Chapter 1
COVER STORY | DECEMBER 2019
It’s a Sunday afternoon in Beverly Hills and I’m seated in a red naugahyde booth of LA’s trendiest restaurant, Bettelheim’s, the kind of place where fake leather is touted as vintage in La-La Land. It’s normally closed on Sundays, but when Sarah White’s assistant made “a call,” they opened up just for her. The European royal turned celebrity is running late from set – she’s wrapping up this season of the hit reality TV show, The Royal Bachelorette – and I’ve been waiting for her for over an hour, keeping busy by making chit-chat with the hovering waiters, hostesses, helpers and hangers-on pretending to be gainfully employed as they watch the door. If I hadn’t have known better, I would have thought it was bring-your-family-to-work day.
The front door of the restaurant is propped open, awaiting White’s arrival, and I spy a black sedan pull up. When White finally emerges from the vehicle and makes her entrance on this hot, do-nothing August afternoon, she is wearing a diaphanous mauve cover-up trimmed with ruffles that sweep the ground as she walks, with nothing underneath but a matching bra and briefs – along with jewels worthy of Marilyn Monroe and expensively scuffed sneakers – “old Tom Ford Gucci” she later tells me. She kisses goodbye to the driver she’s known for a few hours like it’s been a few years and glides past the crowd awaiting her arrival and slips into my corner booth.
“Isn’t this place just the chicest!” she coos, motioning to her security swarm to station themselves at the far end of the room. White is petite with porcelain skin, short black hair, and saucer-wide blue eyes. And those doe-eyes seem to grow even larger as she attempts to determine whether this perfect stranger, in whose hands she’s putting her life to document, is trustworthy. She smiles widely – a beneficent, ethereal kind of smile – and begins to giggle and you realize your preconceived notions about White aren’t quite right. She’s not the “naïve royal.” She’s not the “Sexiest Woman Alive.” She’s not the drugged-and-out-of-control Lindsey Lohan version 2.0. She comes across as friendly and chit-chatty, even normal, laughing easily and cursing liberally. She explains the deal with the fifteen bodyguards.
“When I signed onto the [The Royal Bachelorette], I had no idea how it would turn out. That I would be the bachelorette! Honestly I still can’t believe it, but it’s the reason I have all these...” She pauses, yanking off her sneakers so she can crisscross her legs on the booth and lean it, “stalkers – fans, I mean.” As with most things to do with White, you’ve assuredly heard the news (whether you wanted to or not) that White and “The Bachelor,” Euro-popstar idol, Prince, became engaged on the season finale of The Royal Bachelorette—but what you probably don’t know are the challenges White had to overcome to achieve what she calls her “happy ever after” ending.
“My childhood was really messed up. Like really" she stresses. “It’s extremely difficult to for me to talk about it but let’s just say Cinderella had it easy compared to me. It got to the point of being essentially fatal,” adding with a rueful laugh, “but you already know that if you watched the show. Honestly, for a while, I thought I was on Survivor instead of The Royal Bachelorette.”
I’m just about to delve into the precarious topic of her family when we’re interrupted by the server who timidly drops the menus on the table and then hovers, probably hoping for an autograph, which she’s famously generous about providing. Instead, White orders us two martinis (my drink of choice, coincidentally), specifying “a drop of vermouth twirled in the glass, then tossed out before the vodka touches it,” and a salad, “to be healthy.” When I broach the topic of her family again, she delves into the honest and arresting details of her relationship with her mother, a Bavarian countess whose legendary beauty had regularly graced the covers of Hello! Magazine as a young woman. “But after my father died and Hello! named me The Sexiest Royal of 2017, something snapped in her. Think “Mommy Dearest” meets Steinbeck’s Cathy Ames on steroids. I knew she was on anti-depressants and a lot of meds, but I didn’t realize the extent to which she was suffering.”
With the precision of a butcher’s knife, White narrates how her mother attempted to sabotage her as a teen, how she was forced to run away, and the incredible journey that led her to the set of The Royal Bachelorette and her sleeping-pill induced coma. Suffice it to say, these aren’t adorable-pajamas-and-bedtime-tales kind of stories but through them White emerges victorious as a give-no-fucks kind of woman, with a dose of sweetness and vulnerability that has made her the darling of the media. And she gives some fucks, but not about her mother any more.
White conspicuously wipes a tear from her cheek with her silk sleeve as the server arrives bearing our martinis and salads piled high with exotic lettuces and apple slices. When the plate is set in front of her, she lets out a small gasp and the restaurant goes silent as her security squad dashes to the table – “Sorry” she apologizes with an embarrassed laugh, “Can I switch this salad for one without fruit please?” and the waiter vanishes and a new salad appears in front of White in a matter of seconds.
As she eagerly devours it, I probe carefully about the tremendous scandals and tragedies that played out in front of millions of viewers tuning in every week to The Royal Bachelorette. Was it really White’s mother’s idea to join the team of bachelorettes as the sexy cougar out to compete with her daughter to win the heart of the bachelor? Or was it all just a staged set-up by network executives to boost ratings?
Without so much as a glance up from her salad, White nonchalantly replies, “Oh no, she truly believed Prince would choose her based on her legendary beauty.”
I probe deeper. “And your coma? Was there anything to the rumor of foul play being involved in your coma – or in your mother’s freak accident?
White redirects her gaze at me and with a curious gleam in her eye, dismisses the question, saying, “Are you asking if my mother had anything to do with my overdose? I don’t think it matters now since the police ruled my coma an attempted suicide and my mother’s death an unfortunate accident. And as everyone knows from the newspapers, the mass of boot prints found on the cliff where she fell were from an innocent Boy Scout troop.” I watch White rearrange her features into a veneer of sorrow, but before I can ask another question, she cuts off the discussion with a dismissive, “So that’s that,” and returns to her salad.
Sensing it’s time to change the subject, I lob a softball question and ask how White got through such tough times. “To be honest, it was my great group of best friends—we’re like family. When I ran away from home years ago, I actually took sanctuary in their apartment. It’s funny,” she laughs, “they let me stay in exchange for cleaning the flat so I never had to pay rent, thank goodness, because I left with nothing. They’re such an eclectic group of great guys. They’d do anything for me.”
After White’s coma, she essentially disappeared from social media, posting only the occasional benign image of Prince and her pet menagerie—she’s a self-proclaimed “huge animal person,” and even admits singing to them at times. These days, however, the vast majority of White’s photos are of her Gucci-clad boyfriend, although she’s the first person to set the story straight about their relationship.
“I’m so done with this notion of a storybook romance. Relationships take work. Everyone thinks Prince was by my side day and night during my coma and that his love somehow magically brought me back,” she explains, “but that’s B.S. Prince wasn’t even in the hospital when I woke up. It’s 2019, for goodness sake. Women have to take charge of their own fate.”
This is a slap-in-the face for the millions of fans who had quixotically painted White as a damsel in distress during her one-month coma. Shortly after the Times broke the news about White’s coma, Twitter camps emerged rooting for the survival of Prince and White’s relationship (#TeamWince, i.e, Prince + White), with other camps championing for Prince to get back together with his ex-girlfriend Cindy from The Royal Bachelorette (#TeamPindy). White’s reaction? “The internet hurts. People talk shit about you and they don’t really know your life or who you really are.”
The woman I see sitting across from me today sipping her martini is calm, slightly damaged, but not defenseless. She is strong and ready to put her troubled past to bed. “This is a new chapter of my life. A chapter where I can actually ride off into the sunset with my Prince, play with my pets, and enjoy time with my best friends.” (It’s worth noting that those seven friends are presently in negotiations with TLC for a prime-time appearance on “Little People, Big World.“)
“It’s a chapter where I can finally say goodbye to my mother—I mean, technically she was my step-mom, but she raised me. Anyhow, a burden has been lifted from my chest, and I’m planning to turn over a new leaf in 2020, meditate daily, and eat healthily. Maybe I’ll even try apples again—they were my mother’s favorite fruit so you can understand my aversion to them.”
We find ourselves in a conversation about determination and free will, issues about which she’s surprisingly well-versed, and I have to admit to being impressed. There’s more to this steely survivor than meets the eye.
White and I say goodbye and I promise to send her an advanced copy of the article for review. As I walk out of the restaurant and glance back to wave goodbye, my impression is of a powerful woman with an enigmatic glint in her eye. Pulling an oversized makeup mirror from her purse, she slowly powders her nose and appears to be speaking. While I can’t hear her words, after a pause, a satisfied smile spreads across her fair countenance. Sarah White is clearly pleased by what she sees and hears from her reflection in the mirror.
