Gonzo Journo William Keck Tells All (and Makes Amends) in Outrageous Memoir

EDGE: Please tell us about yourself.

William Keck: I'm from upstate New York and spent the last 30 years as an entertainment reporter and TV producer. I worked for three years at the National Enquirer in the '90s during the OJ Simpson trial and then at the Los Angeles Times. I was the West Coast entertainment reporter for USA Today for five years. I was a senior editor and columnist at TV Guide for six years, and then I spent seven years as a senior talent producer at the Hallmark Channel's "Home and Family" daytime talk show.

EDGE: As a child, I read that you adopted TV families as your own. Who were some of those families, and why?

William Keck: My dad died when I was five years old, and I was an only child. I would play with the other neighborhood kids outside, and then it was time to go to dinner. They would pair up with their siblings and return to their homes to eat. I pictured them like the Bradys and all the other big TV families like the Partridges, and then I would go home and it would just be me and my mom for many years, until my stepfather came into the picture. I always dreamed about being like the Bradfords from "Eight Is Enough," even the Ingalls from "Little House on the Prairie" – that was my dream. When I moved to LA, my main goal was to meet these TV families, and I did, but while working at the Enquirer I was meeting them at their weddings, their funerals, and in their hospital rooms. It was only years later, while I was working at Hallmark, that I could reunite them for big, two-hour cast reunions, and that was when I felt like I was officially an Ewing, a Carrington, an Ingalls, or a Walton.

EDGE: Tell us about "When You Step Upon A Star?"

William Keck: I conducted over 1,000 interviews with celebrities over the years, and most of them went well, but the stories people seem to want to hear are those that didn't go well. Many of those are from my years at the Enquirer, when I was not invited to interview these people. Like I said, I was sneaking into their private domains, and, as you would expect, that didn't go so well. I was escorted out of John Candy's funeral. I snuck into Meredith Baxter Birney's wedding, and I did that by buying a $5 picture frame from Target. I walked into the reception with the other guests, nodded at the security guards, and my date and I lingered around until the last two place cards hadn't been claimed. We grabbed them and sat at a table next to the minister who had married Meredith and her then-husband, Michael. Then, when it came time for the cake cutting, I just jumped up with the other family members and snapped a picture of the cake cutting, which appeared in that week's Enquirer. There were high-speed chases with Britney Spears and Elizabeth Taylor. A lot of weird stuff, like trying to find a husband for Phyllis Diller, a contest I ran in the Enquirer.

It also gets dark. I talk about my journey and the hypocrisy of being an Enquirer reporter snooping into celebrities' private lives while keeping my secrets from the world.

EDGE: What secrets were you hiding?

William Keck: I was deep in the closet. I fell in love with someone and wanted to share this with my friends and family, so I decided to come clean in my own private life, which meant also coming clean in my professional life. At the same time I came out, I quit the Enquirer, and the first person I came out to was Judith Light. I mean, how incredible is that? She is a gay icon and advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. We were in a seminar together – the Landmark Forum – and it was a shocking moment of discovery when we both discovered we were in the same seminar. We were supposed to unleash all of our innermost fears and secrets. She said, "Oh my gosh, I'm in an intensive weekend seminar with a National Enquirer reporter." And I realized I was in a seminar with Angela from "Who's the Boss." So, we had to trust each other, and we did. We both took a leap of faith, and it worked out well. By the end of that weekend, I came out to her, and then, soon after that, I came out to everybody.

EDGE: When writing a story for the National Enquirer, were you told to write them as salaciously as possible? What was the directive?

William Keck: The assignment was to find a source. You would pick up the phone, and it could be a disgruntled nanny, a low-paid hospital employee, somebody at the police department, or people who had vendettas against their exes. You never know who could be calling in for a fast buck.

Sometimes, it was the celebrities themselves who wanted to be in the Enquirer. I write about my adventures with Zsa Zsa Gabor and her husband, Prince Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt. He always wanted to be the Enquirer. He called me up one time to say that he had been kicked out of Bally's health club because the women in the jacuzzi could see his manhood through his white Speedo, so I convinced him to go with me to the Beverly Hills Hotel, and he wore his Speedo. We had a cameraman there, and he shot the speedo dry, and then Freddy went into the pool and came out, and we photographed him wet, and then left it up to the readers to see if there was enough of a manhood issue that warranted him to be kicked out. So many crazy stories like that.

Only once was I beaten up by a celebrity, and that's the only name in the book that I don't reveal. It's toward the end of the book. This male celebrity has multiple Emmy wins for his '90s sitcom. He did not appreciate me showing up at his door and snooping into his business. After the beating, I signed a non-disclosure, but I dropped hints, and instead of showing his face in that chapter, I ran photos of me wrestling a bear. The Enquirer always had us do these insane things; you never knew what would happen that day.

EDGE: Favorite outrageous story you wrote?

William Keck: I was trying to crash Dean Martin's funeral, and so the security guards cleared the cemetery grounds. I was walking the perimeter of the Westwood Memorial Cemetery, and I saw that a neighbor outside the cemetery had a tree that was growing over the wall, so I rented the tree for $500, and the photographer and I were perched up there. We had a perfect bird's eye view of the celebrities arriving, including Frank Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney. I could hear Rosemary Clooney singing Dean Martin standards. I stole Kelsey Grammar's garbage to find out his secrets. I conspired to get Telly Savalas (of "Kojak") a tombstone. He had been buried in an unmarked grave, so I pretended to be somebody, and I arranged to have his tombstone installed, and we got photos of that. Those are just a few. There are so many more.

EDGE: Is there a star you regret stepping on?

William Keck: Absolutely, tons. I wrote about sending Emilie de Ravin from "Lost" running and crying from a round-table interview with several of her "Lost" co-stars while I worked for USA Today. I had to ask personal questions about their lives, and unfortunately, the week of this interview, Emilie split from her husband, so when I brought up that topic, she got really upset and just ran off in tears. Then, her castmates defended her and said it was inappropriate for me to ask personal questions. I felt terrible about that. Emilie apologized to me through her publicist, and we became friends. That's a big part of the book.

Over the years, I had an opportunity to do legitimate interviews. I received a second chance, and now many celebrities know me as a legitimate and respected journalist and TV producer. Several of them responded to my request to contribute essays from their perspective. Even though I crashed Melissa Gilbert's wedding back in the day, she writes a whole page in the book about the William she's come to know. Marcia Cross from "Desperate Housewives" was one of the first people I alerted about the book. I was sent to her home to interview and meet her new twin girls. The morning of the interview, the man I was seeing at the time texted me that a story had just broken from Perez Hilton about nude photos leaking of Marcia. So, here I was at her home, doing a fluffy little at-home piece, and in my mind I was thinking about whether or not I ask her about them. I decided to bring them up, which ended the whole interview. Marcia said, "Oh, Will, you're too hard on yourself." She absolved me, and she told her side of the story. She wasn't mad at me. She was mad at the photographer who took those invasive photos, and she had paid $10,000 to have those photos go away, and here they resurfaced.

For some of the celebrities I covered, I have received responses from their co-stars. Once, I upset Bruce Willis at a premiere, and he told me he would come burn my house down. I can't apologize to him because he's sadly nonverbal, but his "Moonlighting" co-star, Cybill Shepherd, spoke on his behalf, defended his sense of humor, and said that he most likely was not serious about burning my house down.

I have a very serious story in there about my very first story for the Enquirer, when I was sent to get a deathbed interview with Dack Rambo from "Dallas," who was dying of AIDS. I was sent with this hotshot new Enquirer hire and told do whatever he does. Well, Brad ended up inventing the whole deathbed interview. We never found him in his hospital bed, so Brad took me to a diner, and he made up a whole fake deathbed interview. That's been haunting me forever. It was a terrible thing, because here I was, a closeted gay guy, and I lusted after Dack Rambo when he was starring in "Dallas." It was just shocking how the Enquirer gets their stories. Sadly, I could not apologize to Dack or his immediate family because they have passed away. His "Dallas" co-star, Sheree J. Wilson, who played April Stevens Ewing, writes a lovely essay in the book about the Dack Rambo she knew and the legacy of a brave man who was one of the first to come forward with his diagnosis and helped change the perception of what AIDS was.

EDGE: Were there any celebrity threats that you took seriously?

William Keck: I had my crotch grabbed by one male celebrity in the book. He was a sitcom idol of mine, and I write about him. There was a time when celebrities thought they were above the law and could do anything. I think he thought I was getting a treat from him.

I did take these threats seriously. Kelsey Grammer, in his memoir, called me a despicable piece of flesh who he invited to fry in hell. He said, "Your mother must be very proud of you." And, in fact, my mother was very proud that Frasier was writing about me in his book. She got a big kick out of it. I shared the chapter with Kelsey, and he chose not to respond, but his ex-fiancé did, and wrote a personal essay where she revealed that their engagement ended with Kelsey having their therapist break up with her. He didn't even call to tell her himself, and then that led to her contemplating thoughts of suicide.

I received legal letters from Teri Hatcher and Victoria Principal. I write about how I stalked Victoria when I first came out to LA. I was so desperate to meet her that I booked an appointment to get a nose job from her plastic surgeon husband, Dr. Harry Glassman. I pass his office and see this framed photo of Victoria in a beautiful sterling silver frame. I was so excited that I ended up going through with the nose job. I did get to meet her, and became a little stalkery with her, which I write all about in the book. We haven't spoken since I got that legal letter, but when she found out about the book, she called me, and we had a lovely off-the-record conversation for about an hour. She elected not to write an essay in the book because she is very protective of her private life, but I feel like that conversation did help heal old wounds.

EDGE: Is this book a confessional and redemption for you?

William Keck: 100%! At the end of every chapter, I have a lesson learned. I believe that each of these mafia-like assignments I was sent out on helped me get a sense of who I was, what I was capable of, and what I was not willing to do. It helped give me a sense of right and wrong. I think that these lessons learned are just very funny, but others, I think, are relatable to others. I think the reader can apply it to their own lives with whatever moral quandaries they may be presented with. I was thrilled that I was absolved of my sins by many of these celebrities and their friends. The front of the book is loaded with quotes or support from many of my idols – Henry Winkler, Linda Evans, Donna Mills, Joan Collins, Lindsay Wagner, and many more. I crashed Lindsay's father's funeral back in the day, and here she's writing some lovely words about the power of forgiveness and second chances. I think that I was able to cleanse my soul and move forward with a clean conscience.

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