‘I Played Cherise Bangs No. 3 on “To Tell the Truth”’

“Hi . My name is Cherise Bangs, and I grew one cup size naturally.”

I was no longer a 34-24-34 plain Jane journalist, but a 36-24-34 breast success spokesmodel babe. At least that was what I was trying to convince “To Tell the Truth’s” celebrity panel and studio audience.

There I stood like Miss America on the stage with two other “Cherises,” another impostor and the real one, feeling like one-third of “Charlie’s Angels” in my hip-hugging, black boot-cut Gap jeans and a suggestively enhanced blue bikini bra.

The guys in the audience howled as host John O’Hurley (“Seinfeld’s” eccentric J. Peterman) read the affidavit for Cherise Bangs, an up-and-coming model/actress who went from “semi-flat to all that” with the help of a special cream and herbal capsule. And suddenly, right there under the hot white lights on Stage 11 at NBC in Burbank, I thought I was going to puke.

This is what happens when I let my curiosity get the best of me. On my unrecorded list of Things I’d Never Do, being a game-show contestant was somewhere below eating cow brains (which is exactly what you’d have to do to get on most reality game shows these days) or running a pizzeria. It just didn’t intrigue me.

But over the summer, I’d started watching “To Tell the Truth,” an updated version of the long-ago CBS hit (now in its second season of syndication). The show pits a team of three, all claiming to be the same person, against a panel of celebrities and the audience (a new spin to the old format), who have to figure out which one is the real deal. It’s typically a pretty unusual character, like the curator of the Jell-O museum, the dean of research for potato tasting or a plastic surgeon who turns patients into celebrity look-alikes.

The more of these fantastical contestants I saw, the more fascinated I became with their stories (350 unique tales a season), most of which producers find on the Internet, newspapers and by word of mouth.

So what is it really like on this wacky little show? I wanted to find out, and what better way to do that than to play the game. While there’s no chance of winning a million dollars (the most you can hope to get is $5,000 per team), as reality games go, “To Tell the Truth” is a kinder, gentler sport--no one gets hurt, no one’s humiliated and no one has to eat bugs. Unless it’s in your job description.

“We did one spot with a lady who wrote a bug cookbook,” said supervising producer George Sylak. “But what’s different about this show as opposed to other reality shows is that we do the unusual stuff--we have the lady who cooks with bugs--but we’re celebrating them and how unique they are.”

And according to executive producer Michael L. Weinberg, there’s a chance the audience can learn a little something, too.

“I’d like to think if you spent a half hour watching this show you’d become aware of something new,” he says. “If someone’s eating goat’s eyes just to get to the next round, you’re not going to learn anything except ‘Ugh, that was gross.’ But we’re not PBS or the ‘Electric Company,’ so it has to be fun.”

Meeting the Producers of the Game Show

From the moment I met with Sylak and producer Lisa Schultz at their second floor production offices above Stage 11 on a blistering Monday afternoon in July in Burbank, they had a child on Christmas Eve kind of excitement. Both were one shout away from being mistaken for a Lakers cheerleader, as they rattled down the week’s schedule: a meet-and-greet day on Wednesday with “the other Cherises,” and Friday’s “carnival,” which is tape day. And after filling out an information form and taking my Polaroid head shot, they sent me away with an enthusiastic handshake and a vague idea of what this experience was going to be like.

The process had begun several weeks earlier. I was initially chosen to pose as a professional chocolate taster for Hershey’s, which was great. After 34 years of chocolate eating, playing this role would be a cinch. But the sweets lady had to pull out, and I became a candidate to play the Isis breast enhancement cover girl or a cop-turned-Playboy centerfold.

Fearing I could wind up in a bunny suit and gun holster, I chose what I thought would be the less embarrassing. That was until I met Cherise Bangs, a West Los Angeles-based actress (who can be seen in the current film “Two Can Play That Game”) and my fellow impostor, Jennifer Rittenhouse, a waitress at the Cheesecake Factory in Sherman Oaks. Both perky, longhaired beauties in their early 20s with great figures.

This was obviously a mistake. Who was I going to fool?

On tape day, after a 7 a.m. appointment for a fresh ‘do, I was back at the studio by 9, where the circus was already in full swing on the second floor. Three white pant-suited sky-diving Elvis impersonators passed me in the hall, and in another room, I spotted a trio of surfing rabbis--complete with the yarmulke, beard and Hawaiian shirt--being quizzed by another producer.

A few doors down the hall, I found our designated room where I put on my little get-up, which required extra padding in my already padded bikini top, and a pair of sandals. Then associate producer Spencer Stephens summoned me to the makeup room. Next, more paperwork: a consent form and a prize agreement.

Schultz and Stephens then took us downstairs to the stage for a rehearsal, where we met the other contestants: the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes Prize Patrol check couriers, the “Angela Nissels” (the real one authored a book called “The Broke Diaries”) and the ladies who paint dead people.

After rehearsal, things got intense. Schultz took us Cherises back to the dressing room to prepare us for any possible zingers that could be asked by the celebrity panel: “Baywatch’s” Brooke Burns, comedian/ventriloquist Jeff Dunham (and Walter), “Living Single’s” Kim Coles and Meshach Taylor of “Designing Women” fame, who’s been with “To Tell the Truth” since it began last fall.

Jennifer and I were practicing our Cherise mannerisms. Then Sylak came in for a final rapid-fire round of practice questions. All of a sudden he blared out: “No. 3. What is your name?” “My name is Cherise Bangs,” I said assuredly, “And I grew one cup size naturally.”

Whew. Now if I can only remember that on stage.

“The thing that scares us the most,” Sylak later said, “Is when you’re on that stage [during rehearsals] and I ask, ‘No. 3, what is your name?’ And the impostor says their real name. As long as you can get that name out and say that line, you’re home free.”

Getting Into Character of Cherise Bangs

When my time came, just before 2, I was Cherise Bangs. But I was really nervous, leaving much of my 9 minutes on stage in a blur. I did manage to convince Dunham that discontinuing use of the product could cause “slackage.” And somehow I fooled Burns into believing I was a model from the Ford modeling agency. And it seems Coles, red-faced the entire episode, had a harder time with the segment than I did.

Taylor didn’t seem to mind, ogling us like Homer Simpson eyes a doughnut. But he still had the presence of mind to discern the fakes from the original article. “A lot of times people give themselves away,” he later said. ‘But as the show has progressed, it gets more difficult because the producers have prepped [the contestants] really good to sharpen their lying tools.”

Even the real surfing rabbi got so caught up in the moment, he told a little white lie. But that’s is a big no-no. “They [the non-impostors] sign an affidavit that says they won’t deliberately mislead the panel or else they will be disqualified,” Weinberg says. “In this case we had to, and it kills us because we don’t like to lose segments.”

By the end of the afternoon, Cherise, Jennifer and I were each $666.66 richer, splitting a $2,000 prize three ways. (A grand for each celebrity we stumped.) I’d met some interesting people and learned that cremation artwork can be beautiful. Plus I got to pretend I was Tyra Banks for a day and managed to come out of the whole experience unscathed. And who knows, I just might decide to open that pizzeria one day.

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“To Tell the Truth” can be seen weekdays at 8 p.m. on KCAL. This episode airs today.