GOSSIP GIRL
Gossip dishes the scoop on growing up with a mother who had something to say and many ways of putting it across
Elaine Lui of eTalk, The Social and LaineyGossip fame, chats with Sun Books editor Tracy Sherlock about her new book on her mother. BOOKS
Elaine Lui book launch Friday | Villa Amato Ballroom, 88 First Avenue East Tickets and info: $ 39 ( which includes cocktails, hors d’ouevres and a copy of the book) from globerecognition.net
Elaine Lui is best known for her website: LaineyGossip, where she spills all about movie stars, royalty and other celebrities. She gave a TED ( Technology, Education and Design) talk in which she said: “My name is Lainey and I talk shit for a living,” and then proceeded to explain how gossip is really a more profound discussion about societal values. She is also a television personality and now the author of Listen to the Squawking Chicken: When a Mother Knows Best, What’s a Daughter to Do? ( Random House), a sort- of memoir about her life with her mother . Lui lived in Vancouver from 2000 to 2013, but has moved back to Toronto to work on The Social, a current affairs talk show on CTV.
Q What is your mother’s reaction to the book?
A She is very happy for herself. She is thrilled. She has nothing to hide or be ashamed of and she is really looking forward to people reading about her story and once again being the centre of attention. Not everybody in life can be the person with the spotlight on them and not everybody wants to be that. But she really did and her spotlight is so bright that the people who are in her life accept that she is going to be infinitely more interesting and more compelling than they are. In a hilariously comparative way, because I also report on celebrity, it would be like Jennifer Lawrence’s best friend or Julia Roberts’ best friend. People are always going to care only about Jennifer Lawrence or Julia Roberts.
Q And yet, you chose a career that is in the spotlight.
A When I’m on TV on eTalk, I’m talking about the other people who are celebrities and who are infinitely more interesting than me. When I’m on The Social, we talk about current affairs and celebrities, we interview other people: authors, cooks, designers. It’s never about me. That’s what I do best, is talk about other people. One of them is my mother.
Q What does your mother think about LaineyGossip?
A She doesn’t really understand the Internet and she certainly has never used the Internet. In the last year or so, she just learned how to text, but she still texts with a flip phone. With a flip phone when you text, it is all caps. But that’s her style — she talks in all caps anyway, so she might as well text in all caps. She doesn’t really get how the blog functions. She knows that I write a gossip column and in Chinese the expression is “other people’s business” and she knows I talk about “other people’s business.” She thinks that’s great too because she loves talking about “other people’s business.”
Q In your TED talk, you say that gossip isn’t really just gossip, it really is talking about more universal issues. Would your mother agree?
A I don’t think she spends a lot of time thinking about the profundity of gossip. I think I say in the book that this is not a woman who communicates with a lot of words or gets into feelings and whatnot. It just is what it is. But around the Mah Jong table, if she’s talking about a homewrecker, she’s enjoying tearing down the homewrecker, but underneath there is my lesson, ‘ Hey, daughter, don’t go and screw up someone else’s marriage.’ Instead of theorizing, she’s demonstrating the theory.
Q What is the best lesson she has taught you?
A Work hard. In telling me to work hard and to work harder than anybody else, it’s truly something that no one can take away from you. It’s something that I am very capable of doing. She gave me something very tangible that I could do and in giving me that, she gave me something that I could do better than anybody else, as long as I worked hard enough. You can’t be smarter than everybody — it’s very genetic and subjective — but you can actually be the hardest working person that you know. It’s very possible.
Q You decided not to have children. Will you pass on your mother’s advice to your nieces and nephews?
A If I get the opportunity, I will certainly squawk at them. In a way, I can share it through this book as well. What I’m really trying to with the book is to honour my mother, to pay tribute to her and to demonstrate how much I love her.
Q In the book you write a cautionary ghost tale about an umbrella found in the street. This tale taught you never to take what isn’t yours. What can you tell us about that?
A My mother used so many different methods of teaching in order to shape me. Some of those methods were very pragmatic — scolding, discipline or shaming, even — but the other ways that she taught me were almost by magic. In telling the umbrella story and the superstition that we ( her family) have about what happens when you bring home an umbrella, as a child it’s like a Grimm’s fairy tale. I really, really believe that that happened to her and she believes that that happened to her. When you get it from somebody who lived it, it makes it even more dramatic and scares you even more. The lesson gets sort of branded into you. I can’t even walk by an umbrella that’s lying in the street — I have to cross the street — that’s how frightened I am by it.
Q How is her health now?
A There is no cure for ( her mother’s rare illness that causes nerve damage, enlarged organs, skin abnormalities and other symptoms) but she is a lot better than she was. There were times when we didn’t know if we would have her still. She stayed in the hospital for nine months and she was very, very sick. Right now, she’s good. She has good days and bad days, but compared to what she was, this is great.
Q Anything else you’d like to say?
A People who have read the book have said: ‘ She was really harsh — how did you come out of this not resenting it?’ What I will say is that my mother meant to sting me with her words because she wanted me to remember the sting, but it never left a scar because she would explain to me that it came from a place only of 100 per cent concern and care. By the time her lesson sunk in three hours later, I understood that my mother only wanted the best for me and cared about me. People will interpret it the way they will and they may be shocked or think it was borderline abusive, but all I can say is that I love her and I have never stopped.