Tera Patrick - Sinner Takes All

ONE DAY IN 2006, we got a call from the producers of Will Ferrell’s movie Blades of Glory . His character in the movie is this washed-up ice-skating pro who is trying to make a comeback and part of his backstory was that he did a porn movie that won an AVN award called The Iceman Cometh. The producers were looking for two porn stars to pose with Will for a fake DVD box cover of the movie. When they called me I was thrilled and said yes immediately. They asked me who I thought should be the second girl for the shoot and I chose Stormy Daniels because we were friends and had worked together before.

Apparently, the reason they set up the shoot on a Sunday was because the producer Patrick Esposito said that people at Paramount might be uptight about having porn chicks on the lot. It was a pretty intense set. Porn shoots are so low-key, but this was very high-energy and very Hollywood. You’d hear on the walkie-talkies, “Tera and Stormy are coming out of their dressing room.” “Tera and Stormy are walking.” “Go for Patrick.” It was so funny.

All of a sudden, we look around and there are hundreds of people looking on. Patrick told us it was 450 people to be exact, which was just about everyone who worked for or at Paramount. So much for keeping it quiet on a Sunday afternoon! The director said he’d never seen anything like this before. It was flattering.

The shoot was fun. We posed in fur bikinis with huge furry boots, looking like sexy cavewomen. When I first met Will, I was shocked at how much makeup he had on. I thought porn makeup was heavy, but it was nothing compared to movie makeup. We said our hellos to Will, and he got right down to business: “Awesome, ladies. Let’s get to work.” Stormy and I were on either side of Will, straddling his legs as he stood there, legs spread wide, making funny faces and cracking us up. He really has a way of contorting his face to fit the goofy character perfectly. I’ve never had someone make me laugh out loud without uttering a word like Will Ferrell did. He was hilarious.

From the Blades of Glory shoot

“Grab Tera’s hair,” the director told Will, who, by the way, could not have been nicer.

Will takes a handful of my hair and picks it up like he’s picking up a butterfly or something.

I told him, “No, grab it harder.” I love getting my hair pulled, so I thought I’d have some fun with Will.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

“No, really, it’s OK,” I insisted.

So he grabs my hair again and it’s still gentle as hell. So, Stormy gets in on the action: “Grab it, Will! Grab it harder!”

Will still wouldn’t grab it harder. He kept saying, “No, no, I don’t want to.” Everyone’s yelling, “Grab it harder!” He must have thought we were crazy. He was such a gentleman and very kind. But damn him for not yanking on my hair!

One of my favorite opportunities in 2006, though, was being on the animated show Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which airs on The Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. I always wanted someone to make me into a cartoon. I mean, who doesn’t want to be animated, right? The funniest part is that in the show they had me in a tiny blue bikini on all fours, eating a corn dog!

When I got to the voice-over studio to tape my lines, there was a hot dog sitting on the console next to my headphones. Hmmm. That’s odd, I thought. Maybe someone left their lunch in the booth. “Oh, that hot dog is for you,” the director said.

“Huh?”

“Yeah, the scene calls for you to be eating a corn dog while you’re talking, but we could’t find one so we got you this hot dog to eat while you’re reading your lines,” he said.

Hmmm. Was this just a cheap ruse to get a porn star to eat a hot dog in front of them? Nope. The script really did have me chowing down. “OK. I don’t eat hot dogs, but I’ll give it a whirl,” I said. So, down the hatch it went. I never actually watched the episode I was on until three years later, and I have to say, I cracked up over how they had me on all fours throughout the entire thing. It was hilarious. And of course, the video of me eating the hot dog made it onto YouTube and the DVD release. The episode, titled “Grim Reaper Gutters,” aired on November 19, 2006.

I gained so much more recognition from all of these endeavors, which felt fantastic. But more important, I made my family proud. Sure, they had accepted my life in porn, but it wasn’t exactly something they could brag about to their friends and coworkers. With the work I did in 2006 and beyond, they finally had some PG-13 things they could hold up and say, “This is my daughter!” Every time I’d get on a VH1 show or E! or in the news, they’d call up all their friends and say, “There’s Linda!” Fans have asked me in the past if my family watched my work. And I just have to laugh. Yeah, right. We have Tera Patrick movie nights and eat popcorn while watching my porn. But now there are actually shows we can watch together and be proud of. It felt great that my family could finally participate in my success.

Of course, all this helped my mental state. My “crazy Tera” episodes were few and far between. I was feeling great about my career, happy, and really satisfied and rewarded for working so hard all these years. I finally got to a place where I didn’t have to work as much and I could pick and choose what projects I wanted to do. And we did it our way. Evan was kicking ass as my manager, and I was happy not just for myself, but also for him. It was hard for naysayers to put him down at this point. Just three years before, I was suicidal and now we were able to have the last laugh. I’d been dragged through so much shit, and we came out smelling like roses.

Being happy in my marriage and career also helped me with my family affairs. But what especially helped was being close with Evan’s family. I didn’t grow up with that close-knit family unit and I’ve had an inconsistent relationship with my father over the years; a long-distance one with my sister Debby; and no relationship with my mother until 2009. So when the Seinfelds welcomed me with open arms, I accepted their love and let them be my family. Evan was lucky to have a mother and father still together after all these years.

I think they accepted me because they saw how in love Evan and I were and how much I cared about Evan’s son, Sammy. And they respected me as a successful businesswoman. Evan says that he grew closer to his parents after we got together because it showed them that he finally was settling down in life. I learned how to be the perfect wife from Lois, Evan’s mom. That was always one of my goals in life, to be a housewife in addition to a porn star. And Lois and Ira were very instrumental in bringing that side of my personality out and helping me achieve that personal goal. I learned how to cook Jewish foods, such as latkes. My favorite vacations were visiting them in Boynton Beach. I’d play shuffleboard and shop at the 99-cent store with Lois and visit museums with Ira. And they would always treat me as if I was just a normal housewife. It settled my heart.

The culmination of the year for us would be what the Seinfelds call “Fake Hanukkah.” Evan’s parents are “snow birds.” They stay in Florida in the winter and fly up to visit the rest of the family in New York in the warmer months. So instead of celebrating Hanukkah in the dead of the December winter, we’d celebrate it on “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving, because it wasn’t as cold and it was the latest the whole family would stay in New York. The entire family would be there, and we’d cook a huge Jewish meal with latkes, chopped liver, tongue, and corned beef. Everyone would be shouting at one another in good fun. We even had a dreidel, and would light the menorah together. It was your typical big, loud, Jewish family dinner, and I just loved it. Even though it wasn’t at the year’s end, it completed the year for us.