it never really dawned on me that he had
all the lies that had started as soon as we met.
(10:57):
It took back three years to leave his wife. During
that time, Pauline and Rick kept their romance secret. Eventually
they married. I became his obsession for the first time
in my life. I felt totally desired. He would not
share me. He flew into jealous rages often enough to
(11:18):
make me understand how much I mattered to him. I
stopped doing bookings where I had male counterparts. I stopped
working weekends, but we're not convenient with his schedule. We
made very few select friends together, only ones who understood
that we were a package. There wasn't much room for
anyone else, but adoring someone takes up a lot of room.
(11:41):
Both of our careers suffered because we became each other's priorities.
I trusted him wholeheartedly for pretty much most of my life. Wow,
I was very very much in love with him. But
I started to match or and no longer was his
word the word of God. And you have your own children,
(12:05):
you run a family. He had a bunch of children
that you know, we're all incorporated as family. I did
all of that work, and I wanted him to step
up a little bit more to be acknowledged, I guess
for what I did. And the more demanding I became,
the further way he pulled Pollack. Yeah, And I felt
(12:27):
that as an abandonment, and so abandonment has been like
it still is. I think my greatest fear in what
way my parents abandoned me. When I was three, they
moved to Sweden in a Soviet invasion. Then my mom
came back to get me when I was nine, and
then I was taken away from my grandmother, who was
(12:47):
really the woman that raised me. So there was another
abandonment of somebody, of my safety, of my home life,
of everything I knew. And then I marry a man
that seemed to love me so completely and holy, if
somewhat obsessively. M M. And when he started backing off
for me, I was like wait, wait, wait, like where
(13:07):
are you going? Can we can we do therapy, can
we do vacations? Like can you read the self help?
But can you please? And he'd be like, doesn't work
for me. You do your thing. I'm back here. When
you figure it out and you want to just be happy,
then come back to me that thing. So things kept
disintegrating more and more and we decided to get a
(13:30):
divorce and we told the children and I put it
out on Instagram that we were separating, and I go, okay,
this is what I'm going to post. Is this okay
with you? I mean, we're still living in the same house.
I was so concerned about him his well being that
he was okay. I didn't realize until much later that
it only went one way. Actually, he was inducted into
(13:53):
the Hall of Fame. I was like, I'm gonna go
I'm going to be your wife. I'm going to be
like fully supportive because I know how much this means
to you. And he was the only guy who didn't
thank his wife on the podium. And so when we
got back home, I was like, yeah, okay, so now
we're going public, and I'm going to start dating right anyone, Okay,
to your thing. So I did my thing. We lived
(14:14):
in a really large town house and our children were
still at home, and there was no real animosity, And
so I went about still being housemother and still providing food,
and still making sure he had his favorite yogurt, even
though we slept in separate bedrooms for many years by
that time already so like to me, all of this was,
(14:34):
you know, strictly, strictly above the table. When I found
a man and I fell in love, I told my husband.
My husband went, oh, well, good for you. You You know,
I'm glad he was not a musician. That's all I
got to say. After we had separated, I had fallen
in love with someone else, and I was in a
relationship with this man when my husband died. I've never
(14:56):
spoken about this publicly, though I've never hidden it either.
My friends and family were all aware. My husband knew him.
We talked openly about my boyfriend. We discussed getting apartments
close to each other after we sold our home so
we could help each other when needed. I thought we
had found the perfect way to navigate the end of
our marriage. And you guys were actually divorced. We were separated,
(15:23):
and we were going to do like the final divorce
papers after we sold the house, so that we knew
exactly what the assets were. And he did get a
really really evil lawyer, divorce lawyer during this period and
didn't tell me about it, and I thought we were
going to get mediators. All of a sudden, shark lawyers
came in and you know, oh, no, you don't get this,
(15:45):
and you don't get this, and you don't get this.
And I go to my husband and go, what what's
going on here? Oh, don't worry about it. He'd say,
don't worry about it. It's just a beginning negotiation. And
I told her to treat you fairly. And I was like,
you know, she has one of the worst repute patients
in like the United States, right, And that never went
anywhere because when he died, tell us about that day.
(16:06):
So he had surgery because he had UM. They found
stage zero lung cancer. So it was kind of good news.
You know, he had gone in for a catskin just
to be sure because he had been a heavy smoker,
rock star, you know, UM, And so they found it
super early and it was like Hey, this is great.
It's like we're finding it before it makes any trouble whatsoever.
(16:27):
And I said, honey, don't worry. I'm there. I'm taking
care of you. We're going to get through this together.
Don't worry for a second. I'll be there. And he
was like, I'm so happy, Thank you so much. We
went through the surgery, me and the boys, I mean
we were all there, and you know, I'm making him dinner,
taking care of him, all of that stuff that you
(16:47):
do for somebody that you love. And he was recovering
really well, like two weeks. He was walking around um,
he was starting to feel much better. He was sleeping better.
And this night I went out for a friend's birthday,
I mean sure that my boys were at home. And
as I was going back home, I remember I bought
like these like warm cookies from like one of those
(17:08):
like stands on on the the New York streets. And
I came home and he was sitting up in his
chair in the living room where he always said, and
I was like, hey, honey, I brought you some warm
cookies and he said, you know what, I'm feeling kind
of tired. I think can you save them for me
for tomorrow, and I said sure, and he went to sleep.
The next morning, it's like, you know, nine ten, he
(17:29):
still wasn't up, but he tended to sleep late rock
star hours, and so by eleven, I was like, he's
sleeping in a little bit too long. So I'm gonna
make him a cup of coffee and I'm gonna bring
it up to him, like maybe he's not feeling so great.
And I brought him a cup of coffee and and
he just looked like he was sleeping. So I set
(17:51):
the coffee down next to him, and that's when I
saw his face. I saw his eyes and they didn't
like eyes anymore. And it all kind of started going
through my head. I was like, oh, I can't move.
(18:14):
Oh I think I'm gonna pass. Oh no, I'm my
legs are giving out, okay, and I'm just gonna fall
onto the floor here. But this is interesting. And that
coupled with this like panic, like oh my god, oh
my god, Oh my god, Oh my god. And then
uh and then I think my only thought was I
(18:35):
have to get to my children. I have to get
to my boys. It was kind of lucky that they
were both at home and I couldn't walk. I crawled
downstairs on my elbows, like three flights up stairs on
my elbows because I couldn't use my legs. Just the
damnedest thing. It's like how your body just shuts shuts off.
And then my boys, I think witnessing, my witnessing the
(19:01):
pan of which was probably some of the worst things
that has ever happened to me. Yeah, I can only imagine. Yeah, Okay,
I'm good. I know, yeah, I know, I know. I'm
just thinking. You know, it's so deep, it is. But
(19:26):
as I'm listening to us, you know, I think about
my life and I remember talking to this older actress.
Her name was Ruby d and she said one of
the things that she wished when Ozzie Davis died, which
was her husband, and they were married for decades, decades,
(19:46):
and there's so many ups and downs. But she said
to me, you know, I wish I had laughed with
him more. She's like, the one thing I want to
tell you, Jada, she was like, marriages go through their seasons,
you know, they go through their chain ages, she said,
but um, when a loved one dies, you don't even
(20:09):
think about all that has transpired, all of the foolishness
that goes on within a marriage, you know, and when
I'm listening to you, that comes to mind. Yeah, yeah,
(20:31):
thank you empathetic souls. Yeah, it comes to mind. You know.
Do you feel like you had a moment, that moment
where it didn't matter? Of course, of course I for
about two days all I remember. I mean, first, you're
(20:51):
just kind of in this fog um of you know,
I have to call his children. It's up to me, like,
it's like, I have to do this. I have to
do this now. Choosing out the clothing for the coffin,
which was really rough. Mm hm. I never realized how
(21:20):
sad shoes were shoes, you know, just opening the closet
and seeing his shoes. Yeah. So while doing that, you know,
I opened a novelope that says this is the will
in the Testament, and and his writing that says I
will not provide for my wife because she abandoned me. Whoa.
(21:45):
Paulina writes that Rick had decided to disinherit her. He
used the legal system to try to prevent her from
inheriting money after he passed by using the word abandonment.
My husband wasn't just making a hyperball statement he was
making illegal claim. Abandonment of a spouse legally speaking, is
(22:06):
when a person's partner disappears and cannot be contacted for
the duration of at least a year. I was in
no state to process it, honestly, I just went I
was like, well, that's ah I yea. So maybe he
was angry and like he had jotted this down and
(22:27):
somebody took it down as a memo and like pasted
it on, and it's like somebody made a mistake. But
people kept bringing it back up to me, and then
the press got ahold of it because it was put
in a way that it could be publicly released. He
could have made it secret, they didn't. So then all
of a sudden, I'm in a position of what did
(22:50):
you do to him? Yeah? Like what did you do?
Like what kind of beastly wife were you? Yeah? So
then you're put put in defense. Yeah, yeah, made out
to be the bad bad which yeah, I mean, this
was a man that I was just bringing a coffee to.
How did we go from being like best friends and
family to him publicly shaming me? Why do you think
(23:14):
that he did that? I saw some text on the
phone my girlfriend when she came for the funeral, went
p look at his phone, go into his phone and look,
you need to do this, and I was like, no, no, no,
they like and it's like, if you don't do it,
I'll do it. So I looked through his phone and
I found some interesting communications between him and his divorce lawyer.
(23:38):
Let's just put it that way. Yeah, but it was
his choice to hire her, and when she kept pushing,
he went and did as she suggested. So I know
he didn't expect to right now. He didn't expect his lawyers,
didn't expect him to die. So I think ultimately, in myself,
(24:02):
I have decided to solve it by going. I don't
know that this makes me very sane. But when love ends,
when it really ends, when you no longer love somebody,
you just walk away and you never look back. So
him being vindictive towards me, I went. You know, he
(24:24):
he still loved me and his obsessive, crazy love was
still in there and he wanted to hurt me one
last time. And weirdly enough, I can forgive that because
you have understanding around it. Yeah, were you right in
your book about being broke after Rick di? Okay? So
(24:46):
I was very specifically broke. I just want to upset
that right so that people don't, you know, accuse me
of lying. I was a woman with um assets. I
had two mortgaged houses, and I had a pension plan
that I can access in ten years and zero cash,
had no way to pay for anything. So I was
(25:06):
in a really really peculiar position of being a woman
with assets and no money, right right, right right, And
because that's that's very different full down COVID. Yeah. So,
and property values in New York had just fallen off
a cliff and I had to sell my house immediately
because I couldn't pay. I could write, you had no liquid,
(25:29):
zero liquids, zero liquids, and zero So yeah, I was
asking my friends to buy our groceries for a little while. Yeah. Wow,
so you didn't have any money for groceries. No, no, no, no,
no cash, no cash. Yeah, I had to be scary. Yeah.
There were so many things that sucked at that point. Yeah.
The worst part of the betrayal was not that it
(25:50):
took away the income Brack and I had been using
to live. The worst part was that he publicly declared
that I had abandoned him. For the next two years,
I had to sue my own business manager, who was
now the trustee of Rick's estate, and by extension, my
own children and stepchildren who were the beneficiaries of the estate.
During those two years, I learned more about money than
(26:13):
I had in my entire life up to that point.
When I signed a contract with st Ladder, it was
the largest modeling contract ever signed. At that point, all
that money went into the family purse. I had no
real idea what happened to it, whether it was saved, spent,
or invested. Our business manager always spoke to my husband
(26:34):
about our finances, and I would just get the condensed
version from Rick later. Don't worry. It was so nice
not to have to worry. The will got settled at
court Under New York law, I don't get a half
as you didn't divorce, you get a third. At least
I got my third and and I'm out. That's it.
(26:57):
I don't want to have to ever think about that again.
If I need money, I'm gonna have to make money.
And that's the way it is. It's like to me
money because of how I grew up. I grew up
without money, and when I was nine years old, my
mom went to Italy because she was having a nervous breakdown,
and somehow Dad was supposed to look after us and
he didn't get them my moos, so they just left
(27:18):
us a lot. So I was nine and my little
brother was three, and we weren't two weeks by ourselves,
and I ran out of food. But after a week
and I had to you know, go and steal in
a in the supermarket to you know, get food for
the second week. And uh, to this day, I really
don't like white bread and spread cheese because that's what
(27:39):
I kept stealing. So I know how to survive. And
then there was another abandonment that was my boyfriend leaving me.
He just walked away without ever looking back on the
day that I was moving out of my house when
I probably needed it most. I don't understand saying you
love somebody and can off and being like you're just
(28:03):
too much for me. I love you, like I really
love you. But he said he didn't have the fortitude
to stay with me, he couldn't have a healthy relationship
with me because I was too up. I mean, he
had a point. I was grieving my husband's and I
had no money and was going through menopause and how
to sell my house. So yeah, well maybe I was
not in the best place of my life. There's a
(28:24):
good year where I'm like, I don't recall much, but
like walking through the woods behind my house, playing like
Herman and the Hermits the End of the World and
just howling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sometimes that's just that's what
it takes, that's what Sometimes that's all we got and
(28:44):
the Hermits. I have a pretty hard time trusting people. Yeah,
I could see that. I think when someone says I
love you, I think we think you're gonna love me
whether I'm up or down or happier sad exactly. And
then when they're like, oh, no, I only love you
(29:05):
like this, No, I only love you when when it's
when you're not complaining exactly. I think we like in
the first stages, it's so like intense and hot and
passionate and fiery, right, and so you want the same
things at that moment. Then you start peeling, peeling the
las of people really really are we can't we can't
(29:28):
really see what we want when we're in the passion
of it all. Once that kind of dies down and
like life takes its course, it's like, no, no, no,
I need someone who can show up with me. It's
really about getting to those next stages up togetherness. And
you always say, Jada, and I love that is you
don't really know who somebody is until you've been in
(29:50):
the battle. Until you you've been on the battlefield. It
is one thing to know somebody yourself. It's one thing
to know somebody when everything is going well, But who's
the person that shows up with stuff isn't going that
great exactly at the end of the day. I think
that's a big lesson for all of us. But when
it's a partnership, there's a partnership, you're like, let's just
(30:12):
work together to figure this out, because that's part of
the humanness of it, right, because yeah, sure, crazy love infatuation. Oh,
it's just the two of us on the mountaintop making
love forever. And then it's like children and responsibilities and
this and this and this and this, and then that's
when it comes to a partnership. Right where your partnership
I feel is I'm there for you when you need me,
(30:35):
and you'll be there for for me when I need you. Yeah,
And I haven't found that one. Yeah, But now on
fifty seven and I'm in the dating pool. What is that? Like,
it's a small pool, dirty little puddles, dirty little girls, ladies.
(30:58):
It sucks. It turns out that on the dating apps,
men our age my age that are willing to sleep
with women our age have slept with all my girlfriends already.
So like there's like these five guys we keep passing around,
and so they're like, so, did you sleep with him yet? Yeah,
don't don't bother? Ok, thanks, right right right, So that's
(31:22):
the first problem. The second problem is all my friends
are like, okay, so you need to date real people.
That's your problem is that, you know, you think you
need to date celebrities. No, you need to get real.
You need to real people, real men. They're going to
respect you. You know, they're gonna act the way that
(31:42):
you know, real people should, not the narcissists that you
always deal with. Well, the challenges of dating real men
when you are a celebrity. Yeah, it's just it's it's
fascinating because basically you walk in there and you're either
a trophy and they're like really sweaty and nervous and
(32:05):
they're like, yeah, So, like I told my buddy that
I was going out with a supermo I'm already like, gah,
oh you told all your friends, did you sexy? This
is totally gonna work. Or there's a lot of well
let me tell you about all those things, because like
you might be a celebrity at all, but I've done
(32:27):
some really awesome things to right, And then follows two
hours of me being like, right, right, you sold those bullboards.
That's fantastic. Are there any other options? This is not
only two? Maybe I'm like, what about like men in
(32:48):
different countries? You know, thank you, darling. I'm gonna have
to start traveling. I don't know, I don't know, I
wouldn't know. Tell us about your sons. You have two sons, right,
my boys? Yeah, well I have two sons, but I
also have four step sons. Okay, so it's like this
(33:08):
boy that's all boys and they're really close to each other.
They just actually just all took a vacation in Kankun together.
My brother. It's like we are a tightened family. And
I did that. I'm taking credit. That was not my husband. Well,
we're gonna give you credit because thank you. Will your
(33:31):
boys send a little rid tickets talk surprise Hello everyone.
My name is Oliver Okassek, and hi, I'm Jonathan Okassk.
One of the most important things that my mom taught
me over the years is that it is actually possible
to reinvent yourself. It's a long road between being some
(33:53):
hot chick on the cover of the magazine and being
an intellectual who's actually talking about some of the real
problems behind aging, and just the fact that she has
managed to do that is as founding to me. For
my part, the most important piece of advice I feel
like my mom ever gave me was you always want
to do um everything to the maximum of what you're
(34:15):
capable of, and she puts her heart and soul into
everything she does. In terms of this book, I learned
a lot about my mother was dealing with this great
tragedy internally and how she was trying to heal from
this terrible time. I mean to see a path forward,
and it really gave me a path forward for myself
as well. That's beautiful. I guess I couldn't have told
(34:44):
told you any better. How fantastic lessons we got to
see it for ourselves. We got okay, wait, that's totally
bawling here and Jonathan got engaged. Jonathan got engaged in
London a couple of months ago. To it's a long
time girlfriend, saving together for almost eight years and as
of today, she just passed the bar in New York.
(35:08):
That as a big accomplishment. So Maria Shriver reached out
to you and told you you should write a book. Yeah,
that was kind of out of the blue. Say so,
I'm going through this period of time grieving, kind of
kind of having a little nervous breakdown, being really alone.
It's COVID. I'm posting my emotions of how I feel
(35:32):
on Instagram, and I'm getting to be known as the
crying Lady of Instagram, which I had no idea. By
the way, I was so desperate and so lonely. I
felt like I was drowning and I was just throwing
little bottles with little messages going help me read somebody please.
And it turns out there were women who felt like me,
(35:54):
that we're suffering, that we're in pain, that we're losing
people in COVID that couldn't even say good eye to
their loved ones. I mean, it was a crap place
to be. It's kind of like they all they found
me and I found them, and then Maria Shriver calls
me up, like, I know Maria Shriver right like home.
Maria Shriver is, of course, but it's not like I
hang right And she said, I follow you on Instagram
(36:17):
and I have an imprint and I am only going
to publish it to four books a year, and I
want them to make a difference in the world. And
would you write a book for me? Wow? Well, Maria
Shriver sent you some R T T love too. Oh Hi,
red Table Talk Family. Hi, probably not. I just wanted
(36:37):
to say how proud I am of you for writing
this book, for sharing your truth, for being a candle
in the dark to millions of women. I had seen
you on Instagram a couple of years ago, and I said,
this woman is at the beginning of what it's going
to be a fascinating journey to finding herself again, reclaiming
(37:00):
her life, claiming her power. I know some days are
still really tough, and some days you feel like you've
found your purpose through your pain. I hope you keep
talking about aging, keep talking about grief. We're blessed to
be the age that we are, and you are shining
a light on that and lighting the way. I'm really
(37:21):
really proud of you, Brava Maria. You know Maria's against
O G Yes, I feel like look three Barbara Walters.
I never had a chance to cry with her. So
thank you, thank you, Pauline, and thank you so much
for sharing your story. Thank you for this book. I'm
an agreement with Maria. I think that's been an inspiration.
(37:44):
Thank you so much. It's really given me plenty of
food for thought, and I certainly certainly appreciate it. That's
that's so kind of net to say thanks you and
thank you. And it's so fascinating to have three women
of three jed rations. You're like this, this show rocks
to hear from each of you and you're intellectual curiosity
(38:09):
and your empathy to share. Thank you, Yeah, thank you
at this table. And Paulina's new book is called No Filter,
The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful, Go get it.
Thank you, thank you. Should I take my height he off? No,
(38:32):
we're not. Don't take your hot heels off. Do you
read my chapter on height about me feeling like Shrek? Oh? Okay,
I can take them off. I'm gonna got your treat
from the theater. Oh you want to see my broking stocks.
That would just like be a bad fashion choice guy. Look,
I'm normal. To join the red table Talk family and
(38:54):
become a part of the conversation, follow us at facebook
dot com slash red table Talk. Say thus for listening
to this episode of Red Table Talk podcast produced by Facebook,
Watch Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.
Hey, fam I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the
Red Table Pop podcast all your favorite episodes from the
Facebook Watch show in audio produced by Westbrook Audio and
I Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review
on Apple Podcasts. She's an iconic supermodel. Paulina poor Riskova
was the highest paid supermodel in the world. Her glamorous
(00:22):
marriage to Hall of Fame rocker Rick Okasseck made them
the ultimate a couple. She says she spent a lifetime
being seen, but has never been heard until now. For
the first time, Paulina is revealing what happened behind the
scenes of our picture perfect life. I was waiting for
him to leave his wife and then a few months in,
Oh yeah, there's children involved. All the lie started as
(00:44):
soon as we met. I opened an envelope that says,
this is the will in the testament. I will not
provide for my wife because she abandoned me. He wanted
to hurt me one last time. My parents abandoned me
when out three. Abandonment still is I think my greatest fear.
(01:05):
So let's talk love life. O love life. Men willing
to sleep with women our age have slept with all
my girlfriends already you sleep with him yet, Yeah, don't
don't bother a raw revealing an emotional RTT you won't
want to miss missing but was probably some of the
worst things that has ever happened to me. I know
that the day he passed that you found him. She's
(01:35):
an iconic supermodel who says she spent a lifetime being seen,
but has never been heard until now. Legendary supermodel Paulina
Poritzkova was just eighteen when she made history as the
first Czechoslovakian woman to grace the cover of the sports
(01:59):
illustrated Swims suit issue. Vogue Australia declared her the face
of the nineties and she landed the most lucrative modeling
contract at that time. When she was nineteen, she was
in the music video for the band The Cars iconic
ballad Driven, where she met lead singer Rick Ocassock. The
(02:26):
glamorates couple had two sons in Paulina and Rick were
in the process of ending their thirty year marriage when
Rick unexpectedly died. A shocked and heartbroken Paulina found his
body days later. In the midst of her grief, Paulina
discovered Rick had cut her out of his will, leaving
(02:47):
her feeling betrayed and in deep financial despair. Now, in
her new memoir No Filter, Paulina is opening up about
it all. She's ready to talk no filter. Welcome, Paulina, welcome,
thank you. That is a going to color. The color
(03:09):
is specific. I wanted to Yeah, nice to me, look
like already red table. Yeah you look beautiful. Well, thank you.
So so let's talk about your book cover no filter
(03:30):
and there's no filter the picture, right, Yeah, no filter.
I make a point of not using filters ever, because
that's kind of my thing by you know, trying to
represent a woman my age fifty seven without filters. I
am so delighted when I see a woman my age
(03:51):
that looks like I do. I'm like, oh, look, you
have the same wrinkles where you have the same little
weird goobbly bits here, and I find it BEAUTIFU full
on them. So I'm kind of hoping to do for
other women what some of those women do for me.
I was really excited to talk to you, specifically for
that reason. I just turned sixty nine a couple of days.
(04:12):
What a beautiful sixty nine. So much, but that's the
thing it really has made me rethink, like how much
of this am I gonna do? Like how much botox
am I going to get? And when will I be
comfortable enough to let that all go? How did you
get comfortable? I am not comfortable with and I'm still
like struggling with it on a daily basis. And I
(04:34):
think that that's kind of where a lot of women fall.
It's like I have fourhead wrinkles, and I have wrinkles
here and and all the stuff that comes with being
lucky enough to live. So it's kind of a precarious
balance because we're in the public eye all the time
and people will take hot shots at you constantly. The
amount of like hey Grandma, that I get it's plenty.
(04:57):
It hurts my ego a little bit. But at the
same time, it isn't a part of the beauty of
becoming older that we acquire more confidence because we know
who we are and we are a little easier with
telling people to just piss off. All right, So let's see,
if you know, if I if I pushed back my
next botox supportment exciously. The moments where I feel the
(05:23):
least secure about myself is when I am modeling. One
day of modeling will set me back, like confidence wise,
Like a few can totally get that. I've been a
model for forty two years, since I was fifteen, and
so I'm just kind of used to stepping in front
of the camera. And then I see the pictures and
I go, WHOA, wait, this is not how I remember
(05:47):
it looking the last time I did it. And so
it's just the comparisons between like what I remember myself
as and then you know, being faced with the reality
of what I look like now, and it's beautiful. I
think we need to switch the thing of like, oh,
there's something wrong with me. So there's something wrong with
the world. You said it perfectly, So, Paulina, you had
(06:10):
a traumatic and offensive incident with a photographer early in
your career. You talk about that a little bit. Okay,
So I'm fifteen years old, like freshly fifteen years old.
I'm in Paris. Getting hired for any kind of a
job was such a big deal because I thought that
every job would be my last, and you wanted to
be the nice little girl and the line everybody. And
(06:32):
so I'm sitting there and there's a you know, makeup
mirror in front of me, and there's a makeup artist
doing my makeup. There's a hairdresser on the side, and
then the photographer walks in from behind and then I
feel something on my shoulder and it's like how warm
and heavy? And he's laughing at me, and the makeup
artist is laughing at me, and the hairdresser is laughing.
Everybody's laughing, and I'm like, what what is that? Don
(06:57):
It looks like a brown flower or but it feels
like Penny who's stuff was mashed potato. It was like,
I could not for the world figure this out. And
it wasn't until he retracted it and zipped up his
flight that I realized it was Spenish. So were the
were the makeup artists and the other people that were
in the room where they all men not women. This
(07:20):
was his little joke that he did two young girls.
And it's kind of culture in that. I mean that
modeling World, Paulina, Was that the first time you ever
saw well, yes, it was certainly the first time I
saw it. That's so disrespectful. And you were on these
sets alone, right of course. I remember Carl Lagerfeld telling
(07:45):
me with you, he was like, I love that you
don't leave her alone on the set, and he said, never, Jada,
never leave her alone on the set. And he didn't
go into detail. A lot of sexual harassment going on,
and if I saw that being done now to my
granddaughters or my nieces, I'd be horrified. And I want
(08:05):
to go and kill somebody. So let's talk love life.
Oh love life. Oh great? But you met Rick when
you were nineteen and you said it was love at
first sight. It was kind of love even before first sight.
Because I had just gotten my MTVS, like Night four,
(08:27):
and I had accidentally seen this video and I thought,
oh God, that guy's really hot, and his name came
up and it said Rick Okasseck. And about three months later,
I was called to do an audition for a MTV
video for a band called The Cars that I had
never heard of because I was from Europe, so I
didn't know the American bands and the band we're going
(08:49):
to take me out to dinner before we did the video.
So I showed up at the Four Seasons and the
door opens and the guy from the video walked out
and it was literally like one of those like teenage
wet dre So I was like, right, yeah, I can't breathe.
It's like magnets drawn across the room to each other,
(09:09):
and it's like, yeah, that was history. So he was
he was married at the time. Didn't tell you that, No,
not not right away, obviously. He told me that after
a couple of weeks had gone by, when we had,
you know, already made out and I was like passionately
(09:32):
love with this guy. And then he sort of came
up with I like, oh, yeah, by the way, I'm there,
and I was like what this bombshell came While Paulina
and Rick were making out. At some point between the kisses,
I asked him to tell me something secret about himself.
I meant a little confidential snippets, something only I would
(09:52):
get to know. And that's when he told me he
was married. It was a glass of cold water thrown
in my face. But quickly, with my nineteen year old reasoning,
I figured it always took two to be unhappy in
the relationship, so clearly his was not a good marriage.
But that was that we resumed kissing. I just thought, okay,
(10:15):
so they'll divorce him. You know, I'll leave my boyfriend,
he'll leave his wife, and that's good and then so
I left my boyfriend, and then I was waiting for
him to leave his wife. And then a few months in,
oh yeah, there's children involved. That one was a little
harder to take. I was in too deep at that point.
I was maddeling in love with him. And when he
(10:37):
said that he needed time because there were two small
children involved, on went, he's such a good dad. Yeah,
And it never really dawned on me that he had
all the lies that had started as soon as we met.
(10:57):
It took back three years to leave his wife. During
that time, Pauline and Rick kept their romance secret. Eventually
they married. I became his obsession for the first time
in my life. I felt totally desired. He would not
share me. He flew into jealous rages often enough to
(11:18):
make me understand how much I mattered to him. I
stopped doing bookings where I had male counterparts. I stopped
working weekends, but we're not convenient with his schedule. We
made very few select friends together, only ones who understood
that we were a package. There wasn't much room for
anyone else, but adoring someone takes up a lot of room.
(11:41):
Both of our careers suffered because we became each other's priorities.
I trusted him wholeheartedly for pretty much most of my life. Wow,
I was very very much in love with him. But
I started to match or and no longer was his
word the word of God. And you have your own children,
(12:05):
you run a family. He had a bunch of children
that you know, we're all incorporated as family. I did
all of that work, and I wanted him to step
up a little bit more to be acknowledged, I guess
for what I did. And the more demanding I became,
the further way he pulled Pollack. Yeah, And I felt
(12:27):
that as an abandonment, and so abandonment has been like
it still is. I think my greatest fear in what
way my parents abandoned me. When I was three, they
moved to Sweden in a Soviet invasion. Then my mom
came back to get me when I was nine, and
then I was taken away from my grandmother, who was
(12:47):
really the woman that raised me. So there was another
abandonment of somebody, of my safety, of my home life,
of everything I knew. And then I marry a man
that seemed to love me so completely and holy, if
somewhat obsessively. M M. And when he started backing off
for me, I was like wait, wait, wait, like where
(13:07):
are you going? Can we can we do therapy, can
we do vacations? Like can you read the self help?
But can you please? And he'd be like, doesn't work
for me. You do your thing. I'm back here. When
you figure it out and you want to just be happy,
then come back to me that thing. So things kept
disintegrating more and more and we decided to get a
(13:30):
divorce and we told the children and I put it
out on Instagram that we were separating, and I go, okay,
this is what I'm going to post. Is this okay
with you? I mean, we're still living in the same house.
I was so concerned about him his well being that
he was okay. I didn't realize until much later that
it only went one way. Actually, he was inducted into
(13:53):
the Hall of Fame. I was like, I'm gonna go
I'm going to be your wife. I'm going to be
like fully supportive because I know how much this means
to you. And he was the only guy who didn't
thank his wife on the podium. And so when we
got back home, I was like, yeah, okay, so now
we're going public, and I'm going to start dating right anyone, Okay,
to your thing. So I did my thing. We lived
(14:14):
in a really large town house and our children were
still at home, and there was no real animosity, And
so I went about still being housemother and still providing food,
and still making sure he had his favorite yogurt, even
though we slept in separate bedrooms for many years by
that time already so like to me, all of this was,
(14:34):
you know, strictly, strictly above the table. When I found
a man and I fell in love, I told my husband.
My husband went, oh, well, good for you. You You know,
I'm glad he was not a musician. That's all I
got to say. After we had separated, I had fallen
in love with someone else, and I was in a
relationship with this man when my husband died. I've never
(14:56):
spoken about this publicly, though I've never hidden it either.
My friends and family were all aware. My husband knew him.
We talked openly about my boyfriend. We discussed getting apartments
close to each other after we sold our home so
we could help each other when needed. I thought we
had found the perfect way to navigate the end of
our marriage. And you guys were actually divorced. We were separated,
(15:23):
and we were going to do like the final divorce
papers after we sold the house, so that we knew
exactly what the assets were. And he did get a
really really evil lawyer, divorce lawyer during this period and
didn't tell me about it, and I thought we were
going to get mediators. All of a sudden, shark lawyers
came in and you know, oh, no, you don't get this,
(15:45):
and you don't get this, and you don't get this.
And I go to my husband and go, what what's
going on here? Oh, don't worry about it. He'd say,
don't worry about it. It's just a beginning negotiation. And
I told her to treat you fairly. And I was like,
you know, she has one of the worst repute patients
in like the United States, right, And that never went
anywhere because when he died, tell us about that day.
(16:06):
So he had surgery because he had UM. They found
stage zero lung cancer. So it was kind of good news.
You know, he had gone in for a catskin just
to be sure because he had been a heavy smoker,
rock star, you know, UM, And so they found it
super early and it was like Hey, this is great.
It's like we're finding it before it makes any trouble whatsoever.
(16:27):
And I said, honey, don't worry. I'm there. I'm taking
care of you. We're going to get through this together.
Don't worry for a second. I'll be there. And he
was like, I'm so happy, Thank you so much. We
went through the surgery, me and the boys, I mean
we were all there, and you know, I'm making him dinner,
taking care of him, all of that stuff that you
(16:47):
do for somebody that you love. And he was recovering
really well, like two weeks. He was walking around um,
he was starting to feel much better. He was sleeping better.
And this night I went out for a friend's birthday,
I mean sure that my boys were at home. And
as I was going back home, I remember I bought
like these like warm cookies from like one of those
(17:08):
like stands on on the the New York streets. And
I came home and he was sitting up in his
chair in the living room where he always said, and
I was like, hey, honey, I brought you some warm
cookies and he said, you know what, I'm feeling kind
of tired. I think can you save them for me
for tomorrow, and I said sure, and he went to sleep.
The next morning, it's like, you know, nine ten, he
(17:29):
still wasn't up, but he tended to sleep late rock
star hours, and so by eleven, I was like, he's
sleeping in a little bit too long. So I'm gonna
make him a cup of coffee and I'm gonna bring
it up to him, like maybe he's not feeling so great.
And I brought him a cup of coffee and and
he just looked like he was sleeping. So I set
(17:51):
the coffee down next to him, and that's when I
saw his face. I saw his eyes and they didn't
like eyes anymore. And it all kind of started going
through my head. I was like, oh, I can't move.
(18:14):
Oh I think I'm gonna pass. Oh no, I'm my
legs are giving out, okay, and I'm just gonna fall
onto the floor here. But this is interesting. And that
coupled with this like panic, like oh my god, oh
my god, Oh my god, Oh my god. And then
uh and then I think my only thought was I
(18:35):
have to get to my children. I have to get
to my boys. It was kind of lucky that they
were both at home and I couldn't walk. I crawled
downstairs on my elbows, like three flights up stairs on
my elbows because I couldn't use my legs. Just the
damnedest thing. It's like how your body just shuts shuts off.
And then my boys, I think witnessing, my witnessing the
(19:01):
pan of which was probably some of the worst things
that has ever happened to me. Yeah, I can only imagine. Yeah, Okay,
I'm good. I know, yeah, I know, I know. I'm
just thinking. You know, it's so deep, it is. But
(19:26):
as I'm listening to us, you know, I think about
my life and I remember talking to this older actress.
Her name was Ruby d and she said one of
the things that she wished when Ozzie Davis died, which
was her husband, and they were married for decades, decades,
(19:46):
and there's so many ups and downs. But she said
to me, you know, I wish I had laughed with
him more. She's like, the one thing I want to
tell you, Jada, she was like, marriages go through their seasons,
you know, they go through their chain ages, she said,
but um, when a loved one dies, you don't even
(20:09):
think about all that has transpired, all of the foolishness
that goes on within a marriage, you know, and when
I'm listening to you, that comes to mind. Yeah, yeah,
(20:31):
thank you empathetic souls. Yeah, it comes to mind. You know.
Do you feel like you had a moment, that moment
where it didn't matter? Of course, of course I for
about two days all I remember. I mean, first, you're
(20:51):
just kind of in this fog um of you know,
I have to call his children. It's up to me, like,
it's like, I have to do this. I have to
do this now. Choosing out the clothing for the coffin,
which was really rough. Mm hm. I never realized how
(21:20):
sad shoes were shoes, you know, just opening the closet
and seeing his shoes. Yeah. So while doing that, you know,
I opened a novelope that says this is the will
in the Testament, and and his writing that says I
will not provide for my wife because she abandoned me. Whoa.
(21:45):
Paulina writes that Rick had decided to disinherit her. He
used the legal system to try to prevent her from
inheriting money after he passed by using the word abandonment.
My husband wasn't just making a hyperball statement he was
making illegal claim. Abandonment of a spouse legally speaking, is
(22:06):
when a person's partner disappears and cannot be contacted for
the duration of at least a year. I was in
no state to process it, honestly, I just went I
was like, well, that's ah I yea. So maybe he
was angry and like he had jotted this down and
(22:27):
somebody took it down as a memo and like pasted
it on, and it's like somebody made a mistake. But
people kept bringing it back up to me, and then
the press got ahold of it because it was put
in a way that it could be publicly released. He
could have made it secret, they didn't. So then all
of a sudden, I'm in a position of what did
(22:50):
you do to him? Yeah? Like what did you do?
Like what kind of beastly wife were you? Yeah? So
then you're put put in defense. Yeah, yeah, made out
to be the bad bad which yeah, I mean, this
was a man that I was just bringing a coffee to.
How did we go from being like best friends and
family to him publicly shaming me? Why do you think
(23:14):
that he did that? I saw some text on the
phone my girlfriend when she came for the funeral, went
p look at his phone, go into his phone and look,
you need to do this, and I was like, no, no, no,
they like and it's like, if you don't do it,
I'll do it. So I looked through his phone and
I found some interesting communications between him and his divorce lawyer.
(23:38):
Let's just put it that way. Yeah, but it was
his choice to hire her, and when she kept pushing,
he went and did as she suggested. So I know
he didn't expect to right now. He didn't expect his lawyers,
didn't expect him to die. So I think ultimately, in myself,
(24:02):
I have decided to solve it by going. I don't
know that this makes me very sane. But when love ends,
when it really ends, when you no longer love somebody,
you just walk away and you never look back. So
him being vindictive towards me, I went. You know, he
(24:24):
he still loved me and his obsessive, crazy love was
still in there and he wanted to hurt me one
last time. And weirdly enough, I can forgive that because
you have understanding around it. Yeah, were you right in
your book about being broke after Rick di? Okay? So
(24:46):
I was very specifically broke. I just want to upset
that right so that people don't, you know, accuse me
of lying. I was a woman with um assets. I
had two mortgaged houses, and I had a pension plan
that I can access in ten years and zero cash,
had no way to pay for anything. So I was
(25:06):
in a really really peculiar position of being a woman
with assets and no money, right right, right right, And
because that's that's very different full down COVID. Yeah. So,
and property values in New York had just fallen off
a cliff and I had to sell my house immediately
because I couldn't pay. I could write, you had no liquid,
(25:29):
zero liquids, zero liquids, and zero So yeah, I was
asking my friends to buy our groceries for a little while. Yeah. Wow,
so you didn't have any money for groceries. No, no, no, no,
no cash, no cash. Yeah, I had to be scary. Yeah.
There were so many things that sucked at that point. Yeah.
The worst part of the betrayal was not that it
(25:50):
took away the income Brack and I had been using
to live. The worst part was that he publicly declared
that I had abandoned him. For the next two years,
I had to sue my own business manager, who was
now the trustee of Rick's estate, and by extension, my
own children and stepchildren who were the beneficiaries of the estate.
During those two years, I learned more about money than
(26:13):
I had in my entire life up to that point.
When I signed a contract with st Ladder, it was
the largest modeling contract ever signed. At that point, all
that money went into the family purse. I had no
real idea what happened to it, whether it was saved, spent,
or invested. Our business manager always spoke to my husband
(26:34):
about our finances, and I would just get the condensed
version from Rick later. Don't worry. It was so nice
not to have to worry. The will got settled at
court Under New York law, I don't get a half
as you didn't divorce, you get a third. At least
I got my third and and I'm out. That's it.
(26:57):
I don't want to have to ever think about that again.
If I need money, I'm gonna have to make money.
And that's the way it is. It's like to me
money because of how I grew up. I grew up
without money, and when I was nine years old, my
mom went to Italy because she was having a nervous breakdown,
and somehow Dad was supposed to look after us and
he didn't get them my moos, so they just left
(27:18):
us a lot. So I was nine and my little
brother was three, and we weren't two weeks by ourselves,
and I ran out of food. But after a week
and I had to you know, go and steal in
a in the supermarket to you know, get food for
the second week. And uh, to this day, I really
don't like white bread and spread cheese because that's what
(27:39):
I kept stealing. So I know how to survive. And
then there was another abandonment that was my boyfriend leaving me.
He just walked away without ever looking back on the
day that I was moving out of my house when
I probably needed it most. I don't understand saying you
love somebody and can off and being like you're just
(28:03):
too much for me. I love you, like I really
love you. But he said he didn't have the fortitude
to stay with me, he couldn't have a healthy relationship
with me because I was too up. I mean, he
had a point. I was grieving my husband's and I
had no money and was going through menopause and how
to sell my house. So yeah, well maybe I was
not in the best place of my life. There's a
(28:24):
good year where I'm like, I don't recall much, but
like walking through the woods behind my house, playing like
Herman and the Hermits the End of the World and
just howling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sometimes that's just that's what
it takes, that's what Sometimes that's all we got and
(28:44):
the Hermits. I have a pretty hard time trusting people. Yeah,
I could see that. I think when someone says I
love you, I think we think you're gonna love me
whether I'm up or down or happier sad exactly. And
then when they're like, oh, no, I only love you
(29:05):
like this, No, I only love you when when it's
when you're not complaining exactly. I think we like in
the first stages, it's so like intense and hot and
passionate and fiery, right, and so you want the same
things at that moment. Then you start peeling, peeling the
las of people really really are we can't we can't
(29:28):
really see what we want when we're in the passion
of it all. Once that kind of dies down and
like life takes its course, it's like, no, no, no,
I need someone who can show up with me. It's
really about getting to those next stages up togetherness. And
you always say, Jada, and I love that is you
don't really know who somebody is until you've been in
(29:50):
the battle. Until you you've been on the battlefield. It
is one thing to know somebody yourself. It's one thing
to know somebody when everything is going well, But who's
the person that shows up with stuff isn't going that
great exactly at the end of the day. I think
that's a big lesson for all of us. But when
it's a partnership, there's a partnership, you're like, let's just
(30:12):
work together to figure this out, because that's part of
the humanness of it, right, because yeah, sure, crazy love infatuation. Oh,
it's just the two of us on the mountaintop making
love forever. And then it's like children and responsibilities and
this and this and this and this, and then that's
when it comes to a partnership. Right where your partnership
I feel is I'm there for you when you need me,
(30:35):
and you'll be there for for me when I need you. Yeah,
And I haven't found that one. Yeah, But now on
fifty seven and I'm in the dating pool. What is that? Like,
it's a small pool, dirty little puddles, dirty little girls, ladies.
(30:58):
It sucks. It turns out that on the dating apps,
men our age my age that are willing to sleep
with women our age have slept with all my girlfriends already.
So like there's like these five guys we keep passing around,
and so they're like, so, did you sleep with him yet? Yeah,
don't don't bother? Ok, thanks, right right right, So that's
(31:22):
the first problem. The second problem is all my friends
are like, okay, so you need to date real people.
That's your problem is that, you know, you think you
need to date celebrities. No, you need to get real.
You need to real people, real men. They're going to
respect you. You know, they're gonna act the way that
(31:42):
you know, real people should, not the narcissists that you
always deal with. Well, the challenges of dating real men
when you are a celebrity. Yeah, it's just it's it's
fascinating because basically you walk in there and you're either
a trophy and they're like really sweaty and nervous and
(32:05):
they're like, yeah, So, like I told my buddy that
I was going out with a supermo I'm already like, gah,
oh you told all your friends, did you sexy? This
is totally gonna work. Or there's a lot of well
let me tell you about all those things, because like
you might be a celebrity at all, but I've done
(32:27):
some really awesome things to right, And then follows two
hours of me being like, right, right, you sold those bullboards.
That's fantastic. Are there any other options? This is not
only two? Maybe I'm like, what about like men in
(32:48):
different countries? You know, thank you, darling. I'm gonna have
to start traveling. I don't know, I don't know, I
wouldn't know. Tell us about your sons. You have two sons, right,
my boys? Yeah, well I have two sons, but I
also have four step sons. Okay, so it's like this
(33:08):
boy that's all boys and they're really close to each other.
They just actually just all took a vacation in Kankun together.
My brother. It's like we are a tightened family. And
I did that. I'm taking credit. That was not my husband. Well,
we're gonna give you credit because thank you. Will your
(33:31):
boys send a little rid tickets talk surprise Hello everyone.
My name is Oliver Okassek, and hi, I'm Jonathan Okassk.
One of the most important things that my mom taught
me over the years is that it is actually possible
to reinvent yourself. It's a long road between being some
(33:53):
hot chick on the cover of the magazine and being
an intellectual who's actually talking about some of the real
problems behind aging, and just the fact that she has
managed to do that is as founding to me. For
my part, the most important piece of advice I feel
like my mom ever gave me was you always want
to do um everything to the maximum of what you're
(34:15):
capable of, and she puts her heart and soul into
everything she does. In terms of this book, I learned
a lot about my mother was dealing with this great
tragedy internally and how she was trying to heal from
this terrible time. I mean to see a path forward,
and it really gave me a path forward for myself
as well. That's beautiful. I guess I couldn't have told
(34:44):
told you any better. How fantastic lessons we got to
see it for ourselves. We got okay, wait, that's totally
bawling here and Jonathan got engaged. Jonathan got engaged in
London a couple of months ago. To it's a long
time girlfriend, saving together for almost eight years and as
of today, she just passed the bar in New York.
(35:08):
That as a big accomplishment. So Maria Shriver reached out
to you and told you you should write a book. Yeah,
that was kind of out of the blue. Say so,
I'm going through this period of time grieving, kind of
kind of having a little nervous breakdown, being really alone.
It's COVID. I'm posting my emotions of how I feel
(35:32):
on Instagram, and I'm getting to be known as the
crying Lady of Instagram, which I had no idea. By
the way, I was so desperate and so lonely. I
felt like I was drowning and I was just throwing
little bottles with little messages going help me read somebody please.
And it turns out there were women who felt like me,
(35:54):
that we're suffering, that we're in pain, that we're losing
people in COVID that couldn't even say good eye to
their loved ones. I mean, it was a crap place
to be. It's kind of like they all they found
me and I found them, and then Maria Shriver calls
me up, like, I know Maria Shriver right like home.
Maria Shriver is, of course, but it's not like I
hang right And she said, I follow you on Instagram
(36:17):
and I have an imprint and I am only going
to publish it to four books a year, and I
want them to make a difference in the world. And
would you write a book for me? Wow? Well, Maria
Shriver sent you some R T T love too. Oh Hi,
red Table Talk Family. Hi, probably not. I just wanted
(36:37):
to say how proud I am of you for writing
this book, for sharing your truth, for being a candle
in the dark to millions of women. I had seen
you on Instagram a couple of years ago, and I said,
this woman is at the beginning of what it's going
to be a fascinating journey to finding herself again, reclaiming
(37:00):
her life, claiming her power. I know some days are
still really tough, and some days you feel like you've
found your purpose through your pain. I hope you keep
talking about aging, keep talking about grief. We're blessed to
be the age that we are, and you are shining
a light on that and lighting the way. I'm really
(37:21):
really proud of you, Brava Maria. You know Maria's against
O G Yes, I feel like look three Barbara Walters.
I never had a chance to cry with her. So
thank you, thank you, Pauline, and thank you so much
for sharing your story. Thank you for this book. I'm
an agreement with Maria. I think that's been an inspiration.
(37:44):
Thank you so much. It's really given me plenty of
food for thought, and I certainly certainly appreciate it. That's
that's so kind of net to say thanks you and
thank you. And it's so fascinating to have three women
of three jed rations. You're like this, this show rocks
to hear from each of you and you're intellectual curiosity
(38:09):
and your empathy to share. Thank you, Yeah, thank you
at this table. And Paulina's new book is called No Filter,
The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful, Go get it.
Thank you, thank you. Should I take my height he off? No,
(38:32):
we're not. Don't take your hot heels off. Do you
read my chapter on height about me feeling like Shrek? Oh? Okay,
I can take them off. I'm gonna got your treat
from the theater. Oh you want to see my broking stocks.
That would just like be a bad fashion choice guy. Look,
I'm normal. To join the red table Talk family and
(38:54):
become a part of the conversation, follow us at facebook
dot com slash red table Talk. Say thus for listening
to this episode of Red Table Talk podcast produced by Facebook,
Watch Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.
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