Rita Wilson

It actually goes back to, I don't know what period, but let's say the 1800s.

And it was about venereal disease.

And if you got a venereal disease, if you were a man and you got a venereal disease or a woman, then you were considered dirty.

And so you were, you know, didn't want to be, nobody wanted to deal with you, right?

And if you recall, even in the 60s, if you got cancer, you never said cancer.

You said the C word because it was not to be spoken of.

And so there's this kind of shame and this thing that got attached to this earlier thing of venereal disease.

But it's all this sort of thing that just gets translated over the course of years and years to people not talking about it and people feeling as if there's shame around it and there's something that they did wrong that brought it on.

Fascinating.

Big heart, big voice, big laugh.

Rita, your second failure is not recognizing the true value of your dad until a fateful dinner with friends.

Yes.

Tell us this story.

Okay.

So I mentioned earlier that my parents were uneducated, but they were incredibly smart and incredibly intuitive and very hardworking, incredible values.

And of course I knew this, but my dad was bartender and we grew up in the Hollywood Hills and everybody around me in my school, they were all, I would say, upper middle class.

And I was dating a guy and he was from a very wealthy family and all of his friends were incredibly wealthy.

And so I was just getting to know all of these people and they were, you know, I mean,

I had never been exposed to that sort of lifestyle or anything.

And we were having dinner in Laguna Beach, which is a community south of Los Angeles.