Has Arthur Kade Found God?

“Are we going to eat?” wonders Arthur Kade, his eyes surveying the menu of the Oyster House as he sips a Diet Coke one Monday in August. “I’m diabetic, and I have got to eat.” This is Arthur Kade? The vodka-swilling, womanizing wannabe actor who began his pursuit of Hollywood fame almost three years ago (and became an Internet sensation in the process)? No, that was Old Arthur. This—well, this is the new one, who, at 33, says he’s finished with acting and his old, loathsome ways.

Kade settles on cherrystones with a glass of pinot grigio, adding that he’d temporarily cut out alcohol due to a photo shoot for the annual Daily News Sexy Singles issue earlier in the day: “I wore these tiny little bottoms.” But just as Old Arthur glimmers in the distance, the new one beats him down. “I’m done with that persona,” he promises. “I created it as a shortcut to my dreams, but the lines became blurred. And I’ve found that the Journey”—that’s what he calls his life’s path—“is to find the real love and the real me.”

Kade says this all started about a year ago when he lost the love of his life. “She couldn’t take it,” he reflects, seeming to choke up. “She’s very private.” Once she left him, Kade says, he lost control—drinking too much, putting on 30 pounds. He explains that he’s found a new path through a church, Trumpet Call, in the Northeast: “I’ve turned my life over to God.”

As for fame, that’s the one thing he’s not willing to sacrifice, though he intends to get there not through acting (“It’s over. I’m 33 and I have a lisp”), but through celebrity video interviews, dozens of which appear on his blog, with everyone from Jersey Shore’s J-Woww to model and Bravo host Tyson Beckford. “I’m going to be the Larry King of the Internet,”
Kade says.

Whether the new Kade is to be believed is anyone’s guess. After all, this is a man who spent three years selling himself as someone he’s now claiming never to have been. Then again, anyone who says he prays several times a day, as Kade does … well, maybe it’s best to give him the benefit of the doubt.

This article originally appeared in the September 2011 issue of Philadelphia magazine—on newsstands now.