Secrets of a Celebrity Nanny (Robbins Entertainment, Daro Film Distribution, Penalty Vox, Lifetime, 2023)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night (Sunday, October 29) my husband Charles and I watched a Lifetime movie called Secrets of a Celebrity Nanny, as if all the good Lifetime titles were taken already. The titular celebrity nanny is Gabrielle “Gaby” McFadden (Monroe Cline), and the celebrity she ends up working as a nanny for is singer Justice Grayce (Yolanthe Cabau). Years before Justice and Gaby’s mother had been school friends before Gaby’s mom died, so when she saw Gaby’s name on a list of prospective nannies Justice was so determined to get her she actually descended on the home Gaby shares with her roommate Hannah (Lily Wirum). Gaby is actually interested in being a writer, but she’s running low on income and it’s an open question as to how both young women are going to be able to afford the rent. So, with Hannah agape at the prospect of having Justice Grayce in her home and her roommate working for Justice as a nanny, Gaby takes the job. Gaby soon learns that the kid she’ll be a nanny to is Justice’s 13-year-old daughter Willow (Lilly Williams), whom she had with her first husband, Hudson Thayer (Matthew Blade). Justice currently has a much younger boyfriend, heavy-metal musician Ian Pierce (Memphis Taylor), whom we first see in Justice’s home aimlessly strumming an unconnected electric guitar and wearing a body shirt that shows off all his tattoos. When Gaby arrives at the Grayce household things are a mess; it seems that Justice has laid off almost the entire household staff and the only people around are Ian, Willow and a heavy-set security guard named Damien Gries (Dominic Pace). Damien is a large, intimidating man who used to be with the Los Angeles Police Department before an injury forced him to retire, whereupon he took the job as Justice Grayce’s head of security.

There was also a previous nanny named Mia who was killed on the premises – this was the subject of a typical Lifetime prologue, in which she was strangled from behind with a cord just as she was trying on one of Justice’s fur jackets (this startled Charles because fur has become so politically incorrect these days it’s rare to see its use depicted in any film, even one set in the recent past, and when it is shown it’s usually accompanied by an end-credits disclaimer saying that the filmmakers are showing it because it’s historically accurate but they want to make it clear that they don’t approve of people wearing dead animal skins) – and Justice was worried that the fact that her previous nanny was killed at her home might make it difficult for her to hire a new one. As soon as Gaby starts on her first day at work, Damien demands that she sign a non-disclosure agreement and confiscates her phone until she signs it. She also finds that the place is a hotbed of sexual intrigues: Justice is supposedly engaged to Ian but is still sleeping with her ex-husband Hudson, who married her before she became famous and broke up with her because he couldn’t handle the strain of being a celebrity’s husband – even though he has a career of his own in book publishing and naturally wants to have a look at Gaby’s manuscript. Meanwhile, Ian not only cruised the previous nanny Mia – or at least the tabloids reported that he had – but he’s got an ex named Samara (Brittany McVicker) who doesn’t want to be quite so “ex” and is stalking Justice to see if she can get them to break up so Samara can get Ian back on the rebound.

Justice also has another stalker, Isaac (Isaac Levi Anthony), who seems like the typical crazed-fan psychotic who’s convinced that he and Justice are pre-destined soulmates even though Justice has never formally met him and wouldn’t be interested if she had. Besides Damien, the only other person in Justice’s entourage keeping things together is an African-American personal manager who’s constantly ushering her out of her house to attend one celebrity function or another – much to the disgust of Willow, who’s understandably miffed at how little face time she gets with her mom. It’s also established that despite her continuing fame, Justice hasn’t had a hit record since Willow was born 13 years earlier – we know she’s coasting on her previous fame because the best gig she can get is a one-night stand at a theatre also hosting the Kingston Trio (remember them?), and that only because Ian will be on stage with her even though their two styles blend about as well as oil and molasses. During a rehearsal for Justice’s show, someone sneaks up behind Samara, who’s crashed the show and is sitting in the otherwise empty auditorium, and strangles her, though the rather obtuse cops rule it suicide. Later, at the actual performance, Damien flashes his gun and shoots and kills Isaac the crazed-fan stalker – only this causes both Justice and Gaby to realize that he was the killer of Mia and Samara. In a totally unsurprising resolution, his motive turns out to be that he had a decidedly unrequited crush on Justice and wanted to eliminate the competition so he could have her. Fortunately, as he’s holding Gaby hostage, Justice sneaks up behind him and knocks him out with the proverbial blunt object, though Damien survives long enough to be arrested by his former colleague and friend with the LAPD, a Black woman detective named Rhodes (Shawn Woodward). But the scandal surrounding Damien firing a gun at Justice’s performance earns her enough Internet “hits” it looks like her duet record with Ian will become her first hit in 13 years.

Energetically directed by Dylan Vox (which explains why one of the production companies for this film is called “Penalty Vox”) from a script by old Johnson Production Group hands Jason Shane-Scott, Richard Clark and Jeremy Inman, Secrets of a Celebrity Nanny ends up with Gaby doing a signing for her new book, also called Secrets of a Celebrity Nanny (one wonders how she got out of her NDA – probably Hudson handled getting Justice to allow the book to be published), and making out one copy to the three of them: Hudson, Justice and Willow. It’s an unusual Lifetime movie in some respects, even though totally clichéd and predictable in others – almost from the moment Damien was introduced I was thinking he’d be the villain, and unrequited love for Justice would turn out to be his motive – mainly because of its no-holds-barred depiction of love, sex and obsession among the famous, near-famous or wanna-be-famous. All too much of it reminded me of George Harrison’s quote, “I just wanted to be successful, not famous.” Alas, as one-fourth of the greatest rock band of all time, for him being successful and being famous came as a package deal!