Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper

The “It” book you absolutely must pack in your beach bag—an addictively juicy novel of celebrity love gone wrong.

• An EW Best Book of 2015 for the Pop Culture Fanatic in Your Life •

“Readers who come for the dirt, real or imagined, won’t be disappointed; there’s plenty of gold in these True Hollywood hills.” 
—Entertainment Weekly

Chosen as a Great Summer Read by:
• USA Today • People Magazine • Entertainment Weekly • Good Housekeeping • Cosmopolitan • Vogue.com • The Hollywood Reporter •
 
“[A] delicious beach read.” 
—People Magazine

“A hilarious, tabloid-trashing gotcha novel.” 
—Vanity Fair

“A juicy work of shocking betrayal.”
—Us Weekly

“I’ve had a million meetings in my acting career, and I had no idea that this would be the one that would change my life forever. I walked into the room, and there was Rob . . . in the flesh.”

Actress Lizzie Pepper was America’s Girl Next Door and her marriage to Hollywood mega-star Rob Mars was tabloid gold—a whirlwind romance and an elaborate celebrity-studded wedding landed them on the cover of every celebrity weekly. But fame, beauty, and wealth weren’t enough to keep their marriage together. Hollywood’s “It” couple are over—and now Lizzie is going to tell her side of the story.
 
Celebrity ghostwriter Hilary Liftin chronicles the tabloids’ favorite marriage as Lizzie Pepper realizes that, when the curtain falls, her romance isn’t what she and everyone else thought. From her lonely holidays in sumptuous villas to her husband’s deep commitment to a disconcertingly repressive mind-body group, Lizzie reveals a side of fame that her fans never get to see. Full of twists and turns, Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper is a breathless journey to the heights of Hollywood power and royalty and a life in the spotlight that is nearly impossible to escape.Praise for Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper:

“A hilarious, tabloid-trashing gotcha novel.”
—Vanity Fair

“From Pepper’s first date with Rob Mars to her final escape from his cult, Liftin’s sly novel wears its lurid shallowness on its jacket sleeve, and yet her details are careful, funny, and right.”
—Boris Kachka, Vulture

“Readers who come for the dirt, real or imagined, won’t be disappointed; there’s plenty of gold in these True Hollywood hills.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Liftin, who’s cowritten memoirs with celebs including Tori Spelling, presents her first novel as a tell-all by a star she calls Lizzie Pepper. Married young to an actor involved in a cultlike religion, Lizzie ends up leaving him . . . Sound like someone we know? Liftin’s not saying, but her book is dishy fun.” 
—People Magazine

“A debut novel guaranteed to ring true.”
—The Hollywood Reporter

“A juicy faux tell-all about the price of fame.”
—Cosmopolitan

“We love tabloid gossip as much as the next person, and celeb ghostwriter Hilary Liftin gives us a whopping 352 pages of it in this juicy read.”
—In Style

“Written from the perspective of a fictional Hollywood actress, this faux memoir is a juicy work of shocking betrayal.”
—Us Weekly

“A kooky story by real-life ghostwriter about a celebrity romance gone way off the rails.”
—Good Housekeeping

“In the course of entertaining us with her dishy book Liftin also manages to humanize these public personas, offering backstory and emotions, coloring in imagined details of their day-to-day lives, exploring not just the characters’ truths but all of our truths: Why do we choose whom we choose? What are we most afraid of? What are our secrets? Whom can we really trust? And how do we know when to leave? It all makes for an extremely satisfying read.”
—Allison K. Hill, Los Angeles Daily News

“The phrase ‘beach read’ seems made for this fun-in-the-sun frolic of a novel.”
—The Boston Globe

“A juicy beach read about how a starlet's relationship with an A-list actor goes from ideal to surreal.”
—Shelf Awareness for Readers

“Probably everyone will read this book, and for good reason: it's the easiest sell of the summer.”
—Flavorwire

“[An] irresistable debut . . . With its sympathetic narrator, suspenseful plot pivots, snappy pace, and dishy details about Hollywood's inner workings, Liftin's compelling, highly readable novel is likely to engage even readers who remain blissfully unaware of the tabloid characters who may or may not have inspired it. Dishy Hollywood fiction at its finest.”
—Kirkus Reviews 

“With its fast pace and combination of mystery with juicy celeb details, it’s a surefire hit. Fans of the showbiz tales of Sophie Kinsella, Lauren Weisberger, and Rachel Pine will love this book. The beach read of the summer, it will keep you up long after the sun has gone down.”
—Library Journal (starred review)

“A surprisingly poignant look at making yourself the hero of your own story, in a very anti-Cinderella way. Readers will enjoy speculating about the real-life A-list celebrity inspirations, which adds to the already juicy entertainment of Lizzie’s story.”
—Publishers Weekly

 Support from Lizzie’s friends:

“When we worked together, Lizzie Pepper was always the good girl, the confidante who kept all our secrets. It's empowering to watch her now smash Hollywood rules by revealing the truth of her marriage that the tabloids never got, in her witty, juicy, and addictive story.”
—Nia Vardalos

“This fairy tale romance turned nightmare of marital imprisonment has all the hallmarks of a heart-pounding, sprinkled-with-wit, Hollywood thriller. But what's more impressive--and indeed disturbing--is that it also feels wholly plausible. Almost as if it had actually happened to a certain someone.”
—Evgenia Peretz

Hilary Liftin is a ghostwriter/collaborator specializing in celebrity memoir. Since 2006 she has worked on fifteen books, ten of which hit the New York Times bestseller list, including Stori Telling by Tori Spelling, which won the 2009 Bravo A-List Award for Best Celebrity Autobiography; Miles to Go by Miley Cyrus; and High on Arrival by Mackenzie Phillips. Hilary is also the author of the memoir Candy and Me and coauthor of Dear Exile, both penned under her own name. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children. 

INTRODUCTION

When I first told P. J., my longtime publicist, that I wanted to write a book, she just about hung up on me. (It wouldn’t have been the first time—P. J. has one way she likes to do things: P. J.’s way.) After she’d cooled down a bit, she reminded me that we’d spent the past year and a half trying to show the world that my life was completely boring and mundane in an attempt to get the press to relax its twenty-four-hour watch on me. Why would I want to stir things up again?

It was a good question, and it has a real answer, but it might not be what everyone expects.

I know that people want to hear my side of the story. I’ve been asked the same questions every time I’ve stepped out into daylight for more than seven years. Lizzie! Lizzie! Why did you marry Rob Mars? Was it a career move or do you really love him? Is he gay? What’s it like inside the One Cell Studio? Have you learned to levitate? Is it a cult? Why did you leave Rob? Did he cheat on you? Seriously, is he gay? Where’s your wedding ring? Are you saving your sons from the Studio? Are you and Johnny getting back together? And, of course, Who are you wearing?

I am going to answer those questions (though I’m not going to dwell on fashion). In doing so, I have no choice but to violate my ex-husband’s cherished and embattled privacy. I don’t do so out of spite. In fact, I’m deeply conflicted about it. A marriage that fails has surrendered on multiple levels: the smallest intimacies; the day-to-day rituals; the fundamental principles. In my case, my issues with Rob’s involvement in One Cell are distinct from my issues with Rob, but it became, and is in these pages, very difficult to separate the two. What will forever be true is that I respect Rob, and I will always care for him, and I would rather not hurt him.

So why am I telling the story? Why expose Rob, and myself—and even, to some extent, our young sons, who didn’t choose a public life? It’s not revenge or bitterness or a desire for attention, that’s for sure. I’m not trying to make my ex-husband look bad, and I’m not trying to make myself look good. I’m not trying to rejuvenate my image or pay off debts. But for the last fifteen years the press has drawn me in crisp, simple, black-and-white lines. The Girl Next Door. America’s Sweetheart. Rob Mars’s wife. For all the paparazzi shots and legal briefs and features that have been written about the “news” of my every trip to Starbucks (venti soy latte, if you don’t know already), nobody ever writes or talks about the reasons or the reality. I feel like nobody really knows me, and, until very recently, there were some things even I didn’t understand about myself.

After this bizarre, otherworldly phase of my life in which the press tried to predict, expose, and analyze every slight movement I made, I was determined to reclaim those years, to describe what they were to me, regardless of what the truth might do to my image, dammit! The right to tell my own story, in my own words, became so important to me that I made sure it was part of my divorce agreement. (I achieved this in a rather unorthodox way, but more on that later.) Now that it has settled at last, I can finally break the first commandment of celebrity: I can tell the imperfect, unpolished truth.

I’m only thirty-two, but, as they say, my life so far has been quite a journey: growing up a straight-A student in Chicago; landing a lead role on a beloved TV series before I finished high school; making movies in Hollywood; marrying a megastar; giving birth to twins; getting a divorce under circumstances I never could have predicted; launching O Naturale, my organic cosmetics line (available at a department store near you). These are the Wikipedia trappings of a Hollywood life. I’m famous for what is completely obvious about me—that’s how it works—but behind the screen, behind the scenes, behind the behind the scenes, I’m human. I fell in love, as people do, and entered a marriage that I thought would last a lifetime. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve kept secrets. I’ve had my heart broken. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky, and I’ve had my share of struggles. Through it all, the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that there are no black-and-white lines. In my story, there is no he said/she said, no good and evil, no right and wrong. We are all human, complex and simple, great and small. This is a story about the choices that we each make every day, and how those choices make us who we are.

Lizzie Pepper

LOS ANGELES

PART ONE

DAZZLED

1

I wasn’t really interested in the part: another helpless girlfriend—too small a role for me—but my management told me to take the meeting. It was Rob Mars after all. You don’t say no to Rob Mars.

I’ve had a million meetings in my acting career, and I had no idea that this would be the one that would change my life forever. I walked into the room, and there was Rob. At this point I was past being dazzled by movie stars—or so I thought. But even at the Oscars, in that concentrated crowd of self-involved, hard-to-impress A-listers, Rob Mars turns heads. Celebrities gawk at him the way most people gawk at them.

Here he was. Rob Mars, in the flesh. Seeing him spun me back to my teen years, before I took the role of Lucy McAlister on American Dream, before all the press, the red carpets, the award ceremonies, the movies and TV appearances. Back to the days when Rob Mars was a life-size poster on my best friend Aurora’s bedroom door, and we had no idea that I would ever lead a life that would have me meeting him in person, much less as a potential colleague. I would say I never dreamed of it . . . but isn’t this what everyone dreams of?

Rob rose to greet me, tall and debonair, his familiar face sharper in three dimensions, as if he’d always been slightly blurry onscreen and now he was in high-def. His brow and chin were strong, elegantly framed by salt-and-pepper hair. But you know that. What I really mean is that in person his features were breathtaking, his face chiseled by destiny. And I had never noticed before how his eyebrows slanted down toward his ears. It made him look a little vulnerable in spite of the ridiculous bone structure.

“Hi, I’m Lizzie,” I said, and stuck out my hand to shake his. A worry flitted through my head. Was he one of those germophobes? I hadn’t done my research. Had I blown it already? But he took my hand and at the same time leaned in to kiss my cheek. Phew.

“Can I call you Elizabeth?” he asked. “You’re too sophisticated for Lizzie.”

I nodded dumbly. My father was the only person who called me Elizabeth. Elizabeth felt premature, but also intimate coming from Rob—as if he’d already found something in me that he’d been looking for.

“Elizabeth,” he said, and smiled. That famous megawatt smile, but now it was for me.

We took our chairs, and I noticed that he was one of those people with a disproportionately long torso because sitting down he was a good foot taller than I was, and I’m five foot seven.

There were other people in the room. Six, maybe? Hard to say, I never pay much attention to entourages of agents and managers, and I was transfixed by that smile. Anyway, Rob was the one who led the conversation from the start. He talked about how much he’d admired my work, not just on American Dream, but in Underground and The Last Hurrah. I ate up the praise. American Dream was formative for me—I grew up on that show—but I didn’t want it to define me as an actor for the rest of my life. Plus, these compliments were coming from one of the biggest movie stars in the world. Maybe the biggest movie star. Rob Mars isn’t just a moviegoer’s idol. He’s an actor’s actor. He’s played good guys, bad guys, teen heartthrobs, Jesus himself, and an immortal god who rules over an unbelievably distant planet. He even sang in some musical where he played a sensitive cowboy. Anyway, my point is completely obvious to anyone who has ever stepped into a movie theater. Nothing Rob Mars ever does feels small, and it never is. All his movies over-perform. He over-performs. Whatever you think of that movie, he was a completely believable Son of God. Somehow even the cowboy musical, which was generally considered to be a flop, made millions of dollars. Meanwhile, all my movies so far had been small, offbeat indies with good reviews and mediocre-to-nonexistent box offices, and all my parts had been awkward girls with glasses and names like Ruby who just needed to accept their quirkiness before realizing that the cute lead guys loved them in spite of themselves. And now Rob Mars himself knew who I was. By name. He knew and said he loved my last film, which, as far as I could tell, had been seen by about twelve people. If nothing else came out of this meeting, at least I had that.

We chatted. He never broke eye contact. He might not even have blinked. Even stranger, he also didn’t say a word about the part in his new movie, which was ostensibly the reason we were there. Where was this going? I was flattered and a little confused. But fine, if he was one of those people who liked some long, semi-personal “get-to-know-you” conversation to see if I had a brain before getting to the point, I could play that game.

“Okay, this is off topic,” I said, “but I read this amazing book last week: The Birthday Boys. It’s a fictionalization of Captain Robert Scott’s failed expedition to the South Pole. He and three other men froze to death in a tent, waiting out a blizzard that they knew would never end.”

“Tell me more,” Rob said. A good sign. I had a morbid interest in survival stories (they could take place at either Pole, in the Andes, or in outer space so long as they involved intrepid people in inhumane circumstances fighting for their lives), and as my go-to topic of conversation they tended to separate the wheat from the chaff. Approximately half the time, my audience took the first chance to excuse themselves to get another drink. But I had Rob’s full attention.

“One of the characters says it was so cold their teeth splintered. Do you think the author made up that detail—or do you think their teeth actually froze and cracked? I mean, they’re teeth.”

Rob seemed to ponder this.

Then he said, “Guys, could you . . . ?” and before he finished the sentence, the room emptied.

Now it was just the two of us. Rob sat calmly in his armchair, but I could feel his intensity radiating toward me.

“So, Elizabeth, I hear you had a poster of me on your wall?”

I cringed. He’d seen the profile in Glam, the one where I said he was my childhood crush. It wasn’t true—the poster I had in mind was the one on my best friend Aurora’s bedroom door—sometimes in an interview I panic under the pressure to come up with an answer. My real childhood crush was Alec Dumall, but since he’d just been busted for downloading child porn (hey, perhaps we’d both had crushes on each other!)—I’d had to think fast.

“Do you always read Glam, or do you mostly just tear out the pictures and tape them inside your locker?” I teased.

He laughed. “I like you, Elizabeth Pepper.” There was an awkward pause. Or, rather, I felt awkward. Rob sat there watching me squirm, a beatific smile on his face.

“Look,” he said, “I have to go. But I want to spend more time with you. Can I take you out?” Take me out. A date? Either a date or a mob hit. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that Rob Mars was the most eligible bachelor in the world. Aurora was going to keel over and die. But I wasn’t making any assumptions.

“Sure,” I said, trying to sound casual.

“Excellent!” he said, and pumped his fist in the air. Yup, a fist pump. But it was somehow okay on him, as if he’d invented it and everyone else who followed had turned it fratty and overused. “Hold on,” he continued. “Let me walk you to your car.” He picked up the landline and pushed a button. “I’m heading down to the lobby,” he said.

He walked me out into the office hallway. One of the suits who’d been in our meeting came up to us. “All clear,” he said, and vanished. Rob and I headed to the elevator bank, and it struck me that the cubicles, which had been bustling when I entered, were quiet now. The halls were empty. Even the front reception desk wasn’t monitored. This was ACE, one of the biggest agencies in Hollywood. Incoming calls were always answered immediately. Yet, as we exited, multiple phone lines rang and rang.

The elevator was waiting when we got there. The lobby button was already lit. And when the doors opened and I saw that the lobby, like the offices above, was completely deserted, I finally understood what “all clear” meant. Rob walked me to the front door as if it were perfectly normal that an entire office building would shut down operations to let him pass. Because, as I would soon learn, it was perfectly normal to him.

“Shut up.” Aurora, who had just served herself some of our take-out sushi, sat up straight.

“Well, it’s not necessarily a date. He just said—”

“It is totally a date and, holy crap, we have to figure out what you’re going to wear. When is this date happening?”

“I don’t know. He said he’d call.”

“You have to be ready!” Aurora exclaimed. “I know how this goes down. He’s going to call the day of. A limo will whisk you to a restaurant, where you’ll be the only people because he’s reserved the whole place for the two of you. You won’t have time to think. The only solution is to be fully made-up and wearing a black cocktail dress every waking moment of your life. Do you own the right dress for a date with Rob Mars? This is major.” Aurora sprang up. She flew to the closet, her unruly mane of blond hair bouncing. In a blur of wiry limbs, she started pulling out dresses.

“Trying too hard,” she said, rejecting a dark red silk. “Slutty . . . this could be good.” She held up a graphite sparkling mini-dress. “Hel-lo, Lizzie!”

“He calls me Elizabeth.”

Aurora tossed the dress aside. “Oh, forget this one, then.”

“Can you please stop this makeover montage?” I begged.

Aurora threw three dresses into my arms. “Try these ridiculous little handkerchiefs.”

“He might not call, you know.” I dropped the dresses on the bed.

Aurora paced impatiently. “Pepper, you are impossible.” She paused and closed her eyes. I waited. More was coming.

“You know that he’s gay.”

“Aurora . . .”

“I’m serious. I have it on good authority. My power yoga teacher is best friends with his lover.”

Aurora was visiting from Chicago, where her power yoga teacher, an L.A. transplant, was her best and only source for all celebrity rumors, including plenty about me that we both knew were lies. Mostly. Okay, exaggerations. The one with the tequila shots and the Segway on the 405 is true, but I was young and I’m not proud.

“Fine. He’s gay. He’s also twenty years older than I am. I’m just going out with him. If he ever actually calls. And even if he does, it might not be a date—certainly not if he’s gay—so who cares?”

“It is a date. I’m just saying be careful. You don’t want to be a beard like his last wife.” Rob had been married to Lexy Hartfield for fifteen years. Lexy Hartfield! How could I compete with her? The long, dark hair, full lips, almond eyes, and curves that made me look like a schoolboy. If Lexy was Rob’s type, then I certainly wasn’t. She was drop-dead gorgeous, famous for never wearing makeup or styling her hair except on set. Without the fancy dresses and professional makeup, I’m a plain Jane. (See, for evidence, any paparazzi shot of me from the past year, along with the accompanying snarky, derogatory caption.) And, if anything, I’ve been encouraged to play up my plainness and sensibility. Because, as my publicist never fails to remind me, I am famous for my girl-next-door character, my girl-next-door upbringing, and my girl-next-door looks. Apparently I’m famous for how undeserving of fame I am. Furthermore, Lexy was a daredevil, said to have performed all her own stunts in the action movies that made her a star. She could have any man in the world. There was no way she was a beard. Yeah, now that I thought about Lexy, I realized there was no way Rob would go for me. Easy come, easy go.

I lit a cigarette and leaned out the window to exhale. My parents were visiting the next day, and my mother had a nose like a bloodhound.

2

As always, Aurora was right. The call came without warning. But what she failed to anticipate was that it would come at seven a.m., at least two hours before what I consider to be daybreak. My phone vibrated on my bedside table as I groped for it in the dark room.

“Elizabeth. It’s me.”

Me. Because he knew I would know.

“Hey,” I whispered, hoping my half-awake croak would pass for sexy.

“Can I steal you away?” This guy had spent too much time reading scripts.

“Um, what did you have in mind?”

“Let me surprise you. Come downstairs. Your chariot awaits.”

Downstairs? He was downstairs? “I’m . . . I’m just waking up. And if this surprise is going to run past eleven, I have a few things to cancel.”

“Cancel,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

I peeked around the edge of my curtains. There he was, on the street ten flights below, leaning against a lamppost. He saw me at the window and waved. Crap. Did every moment in his life seem like it came straight out of a movie? He gestured to a limo parked outside my front door. My “chariot.”

“Be right down,” I said into the phone.

Ten minutes later I slid into the backseat of the limo. It took me a second to process that I was the only passenger. Where was Rob? “Wait!” I said to the driver. I thought there was some mistake. Maybe I’d hopped into a limo someone in my building had summoned for a trip to the airport.

“It’s okay,” the driver said. (His name, I would later know, was Lewis.) “He wanted me to give you this.” He handed me an envelope and we started speeding toward the highway.

“Elizabeth,” the neatly written note read, “I’m sorry it has to be like this, but it will be much better for both of us if we aren’t seen together. Yet. Now please look out the passenger-side window.”

I turned to my right and there, driving in the lane next to us, was another black Escalade with Rob sticking his head out the back window. He gave me a thumbs-up, a questioning look on his face. I smiled gamely and returned the thumbs-up. What choice did I have? I couldn’t turn back now. I grounded myself by composing a text to Aurora in my head. i am living your fantasy. Rob’s car pulled ahead of mine, and he stuck his arms out toward me, as if we were being tragically torn from each other. I couldn’t suppress an internal swoon.

I still had no idea of our destination, but it dawned on me that Rob was right to arrange for us to travel separately. Nobody was following us. Nobody had whipped out their phones to take pictures. Nobody wanted an autograph. We were free. This was a feat. The tabloids had barely gotten over my embarrassingly public breakup with Johnny Flaim. (“Lizzie’s Flaim Out”—which tabloid hadn’t had that headline at the ready?) The moment they caught me with someone new, they would have a field day. No, I realized, I would no longer be the lead. I may have been a star, but Rob was the sun. The headline this date would have generated wouldn’t have started with me. It began and ended with Rob Mars.

An hour later we arrived at a harbor, still and gray in the morning fog. I was getting hungry and hoped we were there for a romantic breakfast at some restaurant by the shore followed by a quick ride back home so I could spend the rest of the day by myself squealing loudly into my pillow, but instead we thanked our respective drivers and Rob led me down the docks to a waiting yacht. I’ve been on yachts before—mostly for parties—and it wouldn’t have surprised me if Rob owned this one. A captain greeted us, and we climbed aboard. Rob led me to the upper deck. I caught a glimpse of the living room as we passed the main deck. It was stark and formal: black enamel paneling and white leather furniture. Up on the top deck, a bottle of champagne was chilling in a bucket. I mentally texted Aurora: definitely a date.

Rob poured me a glass of champagne, but instead of serving himself one, the captain came out and handed him a jugful of something green and foamy. I raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t drink much,” he said. “This gives me incredible energy.”

Something about the preplanned champagne for me, green smoothie for him was disconcerting. What exactly was I doing here? “Are you trying to get me drunk?” I said.

He put down his glass. “Elizabeth, that is the last thing I would do. I want to know you. The real you.”

“Okay, well, then I have to tell you. The real me thinks saying things like ‘the real you’ are kind of cheesy.”

He froze and looked almost hurt. Then he stared deeply into my eyes and said, “Guilty as charged.” His face broke into a smile, and suddenly Rob Mars the movie star and Rob Mars the person simultaneously merged and separated. His expressions, his smile, his manner—all were familiar to me from his movies. No actor can transform himself entirely. But in that moment I also had a flash of recognizing the divide between who he was and what he brought of himself to his characters. I saw that—right now, at least—he was not acting for me. Then, for the first time, I allowed myself a tiny, internal “wow.”

He lifted his green jug to my crystal glass. “Requesting permission to be cheesy?”

I smiled in spite of myself. “Granted.”

I had assumed we were alone on board except for the captain, but we hadn’t traveled far from shore when another man came out onto the deck. He wore jeans and a light yellow cashmere sweater. He looked sort of beige and featureless, like a soulless Wall Street guy on his day off, nondescript except that one of his pale eyes had a patch of brown in it. He was sucking vigorously on a mint, which I could smell as he approached. He stopped sucking, smiled politely, and then quickly, as if it were a tic, flipped the mint in his mouth with his tongue.

“Elizabeth, you remember Geoff from our meeting,” Rob said.

“Of course I do.” I didn’t. Clearly I’d been otherwise focused or I would have remembered the mint-sucking. As I watched, the stranger opened an Altoid tin and popped two new mints in his mouth. The guy was chain-mint-sucking.

Was Geoff one of Rob’s agents? Maybe this wasn’t a date after all.

“Welcome aboard,” Geoff said. “I won’t disturb you, but I wanted you to know how happy we are to have you as our guest.”

Apparently this man was my host. I automatically thanked him and complimented the