Mrs. Eastwood, star of new reality show, talks family, boy bands

Mrs. Eastwood, star of a new reality show, talks family, boy bands and her famous husband in a candid interview about her newly-debuted television show on the E! network.

By The Associated Press / May 21, 2012

Mrs. Eastwood, star of new reality show ?Mrs. Eastwood & Company,? talks family and boy bands. In this Jan. 31, 2010 file photo, Clint Eastwood, right, arrives with wife, Dina Eastwood, on the red carpet in London.

Joel Ryan/AP

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Dina Eastwood has heard the question repeatedly: Why put her family and superstar husband Clint Eastwood on display for a reality TV show, generally the province of D-list or wannabe celebrities?

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The answer is simple, she said. "Mrs. Eastwood & Company," the E! series debuted Sunday, is her bid for stardom ? not for herself, but for a vocal group, Overtone, that has become her passion.

"I had a midlife crisis and I adopted a boy band," said the breezily candid Eastwood. "I was edgy, I didn't know what I was doing. Clint was accelerating how many movies a year he was doing. Our youngest daughter was getting to the point she doesn't want to be around me as much."

Eastwood, 46, discovered Overtone at a concert in Capetown, South Africa, where her husband of 16 years was making the 2009 film "Invictus" with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela. The six-member group ended up a prominent part of the movie's soundtrack and Dina Eastwood made the leap to manager.

"They're very good-looking and the best vocal group Clint and I have ever heard," she said. "I was thinking what a cute little reality show about a haggard mom who doesn't know what she's doing, leading this cute band around trying to ... get them successful."

Overtone singer Eduard Leonard said the group is awed by the opportunity and by their patrons, especially Clint Eastwood.

"At first it was terribly intimidating to be in his presence," Leonard said. "We still have to pinch ourselves."

Although Dina Eastwood pitched "Mrs. Eastwood & Company" as a showcase for Overtone, she decided the gender balance, of a half-dozen men and her, was off. So the "& Company" was expanded to include Morgan, her 15-year-old daughter with Eastwood, and her stepdaughter Francesca, 18, (Clint Eastwood's daughter with actress Frances Fisher).

The teenagers were game ? reality TV is in their generation's DNA, as Dina Eastwood sees it ? but the Eastwoods and Fisher vetted the girls' involvement before deciding it was appropriate for them, she said.

Also in the mix are Groucho Marx's granddaughter (married to Dina Eastwood's brother, Dominic Ruiz, Overtone's road manager); a tart-tongued housekeeper who could have come straight from Sitcom Central Casting; a pet menagerie including a tortoise and a pig; and access to the Eastwood's Carmel home on California's greatest stretch of coastline.

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