Ross Matthews lights up the stage when he’s on the red carpet or at the roundtable on E!’s Chelsea Lately and now the hilarious openly gay correspondent is opening up about his work and personal life in his new book, Man Up!.
People reports that Matthews divulges about meeting Madonna for the first time, becoming e-mail buddies with Gwyneth Paltrow and realizing he was gay. Matthews, who first started off as “Ross the Intern” on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, gushed about becoming buddies with Paltrow at the Vanity Fair 2002 Oscar Party. Matthews gave the Iron Man actress his e-mail address and to his surprise, she wrote him the next morning.
He retells, “The next morning, I was about to head out to the dining hall to drown my sorrows in a breakfast burrito the size of a newborn baby when something told me to check my email one last time," he writes. "And, you guys? OMG, there was one unread email."
Continuing he notes," 'Please God,' I prayed, Let this not be an ad for penis enlargement or spam from a Nigerian prince ... I took a deep breath and clicked on Inbox. There it was – the email ... 'Hello, it's Gwyneth. Very nice to meet you last night. Is this the right address for you? Verify before I continue or say anything too risqué. xoxo, gp.'
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Paltrow offered her own words for the hilarious journalist as she wrote the forward of his book.
The “afterward” is written by longtime friend and coworker Chelsea Handler.
Also revealed in the book, which is available on May 7, Matthews confesses he realized the moment he knew he was gay which came from the help of Barbra Streisand.
He explains, "I realized I was gay in the shower one day with Barbra Streisand. It happened while I was lathering, rinsing, and repeating with Pert Plus…As I was belting out the chorus to my favorite song from Funny Girl, " 'Oh my man, I love him so, he'll never know…' it hit me."
Matthews calls this book his “greatest triumph since that summer vacation I spent memorizing every line in Steel Magnolias.”
Man Up! is published under Handler’s A Chelsea Handler Book/Boarderline Amazing, a part of Grant Central.
image: Amazon