Kimberly Williams-Paisley

Actress

“Being treated as a dork will color who you are forever.”

    From an adult’s perspective, mean-girl behavior all looks the same. But victims know better: Middle school and high school meanness is highly calibrated to its target. For Kimberly Williams-Paisley, star of Father of the Bride, We Are Marshall, and How to Eat Fried Worms movies and Dana on According to Jim, the suffering started just before seventh grade when she was about to enter Fieldston, a private school in Riverdale, New York, that she attended for two years.

    She was one of a handful of new girls entering the class (another was Sofia Coppola). Kimberly’s mother had met another mom, who invited Kimberly to a pool party in order to introduce her to the nice girls in class. “I was the only one who showed up with my mom,” Kimberly remembers. The girls decided to have a diving contest. Kimberly had not taken diving lessons but nevertheless decided to go for it. She stepped out onto the diving board and executed one of the worst belly flops of her life. She recalls slapping the water, feeling the horrible burn, and dreading coming to the surface to face all those girls looking at her.

    “They all had looks of disdain and horror. One of them asked with exaggerated concern, ‘Are you all right?’ But their expressions said that that was the ugliest thing they had ever seen,” says Kimberly. The belly flop may as well have sealed her fate. She could never get it right after that. She adored the school’s dance and theater program, as well as its buildings, which were filled with colorful nooks and crannies. But she could never fit in.

    Growing up to become a movie star helps, though. Immensely. Married to country singer Brad Paisley, who wrote the tender She’s Everything for her, Kimberly laughed when

    I asked her if she ever wondered whether those mean girls know what the girl they once rejected had become. Turns out she happened to run into one of the former Popular Girls. Kimberly was coming off the set of Father of the Bride on her way to a screening when it happened. “She was so nice to me,” remembers Kimberly. “Of course, I played it cool and was very nice to her . . . but inside my little child was jumping for joy. It didn’t hurt that a professional had done my hair and makeup that day.”

    Those days seem like a lifetime ago. Eight months pregnant when I talked to her, Kimberly and Brad are immersed in their family; William Huckleberry Paisley was born February 22, 2007.

    Now thirty-six, Kimberly’s letter is to the new girl she once was in middle school.

Dear Kim,
    I see you in the nurse’s office with your daily stomachache—the real one you often suffer from, or the fake one you develop to get out of things. You know that being at Fieldston is a privilege, one that your family can only afford for two years. But your body is shouting out how miserable you are here.

    Gym is the worst. You can never make those horrible orange uniforms look cool, the way the popular girls do with bleaching and just the right roll of the sleeves. You’re mortified about taking your clothes off. Everyone checks each other out. It hasn’t happened yet, but soon the thought of gym is going to start making you break out in hives. So then you have to undress while covered in red bumps.

    It seems that every small detail prevents you from fitting in. You’ve turned into the unpopular geek. In field hockey season, everyone showed up with cute little sticks. Your parents made you bring your mom’s old, giant stick—the one that looks like an ice hockey stick. For softball you had to use her old, heavy, smelly mitt. You are left-handed, and the mitt is made for a right-handed player, and so what little athletic talent you have was further hindered.

    You’re not exactly paralyzed about what a big belly flop you are at this school. There is a sweet naïveté that protects you from knowing how out you are. But not fitting in is so unexplainable, so perplexing, and so much harder than you ever expected, that it’s making you fearful of the future. If this part of life is so hard, you think to yourself, how much harder will your life get in the future?

    This, my friend, is the big leagues. Twenty-five years later I know that what you’re going through really is as hard as it gets. If you can get through this, you really can endure anything. There will definitely be difficult things you’ll have to face, but going forward you’ll be able to put them into perspective.

    So when that boy you have a crush on looks at you, nudges his friend, and the friend rolls his eyes like Puhleese, you can’t be serious, try to hang in there. Everything is going to change for you at your next school. You’ll find your people. You’ll fit in. In fact, you’ll be homecoming queen. How unimaginable is that? And that’s just the beginning for you.

    Being treated as a dork will color who you are forever. You’ll know that you are a survivor. You’ll fear fewer things. You’ll have a great dose of humility, and you’ll understand vulnerability—which will be crucial to the creative person you will become.

    You won’t be able to appreciate this now, but you’ll also have some hilarious stories that you and your family and your friends will howl over.

Dorks forever!

Love,
Kim