Who says sweet women can’t have a little zing? Or make that Ziering. A chat with Nikki Z. reveals that while it may be her form that draws us in, it’s her tongue that keeps us on our toes. Hey, we’re just happy to have a taste.

By Tim Coleman
Photos by John Russo

Becoming and staying another pretty face would have been the easy road for Nikki Ziering to take, but the zesty blonde just couldn’t keep her mouth shut. And now, we men can’t thank her enough. Her story is the story of how stars rise in the twenty-first century. They move from obscurity to model to actress to reality TV figure, back to actress, and-if their reps and the actual stars are all correctly aligned-right on up to superstar. She has taken the first five steps. Now she seems poised to take the sixth. Why? Because the former dentist’s assistant has a wit. I know what you’re thinking, a what? But trust me when I say she has both brains and beauty. She also possesses another quality uncommon to the Former Bikini Model species: a sense of humor.

Comedy is her strong suit, in fact. (OK, she’s a knockout first, agreed, but an ability to laugh at herself ranks a close second.) Not only did she appear as a henchwoman in the third Austin Powers film, Goldmember, but she portrayed the abusively randy Officer Krystal in the third American Pie flick, American Wedding.

Not everybody’s yukking it up. Roger Ebert may have called Ziering “a leather goddess” in his thumb’s-up review of American Wedding, but Jen Chaney of The Washington Post panned Ziering’s latest, National Lampoon’s Gold Diggers. “Nikki Ziering gets prominent billing as dream girl Charlene,” wrote Chaney, “but her part is smaller than her swimsuit.”

But, all right, Chaney, settle down because Ziering says she recently did a stint on “The Grill,” a comic variety show in England she calls “a cross between ‘Saturday Night Live’ and ‘The View,’” and feels it was the kind of experience that hints at what she’s capable of. There’s even a new television show she’s trying to get off the ground here at home. Her part in it? It’s several parts, actually: she aims to be not just the star, but also one of the writers.

NIKKI LIKES IT SMOOTH
Discovered by a modeling scout, Nikki Schieler had long ago been busy working as a dental assistant. The scout liked her California Girl look, and before long, she was appearing on the covers of swimsuit catalogs and in the ads of such household-name brands as Budweiser.

From there the men’s mags came calling, as did the bit parts and bigger things. The latter included her three-year stint as one of TV game-show host Bob Barker’s Beauties on “The Price Is Right.” “It was kind of surreal that I was on the show,” she says. “When I was seven, I told my mom I wanted to be on it, and then years later, I’m on it. I was one out of 2,000 girls to audition.” She giggles. “Even when people would lose on the show, I tried not to laugh. But it was hard because that loser music would come on-waht waht waaaaaahnnn.”

Her successive television credits read like a collector’s set of TV Guides from the 1990s: “The Love Boat: The Next Wave,” “Silk Stalkings,” “Pacific Blue,” “VIP,” “Babylon 5,” and of course, “Beverly Hills, 90210,” where she met her eventual husband, actor Ian Ziering. (The two were married in July 1997, but filed for divorce in February 2002.) As the industry shifted its focus to reality tube, so did she. Ziering appeared in two such offerings, “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here” and then “Celebrity Boot Camp.”

It’s obvious why producers like her. At 5’ 8” and change, she has a statuesque symmetry, with a fuller bottom lip than the top one. Even in photographs she seems sturdy, flaunting toned shoulders and a solid middle. (Doubters are advised to visit her website and view the sepia pictures of her dressed as a squaw. Pow wow!) A sexy X crosses her face anytime she smiles thanks to the amber eyebrows and the lines of her cheekbones, and her green eyes pierce you anytime she turns your way. She speaks with a gentle rasp, like a cheerleader who smokes.

Then again, she’s hardly the rah-rah type.

“People always think I was the cheerleader or the homecoming queen or whatever in high school, but I was so far from that,” she says. “I was such a clown. I got good grades, but I was also on the other dean’s list-the bad one. I have an older sister who was a great student, and I had all the same teachers she did. They loved me at first, but after a couple days, they told me, ‘There’s no way you guys can be related!’”

NIKKI LIKES IT ROUGH
Being a class clown probably makes Ziering’s not one, not two, but six appearances on “The Howard Stern Show” no shock to those flustered former teachers.

While she hasn’t ever gotten naked on the bawdy broadcast, she did lend her name and time to the “Win a Date with Nikki Ziering” contest in which lumpy Stern show cretin Hi-Pitch Eric took the crown. “Thank god my publicist and the whole E! camera crew and other people were with us,” she says. “But, seriously, Hi-Pitch Eric was sweet. I found out the next day that he went on the air to talk about the date, and I felt bad because they all made fun of him.”

The date was one thing, but getting into the host’s “Tickle Chair?” “Howard said The Tickle Chair episode is the best show he’s done in his 20-year history,” she says. “I don’t know about that, but it was fun. I’d done the show five times and managed to dodge The Tickle Chair every time. But he wanted to talk politics, and I wouldn’t. He wanted to ask me about my sex life, and I wouldn’t answer. Then the haters started to call in... and I knew I had to get in The Tickle Chair.

“First of all, I wasn’t prepared at all to get into a bikini. Girls like to get tanned and put lotion on and whatever before they get into a bikini, so I was terrified about that. And then when girls come on the show, Howard’s guys just wreck them and pick apart every little thing. Then I remember sitting in that chair and realizing how surreal it was. When you’re tickled, you’re laughing. Then they poured water on me, and I’d been so tired doing the Gold Diggers publicity tour, the water kind of woke me up. It felt great.”

Yes, she’s living proof that if the going gets tough, the tough get rough right back. As Officer Krystal in American Wedding, she tapped her inner dominatrix, making the shoot more like a “two-week long bachelor party.” Her background includes studies in shaolin-style martial arts, for which she earned a purple belt. “Later on I started kickboxing when I’d work out. It helped because in Serving Sara, I had a fight scene when I kicked Matthew Perry’s ass.” And look at her hobbies: water skiing, snow skiing, dance, aerobics, skydiving, horseback riding, and SCUBA diving.

Disrobing in front of a camera, however, is not an intimidating experience for her. “I find doing nude scenes very comfortable, because I know what I’m getting myself into and I wouldn’t do anything I didn’t feel was appropriate or tasteful. I feel powerful because I think everyone else is uncomfortable,” she laughs. “I can be in charge.”

A producer at ABC noticed her “Howard Stern” appearances and cast her in “I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!” The cell phone-free and de-trafficked environment appealed to her initially, though it had its downsides. “They only gave us half a cup of beans and rice a day,” she says. “And for me, I had to get into a crocodile pit, and I was buried alive.”

But she survived those trials... only to be drafted into “Celebrity Boot Camp.” There the military instructors kicked the door down every day before sunup. Again, what might have scared off somebody else made her adapt. “I think I surprised people because I’m pretty athletic. I mean, I am a princess - I do throw a ball like a girl - but I pick up on stuff.”

Apparently so. She was next tapped to throw the pigskin in the pay-per-view halftime special “The Lingerie Bowl” during the 2004 Super Bowl.

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