Las Vegas Weekly

March 5, 2009 · 11:43 AM

Kelly Carlson talks Nip/Tuck‘s end, brushes with death and plastic surgery

By Robin Leach

Kelly Carlson.

Photo: Scott Doctor/www.greatscottstudios.com

Beautiful, sexy actress Kelly Carlson confirmed during her Las Vegas visit that her hit F/X series Nip/Tuck is ending after two years of nonstop filming. The drama will continue to run through 2011, but she’ll be watching rather than filming episodes! Kelly also revealed that plastic surgery has helped her win stardom after she nearly lost her life twice in near-fatal auto accidents just four years apart!

The blonde bombshell, 32, checked into the Palazzo to celebrate her cover shoot for the resort’s in-house Style magazine. Kelly hosted a VIP party for high rollers in the luxurious four-bedroom, 8,000-square-feet Chairman’s Suite complete with its own spa, gym and outdoor private pool. Kelly personally asked her favorite chef Charlie Trotter to send up the food for her soiree, but it was star chef Wolfgang Puck who dropped by to give her an autographed copy of his new cookbook.

Kelly hit both Lavo in the Palazzo and sister nightspot Tao in The Venetian on her weekend trip. Kelly took time to sit with me for a one-on-one interview. She was candid not only about her role as a “harlot” on Nip/Tuck but openly talked about how she nearly lost her life in not one but two brushes with death at 16 and again at 20.

Robin Leach: Your first experience of facial reconstructive surgery back home in Minneapolis came from the accident that damaged your nose and forehead?

Kelly Carlson: It was a brush with death, which I am sure put me in a different place in my mind about my future. It could have been a fatal accident. It could have meant no career, 100 percent no TV! It is ironic that some of my good personal friends are doctors, plastic surgeons who started a charity, an organization to assist people with facial disfigurements either at birth or from accidents. It had nothing to do with my future on Nip/Tuck -- maybe just good karma! I always think of stuff like that. The universe is always taking care of me in some way.

Photo: TVT

Kelly Carlson and Wolfgang Puck.

RL: So then the show comes along and you were there for a week just to shoot the pilot, and here you are five years later still on the show and reveling in it.

KC: I just auditioned like everyone else. I didn’t have any special privileges or auditions that you can have sometimes. But the breakdown was a 26-year-old girl from Minnesota, and I was 26 and I am from Minnesota.

RL: And if she would have had a scar on her forehead …

KC: That would have been better! That would really have been karma, but it wasn’t. We have never referenced Minnesota since, but that was in the character breakdown. I don’t even think that I told them that in the audition.

RL: Do you believe in plastic surgery?

KC: Yes, in moderation like everything else. It’s not right when people become addicted to it like a junkie.

RL: Have you ever had a little nip and a tuck? Forgive me if that is a rude question to ask a lady -- like her age.

KC: Yes, kind of, it is like asking her age!

RL: Which is worse?

KC: I think the nip and tuck. Because one follows the other.

Photo: Scott Doctor/www.greatscottstudios.com

Kelly Carlson.

RL: You had to have plastic surgery for your forehead because of the accidents, though?

KC: I had to have a plastic surgeon because the skin was torn right to my skull. I have been in two bad accidents. I never saw the injury, but I’m told they could see my skull and I had to have three layers of stitches. The first time, I flipped in a car, which is bad, down a hill. Then the second time, we were on the freeway and a car was in front of us. We were in an SUV and the car in front of us swerved out of the way really fast. There was a stopped car in the fast lane, and we didn’t have time to stop.

I was a passenger in both. I am a very good driver, a defensive driver. Both of them could have been fatal. I hit the dashboard with my forehead, and I hit the windshield with my head. I remember I checked my teeth, I breathed through my nose, and I wiggled my toes, and I was OK. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I was totally in shock. There was blood everywhere, even in my eyes. We ripped that dashboard. It was dented in and down because I hit it with my face, and then I cracked the windshield with my head. I could have passed out for a second, but I don’t think I did.

RL: So nip/tuck was what fixed it?

KC: Yes. When I was in the ER, I had to have a plastic surgeon come in. I had blood in my eyes and I couldn’t see him, but he kept pointing his fingers at me saying, “How were you not wearing a seat belt?” I was saying, “Sir, could you please get the blood out of my eyes,” and my dad came in and was cursing him. He was, like, “Help my daughter! You don’t need to lecture her right now, help her. Fix her. Give her some pain medication or something!” Anyway, the hospital let that doctor go after that incident. Fortunately, no repeats since those two horrible accidents, and life has been pretty good since!

RL: With Nip/Tuck, I find it really intriguing that you have shot 50 episodes to last until 2011. Why and how is that possible? Will you be an old lady in a wheelchair watching yourself when you were a young lady?

KC: Yeah, pretty much! Part of it has to do with the writer’s strike, which screwed up our programming and filming cycles. Secondly, I think, I hate to say it, but the network wanted to get it done and over with all at once but extend it for broadcasting over a long period of time. They wanted to get us done with but keep it on the air.

Photo: Jacob Andrejczak

Kelly Carlson and Robin Leach.

RL: That is not a bad situation for an actress because it means you are onscreen for three more years, and you can go off and do other things. Is Nip/Tuck over with?

KC: We are shooting until June, and that wraps up Seasons 6 and 7. There will be no Season 8. We hit syndication strength with seven years of shows, so it could go nightly in reruns. Hopefully people will still want to hire us for other shows while we are leads on another series that is still on TV.

RL: You love Las Vegas, but you don’t like gambling. You work in Los Angeles, but you live in Toronto with your NHL boyfriend Tie Domi. You’re as slim as could be, yet you love our great food. I actually saw you doing your cover model shoot in Charlie Trotter’s restaurant here. You have a very busy life!

KC: Charlie is such a nice man. It is not that I love, love food, but I love cooking, and the reason I was so excited to meet Charlie is because he showed me a few things, and I like to learn how to cook because I love to eat everything. I just love coming to Vegas. There is always a good energy here; the minute you get off the plane, it is happy. Every experience I have had here is fun, and everyone is in a good mood; they are happy, and they let it go. I like that. It is refreshing to me. I love the restaurants and the service. I love coming to great hotels, I love over-the-top hotels, I love going to spas and spending time with my friends. My friends gamble. They are major high rollers, but I am too cheap to gamble. I love the spas, though. You’ll find me getting collagen facials or in and out of a mud bath or a milk bath. I have to take care of myself for the show.

RL: Now we know your character Kimber is a former porn actress, but the ladies I spoke to just describe her as a vixen.

KC: That’s putting it lightly! She really is a harlot!

Photo: Prive

Kelly Carlson and David Spade.

RL: Is there any of you in her?

KC: Absolutely. I take all of my emotional experiences in my life. I have lost my father. I take a lot of relationship feelings and bring it to the table with Kimber because most of her motivation is for a man on the show. Granted my life is nothing like Kimber’s, but the feelings are very similar. I bring my own emotional experiences and relationships to her. That is everything for her -- her motive for everything -- is this man …

RL: Would you ever have sat in a bathtub making love in an empty house being shown by Realtors? Could you have done that?

KC: I didn’t do that on the show -- that was Christian (actor Julian McMahon)! He had sex with a woman to revive her … that wasn’t me, but I have done many bad things on the show. I’d never done a love scene before the show. I had to watch Madonna’s Truth or Dare to get the movements. Emotional scenes are now much more difficult than sex scenes. I relate because in real life, I had done bad things when I was younger. I was a wild child. It’s nice, though, now to have grown up and be normal and domestic. I’ve become very traditional. Conservative, worldly and very wise but fun.

RL: Is marriage on the horizon up in Toronto with Tie?

KC: We don’t talk about it; we are both very content. You know when all is well, there is no pressure on either side.

Share This