Double coverage
Elisabeth and Tim Hasselbeck are both game for a life together in the media spotlight
The shot is supposed to be simple enough: Boston College. Hillside Cafe. With cameras rolling, Tim Hasselbeck, strapping quarterback for the Washington Redskins, readies to down a tray of Dove bars and Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey while Elisabeth, his pint-size wife and Gen-X gabber on ABC's "The View," tries to offer him a grapefruit from the produce heaped two-deep on her tray. But Tim, following the script, quiets her pleas -- can't she see he's busy watching WCVB-TV, coincidentally the very folks who are filming them?
But by mid-afternoon Friday, the set for the promotional ad they are filming for "The View" is anything but organized: Staffers grumble about being an hour behind schedule, rain threatens the upcoming outdoor takes, and everything must be wrapped by 5 so Elisabeth can do a phone interview. Tim seems content to slap five with old college football teammates passing time between summer workouts, and a food worker is telling Elisabeth how great she was on "The View" during the Hillary Clinton interview.
Script-clamping clipboard in hand, producer Annaliza Nieve had tried to hurry things along, getting ready by leading Tim, 26, through the cafe line at the Hasselbecks' alma mater -- and finding sufficiently unhealthy food to load on his tray: "Doughnuts? You eat doughnuts?"
For a promotion featuring the Hasselbecks' return to their stamping ground, there's the minor glitch in accuracy: This cafe didn't exist five years ago when they were on campus. But mention this to Nieve and you might as well have insulted her ethics. "It is the cafeteria. True to life." There's also the inconvenience that occurs when you let a reporter on the set, she tends to ask the celebrities questions -- "Do you mind talking to them between takes?" -- and when Nieve hears Tim explaining their first date to a writer -- during a set break, mind you -- her competitive streak wins over.
"You're giving them all the good stuff. We want it on TV."
Of course they do. The Hasselbecks embody the classic local-kids-made-good story, living a celebrity euphoria, and everybody wants a hit. It seems like another era when Elisabeth, from Cranston, R.I., was merely a sweet contestant from 2001's "Survivor: The Australian Outback" who lost 12 pounds and globs of her blond hair but not her smile, and Tim was doomed to forever be the son of former Patriot Don Hasselbeck and brother of Seahawks quarterback Matt, never cinching NFL stardom for himself. He was a quarterback without a team -- having been dropped from four NFL rosters without ever throwing a pass. She was nestled into a comfortable, if low profile, TV niche after making it to the "Survivor" final four: the host of "The Look for Less" on the Style Network.
Fear not; their resumes soon received a boost. Tim signed with the Redskins last October and in November saw his first extended time on the field when starting quarterback Patrick Ramsey suffered an injury. The next morning, "The View" crew held up paper scraps -- a nod to the "Survivor" tribal council -- to announce Elisabeth would not be kicked off this estrogen-steeped island. Offering a conservative voice to the largely liberal group, she had beaten out two 20-something competitors whittled down from 21 to replace Lisa Ling, who left the show for another job. Elisabeth's brother's suggestion to apply for the job had paid off, and she joined the growing ranks of the New
When that title seats you next to Barbara Walters on national television, it's not a bad place to be.
"I just watch her like a little stalker," Elisabeth says. "Right now, I'm just trying not to drop the ball. I'm trying to maintain the level of play."
Elisabeth, 27, swings into sports vernacular a lot as a former member of the BC Eagles softball team. Then she was Elisabeth Filarski, who joined the team as a freshman walk-on and who received a full scholarship and was named team captain as a senior. Indeed, it is that Type-A personality that attracted her to "Survivor" when a fellow shoe designer at Puma (her first gig after graduating) lamented he was too old to apply to be on MTV's "The Real World" but said he was mulling applying for a show that tests one's coping skills in the wild.
"I thought, `That sounds hard. I like that,' " she says. Elisabeth pulled an all-nighter filling out the application and was soon rationing out white and brown rice with fellow Kucha tribe members. Her only regret? She had to allow co-workers to complete two shoe designs she had started.
Elisabeth says all this from the chair of the Channel 5 makeup room earlier that day, where it is clear she's still not yielding creative control -- in this case, of her face. As tactfully as possible, she makes clear she's not about to allow it to be caked with studio makeup for a dial-in segment during Channel 5's midday news show. No contouring, please.
For someone who says she had no ambition to be on TV after "Survivor" ("I'm more of a behind the scenes person"), Hasselbeck has gotten used to having an audience -- and is savvy of how she presents herself to the media and, by proxy, the public. When she denies the makeup artist's attempt to powder her face ("I usually don't do powder"), she follows up by assuring a reporter she's low maintenance, holding up her yellow Gap bag with its squashed-in contents as evidence: "Here's a true example of my disorganized life. Exhibit A."
It's clear she knows she needs the media. But the media also need stars, and the station's vice president of programming, Liz Chang, says she's been trying to arrange this college town visit for months: "We have our hometown gal on `The View.' They're college sweethearts, both from the area."
Back at BC, people seem to be getting used to the new celebrity status of the former Eagles quarterback and his wife and the ensuing hubbub around them. Camera, sound, and crew members set up their equipment, a station intern quiets the chatty football players disrupting the shoot, and another intern snaps a stream of Polaroids. When the cameras roll, following the trendy blonde and her jock husband, both with microphone receivers hooked at the waist, it's not hard to draw comparisons with that other TV-friendly celebrity couple -- yes, Nick and Jessica of MTV's "Newlyweds."
"On a much more toned-down scale, it semi feels that way," Tim says. "She's into shopping, I'd rather watch a football game."
The spectacle was impressive to some.
"This is the biggest thing to happen to BC since Hockey East," says Mary Lou Mila, a food service worker who used to see Tim at the training table. "I watch you all the time," she says to Tim.
Others were less starstruck. Jennifer Dowty, a Boston College student, was simply eating her chicken salad sandwich during a break from a job, but now is a background prop for the cafeteria shoot.
Dowty's friend from summer physics class, Peter Grieco, stops to chat:
"What's going on?" he says.
"Tim Hasselbeck and his wife are doing something. He's a pro football player. He's good."
"His brother's good. He has a lot of ice cream."
"They told us to sit down because we'll probably be in the background of the shot."
Grieco realizes that means he's in the background of this gig, too:
"Oh, should I be here?"
The Hasselbeck brothers have always been talked about on campus, but now, who in the family gets more attention?
"More him," says a field hockey player taking in the scene, referring to Tim.
"More her," says another. "Lately, yeah, especially with `The View.' "
Elisabeth says more people recognize Tim. He says it's the other way around, with people only realizing who he is after recognizing his wife. Although he says they're a private couple that doesn't crave attention, it's clear whose more comfortable in front of the camera.
"This isn't how I would normally spend a Friday," he says. "For me, the only time I end up being on TV is during a game or a post-game interview."
Indeed, when Elisabeth spots an abandoned golf cart in the cul-de-sac in front of Alumni Stadium, she grabs the chance -- and the photo opportunity -- getting Tim in the passenger seat to join her in a dizzying tour. The director spots a good shot, scrambling to set up his tripod.
Elisabeth lets out a well-timed laugh for the camera as she rounds the grassy circle.
"Talk about being here!" yells Nieve, the producer.
With the stadium being the sight of the couple's first kiss, there's a lot for them to talk about. Tim says he first dismissed Elisabeth as a "Plain Jane." But when his older brother, Matt, tried to set them up, he soon changed his opinion -- cutting through McElroy Commons on his way back to his dorm freshman year to talk to Elisabeth, who was a sophomore.
"I always thought it was fate," Elizabeth says. "Apparently, it was just good planning on his part."
As soon as Tim heard Elisabeth had signed up to be a freshman orientation leader for the summer, he signed up, too. That summer, in 1997, he asked her out. "He just laid it out on the table," Elisabeth says. "It was like a business meeting." On the date, Tim got lost on the way, she says. He didn't ask for directions, he says. They went to an Italian restaurant in Newton, owned by the father of one of Tim's football buddies from Xavieran Brothers High School and Boston College.
After dinner, they walked around campus, finally sneaking into the stadium over a parking ramp fence, Tim boosting her over. Once out on the 50-yard line, they kissed for the first time, but nothing too racy:
"He asked permission first," she says. They returned to their dorm at 4 in the morning, to find they were locked out. After two hours of sleep against a bike rack, they took the T to breakfast at the
The couple continued dating -- Elisabeth scored a job for class credit at Reebok in the cleats department, where Tim's dad was the director of marketing, and Tim and Elisabeth tried to attend church at the New England Chapel in Franklin each Sunday. Tim weathered his senior football season alone while Elisabeth was off shooting "Survivor," although during the two months between when she returned and when the show aired, she had to keep mum about her winnings.
"I knew she must have done OK, because she was so skinny," Tim says.
Tim proposed on his April birthday on the John Wingate Weeks bridge over the Charles River in 2000. Later, they had to postpone the May 2002 wedding because Tim had accepted a position with NFL Europe's Berlin Thunder.
Now, with Elisabeth filming "The View" in New York, where the couple owns an apartment on the Upper West Side, and with Tim starting training camp next week in Ashburn, Va., the relationship is a feat of careful scheduling. Tim watches "The View" when he can, though Elisabeth acknowledges, "I don't think he'd have it on the
It's an existence that takes some getting used to, but if you're a former "Survivor" contestant and an NFL player who has been on six teams in three years, you get used to adapting -- even if that means being a 6-foot-1, 211-pound quarterback wearing makeup, which Tim smudges off with a tissue as Elisabeth does her final lines for the promotion on the curb by St. Ignatius Church.
"Hey Tim!" Elisabeth yells from the curb, giving him the shush signal. They're trying to tape. Tim steps out of the camera's view and lowers his voice.
"I've done different things with makeup, or where I needed to be totally TV ready," he says. "It's not completely foreign."
And so the two are hustled into a whole new frontier: show business. With her hands in pockets, hip cocked to the side with attitude, Elisabeth recites the lines to be edited into "The View" promotion:
"Five women. All walks of life. All the topics you love."
Yep, a natural.
