MONDO EXTRAS

MBTV: And you know, you're the only character on the show who is ever shown eating. Besides Carmen, that is.

Leslie Grossman: I know, it's true!

I miss New York bagels. The bagels are terrible out here. When I lived in New York, I would eat two H&H bagels on a daily basis. I would be like, "Why am I fat? I'm eating vegetable cream cheese!" And then I would eat a fucking Hot N Crusty every morning. You know, a big chocolate chip muffin? And remember when they had to do the fat content of all the nutritional labels? I found out that it had 95 grams of fat. And I would eat one every single morning. It was awful. I was such a pig when I lived in New York. It wasn't even funny. I was so fat.

The bagel is genius in New York and they're so terrible out here. You have so many advantages. You have the genius Joe Shanghai. You have the Veselka. You have Kelley and Ping -- all my favorite restaurants.

I love Veselka.

Isn't it the best? I miss the pirogues so bad. That's another reason why I was such a big pig when I lived in New York. I lived across the street from the Second Avenue Deli and I would eat my way across the city. I can't express how fat I was.

So what were you doing in New York?

I was kind of acting and blowing through my savings and not knowing what I wanted to do. It's so gross of me to say but I never had a real job. I wasn't like waiting tables or anything -- I'm not going to play that line of bullshit that a lot of people do. I was just sort of floundering and figuring what I wanted to do and I didn't think I would ever be able to do acting seriously because I wasn't pretty enough.

But you're so pretty!

Oh please. Believe me, you don't even know how disgustingly competitive it all is. And I just don't compete in that arena.

They say you're never known or experienced true insecurity until you sit in a casting director's waiting room.

Oh, it's disgusting. And I grew up in a very down-to-earth place. It's funny, I grew up in the middle of Los Angeles but I had these very religious parents and I had a very normal upbringing. My mother is an architect/urban planner. My father is an attorney. And they always dreamed that I would have a lofty, intellectual career. Acting was something that was never put up as an option for me. There was never any emphasis on the way I looked growing up. There was never any talk about looking a certain way.

Where in Los Angeles was this?

Brentwood.

So do you have any OJ stories?