Dead Sexy (Maxim, June 2003)
In a perfect world, Rachel Nichols would be the very last thing you see before the Grim Reaper takes his cut.
Since exploding onto the scene in Maxim’s 2001 swimsuit issue, Rachel Nichols—star of this month’s comedy smash Dumb and Dumberer—has been busier than a priest in prison. The 23-year-old actress from Augusta, Maine is now a wildly successful international model, a Columbia University grad, and, after this shoot, our new best friend. There’s just something about a blonde-haired, blue-eyed bombshell with a sinfully sexy dark side that we can’t resist. Must be the college degree.
How’d a smart girl like you end up in the world’s stupidest movie?
Honestly, I got lucky. It was my first movie audition, and the director and I just hit it off. Working on a movie is so cool. There’s food everywhere you look, and they still give you a per diem—literally, an envelope of cash every week for food, which I just put in my pocket and took home. Am I allowed to say that? I guess I should’ve asked someone the rules before I came to this interview.
Busted! Aside from the easy money, stepping from an Ivy League campus onto the set of Dumb and Dumberer must’ve been tough. What’s your favorite way to kill brain cells?
Well, sniffing glue never works…
Oh…c’mon, it always works for us! What is it, then…?
Whip-its. Definitely whip-its. Back in Maine we’d hit the supermarket and buy every can of whipped cream they had.
Is that how all the cool kids got their fix?
Who knows? I definitely wasn’t one of the cool kids in high school. I was a dork. I was this shy, skinny, flat-chested girl with long arms.
When did that all change?
It didn’t. I’m still a big dork, but now I’m just more comfortable with it.
Right, but that’s not what we meant. Exactly when did you, you know, mature?
Oh, these? [looking down through the neck of her shirt] Sometime during my freshman year of college. One day I looked down and I had breasts. I was like, “Wow! How did that happen?” I was so excited I had to call my mom.
Luckily, we never had to make that kind of call. Did anyone else notice?
I guess they did, because I very quickly got signed by a modeling agency, and everything snowballed. I was this innocent, doe-eyed girl from Maine, and the next thing I knew I was moving to Paris for a year.
Do Frenchmen there really smell as bad as they do here?
Well, there’s always the cliché of the dirty little French photographer who wants to take pictures of you, but I made some friends. The most important thing for me was to learn the important phrases like “I have a boyfriend.”
So, what kind of guy gets a nerdy supermodel’s panties in a bunch?
It sounds so cheesy, I know. But the way a man smells is really important. It must be something about the pheromones. People think I’m nuts. But there’s something very primal, very animalistic about it.
Speaking of orgies, you played an orgy-loving waitress on Sex and the City. Are you a method actress?
No, I’ve never been a waitress. [laughs] My character agrees to have a threesome with Samantha (Kim Cattrall) and her boyfriend as a birthday gift to him. As soon as he gets into bed, I rip off my shirt and go right for his lips, but then Samantha goes crazy and kicks me out. Kim was really great. She said, “Do you want me to attack you or push you?” And I was like, “Give it to me. Beat me up.” On the first take she hit me so hard I rolled off the bed and completely off-camera. After so many takes, I’d hit the floor about 50 times.
Sounds rough. Was your brush with reality TV, as a host of MTV’s Revenge of the Rejects, equally punishing?
No, that was a lot of fun. They made a show out of the worst audition tapes from all their reality shows, like Wanna Be a VJ and The Real World. There was one guy who was like, “I want to be on The Real World so bad I’m gonna show you my sister’s nipple ring. Tammy, show ’em your boob.” And another guy decided to run through the street with whipped cream on his…you know what.
Sounds like an American Idol. If you could invent a reality show, what would it be?
Oh, I’ve got an idea that would be way better than The Anna Nicole Show. Someone should just tape dumb models talking to each other. You’d be amazed what you hear.
But posing for Maxim is smart, right?
Hell, yeah! This is the best men’s magazine in the world. You’re in a tiny bikini; everything’s in the right place. Sometimes I look down and think, Damn, I look good!
You too? Tell us, would you rather be smart and ugly or pretty and dumb?
I could never agree to be dumb, and with plastic surgery and liposuction you can always make yourself pretty. But there’s no such thing as a brain transplant.
Damn! So much for college!
by Alex Straus
|
