JM McNab
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Celebrities -- apart from the money, fame, and pagan blood cults, they’re just like us! How do we know? Celebrity interviews. Sure sometimes these manufactured conversations simply expose the dispiriting vacuousness of an artist we enjoy, but other times they are a pure, ridiculous delight such as ...
The recently departed Larry King certainly had some impressively weird interviews throughout his career; there was the show where he enraged Jerry Seinfeld by questioning if his sitcom was canceled, the time he mistook Roman Polanski for his the architect of his wife’s murder, Charles Manson, and, of course, the 1994 special where he sang old standards and made out with an elderly Marlon Brando.
A more recent King interview went viral following his death; this time between him and Community star Danny Pudi, who he thankfully didn’t mistake with any notorious serial killers. During a segment of Larry King Now (which confusingly aired more than a year ago) called “If You Only Knew” King rattles through a list of generic questions like what’s your “strangest fan encounter” and what’s your “favorite movie?” Then Larry poses the question: what’s a “luxury you can’t live without?”
Pudi’s answer, coffee, seemingly rankles King who argues that you can get coffee “anywhere.” His second attempt at answering the question, “socks,” similarly doesn’t accommodate Larry King’s definition of a luxury.
When Pudi asks for an example of what he would consider a luxury, Larry King suggests a “private plane.” At which point, Danny Pudi skillfully reminds him that his current gig is providing voiceover acting for duck-based Disney cartoons, not CEO of Microsoft.
Before it became the “Meghan McCain shouts nonsense while the Academy Award-winning co-star of Ghost watches on in confusion” show, The View hosted a notorious interview with legendary actor Danny DeVito. In the 2006 episode, when he first comes out, DeVito proudly announces that he spent all night doing shots of Limoncello with George Clooney and hasn’t been to bed yet. The seemingly still drunk DeVito is ostensibly there to promote Deck the Halls, but inadvertently gave an interview far more entertaining than anything in that forgotten holiday comedy.
While slurring his speech, DeVito tries to run through an anecdote about the time he stayed at the White House, but ultimately launched into what TMZ described at the time as a “Three Stooges-esque rant against President Bush” that was often “bleeped out.” When he gets back to the subject of his White House visit, he goes on to describe how he and his then-wife Rhea Perlman totally did it in the Lincoln Bedroom.
Making all of this even funnier, while other co-hosts like Rosie O’Donnell and Joy Behar clearly think the whole thing is amusing, Barbra Walters seems pretty pissed off that the guy from Junior is derailing her segment. George Clooney meanwhile had to do Regis & Kelly the same day, but had poured some of his shots into a plant the night before, unbeknownst to DeVito, and was therefore slightly less hammered. At the end of the interview, DeVito starts spoiling the events of Deck the Halls (if such a thing were possible) so Rosie invites him onto her lap and proceeds to cradle him like a small child. It’s pure television gold.
Michael Caine is one of the most ubiquitous celebrity impressions of all-time, most famously popping up in The Trip, a movie (and TV series) predicated on the notion that watching two rich guys eat fancy food while shouting movie quotes in cockney accents at each other’s faces is somehow compelling drama … and amazingly, it is.
Well guess what; Michael Caine knows. Yup, Michael Caine’s no dummy, he’s aware that people all over the world do cartoonishly broad impressions of his voice -- he even seems ticked off that people are ripping off his accent for electronic greeting cards and GPS voiceover gigs. In an interview with Michael Parkinson, Caine himself even did a Michael Caine impression -- essentially an impression of the impressions he’s heard over the years. And it’s pretty spot-on.
According to Caine, his favorite Michael Caine impressionist is Tom Hanks, who did him once on Saturday Night Live. Presumably his least favorite is whoever that guy in Jaws: The Revenge was.
It takes a lot to befuddle a guy whose first name is literally “Weird” -- but when “Weird Al” Yankovic first arrived on the scene, his Michael Jackson parody “Eat It” became a big hit in Japan leading to one of the most baffling television interviews of all time.
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While appearing on a Japanese variety show, Al is seemingly challenged to a dance-off by a guy wearing Michael Jackson’s iconic red leather jacket and, unfortunately, a heavy layer of blackface make-up. Then Al performs “Eat It” partly singing in phonetic Japanese, all while “Michael Jackson” shoves food down his throat and a troupe of sumo wrestlers perform a choreographed dance in the background.
If that wasn’t head-scratching enough, the song abruptly cuts out during the guitar solo and a Geisha wheels out a giant lobster, which everybody demands Al must promptly eat. He agrees and begins munching on the mock crustacean -- but it’s actually a dude in a costume who defiantly screams “NO!” like in the Red Lobster of your nightmares, and nobody is more genuinely perplexed than Al.
Legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki is best-known as the guy who co-founded Studio Ghibli making “family movie night” forever tolerable for parents. While he’s retired now, Miyazaki was randomly approached on the street last year by the Japanese tabloid Flash -- because apparently tabloid culture is way different in Japan than here. (Like, you wouldn’t see the National Enquirer hassling Don Bluth.)
The reporter prodded the filmmaker with questions about how the anime blockbuster Demon Slayer was about to overtake Spirited Away’s box office standing. Miyazaki sure seemed to not care at all, telling the reporter that people shouldn’t “concern themselves with things like box-office records.” When he was further questioned on whether he had seen Demon Slayer, Miyzaki replied: “I don’t watch TV, I don’t watch movies. I’m a retired old man picking up trash.”
This isn’t some obscure Japanese saying, he was literally cleaning up garbage from the streets of his neighborhood. As the interviewer continued, Miyazaki kept politely trying to end the exchange insisting that, “right now I have to pick up trash” and finally “I have to go around and pick up trash, so …” Truly the master.
Rivaling even the time when mute serial killer Jason Voorhees popped by The Arsenio Hall Show --
-- was the episode in which the ‘90s talk show icon welcomed The Ultimate Warrior, star of the World Wrestling Federation and also that PSA in which he gobbles cigarettes like some kind of tobacco-frenzied Cookie Monster. Appearing on the show to hype the latest WrestleMania, following his introduction, The Ultimate Warrior bursts onto the stage and bolts into the audience like a stampeding bull on electrified cocaine.
Furthering the “Led Zeppelin in a hotel room” vibe, The Ultimate Warrior then lifts up Arsenio’s couch, flips over the love seat, and lies down as if he were at a therapy session, not participating a televised celebrity interview program. Arsenio, meanwhile, seems both amused and legit terrified as this hulking beefcake in face paint grunts and screams while refusing to sit down and converse. Still, the whole thing is far less awkward than the episode with Vanilla Ice.
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Top Image: Rock ‘n’ Roll Records
