Carmen Electra
The Prince protégée who became the late-90s everywhere-woman: Playboy covers, Baywatch's Lani McKenzie, MTV's Singled Out, and a Las Vegas wedding to Dennis Rodman that hit annulment papers nine days later. Then the 2000s spoof-movie wave made her its favorite good sport.
Tara Leigh Patrick was born in 1972 and became Carmen Electra in Minneapolis, where she moved in 1991, met Prince, and signed to his Paisley Park Records. Her self-titled 1993 album — her only one — came and went, but the name stuck, and she found her real métier in front of cameras instead of microphones.
Her first Playboy appearance, in the May 1996 issue, lit the fuse. By 1997 she was everywhere at once: taking over as host of MTV's dating show Singled Out after Jenny McCarthy's star-making run, and joining Baywatch as lifeguard Lani McKenzie for the 1997–98 season. In November 1998 she married NBA wild card Dennis Rodman in a Las Vegas wedding; he filed for annulment nine days later, and the marriage was formally over by April 1999 — a tabloid saga that somehow made both of them more famous.
The 2000s gave her a second act as the spoof era's most reliable in-joke. She opened Scary Movie (2000) as Drew Decker, the Drew Barrymore-parody first victim, then turned up in Date Movie and Scary Movie 4 (2006), Epic Movie (2007), Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie (2008). She married Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro in November 2003, and their MTV reality series 'Til Death Do Us Part: Carmen and Dave (2004) documented the wedding before the marriage ended in 2007. Few 90s pin-ups spent the following decade so completely in on the joke.
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Baywatch
The lifeguard drama NBC canceled after one season — which then came back in syndication and became the most-watched TV show on Earth. Slow-motion running, red swimsuits, Hasselhoff. A billion people allegedly watched every week, and almost nobody admitted being one of them.
Singled Out
MTV's gloriously unfiltered dating game: a 50-person dating pool eliminated in real time by one picker who couldn't even see them. Chris Hardwick steered the chaos while Jenny McCarthy — and later Carmen Electra — egged everyone on. It was peak mid-90s MTV: loud, hormonal, zero filter.
Dennis Rodman
The Worm: a rebounding machine under kaleidoscope hair and a map of tattoos. Five championships, seven straight rebounding titles, a wedding dress worn to his own book signing — Rodman was the chaos engine that somehow made the Bulls dynasty run smoother.
Jenny McCarthy
The Playmate who snort-laughed at the glamour game. As MTV's Singled Out co-host she buried the pin-up script under googly faces and gross-out physical comedy — and proved a bombshell could be the funniest person in the room.