People: Tara’s retracing her Miss-steps
Tara Conner may have barely kept her crown after a substance-abuse scandal, but she’ll be front and center when a new Miss USA is selected tonight.
“Certainly, our reigning Miss USA is going to be on television, and we’re certainly not going to shy away from referring to what happened,” executive producer Phil Gurin says.
“Why shy away from what’s part of our family? We embrace our family.”
Gurin says that viewers will be able to see Conner and “make their own determinations by seeing how she presents herself, what she has to say about what happened this past year … and that’s something we’ve never been able to do before.”
Conner endured intense scrutiny after reports she was frequenting New York bars. Donald Trump, co-owner of the pageant, decided to give her a second chance if she’d go into rehab – sparking a war of words between him and Rosie O’Donnell.
The pageant airs tonight at 9 on NBC.
Less Brit for the Brits
Lawyers for Britney Spears won a British court injunction Thursday designed to prevent publication of stories there about her recent stay in rehab.
The injunction bars unidentified “person or persons … who has/have been leaking information about Ms. Spears’ time in a rehabilitation clinic from further disclosures invading her privacy.”
Her manager said Spears left the Promises Malibu Alcohol and Drug Rehab Treatment Facility in California this week “after successfully completing their program.”
The blotto blotter
Elsewhere on the booze beat, Vivica A. Fox was arrested for investigation of driving under the influence after her vehicle passed a patrol car on the Hollywood Freeway at 80 mph.
Fox, a contestant on last year’s “Dancing With the Stars,” has appeared in “Kill Bill: Vol. 1,” “Soul Food” and “Independence Day.”
And Jesse Metcalfe, best known as Eva Longoria‘s former garden-boy love interest on “Desperate Housewives,” has checked himself into rehab “to deal with alcohol issues.”
Metcalfe also has appeared on “Smallville” and starred in the teen comedy “John Tucker Must Die.”
Getting a fair shake?
Dina Lohan insists daughter Lindsay, who entered rehab in January, isn’t an alcoholic.
“Noooo! She is just a 20-year-old who had to reel it in. And she’s from an addictive personality genetically,” the elder Lohan, 44, tells Harper’s Bazaar magazine.
And she downplays her own reputation as a club-hopping “party mom.”
“Listen to me: Lindsay would drag me, literally drag my loser butt (to a club) and say, ‘I need you to know who these people are.’
“Yeah, she trusts my judgment. She’s in such a whirlwind; she’s in a tornado. I mean, we’re talking serious earthquake, you know?”
The birthday bunch
Comedian Marty Allen is 85. Singer Ric Ocasek (The Cars) is 58. Singer Chaka Khan is 54. Actress Amanda Plummer is 50. Actress Hope Davis (“About Schmidt”) is 43. Actor Richard Grieco is 42. Actress Marin Hinkle (“Two and A Half Men”) is 41. Actress Keri Russell (“Felicity”) is 31. Actress Nicholle Tom (“The Nanny”) is 29.