Q 13

PLAYBOY: What's so great about baths?

Kirstie Alley: Bubble bath. I like the natural kind, like marigold, that comes in beautiful bottles. I put a ton in my bath and then pour in some Estée Lauder Youth Dew--which I also go crazy for. I'm such a queer when it comes to baths. I make the room totally black and I light one candle. I put it on one side of my big bathtub. Then I turn on the Jacuzzi and make the bubbles so high that when you scrunch down you can't see out. I dig a huge tunnel in the suds that I can fit inside. At the other end of the tunnel I see the light. My kids, on the other hand, do not like bubble baths. Can't stand them. They think they're weird. I can't imagine why.

Q 14

PLAYBOY: What Cheers memorabilia did you take when the show ended?

Kirstie Alley: The only thing I wanted I didn't get because everything was supposedly so valuable that it ended up in a museum. I always walked around with a cigar box. If you remember the show, it was my only prop. We could never figure out what Rebecca Howe should do. Ted ate, Woody cleaned the counters. Norm drank. But what did Rebecca do? She was supposedly the manager, so we decided she would have receipts. We put them in a cigar box. But that's not all. My lines were also inside. I was always going off my lines, so that helped me keep my place. Before me, Coach had line problems and he wrote them all over: on trays, the bar, everywhere. When I watch the show now, I always laugh when I open the cigar box because I know I'm trying not to mess up.

Q 15

PLAYBOY: When you and Kelsey Grammer are having dinner, what do you talk about?

Kirstie Alley: Once, during dinner while we were doing Cheers, Kelsey told me the grossest thing I've ever heard. We were talking about something most people wouldn't know about, sexually. With me there are a lot of such things, so it wasn't hard. I can't even repeat what he said. [Pauses] OK, he told me about felching. Do you know what that is? You don't want to know. It is the grossest thing you will ever hear. I can't tell you. It's too embarrassing. You'll have to ask Kelsey. When he told me I said, "Did you really do that?" It was so disgusting I couldn't even eat. [Laughs] I went crazy. Every time I look at him now I think, Oh my God! Oh my God! When he'd go out on a date I'd think, Is he doing that? When he got married I thought, Are they doing that? I should add that he never actually told me it was something he liked to do; he just felt it was his duty to tell me about it in case the occasion arose. Woody and Kelsey and Ted took great pleasure in coming up with things I hadn't heard of.

Q 16

PLAYBOY: What's left out of everyone's story on Scientology? For instance, what don't the Germans get about it?

Kirstie Alley: That it's fun. Say you have a problem in your life: a compulsion to strangle mice. [Pauses] That just came up. No reason. Anyway, say you wake up every day and you just can't wait to find a mouse, and it's taking up a lot of your time. You'd have a couple sessions in Scientology and soon you wake up and decide you'd rather go to Home Depot. You'd see a mouse on the way and not have any desire to strangle it. You're just, "Hey, there's a mouse." Scientology takes barriers out of your life and lets you have more fun. What I'm saying is that it's fun to have control, to solve problems, to eliminate compulsions. I define compulsion as anything you feel like you have to do that you don't necessarily want to do. It all boils down to whether what you're doing gives you more survival or less survival. If it gives you more survival, then it's a good thing.

Q 17

PLAYBOY: Sounds like you have all the answers. Where do we go when we die?

Kirstie Alley: We just pick another body. We go to the nearest hospital where women are giving birth, find some good-looking parents and jump in. I don't think there's a rest period, though there might be a confusion period if you were killed in an accident and knocked out of your body. It would all depend on the shape you're in as a spiritual being, which is our natural state. The better the shape you're in, the less confusion. At least that would be my hope. This is just a prison planet--and here's what it takes to get out: a Get Out of Jail Free card or a Get Off of Planet Earth Free card. You should have one in your wallet or purse at all times, just in case. You know how we're all looking for the big secret in life? That's it.

Q 18

PLAYBOY: As a Scientologist, you must own an e-meter. What happens when your non-Scientologist friends come over and want to play with it?

Kirstie Alley: I own three. I do the pinch test with them. When somebody's not a Scientologist, they want to know what an e-meter is. All an e-meter does is help a person locate moments of pain or unconsciousness and disagreement. It doesn't tell right or wrong, it locates moments. For the pinch test I have them hold the e-meter cans. Then I show them the meter face, the dial. Then I pinch them. When I do, the dial reacts. The needle jumps. Then I say, "OK, good. Recall that pinch." They think of the pinch and the needle jumps again--without the actual pinch. You think again and again about the pinch, and each time the needle jumps less until the memory of it isn't painful anymore. Finally I'll say, "Recall that pinch," and the needle will "float," just move back and forth, and my friend remembers no pain. A new pinch starts it all over again, but that would be a new pinch.

Q 19

PLAYBOY: When you were a kid, what did your friends say about you that you hated but which has now become an asset in your life?

Kirstie Alley: I've always been told I'm crazy. Always. When I wanted to come to Hollywood to be an actress, I was crazy. When I was at a party and wanted to do something, I was crazy. I've always believed I was sane but extroverted. And when I look back on the things I've done, I can honestly say that very few of them were harmful or destructive. They were crazy but fun. I guess being called crazy is a good thing.

Q 20

PLAYBOY: If you never gained weight, what would you eat?

Kirstie Alley: I'd drink five glasses of wine and eat caviar and tons of sour cream, and then eat a box of chocolates, then have a big bowl of pasta as a snack. I like everything in abundance. I've always aspired to be a lush. I guess I'm like Henry VIII, except I don't have syphilis.