Jun 29, 2006 01:21 PM
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Hollywood, 11:29 PM
Thu Mar 18
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Realizing that having a spotlight thrown on her regrettable estrangement from the superproducer father that made her an international icon of nepotism-derived semi-fame during the last week of his life might be a less than optimal development for her image, Tori Spelling took some time out of her busy grieving schedule to give her side of the story to Us Weekly. The mag was more than happy to dry her tears, give her a big hug, and roll the tape recorder as tales of her "bitter feud" with her family spilled out in the presence of an approving publicist. Us teases its coverage of Tori's Story with the heartbreaking! exclusive! tale of how her mother withheld the news of her father's death:
On the night of June 23, Tori Spelling sat in Betty's restaurant in Toronto, Canada, when she received the heartbreaking news via BlackBerry that her father, legendary producer, Aaron, had passed away: "A friend of mine had seen a TV report and e-mailed me, 'I'm so sorry. I just heard your father died.' And I was just in total shock," Tori tells Us. Her sorrow quickly turned to anger. "My first thought was, I can't believe my mom didn't call me!" Actually, it wasn't a total surprise since Tori, 33, and her mom, Candy have been in a longstanding feud. Because of the estrangement, the self-proclaimed daddy's girl had only seen her 83-year-old father - whose health had been failing for months - on one occasion since last September. And that tearful visit, at the urging of her brother, Randy, 27 (also an actor), was on June 11, just two weeks before Aaron Spelling died. Tori remembers their final conversation. "The last words he spoke to me were over the phone a couple of days before he passed," she recalls to Us. "He said, 'I love you, babe."
First of all: BlackBerry, Tori? Anyone who's anyone in this town is getting all of their life-shaking news of personal tragedy by text message to their Sidekick 3's. (Preferred ringtone notification: "Had a Bad Day," of course.) To further illustrate just how petty things had become between daughter and mother in Aaron's final days, an increasingly sympathetic-seeming Tori relates a heartwrenching anecdote about how when she called Candy to discuss flying back to Los Angeles for the funeral, her vindictive mom cackled that she'd already booked her a "Spoiled Brat Class ticket" on the next flight home, then inapproriately intimated that a typo in her father's will might result in a sizable portion of his fortune being bequeathed to "my only daughter, Ungrateful Bitch."
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