My worst moment: ‘House’ and ‘The Kominsky Method’ star Lisa Edelstein on an early taste of fame thanks to a NYT profile of her college nightlife

For seven seasons, Lisa Edelstein was the voice of reason and efficiency as Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the Fox hospital drama “House.” More recently she’s been playing a character who is the opposite of that, as the chaotic and messy Phoebe on Netflix’s “The Kominsky Method." “Having permission to be just kind of awful? That’s amazing.”

She was also on Fox’s “9-1-1: Lone Star” this season. “Clearly they have fun writing on that show, between the absurd amount of catastrophes, the absurdities of the catastrophes and making fun of Rob Lowe’s absurdly heroic character,” she said. “It all sounded like fun to me, and it got me out of the house in the middle of the pandemic.”

When asked to share a worst moment in her career (which also includes five seasons starring on the Bravo series “The Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce”) she recalled a story from her college years in the mid-1980s. At the time, she was living in New York City and she had become a fixture of the club scene.

Then came a profile by Maureen Dowd that ran in The New York Times when she was a 20-year-old college junior that began with the words: “Lisa Edelstein, a nice girl from a New Jersey suburb, is explaining how she got to be Lisa E, New York’s reigning Queen of the Night, Girl of the Moment, new Edie Sedgwick and top ‘celebutante’ of 1986.”

Though published in an era preceding internet virality, the article had a similar effect on Edelstein’s life.

My worst moment …

“When I was a teenager, I was having a blast hanging out in the New York club scene. I was surrounded by some of the most interesting, weird, creative, bizarre people and I couldn’t get enough of it. It was like I’d spent my whole childhood starving for something I couldn’t name and suddenly I was immersed in it.

“I suppose it was that enthusiasm that started getting me a lot of attention in the downtown social columns of the day. All of that sort of culminated into an article Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times Magazine called ‘Lisa In Wonderland.’ On some level, I thought it was very intriguing to be followed by a journalist for a whole day. I knew it would forever change my experience and perhaps even bring some challenges. And that was definitely what happened.

“For one thing, I really hadn’t earned the attention I was getting. There were people around me doing extraordinary things that no one will ever see outside that world — performing artists who were cutting edge, designers whose names hadn’t reached brand recognition yet, artists who were established but still struggling. So why celebrate this young girl with no money, no fashion sense, no family name? I really don’t know beyond my absolutely genuine and overflowing enthusiasm for being there.

“But there was a certain amount of resentment that came with the publication of the article ... and for a little bit, I wanted to disappear out of existence. I mean, I wasn’t suicidal, but I was hovering around that drain pipe. People were making up stupid stories about me that weren’t true — nothing even interesting enough to write down — and losing control over your own reputation is deeply upsetting. Maureen was extremely generous with me. She could have destroyed me. But she really wrote a caring article and, on that level, I was safe. But suddenly I was hearing stories about myself that weren’t true at all; I had lost control of my own reputation and people were more than happy to believe whatever was said.

“On top of that, my phone number and address were listed. I suppose I should explain what that means to your younger readers: There’s a book, it’s called a phone book and it was sent to every household with everyone’s info in it unless you requested your info be private, but what 20-year-old would think to do that? Not me. So, in addition to the resentment, I also inherited about 40 stalkers. Men were showing up to my building and waiting for me, others were leaving me messages that were — well, I’m sure you can imagine. In those days, you could check your messages from a pay phone, but you couldn’t fast-forward, so I’d be standing at a pay phone in Times Square between classes, waiting for the guy to, you know, ‘finish his message,’ as it were, just so I could hear who else called.

“I had zero clue how to deal with it or how to even talk about it. I stopped going out very much and got super into some pretty silly New Age stuff. I mean, people were dying all around us (from AIDS), there were much more serious things going on. It seemed like you were either at an ActUp protest or a prayer circle hoping for a miracle. I volunteered with Gay Men’s Health Crisis, visiting ill patients who were isolated from any family, because that’s what AIDS did to a lot of people, and I started writing. I ended up writing my AIDS awareness musical ‘Positive Me,’ about the denial of the existence of the illness, denial of care for the sick and the self-denial one fought when trying to incorporate safe sex into the new reality of life.

“And because of the Maureen Dowd piece, people were curious enough to want to see what I was made of and it enabled me to produce my play at an incredible theater — La MaMa — and work with remarkably talented people.”

“In the end, the shock of the article really propelled me into the life that I truly wanted. It was rough. It was scary. It taught me that celebrity is not a goal. That in fact, it can even be one of the more difficult aspects of success. So, I sort of faded into the background for a while and reassessed my life.”

What made Edelstein say yes to the profile?

“I knew it was a weird opportunity even then.

“James St. James (who would go on the write the memoir-turned-film “Party Monster”), my best friend at the time, had a theory that if you can break out of obscurity for any reason at all, if you follow it up by showing you have talent, then you can sort of sidestep into the career of your dreams. The funny thing is, he was absolutely right. In my case, he just didn’t know how painful that transition can be. Or, maybe I’m just too sensitive. Plenty of people might be rooting for you (thank you Michael Musto and Patrick McMullan), but just as many want you to fail because who are you to get attention like that? What have you done to deserve it?

“Either way, they are watching you, which I suppose was exactly the point. I was a frustrated and ambitious girl from New Jersey with absolutely zero access to the business I yearned to be in. Yet, in a totally bizarre, albeit extremely entertaining way, I managed to garner just enough interest to produce my play and begin the career I was dreaming about.

“I moved to LA in 1991 because in New York I continued to need to ‘recover’ professionally from being seen as Lisa E, so I wanted a fresh start.”

Has she reread the article recently?

“I just can’t do it. My husband loves it because he wishes he knew me then. He would have absolutely loved that world. But it’s really hard to read your baby self! I was a barely formed person!”

The takeaway …

“I don’t regret the experience at all, but it forever changed the way I manage my business.

“The rise of social media was, and continues to be, terrifying to me because that kind of attention-getting behavior has such an ugly bite to it. I’m amazed at how easily some people can ride the negative attention that comes along with the positive. They’ve got thicker skin than I do, that’s for sure!

“So, I do it as much as I absolutely have to, but I really focus on the work that I’m making and keeping myself creative. That’s where the real magic lies.”

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