Celebrity children have many perks, including famous friends, wealth and private schools. Jenny Pentland (the now-45-year old daughter of a celebrity) explains, however. Roseanne BarrTells it, those “perks” aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
“I grew up in comedy clubs and mental institutions,” Pentland writes, and that’s not an exaggeration.
Her bracingly honest, yet mordantly funny memoir is appropriately titled “This Will Be Funny Later” (Harper, 352 pp., ★★★ out of four, out now), Pentland lays out the good, the bad, the ugly and the downright surreal of a celebrity upbringing and of seeing one’s messy life scrubbed and polished into a PG primetime sitcom. The TV series “Roseanne” was directly based on Pentland’s family: Becky and DarleneThese were amalgams of Jessica and the author, while D.J. The author was inspired by her little brother Jake.
While TV Roseanne was a loving mother who supported her children through difficult times with a firm, loving hand, real life saw the family fall apart under the immense pressure of fame. Hollywood success brought divorce and dangerous crash diets, and stints at mental hospitals and reform schools. “I resented Parallel Jenny’s simple life,”Pentland writes. “I couldn’t watch the show without feeling angry, and then I couldn’t watch it because TV was not allowed in reform school.”
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Barr’s ascension to everyone’s favorite sitcom mom was sudden and surreal. Previously, Pentland’s father, Bill Pentland, worked at the post office while her mother took a job as a cocktail waitress at Bennigan’s, where she cracked jokes with diners until trying out her quips at Colorado comedy club open mics. Comedians Louie AndersonDennis Miller saw her perform, and encouraged her to pursue comedy. This eventually led to a “The Tonight Show”appearance, an HBO Special and, of coarse, a sitcom.
For a family of working-class families that had started in a trailer, the move to California was a major upheaval. Bill Pentland was a trash collector and would often scavenge toys for children. Hollywood’s cookie-cutter glamour didn’t suit the family of a poor, overweight Jewish family. “In everyone’s perception, we were basically the Beverly Hillbillies,”Pentland writes.
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Pentland wrote that Barr struggled to balance work and family life, while her father struggled to fulfill his new role of stay-at-home dad. Barr had an affair with Pentland and they would soon divorce. “Roseanne”Tom Arnold, writer and second husband.
“Our family was falling apart, and the stress of falling apart was making us fall apart even faster,”Pentland writes.
They were also being tormented by paparazzi and tabloids, who were digging through the family’s trash and past lives. Before long, a P.I. The P.I. was soon able to mine some gold. Barr discovered that he had given up his daughter for adoption at the age of 17. The P.I. The National Enquirer sold his information just as Barr was meeting Brandi Ann Brown, Barr’s oldest child.
Pentland writes “The first time I ever saw my sister Brandi’s face was in the prom picture her high school boyfriend shared on the front page of the National Enquirer while I was standing in line at the grocery store after school.”
Crash diets, ‘fat camps’Schools that are reformable
Adolescence is hard enough on a young girl without the added pressures of fame and fortune, but Pentland’s teenage years take the cake – or they would, if the fridge hadn’t been padlocked.
Before Barr became a celebrity, the Pentland sisters were constantly under pressure to lose weight. The family cycled through fad diets – Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig, but also sketchier models like the Rice Diet, which had the family subsisting on Minute Rice. At one point, Pentland writes, Barr’s diet “consisted of just one ice-cream cone and one doughnut a day.”
Eventually, a heavy-duty chain was padlocked around the fridge to keep the kids from sneaking snacks (it didn’t work – Pentland only got more creative). Summers, they’d be sent to weight-loss retreats derogatorily called “fat camps.”
The pressure increased further when “Roseanne”The flight was successful. Pentland writes. “Everyone wanted to make us over and teach us which fork to eat with, not because these things are important to happiness but because they were embarrassed that white trash like us had gained entry into their club.”
Both Pentland girl spent their teens in a succession mental-health facilities. Reform schools and survival camps were all part of Barr’s life. Barr was navigating divorce, a dysfunctional marriage with Arnold, and an ever more chaotic work schedule. “Weeks after Jessica disappeared into the privatized adolescent mental-health-care system, my mom left to film the movie ‘She-Devil’ with Meryl Streep in New York,”Pentland writes.
Yet, despite all the trauma and strangeness that has been documented “This Will Be Funny Later,” Pentland’s account of life with her family is also full of warmthAnd especially humor, with chapter headings like “How to Smoke an Illegal Cigarette in a Lock-Up Facility” and “The Pee Cup Is Half Full.” Despite it all, she grew up, got married, had five sons and moved to Hawaii to help her mother with her macadamia nut farm – and wrote a book. This is her first book.
