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32 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE FALL 2012 girl? Who’s that

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She used to be on a show about urban fornication? Now she helps orphans and such.

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Page 1: Kristin Davis

32 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE FALL 2012

girl?Who’s that

Page 2: Kristin Davis

PROFILE Kristin Davis

33LIFESTYLES MAGAZINEFALL 2012

urely you recognize her from that commer-cial for the State of New Jersey? You know, the

one where she was in a hot-air balloon? How about that one for Kraft Salad Dressing, where she !irts with the guy in the grocery aisle? Or the Miller Light commercial, the one shot in Union Station in downtown Los Angeles? You don’t recall any of them? Well, if you’re an actress trying to make your way up in the business, you remember every rung on that ladder. And that Miller Light spot was a big deal.

“"ere were 20 principals and 250 extras. We shot every day for a week. I’d never been in anything big like that,” she says. "e shoot comprised a number of scenarios, from which several spots were generated. “My scenario was that I went to this big club with my group of girlfriends, and then this group of guys comes, and in this group is this cute guy, and we start to dance, and we’ve never met each other, and then we kiss on the dance !oor. But not a grindy, gross kiss; it was a beautiful, romantic kiss.

“"e reason I remember all of this is because it was very hard to cast that guy. We had to go through three sessions where I had to dance and then kiss a guy on camera. "e director was very protective and would say, ‘No tongue, no tongue!’ But the guys were all models and very slick and didn’t seem like they were my type. And I remember the very last day I walked out to the waiting room, and I see this guy and he has kind of long, curly hair and he’s wearing beads around his neck, and I’m like, ‘"at guy’s cute!’ And he came in, was very good, and got cast. It was Paul Rudd. We were like children,” she says, a bit wistfully. “Like little children,” she repeats, breaking the modi#er into two very distinct syllables. “We laugh every time we see each other about it.”

Kristin Davis worked her way up from

commercial actress to HBO icon.

But her new role as a mom is changing

everything.

By Darren Gluckman

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Page 3: Kristin Davis

34 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE FALL 2012

PROFILE Kristin Davis

When she calls, late one afternoon, she’s just returned from the park with her 8-month-old daughter, Gemma Rose. But the nanny’s around and, with the toddler gurgling in the back-ground, Mommy is all business. Not show business, mind you. Interna-tional relief business—Oxfam busi-ness, to be precise. She was recently in Washington, D.C., where, with a group of 70 women, she went to lobby Con-gress. "e occasion was International Women’s Day, and as one of Oxfam’s celebrity ambassadors, her jurisdic-tion, so to speak, is women’s issues, at least in part because she’s associated with shows whose fan base is primar-ily women.

If you don’t recognize her from the Miller Light ad, maybe you were con-scious during the early 1990s, when a little something called Melrose Place captured 90210’s erudite audience for a few years. Or, perhaps more recent-ly, you caught a glimpse of a little HBO show on reruns, the one with that ac-tress who used to be in Square Pegs?

If so, Kristin Davis would rather not discuss it. Or at least not too much, and not if it’s at the expense of her ad-vocacy work.

“Sometimes if you say too much about certain things that are kind of obvious, like Sex and the City, then that’s all they print.”

It was her #rst time in D.C., and she was, to her surprise—and perhaps to yours—impressed by how well versed in some rather serious issues were the congressmen and women she met with (though she won’t name names). She was there, along with her sisters-in-arms, to shine a light on two issues in particular: the sharp increase in the number of the world’s subsistence farmers, most of whom are women struggling to feed their families, and the antiquated buy-America regula-tions that greatly diminish the e$ec-tiveness of the federal government’s United States Agency for Internation-al Development, which, among other things, provides food to the starving masses.

But the law mandates that USAID only supplies American-grown corn and rice, and only ships those provi-sions on American-owned ships. "ese requirements end up being grossly ine%cient, not to mention need-lessly expensive, as it can take up to three or four months to furnish these foodstu$s to famine-ravaged areas like the Horn of Africa, where condi-tions are, as Davis attests, “shocking.” It would be much cheaper and faster, and would save many more lives, she argues, if USAID weren’t shackled by such onerous requirements, if instead it were allowed to buy food from more proximate sources and to use local means of transport. According to Da-vis, such a change would be the right thing to do morally, and it would serve America’s strategic interests, too—so that, for example, a terrorist organi-zation doesn’t get the opportunity to foster local goodwill by responding to crises before USAID, with its cumber-some regulatory constraints, gets the chance.

The ladies of Sex and the City.

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36 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE FALL 2012

PROFILE Kristin Davis

Davis is keenly aware that while her pro#le helps, there’s also the risk that it raises the usual cynical response; but when she speaks, it’s clear she’s not just some sheltered starlet read-ing from a script. She’s traveled ex-tensively, and to places that might give a foreign correspondent pause: post-quake Haiti, Uganda, the Dada-ab refugee camp in northeast Kenya, and poverty-stricken regions of Mo-zambique and Tanzania.

She was in the last of these places, with Oxfam, when reports began #l-tering through of a possible famine in Somalia. "ere was a dramatic increase in the number of refugees streaming into Dadaab from across the Somali border. But Davis knew that it can be di%cult to raise money or awareness on the basis of a “pos-sible” famine. So, after pressuring the organization to arrange it, she trav-eled to Dadaab, arriving just as the famine hit its peak.

“I was able to witness what was happening,” she recounts, “and to hear a lot of horri#c personal sto-ries. I !ew directly to London, where I talked with virtually every news or-ganization, and they were very recep-tive and covered the story. And then I !ew home, and nobody here would talk to me. I really went into a depres-sion from it.”

She contrasts that indi$erence with the outpouring of goodwill that fol-lowed the Haitian quake. But maybe an earthquake, as a single, destruc-tive act of God, so to speak, elicits a more intuitive sympathetic response than does a drought, which is typical-ly a more slowly evolving event, less visually dramatic, and very often the result of human failings, like ethnic or tribal con!icts that prevent the !ow of aid. Davis considers this hypoth-

esis but isn’t convinced. "en maybe Africa itself, the whole damned (or so it seems) continent, is such a basket case that Westerners have, over the years, developed a kind of “Africa fa-tigue” syndrome. She allows that the place is “riddled with problems and people feel it’s overwhelming,” but she objects to a simpli#ed view of the place.

It was Davis’s curiosity that drew her to Oxfam in the #rst place. She’d been on safari in Kenya and Tanza-nia—just another pampered Ameri-can tourist—and as her traveling contingent was whisked from locale to scenic locale, she’d periodically ask her guides about the vaguely disturb-ing in-betweens, the apparent pover-ty, the hunger, the general sense of so-cial dysfunction. But her guides were keen to gloss over the muckety-muck, and Davis had to wait until an oppor-tunity presented itself, as it typically does, at a party at George Clooney’s house.

A Kenyan girls’ choir was on hand, which captivated Davis, who inquired about the visiting songstresses. Turns out the party was to bene#t Oxfam. And it was there that she met Claire Lewis, “this wonderful woman,” who is responsible for Oxfam’s ambassa-dor program. When Davis told her about her desire to learn more about the places she’d been, Lewis told her, “You should travel with us.” And so she did: to Haiti, where Oxfam was responsible for water and sanitation (Davis is somewhat of an expert on the critical division of labor among various large-scale relief agencies, a process overseen by the United Na-tions O%ce for the Coordination of Humanitarian A$airs), and back to Africa, including an encore tour of Kenya and Tanzania. "is time, she

kept a very di$erent itinerary.Given how rewarding the Oxfam

work is, has her interest in acting dis-sipated? "ere are times, she admits, when the acting community can feel like “a small, claustrophobic world.” An exhausting one, even. “I have told the Oxfam people that I would like to quit acting at some point, and they’ve said, ‘Please, please do not quit act-ing.’” In the #erce competition for do-nor dollars, celebrity helps. Besides, Davis adds, “Truth be told, I really miss acting if I don’t do it for a while.”

Born in Boulder, Colorado, Davis was raised in Columbia, South Caro-lina, and her parents divorced when she was very young. When her moth-er remarried, her stepfather, Dr. Keith Davis, now a professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina, took the unusual step of adopting her. How was it possible that you were even up for adoption? What happened to your dad?

“You’d have to ask my biological fa-ther that question,” she says. “I can’t answer for him.” She pauses. “My par-ents were young.” Are you in touch with him? “Not really. I’ve met him. He’s pleasant. "ere’s no bad blood.” Was he in your life at all, growing up? “No. My mom was kind of mad at him. And then he moved to a di$er-ent country. I think he made an e$ort when I was in my teens and my mom was like, ‘We don’t need you.’ And then later, when I was an adult, I thought, ‘Well, I should meet him, it’s crazy not to meet him.’ And I met him and I was like, ‘It’s all #ne.’” She makes a point of emphasizing that it’s Keith Davis she considers her real father.

Is there a connection between your decision to adopt Gemma Rose and your father’s decision to adopt you? “Hard to say. It mattered that he chose

Page 5: Kristin Davis

to adopt me,” which he wasn’t obliged to do, Davis says. She adds, “Sure, it in!uenced me, but I think what in!u-enced me more, with my parents, was that both of them were always very active politically, and my mom was ac-tive as a volunteer. I think that had a big impact.” Her father’s academic work focused on the development of intimate relationships, on friendship and love. Growing up, did he give you insights into those matters? No, she says, though he would provide her with an analysis of her boyfriends.

In view of South Carolina’s tortured racial history, her parents decided to “make a statement” by refusing to send their daughter to an all-white private school. "e result, says Davis, was an education at some of the worst public schools in the state. “Literally, there were like two of us in my #fth-grade class who could read.” Maybe that schooling made you more well rounded?

“Maybe,” she allows. “I turned out okay.” She was ac-cepted to Rutgers University, in New Jersey, where she shot that hot-air balloon spot and earned her B.F.A. She spent the next year living in New York, booking com-mercials, and waiting tables at the River Café in Hobo-ken, which she describes as “a happening watering hole of obnoxious drunk yuppies in the ’80s.”

After serving one Tom Collins too many, she moved to Los Angeles, where, while pursuing work, she opened a yoga studio with a friend. As pat as that might sound today, at the time, yoga was a relatively new urban phe-nomenon, and Davis gave serious thought to making the studio her livelihood should the acting thing not pan out. But then TV gigs started rolling in. A multi-episode arc on General Hospital. Spots on !e Larry Sanders Show and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Yet Da-vis says, “"e biggest break I ever got was getting cast in

38 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE FALL 2012

PROFILE Kristin Davis

Davis visiting Oxfam’s work in South Africa.

Page 6: Kristin Davis

39 LIFESTYLES MAGAZINE FALL 2012

PROFILE Kristin Davis

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a tiny, tiny part on the #rst season of ER, !irting with George Clooney. "at was awesome. I also got cast on Sein-feld. But ER was before Melrose, and Seinfeld was after. ER was exciting be-cause you could feel the energy on the set, that something was happening. If I was on the Warner Brothers lot, I used to make up excuses to go back to the set. And I wasn’t alone.” She was friends with the girls from Friends. “I knew them from yoga.” "eir set was adjacent to the ER set. So Davis would visit with Aniston & Co., say hi, shoot some hoops, and then they’d all stroll over to ogle the young Clooney.

And then she got Melrose Place, the mid-’90s prime-time soap that aimed low and consistently hit its mark. Davis, clearly struggling to say some-thing positive about it, digs up the old bromide—“It was such a great learn-ing experience”—before wondering, out loud, “if I should be totally honest or semi-honest.” "e most she’ll admit is that, while she’d tried to bring her best to the set, in terms of acting and professionalism, “it wasn’t the kind of environment where everybody was into that.” Which may be why, irked by her high standards, they decided to kill o$ her character after a single season. And, the business being what it is, despite her qualms about the show, Davis says, “I was devastated. DE-VA-STA-TED. It’s so funny to think back on it now, but I was like, ‘How could they do this?’ I didn’t see it coming, and I experienced the pow-erlessness that you feel as an actress.” But the death itself was pretty enjoy-able for her. “I remember dying in the pool. "ey had to weight me down to get me to sink, and I loved shooting underwater. "at’s always an adven-ture. "at was maybe my most fun episode, when I died.”

Post-Melrose, her manager, Dave Fleming, told her, “‘Listen, we’re go-ing to have to turn down some jobs because they’re going to o$er you every soapy nighttime show there is, and you cannot do that because then that’s all you’ll ever be cast in. We’re going to #nd some comedies. You might have to audition, and you might not make as much money this year.’ I said, ‘Really?’ He said, ‘Trust me, that’s the plan.’ "at was when I got Seinfeld and a few other things. I think they made me audition for Sein-feld three times. I literally had to go to therapy about it. Like, ‘Should I con-tinue to humiliate myself ?’”

Isn’t auditioning just par for the course for an experienced actor?

“Auditioning is horrible in general, and when you have to keep going back, you feel like, ‘Why can’t they cast me already?’ I’m not a great au-ditioner, either. Auditioning is totally di$erent from acting. Two di$erent things.” Nevertheless, she stuck with her manager’s advice. “I did call him and yell at him when I did my taxes because I made no money that year. But he was very right and wonderful, and still is.” And how right he was: It was only a year later (though “it felt like forever and a day”) that Davis was cast as Charlotte York in Sex and the City.

Did you know it was going to be massive?

“No. I had a feeling in my gut it was going to be good. But, like !e Larry Sanders Show, I thought it was going to be a small cult hit on HBO. And I would’ve been totally happy with that. "at would’ve been cool. But it took a while to build.”

How long before it exploded?“It took them eight months to pick

us up from the pilot. Which did not instill con#dence. Sarah Jessica was

living a block away from me, and I would run into her and say, ‘Did you hear anything?’ "en eventu-ally, thank goodness, they picked us up. We shot our whole #rst season with nothing being on the air and no one knowing who we were. People thought we were doing that show Real Sex, from the HBO of the ’90s, which had real people doing really strange sexual things, fetish-type things. "en the #rst season came on and we did okay. "e second season we picked up some steam, but we didn’t really hit until the third season.”

NOW THAT YOU’RE A PARENT, are you less inclined to book tickets to the world’s misery zones? Her daugh-ter “is portable,” she notes, adding, “so I’m mulling over what’s appropri-ate to take her to. I talked to Colin Firth and his wife, Livia, about it.” "e Firths have a couple sons, older than Gemma Rose, but at an age where ref-ugee camp vacations don’t hold much appeal. So, while the little one is still small enough, less able to object, Da-vis is still willing to parachute into places not likely to feature a Relais & Châteaux designation any time soon. "at said, she mentions that Ray Of-fenheiser, Oxfam America’s president, has currently nixed her proposed return to Dadaab, given the danger that’s since !ared up in the region.

Gemma Rose, who’s been exceed-ingly patient until now, by turns blow-ing bubbles and playing with her stu$ed penguin, has #nally decided enough’s enough. So there’s just time to inquire about what Davis has been reading lately. “I Am a Bunny. !e Run-away Bunny. Basically, all the bunny books.” And now, having cast herself in the role of mother, she’s needed on set.