10 NEWS People
When Simpson needed an intervention
Jessica Simpson remembers when she hit rock
bottom, said Liz McNeil in People. It was
Halloween 2017, and she and her husband,
former NFL tight end Eric Johnson, were driv-
ing with their daughter to a school assembly. “It
was 7:30 in the morning and I’d already had a
drink,” Simpson, 39, writes in her new memoir.
Later that day, Johnson asked if she wanted to
help her three kids put on their costumes, but Simpson says she
was “zoned out” from booze and realized she wasn’t up for it. “I
was terrified of letting them see me in that shape,” she says. She
took an Ambien to fall asleep, then hid from her kids in the morn-
ing until they left and she could start drinking again. She sum-
moned her friends for a self-imposed intervention. “I need to stop,”
she told them. She entered therapy, and “I started to go through
all the depth of the pain that I was experiencing,” much of which
stemmed from being sexually abused as a child by a family friend.
Simpson hasn’t had a drink since. “There’s no better gift I can give
my kids,” she says. “There’s no better gift I can give my husband.
More importantly, there’s no better gift I can give myself.”
From the NBA to Yeshiva
Most former NBA players might think they were too good for
Michael Sweetney’s new job, said Howie Kussoy in the New York
Post. Sweetney, however, is grateful to be an assistant coach on
the Division III Yeshiva University men’s basketball team. At 37,
he feels lucky just to be alive, having attempted suicide with pain-
killers during his rookie season on the New York Knicks. “I was
on a billboard in Times Square and felt nothing,” Sweetney says.
“That’s how dark of a place I was in.” Drafted eight picks after
LeBron James in 2003, the former Georgetown University star
was days away from reporting for Knicks training camp when
his father, Samuel, died of a heart attack. “There was no time to
digest it at all,” he says. “As an athlete, pride got in the way. I was
fighting myself. I kept it hidden and it became a snowball effect.”
Depression led to erratic play and compulsive overeating, and
ruined his career; his weight had ballooned to 370 by the time he
played his last NBA game, at just 25. After playing in basketball
backwaters like Venezuela, Uruguay, and the Dominican Republic,
Sweetney retired and finally sought counseling after learning his
wife was pregnant. Now he gives speeches about mental health and
is the only coach without a yarmulke at Yeshiva. He also coaches a
girls’ high school squad in New York. “To be happy and at peace,”
he says, “I wouldn’t have thought it was possible.”
Stephanie Hull will always be known for getting the lowest score
in Jeopardy! history, said Dan Kois in Slate.com. On March 12,
2015, the lifelong Jeopardy! fan not only won no prize money,
she finished with a minus $6,800, and she was ruthlessly mocked
online in very personal terms. “Imagine doing something you’ve
wanted to do your entire life and then it turning into that,” says
Hull, 30, now a philosophy professor in Sedalia, Mo. By the end
of the game she was “trying desperately not to cry” and hasn’t
rewatched the episode since it first aired. She started off fairly
well, with several correct responses. “I’m actually proud of the
first round,” she says. But the second round turned into a disaster,
with Hull missing one $2,000 question after another while trying to
dig herself out of a deepening hole. “If you’ve ever seen that GIF
of Kermit flapping his arms, that’s kind of what it was,” she says.
“Total sheer panic.” The low point came when she buzzed in for
“Speaking this way involves similes & metaphors.” She answered
“metaphorically” instead of “figuratively.” She didn’t have to pay
the show $6,800, of course; in fact, she was given $1,000 for fin-
ishing third. “And,” she notes, “I live in infamy on the internet.”Jeopardy
Pr
od
uctions,^ Gett
y,^ APHull’s Jeopardy! nightmare
QPrince Andrew has provided “zero” coop-
eration in the ongoing federal investigation
into accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein,
prosecutors said this week. The disgraced
Duke of York, who has been accused by
one of the late Epstein’s victims of
having sex with her when she was
17, has not responded to interview
requests from the FBI, said U.S.
Attorney Geoffrey Berman. When
he stepped down from his public
role in the royal family, Andrew
denied any wrongdoing and
pledged his help to investigators.
Attorney Gloria Allred, who is
representing several of Epstein’s al-
leged victims in a lawsuit against hisestate, said the prince “has a moral obliga-
tion to speak to law enforcement.” A source
connected to Buckingham Palace told The
Guardian that “this issue is being dealt with
by the Duke of York’s legal team.”
QThe Washington Post newsroom was in an
uproar this week over the brief suspension
of reporter Felicia Sonmez for sharing via
Twitter a story detailing the 2003 sexual as-
sault allegation against Kobe Bryant. Hours
after his death, Sonmez tweeted, “Any public
figure is worth remembering in their totality.”
The tweet was met with thousands of vitri-
olic responses and death threats, and when
she relayed screenshots of them, her editors
put her on administrative leave, saying her
tweets showed “poor judgment” and had
“undermined” the work of her colleagues.
Sonmez was reinstated after more than200 Post journalists signed a letter to man-
agement expressing “alarm and dismay”
over the suspension. The letter conceded it
was “a fraught time” for her to be discuss-
ing the charge against Bryant, but noted that
Sonmez herself “is a survivor of assault.”
QPamela Anderson wed Hollywood pro-
ducer Jon Peters in Malibu, Calif., last week,
marking the bride’s and groom’s fifth mar-
riage apiece. Peters, 74, first met Anderson,
52, in the mid-1980s, and they reunited
several months after Anderson split from
French soccer star Adil Rami, 34. Before that,
Anderson was rumored to be romantically
involved with WikiLeaks founder Julian As-
sange. Peters was involved with Barbra Strei-
sand in the 1970s. “There are beautiful girls
everywhere,” he said. “I could have my pick,
but, for 35 years, I’ve only wanted Pamela.”