Getting a 17-year-old soap opera star to bite her tongue can't ever be easy. When the topic is the Spears family saga? Forget it.
"All My Children" starlette Leven Rambin, against the advice of stylist Shane Cisneros, couldn't hold back her opinions on Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy — and the plight of older sister, Britney Spears, of course — while holding court at the Tracy Reese show Sunday night at New York Fashion Week.
"I love Jamie Lynn! I just think it's so awesome that she's having a baby," Rambin said of the 16-year-old pregnant star of Nickelodeon's "Zoey 101."
Rambin said she "hung out" back in the day in Texas — "my friend's mother and Lynn Spears were friends, so we'd go backstage at Britney's concerts and stuff."
As for 26-year-old Britney, whose behavior has become erratic since she filed for divorce from Kevin Federline in November 2006?
"Britney right now," she said, "well, I kind of just wish I could give her a hug. But Jamie Lynn is so cool."
Cisneros, who suggested that Rambin not comment, just rolled his eyes when she did. "Sometimes she's just a little too unjaded," he said.
Rambin, wearing a summery, multicolored Tracy Reese dress, bubble gum pink coat, flouncy yellow ponytail and a big grin, was hanging with Angela and Vanessa Simmons, Run DMC's sneaker-designing daughters and stars of the MTV reality show "Run's House."
She looked wholesome enough, but swears there's more to her than that.
"I was born in 1990, so I get questions like, `Do you know who the Beatles were?' all the time from everybody. But I'm an old soul — I've always hung out with older people. All my boyfriends are always older. I've never done the things other people my age do," she said.
Over it, not over herJustin Theroux, dressed head-to-toe in black, was in a lamenting kind of mood: on the state of New York Fashion Week, the presence of those gaudy bicycles and the loss of his beloved.
"I like fashion," the 36-year-old actor/screenwriter/director said, "but I'm not all kooky about it or anything."
The "Miami Vice" actor and former "Six Feet Under" regular stopped by the party for indie designer Wendy Mullin on Saturday night at the Werkstatte Gallery. Images of her new collection flashed on the wall, spliced with stills from "The Sound of Music."
"I don't plan on going to any other shows this week, but I like to support my friends," said Theroux.
"Thing about Fashion Week is that it can all be just so superficial — so brazenly self-aware. Like all those dumb advertisements you see like those orange bikes," he said, referring to the spray-painted orange bicycles parked all around Bryant Park, where many of the shows are being held, to promote DKNY. "None of it is terribly artistic or really genuinely about New York."
Theroux was wearing all black — suit, glasses, fedora — but it didn't have anything to do with trying to be "genuinely New York." If anything, it was because he's spending much of the writers strike mourning the passing of his 14-year-old pit bull, Pooma.
"She was a PETA spokeswoman," he said. "I found her in Washington Square Park, and it's just been so, so hard. I've been crying like a 9-year-old boy. I can't think of a person who could possibly make me cry this much."
As if on cue, Joanna Newsom began playing her somber song "Bridges and Balloons" in the corner.
"Wow," Theroux said. "I love her."