Entertainment Center Era & Virginia Guiffre's Memoir "Nobody's Girl"
In this episode of the Uploft Interior Design Podcast, I share my personal reflections on Thanksgiving, discussing my small family dynamics and the various ways I’ve celebrated the holiday over the years. I then dive into a listener question from Theresa in Harrisburg, who is looking to modernize her entertainment center. If you have questions for me, make sure to submit them here.
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[Music]
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Design inspiration, real life makeovers, and the latest in pop culture. This is the Uploft Interior Design Podcast with Betsy Helmouth. Happy Thanksgiving week. I hope you’re getting a little time off. I hope you’re surrounding yourself with friends, family, good food. I for one have had
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lots of different types of Thanksgivings. I am from a very small family. My mom was divorced and so it was just her and me. I was an only child. I had half brothers and sisters, but they were much older than me from my father’s previous relationship. I really didn’t grow up knowing them. My dad was
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pretty a strange as far as that goes. Not necessarily estrange, but I did not have a close relationship. I did not see him all that often. I had a grandma who I was very close to, but I was not close to my aunts or my uncles. So, holiday time was always small and sometimes
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different. like when I finally um was able to work, I was often working holidays because that’s when, you know, the people who didn’t have kids and families of their own kind of got assigned to those shifts serving or um you know, I was in New York City and sometimes, especially in the early
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years, didn’t have a lot of friends, so my mom would come up and we’d have sort of a makeshift Thanksgiving in my apartment. Uh, as I grew older and had my own family. My husband is also an only child. So, that circle still stayed small, I always thought I’d marry
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somebody who had like a lot of brothers and sisters so we could have a huge Thanksgiving feast at somebody else’s house and I could kind of glimpse what that looks and feels like. But no, his mom was also divorced and he had aunts too, but they lived kind of distantly
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and had their own things going on. So even when I first got married, our holidays are small and our moms came to us if they were able to come at all. And then, you know, I really liked and intentionally decided to have multiple children because I wanted a more um
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festive vibe on the holidays. That’s not the only reason, but it was certainly a major factor in why I decided to have initially when my husband and I connected, we wanted five children. And uh I’m glad we toned that down and settled at three. But hopefully we’ll have festive and lively holidays from
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here on out, especially as they partner up. Um yeah, so there we go. But I’m looking forward to hosting. Again, it’s going to be small. Just me, my husband, my three kids, dog, cat, and his mom. My mom um is going to travel for Christmas. But yeah, I hope you’re going to have a
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festive, boisterous, or low-key Thanksgiving. There have been Thanksgivings I have spent completely alone watching my favorite shows, eating my favorite foods, answering to no one and just hunkering down and having it be a really introspective, special, super chill day. I’ve seen this holiday from
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lots of different angles. So whether you’re celebrating with friends, celebrating with family, working, sitting at home in your PJs alone on the couch, all of it can be festive. There can always be reasons to find gratitude and to celebrate and to give thanks. And that’s what’s so special about
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Thanksgiving as opposed to other holidays where you know it might feel more integral to have people or presents or things really. You just need to have some reflective time on Thanksgiving and you’re observing it right. I would say reflective time and some good food. I
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think those two things are needed in order to have a successful Thanksgiving. But um yeah, that’s just my two cents. Speaking of my two cents, I’ve got a book recommendation that I’m going to be sharing with you in the second half of today’s show. The first half is of
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course devoted to design advice that I always give, answering people’s questions. They’ve written in with pictures, with dilemas, and I’m going to speak to those dilemas today. And if you have a question, if you’re working on something, if you’re trying to get your
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home ready for an upcoming holiday, head over to uploft.com/mpodcast. Once again, uplift.com/mpodcast. You’ll fill out a quick form. You’ll let me know what you’re working on, and I will get you advice right away because our mailbag is officially empty after this question. Guys, I need you to send
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me in questions or else I’m going to be talking about reality TV on every episode for the duration of the show. And you don’t want that. You’ve come here for the design. Stay for the design by writing me questions. Okay. So, design at the top of the show. At the bottom of the show, we’re going to be
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looking into Virginia Ju’s book, Nobody’s Girl. If you guys remember Virginia, I always have to pause around her last name because it’s not pronounced the way that it looks, but um she was one of the most vocal of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims and she wrote a memoir before she died
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that was published postumously. And I thought I knew a lot about the case. I’d watched all the dines. I’d watched the Netflix. I’ve listened to the podcast. I have deep dived this, but I found myself surprised at how much I learned from her memoir and how into her memoir I was
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despite feeling like I was already fully informed and despite hating the audiobook’s narrator. I just find that the narrator of an audio book can make or break that book. And while this woman did a very proficient job, she was almost too proficient, almost too like
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my voice goes up when I’m talking about something positive and my voice goes down when I’m talking about I mean, it just felt so actor that at first I spent the first hour like trying to just accept that this narrator was who she was and then I let it go and the book
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became something I could not put down. So, I highly recommend not doing the audiobook if you’re interested in this particular tome. I’m going to get into it with you in the second half. But one thing I wanted to say is the second half of the show. While it’s never kid-friendly because I talk about
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reality shows that have all sorts of subject matters that I get into, this one is particularly not child-friendly. So, my design advice is always pretty much child-friendly and your kids can be listening while you drive them to soccer or while you drive them to theater
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practice. But second half of this show, yes, we do we do have a warning there because children should not be listening to that. Okay. Uh without further ado, let me answer a listener question. So we have a listener question, drum roll, please from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Teresa is writing in. Hi
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Betsy. I love the podcast. I would like to replace my entertainment center with something more modern. options are a lowprofile media center where the TV either sits on top or hangs on the wall. However, this means I would lose a lot of storage in the display space. I’d
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prefer a built-in floor toseeiling unit, sort of set up like a bookcase. My question, with this space being right beside a doorway, and with the space on the other side not being symmetrical, could I put a built-in entertainment center on just one side of the wall?
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Would it look odd? If so, how deep could I make the unit? Thanks so much, Teresa. Well, Teresa, as you know, everything old is new again. And right now, those fully enclosed TV units, the ones that look like a tall armwire and have doors that fold in front of the TV, those are
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out and they have been out for I don’t know, at least a decade. I’m sure it’ll come around again. And I like the idea that you can fully enclose the TV and not see it because for me, my husband likes large TVs. My husband likes TVs in lots of rooms and I myself am a TV lover. But there are times I
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just want it to go away so that way it feels like a more balanced space. like that focal point of the black TV hole is not just sucking us in at all times, but that we could have conversation and kind of ignore that alto together. Well, you know, not always possible, especially
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with the larger TVs these days and especially with the fact that nobody’s really selling these armwire TV stands. Um, not really. Okay, let’s get into it. Now, I don’t want to school you right before I answer your question, but guys, if you’re going to write in with
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questions, and I hope you do, answering your questions is what excites me so much and intrigues me every time I open the mailbag. What I like are pictures, four pictures minimum from the corners of each room that you have questions about. And ideally, just one room with a
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question per question so I can really get into it versus asking me questions about three different rooms and I can’t tackle it all. So you can write in three times and just for each room you’re addressing one by one, go to the corners, stand in the corners of each
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room and take me that angled view. So looking out from the corner, all four corners, most rooms have four corners. Take a picture that way. That way I can see kind of multiple walls at once. That way I can kind of get a sense of how you’re using the other walls because
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sometimes it’s not just a matter of solving the problem that you think you have. Sometimes I will see opportunities elsewhere. I might see a different wall where we should put this TV stand or a different wall where we should be putting the sofa, which then would
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inform where the TV goes. I like to look at the room holistically because, as you guys know, if you’ve been listening for a while, I like to go off topic. Sometimes I like to solve problems you didn’t ask about. And sometimes when I solve those problems you didn’t ask
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about, it will actually help to inform my answer to the problem you are asking about. That being said, I only have two pictures here, Teresa, and so I’m going to have to answer from what I can see. Okay. Right now, for those of you listening, there is a large sofa on one wall and
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then kitty corner from it, diagonally from it in the corner, you do have a TV armwire that’s on an angle facing the sofa. Now, the problem with this placement is that I don’t have good parallel viewing. Unless I’m lounging on the sofa, using it as an chase and using
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the arm as a headrest and watching the TV that way, I do not have good sightelines for this TV. In other words, more than one person could not easily watch the TV. That’s bothering me. The other thing that’s bothering me is that this TV armire is somewhat ill-fitting
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in this corner. And I can see you love your accents. I love that you are in the holiday spirit with all this seasonal decor, but this is not the right solution. Yes, you were exactly right in your email. It does not feel contemporary. It does not feel of today. And also, it does not
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make good use of these walls. Now, I have a solution for you. You don’t just have to do a TV stand at the bottom with a TV wall-mounted. And yes, I do recommend whether you do a TV stand or not that you wall mount this TV on a swing arm, a fully articulating swing
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arm, so that you can move this TV off the wall and you can angle it facing the TV in a way that makes it easier to watch. Now you have one of two walls, these perpendicular walls that right now the armwire is angled in front of these two walls. But one of the walls, the wall on
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the left hand side that also appears to share, you know, with a window. It shares it with a window. as well. That appears to be a wider amount of space than the wall on the right hand side of this 90° angle that has an opening to the kitchen or the dining room, which seems to be a much smaller
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wall. So, I would be more inclined to put the TV on the longer wall, wall mount it with a fully articulating mount. And you’re saying to me, Betsy, you haven’t solved the problem. I do like the shelving above the TV because it gives me room for my accents and my
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decor. Yes. And for additional storage. There are a few of these which I’m going to tell you about. There are a few. Are you familiar with the ladder bookcase? The letter bookcase attaches to the wall usually with brackets at the top and then it has shelving and it’s open on the sides, but
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these brackets, you know, come down and are parallel to the wall and have the shelving underneath and it’s very slim and close to the wall. There are a few of these that are actually ladder TV stands, meaning that it has those sidebars. It has a couple of shelves up
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top. It has an empty void in the middle where you would mount the TV and then the bars extend down to like a TV stand at the bottom. So, you’re getting your shelving at the top for display and storage. You’re getting your wall-mounted TV, and you’re getting storage on the bottom just like you are
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with this Armois, but you can use that fully articulating mount to move that TV so that within the two bars on either side, you can still have articulation, even moving the TV in front of those bars. So that came to me when I was looking at these pictures because I also
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think it will go with your more rustic slash transitional style and I recently recommended one from Kraton Barrel for a client and it was just the perfect thing for her space because her TV was not too big. If you do have a very wide TV, you’ll find that it’s just
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ill-fitting and won’t work well in this application. I still would recommend that you wall mount this TV with a TV stand underneath, but you could do floating shelves or you could on the opposite corner. So, if I’m looking at the wall, I’m seeing the opening to the dining area in the middle
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on the left hand side, you know, you have the TV armwire and on the right hand side, you just have an ottoman. You could put a small atajer there. Now the Atajir is just open shelving for display for some storage. And then that would really take the place of the storage
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that you’ve got above the TV now. And you’d have even more storage with that wide TV stand because you do want the TV stand to be wider than the actual TV. And I’m worried that this TV is too small for the space. Now you want to take the measuring tape from where your
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eyeballs are on the sofa to the wall where you’re putting the TV. Take that number in inches, divide it by two, and that is the size of the TV. Now the TV is measured on a diagonal. So keep in mind if it’s 100 in from where you are on the sofa to the wall where the TV is,
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you divide it in half. That’s 50 in. The TV is not going to be 50 in wide. That’s the diagonal measurement. You’re going to go shopping for a roughly 50-in TV. All right, there we go. Answered all your questions, Teresa, but I have a feeling you’re going to have more
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questions as you’re shopping for the Atair, as you’re selecting the right TV stand, and you will let me know. You will follow up because I can’t wait to see what happens. And I can’t wait to see the next season’s decor because you really go for it here. And I’m a huge
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fan. I love going for it with seasonal decor. All right, guys. If you’ve got some time in between decorating for all the different seasons that are happening from fall and Thanksgiving to Christmas, well, you should pick up this book. Virginia Drey’s Nobody’s Girl. Now,
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unfortunately, Virginia Du Frry committed suicide earlier this year. So, I think it was in spring of 2025 that she committed suicide. So tragic. so devastating. I can’t imagine what it’s done to her family. I can’t imagine what she grappled with every day. Um, but I was extra sad because I feel like
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I wanted more of her voice in this memoir. It’s clear that she wrote with a ghostriter or as she calls it her companion, I think, or anyway, I can’t remember the C word that she used to describe her ghostriter. And it’s clear that they had a very close relationship,
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a friend relationship from the first chapter where the companion or the ghost writer really talks about their deep relationship and really says how much of the book that they’d been working on and says sort of what had been happening. Very interesting. But I want to just
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talk about a few things because I really thought I knew everything about this story and there was a lot that I learned from this book and I think this book is very important and the stuff that I’m going to be talking about for the next few minutes is not child-friendly. So
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please listen carefully. Um, so Virginia Juy obviously goes into her relationship with Epstein, her relationship with Gelain Maxwell, and I feel like I knew a lot of that. Of course, there are more details. And what I wish she would have gone into is kind of the relationship
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between Epstein and Gelain a little bit more because Gelain is still here. Gelain is the only one um of that duo, Epstein and Jelane, who can speak to what really happened, who knows everything. Certainly, the girls who were abused know a lot, but she knows everything. And I wanted to know
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more about her inner workings considering the fact that she’s the last living witness to all the horrors. And not all the horrors. I’m sure, you know, Jeffree was doing some things without her, but I’m sure she was doing some things without Jeffrey. Anyway, I just
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felt like that was a little bit glossed over. The thing I did not know is how damaged or how damaging, I should say, Virginia’s childhood was. Not only was she sexually abused by her father, she was sexually abused and passed around to his friends. And her mom knew about it.
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Her mom was very aware of what was going on and chose to do nothing. What really bothered me about this book is that Virginia continued to have a relationship with her father, with her mother, not just as a minor, which of course you kind of have to have in so many different ways, unfortunately.
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But then as an adult, she still wanted her father in her life. She still wanted her mother in her life. she um didn’t really get apologies per se. The reality of what she experienced at their hands was not really fully acknowledged by them. And she continued to say throughout the book, “Family is so
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important. Family is essential.” Yeah. Yeah. But not if they abuse you, not if they don’t admit to their abuse, not if they have grandchildren that you’re allowing them to be in the orbit of. So for instance, Virginia had two brothers who apparently did not know about the
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sexual abuse that was happening and they had grandchildren. They had children who then were in contact with the grandparents. And Virginia did not tell her brothers what had been done to her for many years. So these innocent grandchildren are hanging out with grandma and grandpa and being exposed
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and potentially violated by these monsters who, you know, have not been forthcoming about their part in this. nor have they paid any price for their behavior. I mean, what? And then Virginia wanted her own children to have relationships with grandma and grandpa. And I’m like, no. Uh, no. Protect
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your kids at all costs. And she’s like, I was always supervising. No, you can’t always be supervising. You go to the bathroom for 5 minutes. 5 minutes is too long to be away from your children. Five minutes is too long to be exposing your children to known pedophiles. Like,
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nope. No way. I was shocked. I was disappointed. I was appalled by that. But I was so in admiration of Virginia’s bravery, of her sticking her neck out there to finally go public, of everything she went through. I think hearing her whole backstory of her childhood and being sent away to like
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one of those camps that’s supposed to like fix children who are troubled. I mean, there were so many details that were tragic and devastating. And I had a hard time with the narrator’s voice, but not voice per se, but sort of her inonations, how kind of affected and over the top she felt. I
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really wished I could hear it from Virginia herself, but I was so into this book. I could not put it down. I think it’s really important. I think it’s really important that we start talking about sexual abuse in a way that’s bigger than the MeToo movement, in a way that exposes not only
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Jeffrey Epstein’s and Gelain Maxwell’s, but also grandma and grandpas and moms and dads who are doing bad things to kids. I mean, this is a big problem that has not gone away with the Me Too movement. It’s nice that there’s been some light shown, but we need to be talking about it. We need
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to be taking actionable steps. I felt so devastated that Virginia is gone due to suicide. I also felt relieved for her. She was tormented by everything she’d been through. And then she had several health crises after that and accidents that led to, you know, constant pain and
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things like this. So, not only the emotional pain, but then doubling that down with physical pain. I was devastated for her. I felt relief for her by the end of the book when she’d committed suicide because her trusted confidant, the person that she leaned on ever since she was 19 to support her and
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give her strength, her husband, it was revealed that he had also been beating her and he had been verbally and physically abusive to her. I mean, I was devastated by that. I just felt like finally this poor woman can get some peace. It was a very sad and heavy listen, but
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I also think it was very important and I was shocked by the fact that I gleaned so much new information from it. So, if you’re looking for a read that’s difficult at times, but important, I highly recommend Virginia Dupre’s book. I could not put it down. And that’s what
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I always take as the sign of a really good book. uh a really intriguing and important story. All right, everyone. Something for your holiday wish list. Virginia Dre’s book. You won’t um regret it and hopefully you’ll be inspired and you know just um I don’t know. I don’t
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know. It was complicated but important. Well, until next week everybody. I’ll be back with more design solutions and more things that I’m reading, watching, intrigued by that I want your take on. Until next time. Bye. A big thanks to our producer Jeremy Young and to Eton and the Embassy for
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our theme music. And shout out to our parent company, Uploft Interior Design, your trusted source for expert interior design. Visit uploft.com to explore our services and book a consultation with one of our talented designers. If you’re enjoying the Uplift and Tear Design
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