Episode 11 - Jennifer Stallone | The Katie Miller Podcast

19:38My marriage has lasted the test of time because I'm incredibly patient and I'm incredibly forgiving.

19:48So, sorry, Sly. That's why it's worked. I'm just kidding. Well, I'm, you know.

19:58Katie Miller:What would he say on the flip side of that? He said, she's right. That's why it works. That's why it works because now he just agrees with everything. He's like, no, she works. It works because she's right. And I think now he gets it. He goes, yeah, he probably thought it was really crazy in the beginning because I had, like, ideas of how our home was going to be and our children and everything. And he kind of had more of a free spirit. He didn't even, he was like, I'm not going to parent teacher. They don't have to go to school. And I was like, yes, they do. And they're never going to be late.

20:27And my kids got perfect student wars. But our balance, our yin and yang, like he got me, I'm very A-type. He got me out of my box. And then he kind of, so I could be a little more crazy sometimes. And then I think I brought him to a wonderful, loving home, which he never had before. So, you know, we each offered something.

20:48Katie Miller:It's funny. Five years in, finally, like for the first time, Stephen turns me and he goes, do you want me to like offer you advice on how to fix it or are you just like looking for me to listen to you? And I was like, B, just listen. Just listen. Don't offer. I just need to get it out and then I'm okay. It's like the first time I'm like, stop offering me advice. It's not what I'm coming to you for. Exactly. I think a good thing is once the kids go to bed, it's really important to have you time with your like husband and wife time instead of like, you can't always just focus on children. You have to, I think that would be one advice I would say is like, go have a glass of wine together.

21:21Go sit outside where the kids can't hear you and just kind of like reconnect as, because if you're good as husband and wife, your children will be good.

21:31Katie Miller:How have you managed to balance your own professional passions and your career when he's had such a demanding one? Is it at times that you've taken a backseat to his career and now that your kids are out of the home, you're stepping up more? Like, I want to go to giving advice to other women who feel like they are, their career has taken a back seat and their husband's ambitions have won out? And is it the wife's job to stay at home and raise the children while their husbands are doing amazing things? That's a real hard thing. I think it is very challenging for women because a lot of my friends did stay home and my two older sisters, one was an RN and she stopped when her first daughter was born, her oldest daughter.

22:09And I think it's hard because I know being a stay-at-home mom is one of the toughest jobs I've ever done in my whole life. I can run a company. I work 17 hours a day on the road. I could do all this stuff. Being home, doing the same thing, cooking, cleaning, driving the kids to school, making lunches, unpacked, going to sports, making dinner, cleaning the house, that to me is 100 times harder than going to work. I used to sit on a plane for five hours when I traveled to the East Coast. And I'd sit next to businessmen and they'd be like, ah, you know, I have to go to work. And I'm like, are you joking?

22:48Like we're sitting here watching TV, going through our notes, drinking a coffee. No one's pulling on us. No one's asking us for anything. This is vacation.

22:57Katie Miller:It's a luxury. It's a luxury. What, are you joking? And I'm like, come on, snap out of it. Go do what your wife is doing. And you come back and tell me, you'll be like, I want to be sitting here, just like get to order my own dinner. I don't have to order five other dinners and pack and do for everybody. No, it's much easier going to work and getting a paycheck at the end of the day than staying home and no one goes, good job, you did great today. Here's money for working all day. You don't get that as a mom. You're exhausted and it gets monotonous over time. But the greatest joy is like, I wouldn't change that for the world.

23:38I was blessed to be able to do both and sort of manage it pretty well. It was hard. It was really hard at times. But I also I would fly all night just to get land so I could get home to take my kids to school in the morning. Like, yes, those were hard times. But I just a lot of women can't do that balance. It's really tough for a lot of women today to try to manage a home, you know, a career and, you know, take care of your husband and everything else that goes along with that.

24:09Katie Miller:Do you think if society was more supportive of saying to women, it's not your income that matters or your paycheck or what you're doing in the workplace, but also a high and good use of your time is being a mom and staying at home with your children? It's so important. It's so important. And if you have an option to work part-time or even stay at home for at least the first, like, seven, eight years of your kid's life, I would say stay at home. Those kids are going to come out, and it's going to be so much better for them and for you in the long run. It is. It truly is. And I always think that, like, we put too much emphasis on, like, what society should say and what we should do.

24:47You really just got to look in. Don't worry about what's going on. Your neighbors, this person over here, if they're mentioning it on the news, who cares? You know what's right. You know what's right for your family. You know what's right for your kids. You do what's right. Don't worry about what other people are talking about. Don't worry about what your friends are doing, what they're saying. Because instinctually, moms and women, that's our greatest gift is our ability to know what's right and what's wrong. We know it. We know what's wrong with our kids, what's right with our marriages. So just really go off of that natural, God-given instinct of we know the truth.

25:27We know what's right and wrong.

25:28Katie Miller:I'm sure over time, though, living in Hollywood, you've built up a thick skin to not giving a shit, if I will say this, to what anybody else thinks. But it is very hard to not care what your friends think or how people in the community view you or what so-and-so says. Yeah, it is. But again, that's a lot of it's white noise. What I would recommend, just being an older woman, I'm in my late 50s, I would say for women, find, if you have like sisters, great. That's an amazing gift. But if you don't or your sisters don't live near you, just find like two or three really good women that you protect each other's marriages, you watch each other's kids, you have each other's backs.

26:08That's all you need. You don't need a whole community. You just need a couple people.

26:13Katie Miller:So back to marriage very quickly. Why do you think that so many celebrity marriages fall apart in Hollywood? You've seen, I'm sure, a lot of your friends through years go through marriage and divorce. I just want to go back to this. What is unique about Hollywood? Because I think so many people see this in the news, whether it be people or E! or something. They just don't understand the culture of what it's like. Well, you have to remember, celebrities are people. And they go to the bathroom. They brush their teeth. They have bad hair days. They have, you know, they wake up looking ugly. And then they bring in their team that clips in all the fake hair.

26:49And they put in, you know, their fake eyelashes. And they dress them head to toe. But at the bottom, you know, they're still people. And it's a very insecure business. And I'll tell you why. Especially if you're in front of the camera. Because you're always aging in front of the camera. People are like, oh, my God, she doesn't look as good as she did a few years ago. And la, la, la. So women are always feeling that time clock. And then a lot of what happens is, especially in the acting world and producing directors, what I see on the set is that you're away. The wife is usually home or the husband's home with the kids, and you're in a different state.

27:26Because you don't film in Los Angeles anymore. You film in Atlanta or New Orleans or Canada or Bulgaria. So you're not home for like a month or two or sometimes three months. So your set becomes your family. and you start to look at your hair, makeup people and the director and producers and, you know, the clothing people. And you start to say, oh, those are like my family. We spend, you know, 15 hours a day together. I know everything about them. And that becomes your, like, makeshift family. You go to dinners with them and see. And then you see, you know, let's say your wife back home and, you know, she's been like crying babies on her.

28:03She's exhausted. And And you're sitting in a makeup chair and you get just to read lines. So it's really hard for the person that has to stay at home because then when you get back together, you almost have to figure each other out again. You're like, okay, you just were gone for three months and all I heard about was the stories on the set. But like, I'm home. Like, who are you again? Like, you sort of have to figure each other out. And I think that's what happens with a lot of these marriages is that there's just too much time apart. kind of grow apart a little bit when you're out in the world filming.

28:36The kids get left behind. It's very confusing.

28:40Katie Miller:Okay, I promise this is my last celebrity question. Okay. A lot of people would say, everybody's saying, that Sylvester Stallone would probably be the person they would like to meet the most if they would meet a celebrity, right? Yeah. So when you meet the person, I want to know who it is, would you say, is it maybe yours as a couple or just yours, like your celebrity that you're like, oh, man, if only I ever met them, or maybe you have. what was that interaction like? Because I know it's different when you know you don't want to bother somebody and you want them to be able to. I will never bother anyone or go up to anybody because people, nobody knows who I am.

29:12So like if I'm with Sly they know I'm his wife. Right. So I never approach anyone unless I really really know that. But I really, I like the older celebrities like Jimmy Stewart. Like I just feel like he seemed like a really good guy, like a really good husband, a really good man. And I think people like that are like really good character. I don't know. I don't know him. I never met him. So maybe like someone like that I envisioned because of the movies he made. I thought, wow, that guy's pretty cool. So I'm going to go back to serious skincare for a second. So can you tell us more about what products have been your favorite?

29:51Katie Miller:Why have you loved selling it? And why did you start the brand? Well, I'll start with why I started it. I had acne growing up and I never was on Accutane and I couldn't get my skin to get clear. So I was searching and searching for some product. And then finally I met this lady. Her name was Lisa up in Santa Cruz, California. And she had a little skincare line. And she's like, oh, you know, I've helped so many people with acne. And this is way, way, like 30 years ago. And she goes, it really takes like a system, like glycolic cleanser to exfoliate the skin. and then salicylic acid and benzoyl peroxide.

30:29But you need a step, you know, like cleanse correctly, exfoliate, and then treat the skin, and then heal the skin with a moisturizer. But all of them have to work together because, you know, acne is your skin's inability to peel itself correctly within the follicle wall. It gets clogged with dead skin cells. Like your skin doesn't exfoliate. Like natural skin cells kind of exfoliate all the time. We have dead skin cells floating all around us right now. Now, what happens with people with acne skin is their skin gets trapped. Those dead skin cells don't exfoliate. So it gets stuck in the skin with bacteria and all that other stuff.

31:02It forms a pimple, a blackhead or a whitehead. Well, she was like, well, it's your skin exfoliating every 12 hours, morning and night. You'll have clear skin. It takes time. But get that skin cell turnover. And I thought, that's genius. This is before all the other skin care lines out there that are on TV. This is, we were the first. This is a three-piece system. I said, oh, that's genius. And I was in my mid-20s. I had been modeling, and I had money saved up, and I thought, wow, if I could get this on TV and explain it to people. But I didn't have enough money for advertising. I didn't have enough money to put ads in the newspapers or in the magazines.

31:43But I was watching Home Shopping Network one night, and I thought, wow, you can go on there and, like, sell everything and, like, show them. and explain why this works. So I went, okay, I got to figure out how to get to Florida. I have to figure out how to get a meeting. I have to figure out how to get the product there. So my partner and I at the time went down there. We explained it and they were like, well, you know, our customer's a little bit older. I know, I go, but they have kids, they have grandkids and they may have adult acne, like menopausal acne. They're like, yeah, well, you know, we'll put you on like two in the morning.

32:17So they bought 5 ,000 units of our little three or four piece kit. And we manufactured them. I shipped it out to them. And we sold out. And then they ordered some more. And then they ordered another shipment. So after about me going down there, I realized, well, we really have something here. But I'm paying too much for the packaging. I'm paying too much for the caps. I'm paying too much for the shipping. My costs were getting too high. So the margin wasn't that great. So I asked Home Shopping and the people who worked there, I said, you know, who knows how to manufacture, who can help me run this business?

32:53And they introduced me to my business partner, George. So we made him a partner. And the rest is history. And then we just started making products. And at one time, I think we had 75 SKUs. And we had, we were doing, at the time, I think we were selling, I mean, we had a vitamin A kit. We'd sell 15 ,000 to 20 ,000 of them in a weekend. I would sell 100 ,000 InstaTalks, which was a wrinkle smoother, an instant wrinkle smoother. Now the market is flooded with those, but we were the first one. So we were really inventive with a lot of our products because a lot of people that had ideas or really unique ingredients, because we could manufacture them so quickly and get them to market really fast because of home shopping, they would give us the ingredient and the formula and then we'd make it and then I present it to our customers.

33:48Katie Miller:What's your favorite product or which one do you use now? The ones I love today would definitely be my glycolic cleanser that I've been using for 30 years. I love the glycolic cleanser. I love this other product called Lock and Bond. It's like a very heavy moisturizer. I love our vitamin C night cream. I love our eyelash makeup eye remover because it has an eyelash growth ingredient in there. So when I'm taking off my eye makeup, it helps to grow your lashes. You know, I have so many products. I love our Dry Low. It's like our one-stop acne, you know, pimple eraser. What's your skincare routine now?

34:28I use, I cleanse her every day. I also like a buff puff. This is really like one of my cheats. I buy those buff puffs that you get at the drugstore, and they're reusable. You can buy the gentle ones. I use the regular ones, and I put my glycolic cleanser on that. And that really does a really good scrub on your face, gets rid of the makeup and everything. And then I take off my eye makeup. I use, I don't use too many eye creams, but I use my vitamin C cream. I love our vitamin E serum. And I always layer. so I throw on I kind of have a whole bunch of products and I'm just like just throw it off try it off it doesn't matter I go serums first moisturizer second how about that you've seen

35:12Katie Miller:trends come and go yeah which one should never come back good oh god oh I don't even know um oh god uh tattooing I'm not a fan of tattoos even though Sly has a few on them. I just think I'd rather do something that's not permanent. I've never I don't have a tattoo by the way but I think like permanent things. I have two and I wish I never did them. See? I wish I never did them. I did it when I was like 15 and 16 and I just I tell my daughter the day that I can get them removed when I'm having children. I tell them I say I go there's nothing you're gonna like on your body that you're going to want forever.

35:55Like, there's nothing, like even a mole, sometimes you want that mole off. I think tattooing, put something semi-permanent, like nothing permanent, because you're going to want to change it.

36:06Katie Miller:It's like hair color, it's like hair, you know, cuts. There's a pressure in Hollywood for women to age gracefully. How do you navigate that? You know, I'm not going to say I don't do stuff because I would be lying. I mean, I do occasional Botox and things like that. I mean, I would like to get my neck done. I mean, I am 57. Let's get real. I mean, you know, I think when I'm in my 60s, I might do a little this, a little that. But I think graceful is, you know, in the eye of the beholder. If you don't care, like, look at me. I'm wrinkled. I know. You're beautiful. I have fringe. I could only hope to look as good as you.

36:45No, you know, I'm like, whatever. I do it but then I forget to do it for a really long time then I look in the mirror and I'm like oh my god I gotta do something I do I do a lot of like treatments as far as like peels and things like that I've grown up in the Sun my whole life I grew up in California on the beach and I grew up now I'm living in Florida so you know we get like age spots and things like that I you know you want those removed whatever that's graceful isn't it what's your daily routine like I get up early and make the coffee what do you want to know I take the dogs out. Yeah, the dogs.

37:19I let them go to the bathroom.

37:21Katie Miller:I will just say this. For women out there like myself, the reason why I started this podcast is because there are so much pressures in everyday life and society. And most women who are sitting at home or who are working say no one else feels like me or no one else lives the same day like I live through the bad times, the good times and everything in between. And so for someone like you, I think it's just important that people hear like, what is a normal day? because I think what people would perceive a normal day isn't your real normal day. It's not my real normal day. Like, I don't get my nails done.

37:50Look how horrible they look. I don't want to waste time doing that. I make the coffee the night before, so I just have to push the button in the morning, let the dogs out, wait for the coffee to brew. I bring Sly and I a cup of coffee so we have our coffee in bed. We can watch the news. I mean, we just do normal things. I like to wake up a little earlier before the whole house wakes up. Right now, we're empty nesters, unfortunately. So it's just us and the dogs and the cat. And then I make breakfast, eggs, toast. I do normal things. I go to the grocery store. I love going to the grocery store.

38:24Are you Whole Foods?

38:25Katie Miller:Are you Publix? Are you the local butcher? Whatever I'm buying. If I'm buying meats and produce, I like Whole Foods. If I'm buying more staple stuff, milks and things like that, oatmeal, I go to the closest one, which is usually Publix. And then sometimes I go to specialty stores to get like my favorite breads and things like that. What do you typically eat in a day? Oh, I'm an eater. I'm no Slim Jim. I like to eat. So I eat breakfast, eggs, toast, avocado. I make an oatmeal, like overnight oats, and I make a big pot of it. So it's always in my refrigerator and it has like chia seeds and it has oats and almond milk, oat milk, kefir in there some cinnamon mix it all up stick it in the refrigerator and so when I'm hungry or if I don't have time to eat breakfast I do that and then I don't eat a huge lunch I'll usually snack on something like some cheese and crackers or some chicken salad whatever's in the fridge and then dinner half the time I order in and then the other time since Scarlett's here my youngest and she's a great cook.

39:31So we'll make steaks and we'll make, she brought me an air fryer. So we make like sweet potato fries in the air fryer and broccoli, like normal stuff. When's the last time you had fast food? Let's say that was on Sunday. When did it happen? We went to Pig Beach. It's called Pig Beach here. It's on, I think it's on Okeechobee or Dixie Highway. Sorry, it's on Dixie Highway. Pig Beach is awesome. They have these things called smash burgers and I get sly double-double with cheese. I get the single with cheese. We get French fries. And to be healthy, I get the chopped cucumber salad. Points for something, right?

40:10Katie Miller:Okay, so we've played this game on every single episode of a game of Would You Rather. Okay. Would you rather have flawless skin but bad hair days forever or perfect hair but constant breakouts? I would rather have great skin and bad hair because I can do like a lot. I can make my hair like messy and I don't care if I had great skin. I'm good to go. Would you rather have to run up the Philadelphia Art Museum steps every morning or have Eye of the Tiger play every time you sit down? Oh, my God. Run up the steps. I can get my exercise in and call it a day. Would you rather live in Beverly Hills without a glam team or in Palm Beach without air conditioning?

40:47I love it in Palm Beach. So I would have to say I'd put a fan. Can I have a fan? You can have a fan. I'll live in Palm Beach.

40:54Katie Miller:Which would you rather give up forever, coffee or moisturizer? Moisturizer. I have to have coffee. That's my one thing. Would you rather your husband always be right or never be allowed to correct him when he's wrong? I'd rather him always be right because he's always wrong. I'm just kidding.

41:18I mean, my life would be so easy.

41:21Katie Miller:All right. What's your guilty pleasure TV show right now? God, my daughter and I are watching...

41:31We watch a lot of reality, I have to say. I'm in the middle of watching The Nader Sisters.

41:39Katie Miller:Haven't seen it. Okay, no.

41:44And anything with a housewives we like. Any housewives. Pick one. Give me one. I think Orange County is on right now. whichever one is on right now exactly is that why you chose to do a reality show because you guys watched a lot of them we watched a lot of them but I also wanted ours to be a little different because I thought um I love watching reality because all it is is like a cat fight every time everyone's crying everyone's fighting I'm like I don't know I'm like I how can many fights can you get in with one person it's kind of crazy so I wanted ours to be a little bit different and show a different side.

42:19It's probably one of the hardest things we've ever done. I will never do it again, though. Why was it hard? It's hard because you have people in your home all the time. And it's hard because you can't just have it. It's not really reality. You know that. You have to say, OK, your daughter's coming home from college. You're upset about that. So you're going to have a conversation why you're upset about that. So it is everything set up because they couldn't just follow you around because it'd be kind of boring, right? Like the dog just pooped and you're cleaning poop up. I mean, that's just not how it works.

42:50It's like you have to have situations. So they film the situations. And that is a lot of work because you're just coming up with things and thinking of stories and ideas for your show. So, you know, these stories are like, oh, I just planned to go to Vegas because it was on a Tuesday and I wanted my friends to come. That's not, no, we're going to plan to go to Vegas and we're going to plan to do this and we were going to plan to get in a fight. So I didn't realize how much work it is and how much you had to like come up with.

43:21Katie Miller:If the fights weren't real, did they often carry on into real life? Or did people understood that they were fake? I think they, I think there was some kind of fight going on. Maybe it wasn't as big as it turned out to be. Then it turns into the snowball. And then all of a sudden it's a disaster and everybody's hurt. I think that's what happens. It's like they have a germ of an idea and then it just keeps building and then feelings get hurt. Where in real life you just kind of either pass over it or have like a private conversation. Exactly. Exactly. What do you always keep in your purse? A hairbrush, lip balm, cash, and credit cards.

44:03And that's about it. How often do you switch purses? Quite a bit. And I'm one of those people, I used to save things because I didn't grow up with anything. I'm one of seven children, so I never had anything that special. And when I got a few special things, I remember saving them. And I kept these. Someone gave me these beautiful sweaters, and I saved them because I was like, I'm going to save them for a fancy day. One day I'm going to wear these sweaters out. And one day I looked in that drawer, and they were all eaten by moths.

44:32Katie Miller:No. So from that moment on, I'm like, I am not saving. I let anyone borrow anything my girls can wear any of my clothes they can borrow any of my purses they can wear my jewelry they they go into my jewelry and they take it I'm like just bring it back you know because I don't want to save anything anymore I want to wear everything to the death of it and I just always just take my purse dump it in another purse I always have two purses going at one time you know do you ever find like I find now when I change purses it's like my other person have like just stuff in them like it's a trail of stuff I find things money like there's always like$20 somewhere there's there's mints there's this there's that there's like oh that's where that clip went what's your go-to hype song I have a lot I love old school rap I love like old school rap just any of that is fun I like I love country now I'm listening to a lot of like Morgan Wallen yes I love all that too I like a combination of music I don't have like one I just put on and like start rocking out.

45:35All right.

45:36Katie Miller:So our last question of the pod, if you could host a dinner party with three people dead or alive, who's sitting at the table and what are you eating? Oh God. Of course, God. I mean, I mean, I get me, come on. You would say like Jesus, of course. I think my father, cause he died when I was 11. I'd love him to be there. And my mom died recently. I'd love to see my mom again. So maybe my dad and my mom and Jesus. That'd be fun. And we just drink wine and eat bread, olive oil. I would just, I don't care about really the food as much as like picking at stuff. So maybe some cheeses and some salami and some great dessert, you know, easy food.

46:21I'd be all into the conversation.

46:24Katie Miller:Are you still close with all of your family? Yeah, I'm very close. I mean, unfortunately, we live all across America, but I love my brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, two passed away, two of my brothers. So we're getting smaller, but it's still very, my sisters are my best friends. Family is the most important. Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. Can I have a hug? I'm a hugger. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for watching this week's episode of the Katie Miller Podcast. Please remember to like, follow, subscribe, and share. we are moving again to Tuesday nights at 6 p.m.

46:58Katie Miller:We'll see you every Tuesday, 6 p.m. Thanks so much. See you next week.