Inside Tara Reid's New Life

Plus, get the gossip on Christina Aguilera, Macy Gray and more

Originally posted Tuesday October 26, 2004 06:00 AM EDT

Tara Reid Photo by: Donato Sardella / WireImage

Why haven't we seen Tara Reid tearing up the L.A. scene of late? The American Pie star and notorious party girl tells us she's just been too busy. "I've been working a lot – I'm doing a new TV show that I'm developing and producing and I'm also the creator of it," Reid told us at the recent Jordache launch party at L.A.'s trendy Tracey Ross store. The show, as yet unnamed, was picked up by FOX and is set to start shooting in February. "It's about an actress in Hollywood – she's similar to me, but she is not me," Reid said. "She's always having fun, she kind of gets in trouble with the press – but she doesn't ever really mean to." In her downtime, Reid, who is single, has been quite the homebody lately. "I'm building (a) house from scratch up. I picked out where the bathroom is going to go, what color the tiles are going to be, everything," she said of her beachfront property. Her favorite feature: a sunset mural planned for the bedroom. In all, life's good at the moment: "This is the best it's been in a long time, maybe ever," she said.

Backstage Pass
Former Apprentice hopeful Ereka Vetrini is liking her new role as the sidekick on the Tony Danza Show. "It's going great," Vetrini tells us. "Tony is amazing. I'm having so much fun. I walk into work and I have a blast. I can't believe I'm getting paid for it." And Tony – what's he really like? "People ask all the time if he is as real and genuine as he is on television, and 100 percent," says Vetrini, who has a cable show of her own in the works. "I walk in every morning and I get a hug and a, 'Vetrini, how ya doin.' There is no hidden agenda. What you see is what you get."

Meow Mix
Macy Gray loves a good practical joke. On the last day of filming HBO's upcoming drama Lackawanna Blues (executive-produced by Halle Berry), the singer enlisted the help of costars Rosie Perez and The Wire's Michael K. Williams to help her pull a fast one on director George Wolfe. "So we go to the set," says Williams, who masterminded the prank. "All the main players were there. It was a big party scene. George is giving us direction. When he gets to Rosie, he says, 'I want you to stand here next to Macy.' So Macy goes, 'I really don't feel like standing next to Rosie.' Rosie turns around and says, 'What do you mean, you don't want to stand next to me? What's your problem?'" With that, Williams jumped into the fray. "I said, 'Come on now. I thought you squashed that in the makeup chair,'" says Williams. "They started to reach for each other like they were going to hit each other. Everybody was so shocked. You could hear a pin drop. Everybody thought it was for real." Including Wolfe, who came running over and tried to break it up. "We all fell out laughing and started screaming, 'April Fools'!'" says Williams. "George took a deep breath and said, 'I'm more relieved than mad.' It took us a good 20 minutes to get back to work, we were laughing so hard."

Caught in the Act
Spotted Recently:
• Christina Aguilera, learning croquet from a bellman at La Quinta resort in Palm Springs.

• Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, Angelica Huston, Hugh Hefner, Kelly Lynch, Ryan Gosling and Josh Charles, at a private reading of Hunter S. Thompson's new book (Hey Rube) at the Taschen Store in L.A.

• Bill Cosby, presenting pal Belva Davis with a lifetime achievement award on behalf of the International Women's Media Foundation at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Davis became the first female African-American TV reporter on the West Coast in 1966 when she was hired as an anchor at CBS's San Francisco affiliate.

• Glenn Close, dancing with friends at New York hotspot Crobar. On another night she stopped into Marquee, where she spent time in the booth watching DJ Scratch spin tunes.

• By KWALA MANDEL, JON WARECH, KC BAKER, MAUREEN HARRINGTON, JOANNE FOWLER and COURTNEY HAZLETT