Rib Hillis
During a night out with childhood friends, the 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition' designer shows his presidential side
Rib Hillis is the type of guy who calls his friends (and a certain reporter) the morning after a night out "just to make sure everyone got home OK." And if he seems nicer than the typical "awesome cool edgy actor" (as he puts it), it's because he's on a self-improvement mission.
"I was arrogant," says the designer on "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." "But we all have skeletons."
Hillis, who grew up in Newton, is in town on a crisp Wednesday night for a benefit at the WCVB-sponsored Concept Home in Weston. Proceeds from tours of the 5,500-square-foot French chateau-inspired house benefit the Robert F. Kennedy Children's Action Corps, and Hillis seems excited to be representing the charity for the night.
Within 20 minutes of meeting someone, Hillis, 37, is already plugging the charities he's worked with. He sports a bracelet to remember a girl he recently met through the Make-A-Wish Foundation and wears a dog tag-style necklace in support of the United Breast Cancer Foundation.
"It was a bit of an epiphany for me to realize that if I talk, people will listen," Hillis says of his charity work, while standing in the kitchen of the Concept Home. "I feel like I've found my calling."
The Newton South graduate (class of 1988), whose real name is Robert Duane Hillis, was called Ribbit as a 6-year-old. That turned into Ribby and eventually Rib, a name that has stuck through college in Colorado, modeling in Paris and Milan, acting gigs, construction jobs, and now a network TV show. The name suits Hillis. It's boyish and playful, just like him.
Hillis's childhood friends Keith Marion and Leroy Browne appear at the door, and Hillis points to the entryway in excited disbelief.
"Look at you, all little now," they call out. "Hey there, skinny man." The pair turns to the crowd of interior designers mingling by the granite countertops covered in plates of fruit and cheese. "He used to be the hulk!"
"Did you see my father? My father's here!" Hillis says to Marion and Browne. The three, who haven't seen one another in 10 years, were co-captains of the high school football team, and suddenly it's easy to imagine the reality TV star as a teenage jock in Newton.
"Have you ever seen me? Sunday night?" Hillis asks them.
"Yeah man, and I've seen you on 'America's Next Top Model,' " Marion says.
"Pillow fight?" Hillis asks, referring to an episode of the WB show in which Hillis joined the aspiring female models for a photo shoot.
"You are my hero, man," Marion says. "If you only knew."
"You guys don't understand," Browne explains to the rest of us. "Rib? Model? Girly guy? You would never think."
"If you guys knew him," Marion says of his athletic high school friend, "you would think he's the kind of guy to win a lumberjack contest."
The three catch up on one another's lives - jobs, kids (the newly single Hillis has 5-year-old twins), where they're living (Hillis is based in California) - for the next 45 minutes, and then it's off to the Union Street bar in Newton Centre.
Fellow childhood friends Ben Caplin, Sean Brady, and Matthew "Mugsy" Malone, superintendent of Swampscott public schools, join the energetic group on an otherwise quiet patio, and they all seem dumbfounded by the attention Hillis is getting. "It's just Rib!" they keep saying between tales of playing "war" in the woods and chasing after girls in middle school.
"I love these guys," Hillis says. "I wish I could be around them more. I mean, I have industry friends, but these guys just don't give a [expletive]. Everyone has their own agenda in Hollywood."
Hillis wants to do more acting and considers himself an actor above all, but he seems content with his current place in the universe. He sets his Sam Adams down on the table. He's thoughtful now. "You know, I think of life as like a river. It doesn't matter if you have a paddle, the current just pulls you."
After a few minutes, Hillis says, "I'm gonna be president." It's the third time he's said this during the course of the night, and he doesn't seem to be joking. Surely his friends will call him on it, but Caplin just nods.
"That's the next president of the United States right there," Caplin says, and he's not kidding either.
Correction: Because of an editing error, Leroy Browne and Keith Marion, former teammates on the Newton South High School football team, were incorrectly identified in a caption for the Hanging With story in yesterday's Sidekick section. 