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Contact Tina Andreadis
212-207-7269
“Everything that comes out of Ali’s mouth is funny!”—Jerry Seinfeld
Southampton, NY – The Greek Orthodox Church of the Hamptons announces bestselling author, actress, comedienne, and wife of media star George Stephanopoulos, ALI WENTWORTH as this year’s keynote speaker for the 2012 Sophocles N. & Louiza Zoullas Memorial Hellenic Lecture. On Saturday, July 21 at 7pm Ali Wentworth will discuss her life and bestselling book, ALI IN WONDERLAND exclusively at The Greek Orthodox Church of the Hamptons.
In her sharp-witted—and often laugh out loud funny—bestselling memoir, ALI IN WONDERLAND: And Other Tall Tales (Published by Harper/HarperCollins), actress, comedian and writer Ali Wentworth shares her real-life adventures through the looking glass: from a Washington childhood as the daughter of a White House social secretary, to years in the casting trenches of Hollywood, and back to Washington as the wife of George Stephanopoulos. In between there was a rough stint at an all-girl boarding school, misspent college years, and a few decades of soured relationships—all priceless comic material for the woman who has made us laugh on Oprah, In Living Color, and Seinfeld, and in the pages of Marie Claire and Vogue.
Ali’s memories begin in earnest when she was four and her family moved into “an immodest four-story brick house” in Washington’s Embassy Row (“It’s like frat houses with the cool ones (like Italy and France) who threw parties like recruitment week at William and Mary and lame ones (Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka) who’d maybe get a few interns from the UN who had to B.Y.O.B. their own Red Bulls.”). Her mother, the indomitable Muffie, had married a well-place British journalist. A force of nature, Muffie is a guiding source of reason throughout Ali’s life, pulling no punches and always getting to the heart of the matter with a well-observed truth (When Ali discovers that her recent ex-fiancé is taking his new “wife” to the Caribbean, Muffie simply counters, “Darling, nobody goes to the Bahamas in July!” When Ali’s young daughter is experiencing nightmares, Muffie pushes aside talk of child psychology with, “Did you ever think it might have something to do with how you decorated her room?”).
Ali’s less-than-average childhood included dinners where President Nixon ordered her dog banished from the festivities and pool parties riding the back of Henry Kissinger (“Only in Washington could a man paddle around like a tortoise in a heated swimming pool with a giggling five-year-old girl while he was simultaneously bombing Cambodia. But what did I know, he had a wide back.”). She and her siblings endured a series of wildly inappropriate nannies, and at thirteen she was unceremoniously shipped off to a boarding school in New England (all-girl, her own unfathomable choice). There, she was saddled with a suicidal roommate and the usual corrupting influences. But it was all in good fun for Ali, who can find the silver lining in the murkiest of clouds.
In matters of the heart, Ali shares every ignominious, if hilarious, detail—from the French film director who swept her off her feet in a romantic fantasy that ended with some very unromantic reality in the aisles of Kmart. Finally she hits the relationship jackpot with George (“I had a big, fat, WASP, Greek wedding, heavy on the Greek. What I didn’t realize was, when you marry one Greek, you marry them all (approx.16 million.”) and settles into domestic contentment as mother to two princess-loving daughters (“I tried to explain to them that the Ariel doll’s head would be floating in the toilet bowl by next week and that we already had four Cinderella dresses, but I didn’t want my daughters to feel neglected or Amish when they went to their friends’ houses and didn’t know every word of ‘Someday My Prince Will Come.’”).
“Ali Wentworth is funny and warm and crazy all at once,” says Alec Baldwin. “Like Barbara Eden. But on something. Like crystal meth.” And ALI IN WONDERLAND is as funny, warm and crazy as the woman who lived it.
EVENT DETAILS
DATE: July 21, 2012 TIME: 7PM
LOCATION: Greek Orthodox Church of the Hamptons 111 Saint Andrews Road; Southampton New York
RSVP (required): 631-283-6169
Copies of Ali’s book will be available for sale and autographing at the event
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