A spectrum of feelings! Carmen Electra opened up recently on Oprah Winfrey‘s Where Are They Now? series, recalling her brief and torrid marriage to Dennis Rodman as “the worst.”
“People couldn’t understand why I loved him,” Electra, 42, said of her ex-husband, “because he had a reputation for being a bad boy.”
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Unlike critics, the former Baywatch bombshell saw a quality in the NBA star that others could not comprehend. “What I saw in the beginning was this gentle giant that was in a lot of pain,” she explained. “So in a way we understood each other.”
The couple first met in 1998, shortly after Electra’s mother had passed away from a fatal brain tumor. “I got a call in the hospital that my mom was in the hospital… a couple days after coming home, my mom died,” she recalled in the emotional interview. “Once again, my life changed, but not in a good way. I just went into self-destruction.”
Rodman, 53, and Electra eloped to Las Vegas in 1998. “Our relationship was very passionate. When it was good, it was amazing,” she said. “And when it was bad, it was the worst.” Eventually, the bad outweighed the good, and the two split after just one year of marriage. “It happened so fast,” she said. “It was so spontaneous, and I remember right after, ‘Oh god, what did we do?'”
The Scary Movie actress also addressed other talked-about romances in her life, including her ties with Simon Cowell, which began on the London set of The X Factor. “He was funny. He made me laugh,” she recalled of the music mogul. “We exchanged numbers. We didn’t talk, we were just very flirtatious.”
Later, when Cowell brought The X Factor to L.A., he reached out to Electra. Though they never made their relationship official, the two briefly dated in late 2012. “He was so much fun,” Electra gushed.
Oprah: Where Are They Now? airs on OWN, Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.
