Back in 1993, Jenny McCarthy, a blond nursing student from Chicago, dropped out of school and posed as Playboy magazine’s Miss October, leaning suggestively on a field hockey stick wearing nothing but an unbuttoned grandpa cardigan. By the end of the ’90s, she had hosted MTV’s crass dating show “Singled Out” and was notorious for her brash, say-anything persona.
Flash forward almost 15 years and McCarthy, fresh from a five-year romance with comedian Jim Carrey, is less bawdy, flirty girl-next-door than a full-blown celebrity lifestyle guru, known for penning books about pregnancy and her son Evan’s struggles with autism. This week, execs at Harpo Productions confirmed to The Post that McCarthy had inked a development deal with Oprah Winfrey, one that could catapult her into the living rooms of millions of American women.
The shift from pinup to mom-with-a-mission may seem outlandish, but supporters like Winfrey are taking McCarthy’s aspirations seriously, banking on her as the next Queen of Daytime, maybe even the next Oprah.
Marc Cronin, the TV producer who gave McCarthy her first real break, on “Singled Out,” insists that in spite of his former protege’s tawdry Playboy past, McCarthy is like Oprah — a personality people can relate to.
“In terms of just the raw intelligence, talent, charisma and likability, Jenny has always had it all,” Cronin says. (It doesn’t hurt that she’s also a babe.)
While skeptics doubt that McCarthy, who once posed for a Candies shoe ad on a toilet with her panties pulled down, has the chops to take Oprah’s crown, others insist she has just the kind of sunny, accessible personality that makes housewives tune in.
“Oprah made individual viewers feel that she was their friend. Ellen is good at that. Rosie O’Donnell was good at it. Jenny . . . she’s pretty good at it, [too],” says Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. He thinks McCarthy has a shot at developing a highly successful show.
But Oprah’s endorsement has some critics crying foul. In 2007, she promoted McCarthy’s book, “Louder than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism,” on her show, during which McCarthy proclaimed that she had healed Evan’s autism with a regime of diets and other untested therapies. Linked with her belief that childhood vaccinations were the cause of his autism, it caused a firestorm among parents and medical experts.
“What Jenny McCarthy has done in using her celebrity to tell parents how they can ‘cure’ autism has been phenomenally irresponsible,” says Dr. Paul Offit, chief of the infectious diseases division at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of “Autism’s False Prophets.” “I worry about her broadcasting into the homes of millions of parents and espousing this kind of quackery.”
But Oprah has never shied away from controversy. Further, just like Oprah, who has opened up to viewers about her weight struggles, McCarthy is an over-sharer. Her frank, open demeanor has prompted her to bare all about her struggles as a parent, and now as a mom back on the dating scene. Last month, after she was spotted in a lip lock with a stranger, McCarthy came clean about the episode, tweeting: “Yes, I kissed a mystery man in Vegas. Everyone wants to know who he is or what his name is…So would I. Lol.”
Cronin says viewers can expect this kind of zany familiarity. “She’s a bawdy, bawdy woman. She used to belch at the drop of hat, usually after she ate a Big Mac. But for the generation she’s appealing to, maybe that’s right on point.”
But Thompson says it’s hardly time to crown her a new Queen of Daytime Talk. “Think of how many people have tried it,” he says. “The road to talk show success is strewn with carnage. Will she become the next Oprah? That’s pretty darned unlikely. In fact, I’m not even sure that we want a ‘next Oprah.’”