TVGuide.ca Interview with Melissa DiMarco

DiMarco’s on the hunt for celebrities on ‘Out There’

Melissa DiMarco coughs and blows her nose violently in front of Mathew McConaughey. During her interview with the actor, she has a cold and he helps by holding the tissue to her nose.

This is a scene from the scripted dramedy Out There with Melissa DiMarco. Based in Canada, the award-winning series follows a bumbling entertainment journalist (played by Toronto native DiMarco) who scores A-list celeb interviews in places like Las Vegas, Mexico and London, but can’t manage to get her personal life in order.

Fans of Degrassi: The Next Generation will recognize the blond beauty as the high-school drama’s former principal, Daphne Hatzilakos. But on Out There, which is loosely based on DiMarco’s career as an entertainment journalist, she’s involved both in front of the screen and behind the scenes.

“I love being able to act and interview in the same show,” says DiMarco, who has produced stories and interviewed stars like Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise for her Nite Life late-night entertainment segments since 1996.

“They used to be very separate worlds for me and now that I can marry the two – I think that’s as close to marriage as I’m going to get for a while. So there you go, that’ll please my parents,” she says with a laugh.

DiMarco’s ideas for episodes dig deeper than what viewers end up seeing on TV. “[There are] ideas of competition on the red carpet or losing your spot cause you have been there since 8 in the morning,” she says.

“People who aren’t in the business don’t really know that, so we try to expose the truth of that and [show] that it’s not just glossy. And that comes based on everything that’s really happened to me.”

For example, a real-life coughing fit while DiMarco interviewed Christina Applegate turned into the onscreen spoof interview with Mathew McConaughey.

Although celebrity interviews form the crux of Out There, DiMarco resists comparisons to entertainment shows like Access Hollywood and E.T. Canada.

“Our interviews are longer than those other shows when you see them in context, because we don’t just say ‘and George Clooney was on the red carpet’ and ‘how did you like working with Cameron Diaz?’ And all he says is, ‘Great.’ I’m like, ‘Seriously? You have George Clooney and all you’re going to take him saying is ‘great’? I know he said more than that.”

It’s DiMarco’s desire to go beyond sound bites that attracts celebrities to Out There – and viewers too. “People are invested in the half hour,” she says. “They’re not waiting for that repeated Britney Spears clip for 20 minutes and then when they finally see it, it’s the same clip that opened up the show. Actually we’re making fun of that in a future episode.”

DiMarco does find some aspects of playing a version of herself challenging, though. “The hard thing is I’m exposing myself more and sometimes people confuse the character with who I am,” she says, adding that sometimes those around her don’t know she is acting.

“I was falling on the red carpet and people around me were trying to help me, and then you realize I was doing that on purpose. I’m like, ‘Oh, no no no – that’s OK.’ So I did it again and they’re like, ‘She’s falling again! Who is that girl? Is there a problem with her?’”

Things can get even more uncomfortable when she has to interview her Degrassi co-stars (in case you’re wondering, she’ll be back on the show soon with some surprises). “I’ve always been really shy about telling people about my other half,” DiMarco says, remembering one interview with guest star Kevin Smith (Clerks).

“I felt awkward to let him know that I was an actor working with him and now I’m interviewing him, so it happened that those two worlds collided. But we used it in the story and we exposed it to the audience that my two worlds do collide all the time.”
Watch Melissa DiMarco and her team on Out There, Fridays at 10 p.m. on Citytv.