Interview: 'Rules of Engagement's' Megyn Price!
If you've ever watched "Rules of Engagement," you've seen how actress Megyn Price, a married mom of one in real life, plays Audrey as the epitome of a bold type-A lady who rules the roost. Yet Price says Audrey is pretty far from who she is in real life. "Sometimes it's hard for me to love my character," says Price. "But I love her because she has no self-confidence issues whatsoever."
In the coming weeks on the show, Audrey will embark on a quest for motherhood -- and not without hitting a few speed bumps. Her character will face problems with infertility and surrogacy -- heavy issues for such a funny show. But Price says we'll likely be laughing along with her character's journey. "Somehow our writers -- a couple of whom had gone through fertility issues with their own wives -- managed to find all of the humor that was possible, and the heartbreak along with the absurdity of it," she says. "They just took it to the next level."
When it comes to becoming a mom, Price reveals that Audrey will be type-A about it all the way. "It really shows how much a couple wants a child if they're willing to go to all these different lengths," she says. "I have some friends who had fertility issues, and it became more the quest for success rather than the quest for even a child. It became 'I need to conquer this, because I conquer everything.' I feel almost like Audrey is on that track at this point. She's decided she wants a child and she's going to make it happen."
So what advice would she give Audrey about motherhood? "'Everything's about to change. Get ready to have your world turned upside down' -- which is terrible advice," she admits. "'Get ready to never sleep. Get ready to brush your teeth differently.' It's all terrible advice, but it's almost impossible to convey what happens. So I guess I would just say, 'Get ready to get out of yourself, because your selfish days are over.'"
When Price herself needs parenting advice, she admits that she sometimes turns to blogs just like this one! "My husband and I have one child, and we had her later in life," she says. "We have been in the midst of deciding if we're going to have another child. I have gone to mom-blogging sites to read the accounts of relatively anonymous people giving their experiences with one child versus multiple children. As a human being, I love that resource. It's so interesting how you can read 50 blogs and one will pop out to you and be meaningful."
An L.A. transplant from the Midwest, Price strives to keep the Hollywood lifestyle at bay in raising her 3-year-old daughter with her husband. For one, she'd have to be of legal age before following in her mom's thespian footsteps. "My thing is, be who you are," says Price. "Go get an education before you do anything else, because you bring so much more to the table when you have a life behind you. An actor who's only ever been an actor doesn't have a lot of life experiences, so my advice to anyone who wants to be an actress is, you know, 'Go have a life, and then come do this.'"
In another decidedly un-Hollywood move, Price and her husband actually do the lion's share of the kid-raising themselves. "I know lots and lots of actresses have help all the time, but I don't want it," Price says. "I want it two days a week. Sometimes my house looks like a trash pit because I don't want housekeepers and nannies in my house 24 hours a day. My husband makes the schedule so that he can be with my daughter during times that I have to work. The second I'm done with work I run home to her. We've chosen to make our lives more difficult by not having more help, but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world."
As most working moms do, Price shares many of the same frustrations we all have. "There's an overwhelming amount of gratitude I have for having a healthy child, having a husband I love, having a job that I truly love doing and just understanding that if you want to have all of those things you can't have them all at the same time," explains Price. "'Balance' is a word I don't ever use, because it never feels balanced, ever. I can literally lament and want to quit my job every single day of my life, but there are so many fantastic, I mean, really over-the-top, unbelievable gifts of my job that I have to have gratitude for, or I would be unhappy all the time because I miss every single minute that I'm not with my child. I want everything all the time. I want every breath that she takes. I want to hear every funny thing that she says. But it's just not possible -- even if I didn't have a job."
So what life lesson does she feel is most important to pass on to her daughter? "I think what I've learned -- probably not until I was 30 years old -- was that the way you treat yourself is the way you ask other people to treat you," Price says. "I think all the self-deprecating comments and all the self-flagellating comments can go out the window. It's very important to be kind to yourself because you teach other people to be kind to you as well."