Article Image

IPFS News Link • Hollywood-Entertainment Industry

Who's Afraid of Tom Arnold?

• https://www.rollingstone.com

When Tom Arnold opens the big wooden door of his house in Beverly Hills on a Tuesday in late spring, he's wearing a blue T-shirt with a Superman "S" logo on it. On the floor behind him is a pink, toddler-size Minnie Mouse car, property of his two-year-old daughter, Quinn. "Hey, buddy," he says, out of breath from his flight down the stairs, and still sweaty, post-shower, from his morning cardio. He lost 90 pounds five years ago, when his son, Jax, was born, aiming to stick around for the family he's built with his very patient fourth wife, Ashley. Since then, he's gained enough back to land at a football-coach burliness — still not bad for a 59-year-old who once blew a $10 million Jenny Craig sponsorship by gaining more weight than he was supposed to lose. (Or maybe it was SlimFast — he tells the story both ways.)

We were supposed to be headed over to a taping of his friend Jim Jefferies' Comedy Central show around now, but not for the first time in the world of Tom Arnold, something went wrong. "I did a bad tweet," he says, walking through his kitchen toward his memorabilia-packed man cave of an office. It was, indeed, not good: He used the words "suck racist dick" in connection with black conservative figure Candace Owens. The right-wing press pounced. Arnold apologized, but he's still too radioactive for Comedy Central. "Which made me laugh," he says, "because Trump fuckin' wins again on racism."

Arnold parks himself at his desk, facing a TV tuned to CNN. Behind him is an Al Hirschfeld caricature of his younger self; on an opposite wall is a self-portrait drawn by Howard Stern, with a note thanking Arnold for being a good guest. In one corner is a framed tie David Letterman gave him when he showed up without one; in another, a cel from The Rosey & Buddy Show, a short-lived cartoon he and his ex-wife Roseanne Barr made. "None of it means too much to me except the pictures of my kids," he says, his voice a familiar sandpaper rumble.

He can hardly sit down without sending a leg into twitchy overdrive: "Shaky Tom," Barr called him. He says he's "on the spectrum" (he's not big on eye contact) and has ADHD. The Ritalin his parents snuck into his food calmed him as a kid; cocaine did the same for him as an adult. He's done an awful lot of drugs, was in rehab just last year. He is, in all, a frantic, lovable, weirdly charismatic mess, "a crazy person," by his own half-joking description.

He's having some financial problems, had to refinance his house, sell his Warhol. He doesn't always get his facts straight. His anecdotes can, at times, be hard to follow, and harder to verify. His acting career, fueled for many years by the triumph of 1994's True Lies, is not at its peak, though he does have a recurring role on NCIS: New Orleans (he's currently wearing black khakis purloined from the set: "They fit!"). Again, he once married Roseanne Barr. (When they split, Letterman held up a fake book on-air: "I'm Pretty Much Screwed, by Tom Arnold.")

These days, in between stand-up gigs, Arnold is on a reckless, friendship-straining, marriage-testing, one-man mission to save the world from a former acquaintance who is now president of the United States, at whom he's leveled a long and growing series of wild accusations. His claims of seeing Apprentice outtakes where Trump allegedly uses a racial slur were just the beginning. In September, Viceland will debut The Hunt for the Trump Tapes With Tom Arnold, a gonzo reality show about Arnold's quest: Each episode will focus on a different alleged "tape," from pee to Apprentice.


ppmsilvercosmetics.com/ERNEST/