Just as Clark anticipated, the profile is a tough sell. Reel’s editor David calls me back immediately when I email him the pitch, and it’s clear that he’s confused, trying to figure out how seriously to take my claim of access to Clark.
‘Just for my own edification – are you really telling me Clark Conrad has agreed to this?’ he asks, and I say yes, trying not to sound too self-satisfied. David is clearly wrestling with his conflicting impulses to snap up this story, and to protect Reel from the inevitable criticism it will face if it runs a fawning profile of Clark in this particular moment.
‘But isn’t Reel sort of bulletproof in that regard?’ I argue. ‘That’s why I brought this to you, instead of someone in the men’s lifestyle space. The profile can be industry-focused, about what’s next for him after his Oscar win, but I’ll weave in the personal life stuff and you’ll still get all the buzz and pickup from those quotes.’
He still says no, though I can hear in his voice that he’s tempted. ‘Let’s stay in touch,’ he says, obviously unwilling to let me get off the phone, especially when I make it clear that I’ll be taking the pitch elsewhere. But the truth is I won’t, at least not for now, because I don’t know where to start and I have a sneaking suspicion that David will come around. A new spate of articles has emerged pointing out that there was no record of the police ever having been called, either to Skye’s apartment or to Clark’s home, with an LAPD statement confirming as much. A model ex-boyfriend of Amabella’s posted a Snapchat video in which he seemingly called her a liar, facing into the camera with his shirt off as he talked about ‘girls who try to tear you down when they can’t get your money’. And Amabella herself was out at a club in West Hollywood last night, ‘not exactly keeping a low profile in the wake of her allegations of abuse against ex-boyfriend Clark Conrad’, as one tabloid sniffily put it. The comments below the article were even less kind. Clark’s fans have started a hashtag campaign across social media, #WeBelieveInClarkConrad, which has gained support from a lot of industry power players. Already, the narrative is shifting.
The real clincher comes the next morning, two days after Amabella’s accusations broke, when Skye posts to Instagram for the first time since her suicide attempt. The picture was a black-and-white shot from her childhood: in a forest, a young, shaggy-haired Clark grinning at the camera with tiny Skye in his arms.
When I was five, my parents took me to the Big Basin Redwoods State Park on a road trip. I wanted to climb this tree so badly, but of course it was too dangerous and I’d never have made it up there on my own. So my father carried me up on his back, then let me sit on his shoulders to see the view. Just like he’s been doing for me my entire life. He’s always been my rock. There will always be people who try to take advantage of his kindness and his strength, but the truth will always win out.
Skye’s post explodes, of course, prompting media coverage just as feverish as the accusations did, and puncturing any possibility that she and Amabella may be linked as abused women in Clark’s life. It’s less than half an hour before David calls me back.
‘Can you get this done for Friday?’ he asks. ‘We’re on the line with his publicist right now trying to organize a quick shoot – we want to blow this out, maybe even get it into the print edition if we can.’
‘Wait, you’re speaking to Peyton?’ I ask quickly. ‘I’m not going through her on this. I’m dealing with him directly. You can organize the shoot through her if you want, but just make it clear that her purview begins and ends with the photos.’
David clearly doesn’t know quite what to do with this, but when we speak again a couple of hours later, he drily asks me if I’m psychic.
‘As it turns out, Peyton is no longer working with Clark. I guess he fired her this morning.’
‘Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.’
‘So I have to ask, can you talk to him and figure out when to get this shoot done?’
‘Sure.’
I can hear the smile in Clark’s voice when I call. He wants to do the shoot not at the house, but at the office he’s just leased to house his new production company.
‘Your production company? When did this happen?’
‘Well, you know, I saw your interview with Schlattman and I just thought: that could be me!’ he jokes.
‘God, perish the thought.’ I’d actually forgotten the Ben Schlattman piece was going live today, and ironically it’s been more or less buried by all the Clark news.
‘In all seriousness, you did a great job. Ben’s never sounded better, and I know that can’t have been an easy one to wrangle.’
‘Thank you. He’s definitely a character.’
‘I only hope you can do half as good a polish job on me.’
‘Oh, I’m not too worried about making you look good.’
The shoot is arranged, and I tell the photographer where and when to meet Clark at the offices. As for me, Clark suggests that we do the interview over dinner.
‘Back in the day when I actually did one or two of these things, that seemed to be the norm. Do an activity during, make it seem less like an interrogation. One guy wanted to take me paragliding while he interviewed me.’
‘Hard pass. But dinner sounds good, assuming you know somewhere discreet.’
And of course, he does.
Clark Conrad Is Not Without His Insecurities
Published March 3, 2016 on Reel.com
By Jessica Harris
I’m sitting across from Clark Conrad on a sun-dappled patio in Silver Lake, trying to figure out why he’s so reluctant to talk about himself. ‘It’s always seemed strange to me that so many actors are such narcissists,’ he tells me, the corners of his eyes crinkling in bewilderment. ‘Because acting is the opposite of talking about yourself. It’s disappearing into someone else’s skin.’ The decision to speak with me this evening, then, is a conflicted one. But Conrad has had what he drily describes as ‘an interesting year’ thus far, and the forty-five-year-old actor is nothing if not proactive. ‘I started to realize that if you just say nothing, people end up saying things on your behalf. Nature abhors a vacuum, and this business abhors a silence. I figured it was time to say something.’
Conrad has a lot of things to say. He is articulate and measured and immensely witty, his trademark coiffed hair becoming increasingly tousled over the course of the evening as he runs his hands through it. It’s a gesture he goes to when he’s in search of the right phrase; in conversation as in work, he is a perfectionist. We are speaking just three days after the Oscars, where he won the Best Actor prize for his meticulous, nuanced performance in the biopic Armstrong.
‘What do you want from me, here?’ Clark asks, as our waiter refills our glasses of Sancerre. ‘What do people say about these things?’
‘I don’t know – I haven’t profiled a lot of Oscar winners before. Say something winning, yet modest.’
‘What did you call it, a victory lap?’ He shudders. ‘Can’t you just make up something the internet will like and pretend I said it?’
‘That would be unethical.’
I clink my glass against his, and turn my recorder back on.
After a string of acknowledged box office failures including the much-anticipated adaptation of bestseller The Silver Circle, Conrad admits he had a lot riding on this performance.
‘I was at a moment where I was no longer sure of my choices,’ he admits with a wry smile. ‘And Armstrong was the first time I had felt really strongly about something in a while. I knew how great the material was, I knew how great the people involved were, but I was not sure I was the right guy for the role. So that validation meant a lot. What a surreal evening.’
Insecurity might seem a surprising word for someone at Conrad’s height of fame to use, but he uses the word more than once during our conversation. A lack of security marked his early life, too; Conrad was orphaned by the age of ten. His father, the photographer Philip Conrad, and his mother, a part-time teacher, were both killed in a car accident in 1980, after which he was raised by his paternal grandparents. ‘The first ten years of my life, I would describe as idyllic,’ he admits, recalling his upbringing in the suburbs of San Diego. ‘My parents were as good as it gets, and everything I’ve ever done right as a father, I learned from them.’ But though he has never gone into details, and declines to do so this evening, his teenage years with his grandparents were less sunny, with ‘wrongdoing on both sides. I was chomping at the bit to get out of there once I was eighteen.’
And so, to Hollywood, where Conrad couch-surfed for the better part of a year before landing his first speaking role on All My Children. The pace of daytime did not agree with him, he says, though he credits the show with developing several of the muscles he still uses in his work today. ‘Memorizing twenty, thirty pages of dialogue a day, and regurgitating it all in one take? That’s one hell of a bootcamp, particularly if you never had the opportunity to do theatre.’
It was a full seven years before Conrad landed the role that would become his against-the-odds breakout – the title part in a midseason replacement NBC drama called Loner, about a seemingly cynical and ruthless lawyer moonlighting as a heroic vigilante. ‘It didn’t feel like anyone really had high hopes for the show,’ he recalls. ‘We were coming in at midseason, and it seemed they only gave us the order out of sheer desperation, because they didn’t have anything else to fill the gap. The ratings were rough for that first season, but NBC, God bless them, took a chance on us.’ As many, including Conrad, have noted before, Loner was ahead of its time in many respects, a superhero show before they were a dime a dozen, inspired more by Batman than by other legal dramas. While there are a lot of things about the show that should be laughable – not least of them the lead character’s actual name, Richard Loner – it was consistently so much richer and deeper and smarter than anyone anticipated that it developed a dedicated audience, and a viewership large enough to keep it on the air for five beloved seasons.
Much like George Clooney had done on ER a few years prior, Conrad found an unlikely route into movie stardom by way of network television. His heartthrob status among teenagers and their moms alike translated into a global fan base that propelled him to blockbuster success – the Reckless trilogy has grossed more than $1 billion worldwide – and critical acclaim. And for twenty years, he was one half of Hollywood’s most beloved golden couple, ever since he and Carol Conrad (née Marsh) first stepped out together at the 1995 Emmy Awards, she in a green silk Dior gown that became instantly iconic. ‘Carol and I had no idea what we were getting into that night,’ he laughs now. ‘She was wearing this dress – which, my God, I knew it was a spectacular dress, but I don’t really understand fashion or anything about that world. Her dress became a story, and my winning became a story, and the two of us together became a story.’
‘Something wrong?’ I ask him, because he’s stopped.
‘I just don’t know how to approach this – I mean, I’ve already told you more about my marriage than I should have.’
‘You know your secret is safe with me. That wasn’t an interview, it has nothing to do with this. Tell me whatever version you want, just something wistful and reflective about your marriage.’
‘Keep that glorious myth of Clark and Carol alive a little longer, huh?’
I look at him in surprise, his tone suddenly abrupt and cynical.
‘The thing is, what people loved about us, it was all surface. Not that we were unhappy, but nobody could possibly live up to this thing people wanted us to be. It doesn’t exist.’ He sighs, taking a long gulp of wine. ‘Sorry. That’s not what readers want, is it? Look, I’m giving you permission here – put some words in my mouth. Something moving. Make it about her.’
Humble though he is about his own stardom, Conrad admits he was never surprised by the public’s fascination with his marriage. ‘It’s because we were truly, genuinely in love. And I think people could tell. I credit Carol with most of that – she’s a much braver person than I am emotionally. All that warmth, that chemistry people saw in us, it was all her.’
The Conrad marriage is a story in which America has remained invested for two full decades. But last summer the couple confirmed their divorce, which was finalized in November and heralded the beginning of that aforementioned interesting year. Early in January, Conrad’s nineteen-year-old daughter Skye injured herself, prompting a stay at an inpatient treatment facility; she has since recovered, and has vigorously denied rumours that she was attempting suicide. And earlier this week, mere hours after his Oscar win, Conrad’s former girlfriend Amabella Bunch publicly accused him of domestic abuse, a charge that Conrad has vigorously denied in a statement issued February 28.
‘I’m bewildered by the whole thing,’ he tells me now, still visibly shaken. ‘Though we were only together for a short time, I feel immensely grateful for my time with Amabella – she’s a great spirit, really one of a kind.’ Though he can’t speak to any of her specific allegations, a court hearing still pending, Conrad ‘wishes her only the best’.
‘For this part, do you think Skye will be okay with me saying that it wasn’t a suicide attempt? I don’t want to draw attention to the rumours by mentioning it, but so many publications are still calling it that. I’d like to be as specific as possible.’
He looks confused.
‘I mean, this is a way she could deny it without having to make a statement or go through any more scrutiny.’
‘Two denials for the price of one.’
‘Are you okay?’
His eyes are bright, and he looks away from me as he asks, ‘Did she tell you that? That she didn’t want to die?’
‘Yes. She did.’
And I realize she told me more than she told him. Because this, of course, is a far easier conversation to have with a stranger than with the person you love most, and Clark probably couldn’t bring himself to ask. How could he?
‘Sorry,’ I say quietly. ‘I assumed she’d told you.’
‘I’ve never been sure. I just hoped.’
He shakes his head, his relief tangible and overwhelming, and I reach across the table to squeeze his hand.
The morning after our dinner, I meet Conrad in his corner office at his new production company, an eclectic cave filled with movie prints and rock ’n’ roll memorabilia. He’s drinking a green juice ‘reluctantly’, he says, at the behest of Skye. ‘At nineteen, she’s a far more responsible adult than I’ll ever be, and she’s got me on this healthy living regime with her.’ After an admittedly rocky start to his days as a single father, Conrad says he now cherishes his close relationship with his daughter, who since her injury has been focusing on self-care and reading; the pair are often seen hiking together in Griffith Park, and enjoying bonding time at neighbourhood haunts like Pace. ‘She’s my best friend, in many ways, and it’s taken us a while to get there. She’s the best thing in my life.’
Conrad’s goal with High Six Productions is to have more control over the projects he acts in, and to give opportunities to filmmakers from a variety of backgrounds. ‘I didn’t grow up wealthy, or connected,’ he says, ‘and if anything it seems to me that it’s become harder over the years, not easier, to get a foot in the door if you don’t know people. One of our priorities is going to be seeking out new talent, maybe the folks who don’t necessarily have an agent yet, or their agent isn’t the highest on the totem pole.’
But the company will balance out that risky agenda with some safe bets, including one that’s sure to make legions of fans very happy. Conrad reveals to me exclusively that Loner is getting a ten-episode revival series, a co-production between NBC and High Six. ‘I’ve been very resistant to the idea of rebooting Loner,’ he admits, acknowledging that he dismissed the possibility of bringing the show back as recently as last month. ‘But Richard [Davis, the show creator] came to me with, if you’ll forgive me this reference, an offer I couldn’t refuse. And a script I really couldn’t refuse.’
The Loner reboot is due to begin production in May, with a tentative release scheduled for next winter. But that project aside, Conrad is planning to take some time off from acting, in order to prioritize his relationship with Skye. The production company is appealing, he says, in part because it will ensure he can spend more time in Los Angeles and less time living the travelling life of an actor.
‘If there’s one thing I’ve really learned from this last year, it’s that none of this matters,’ he tells me, gesturing around at the walls of his production office. ‘I’m being glib, of course – I take my work seriously, I always have. But in the end, none of it matters unless your family is secure. I’ve lost sight of that at times in the past. The business is very seductive, and it can warp your priorities and make you believe things are important that aren’t. I know what’s important now.’
‘Do you always go through two bottles of wine when you’re conducting interviews?’
‘Listen, sir, you’re the one who suggested we move on to red. We should have just got two bottles of that to begin with.’
I reach for the check when the waiter brings it, and Clark snatches it out from under my hand.
‘You’ve got to be kidding.’
‘No!’ I protest. ‘I can expense this, it’s a business dinner.’
‘You’d still have to charge it on your card in the meantime, right? Until their accounts department got around to deciding to process your receipt and send you a cheque in the mail? Forget it.’
‘Clark—’
‘Jessica.’
It’s the first time I’ve called him by his first name and I find myself saying it again, my mouth lingering on the sound.