A PRESTIGE HONG KONG EXCLUSIVE
BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT
by Mariel Rittenhouse

In Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?, you play Patricia, an author/psychologist who writes about love. What drew you to that role?
I thought [Patricia] was a really good person. I could relate to her in a sense because, well, it’s weird, I don’t know why, but my friends call me – and you’re supposed to be there for your friends – but some of them call me their therapist. Like I’ve got the answer, and I don’t. I mean, I hear what they’re saying and I try to give them the best advice, but more than anything I just try and be there to listen. I’m nowhere near a therapist, but obviously I’m doing something right . . . they pour their hearts out. Everybody needs to vent sometimes. And it can’t be because I was married twice and divorced twice, because I wouldn’t listen to me! But [my friends] say, “You’ve done it twice, haven’t you learned from your mistakes?” And I say, “I’m still trying to figure it out!”

Who do you vent to?
I still have conversations with God. And you know, I’ll talk to . . . I have so many brothers and sisters, that’s the good thing about having such a big family. You’re best friends with this person this week and best friends with this person the next week, and I’ve got eight of them, you know?

Do the Jacksons still get together for family gatherings?
We didn’t this year and my nephew, bless his heart, said, “We’re not getting together this year and I’m really mad because it’s going to fall on my birthday so everyone was going to be there for my birthday!” Some of us don’t celebrate birthdays because we’re Jehovah’s Witnesses, but he was still going to pretend and be like, “This is a party for me!”

What were you like as a girl, away from all the hoopla and flashbulbs?
I stopped playing with dolls at the age of 10, which when I look back, I think that’s young. But I was working so much that there was just no time. But we had a lot of animals – that was my thing. I used to take care of the animals, feed them, clean their cages, wean them from the bottle. I got a lot out of that. We had dogs, one cat, we had a giraffe, an ostrich, peacocks, pheasants, it was really different, a llama.

There’s been talk of a Jacksons world tour. Will it happen?
I really don’t know. I hope it happens. I would love for it to happen. I’m probably [my brothers’] biggest fan. I think it would be great if they did. They’re so loved and definitely missed and there’s so much history there, musically speaking even, there’s so much that they have to give . . . there’s so much youth still there. I think about how Mick Jagger is 65 million years old, like a dinosaur or something, all of them [The Rolling Stones], and I look at my brothers and none of them look their age. Not that they’re old, they just still don’t look their age and it really trips me out. And I hope they do [stage a world tour]. They still love their music.