Molly Shattuck on her TV role as a "secret millionaire"

“I despise the name Secret Millionaire,” Molly Shattuck says. “ I think it’s so obnoxious. But I absolutely am in love with the concept and in love with the show. I think it’s so important.”

Baltimore and the rest of the nation will finally get to see Shattuck, the former Baltimore Ravens cheerleader and wife of Constellation Energy CEO Mayo Shattuck, Wednesday night in the Fox reality series about rich people who go undercover among the disadvantaged for a week – ultimately giving $100,000 of their own money to someone whom they find deserving.

In Wednesday's episode, Shattuck and her mother, Joan, travel to a small coal-mining town in eastern Pennsylvania where they take jobs waitressing, working in a grocery store and a beauty salon. Shattuck says she was raised from “very humble beginnings” in a similarly small Pennsylvania where her mother operated a beauty salon for 40 years before selling the business in 2001.

Shattuck talked to me about the show last week in an interview that ranged from her crying at the memory of the friends she made on her “journey” during the production of the show, to her putdown of blogs like this one that carry comments from readers who are critical of her.

The most successful reality shows are those that connect with deeper tensions in the larger society. Secret Millionaire, which is drawing an audience of about 7.6 million a week, appears to be resonating with anxieties, anger, fear and hope connected to the nation’s economic meltdown.

The complicating factor in Shattuck’s case is that while she sees her involvement in the show strictly in terms of what she thinks of as philanthropy and helping others, she is married to the very kind of CEO that some Americans blame for the meltdown and the suffering felt by workers and share holders.

You can read some of their comments posted here in reaction to an earlier piece I did on Shattuck and the show. And if you think they are harsh, you should have seen those that my editors and I decided we shouldn’t publish. But the anger and frsutration that many Americaqns feel are part of the story, and part of what Secret Millionaire is consciously trying to tap into, as producer Greg Goldman acknowledged in an interview with me.

So, how did it work, once the “millionaire socialite,” as the Fox publicity materials label Shattuck, and her mother arrived in town?

“We had to hand over our cell phones and my BlackBerry,” Shattuck said. “We also had to give the producers our wallets – no money, no makeup. We found a very modest apartment and were given basically the wage of $110 – like we were at the level of welfare wages.”

The producers also gave Shattuck and her mother a car: “It was a very mature car. It wasn’t clean, and I’m clean, so we had to wipe it out.”

They had to pay for gas and food and the apartment with the $110. Their new landlord took more than half the money before he would let them move in. Finances got to the point, Shattuck said, where she fretted whether she could “afford a cup of coffee” in the morning.

But before long, she was working as a waitress as she did during her college summers in Ocean City, Shattuck said. And then, they landed work in the beauty salon. Their cover story was that they had owned a salon in the western part of the state, but they hit “hard times” and “were looking for a fresh start.”

Shattuck became choked up during the telephone interview when asked what she had learned from the experience.

“The biggest thing is that there are people who have so little yet give so much of themselves and are making such a difference in the area in which they live. There really are angels among us -- everywhere,” she said. “I met some of the most wonderful human beings, and I would never have had the opportunity if not for this show.”

When asked about the comments on the blogs, particularly those that place her involvement in the show in the context of her husband’s role in the loss of jobs and stock value at Constellation, Shattuck says, “Number one, I don’t read blogs. I mean, why? I went and did something to help other people. If someone wants to be critical about it, shame – shame, shame, shame on them. They should go and, really, go get a life. I didn’t do anything to hurt anyone. I didn’t go and do anything that is exploitative – anything to hurt my family, to hurt anyone else. I genuinely went and did this to go and help other people.”

The episode airs at 8 p.m. Wednesday on Fox (WBFF-Channel 45 in Baltimore).


Source: weblogs.baltimoresun.com