The Orange County Register Interviews Heather Dubrow

OCReguster.com:

The first thing you notice is size.

This woman is really tiny, but her house is really big.

Heather Dubrow lives on one of the Pelican streets in Newport Coast where an incredible expanse of ocean is an accessory for the back yard. It's 14,000 square feet with 12 bathrooms and a movie theater – built with columns and symmetry, I'm told, in the Palladian style.

Instinctively you want to use your inside, museum voice.

The house qualifies for its own TV show, but "House" is already taken. It was, however, the set for one.

Dubrow, the newest of the "Real Housewives of Orange County" and the only brunette, is the mother of four children age 8 and under – but there's not a pillow askew or a toy on the floor. Her makeup is flawless and her necklace is Chanel.

She's no housewife, but then, nobody is watching the show for tips on how to remove spaghetti sauce from the rug.

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"The Real Housewives" presents an extreme reality most of us can only imagine. It has a cringeworthy focus on surgically-enhanced women who bicker among themselves and excel at interruption.

Clearly, the reality of Orange County is more complex than the show portrays.

Dubrow, 43, seems fairly grounded — aside from the jaw-dropping house. So the first thing you wanna know is why she joined the seventh season.

The former TV actress almost didn't.

"I was concerned it was turning me into something that I'm not... I'm not about fighting and mean."

Still, in television, reality has been the hot new thing for several years now. She was pitching her own reality show about opening a restaurant when producers asked her to be a Housewife.

She declined until her husband, Terry Dubrow, 53, changed her mind. He's intrigued by Hollywood and, as a plastic surgeon, has appeared on several shows himself.

"I like the way it unfolds in a surprisingly interesting, often authentic way," he explains. "I thought it would be fun and exciting and different. And it was."

"It's good for business," his wife interjects. "Be honest."

And that's the second thing you wanna know: Is reality TV honest?

"It's not set up," she says. "Truth is stranger than fiction, which is why reality TV is so popular. Because if you wrote it ... people would say: 'That doesn't happen.' But you know what? It does ...They catch those moments."

Dubrow was worried she would be too boring. Her role, she implies, was to ground the show in a little normalcy.

"We bring a new dynamic of a functioning family. That doesn't mean we're perfect," she quickly adds, "cause we're not."

Their youngest, Colette, crawled for the first time at 9 months old while cameras were rolling. It didn't make the show.

Home movies are memories; television is drama.

The show is about relationships, although some seemed stalled at junior high. These women with strong personalities are expected to be highly combustible.

"If you put the right mix of people together ... and they happen to be in the right situations – and liquor doesn't hurt – it gets polarized."

Dubrow says she doesn't throw drinks, hit people or scream. She thinks of herself as honest and direct.
So how did she come off?

"In general, I was portrayed as myself. If you don't say it, they don't show it."

You need a rhinoceros hide to expose yourself. Producers warned her: Expect to be happy with about 80 percent of final edits.

"If you film someone for a year, you could paint two completely different pictures ... The 20 percent is the stuff that I did."

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