Rob Lowe paid a virtual visit to “The Kelly Clarkson Show” to promote his new podcast, “Literally! With Rob Lowe”, and host Kelly Clarkson had a blast-from-the-past question for him.
“Wasn’t there a story also about you and Tom Cruise spending the night together in a stranger’s house, because I need to know more about that,” she asked.
“The way you say it makes it sound more interesting and an even better story,” Lowe responded.
According to Lowe, when he and Cruise were part of the cast of “The Outsiders”, director Francis Ford Coppola found some guys who had formerly been “greasers” and instructed the young actors to go live with them in order to gain authenticity in their roles.
He and Cruise, he explained, were assigned to go stay with a couple in their home. “And we just went to their little house and had dinner…”
Clarkson seemed shocked, joking that the whole thing could have turned into an episode of “Dateline”.
“Tom and I ended up in the basement in two cots, and we’re like, ‘We don’t know these people. Who vetted them?’ You think Francis Ford Coppola spent a lot of time vetting them? I can tell you he didn’t.”
In another portion of the interview, Lowe explains the photo he posted on Instagram in which he morphed into “Tiger King” subject Joe Exotic.
Admitting he was one of the millions who became obsessed with the Netflix docuseries while in quarantine, Lowe said that, for an actor, playing Exotic is “the role of a lifetime.”
Prior to the announcement that Nicolas Cage had been tapped to play the jailed zoo owner in a TV miniseries, Lowe decided to try to stake his claim to the role.
“My wife Cheryl, before she was a successful jewelry designer, she was one of the leading makeup artists in the movie business,” Lowe said, explaining that she created “on-the-spot” prosthetic makeup. “I substituted my little dog Bella for the tiger, and off you go.”
