Think of all we would miss, all the funny, witty moments, all the extraordinary talent that would never be on display if we didn’t have late-night talk shows.
I’m not talking about the hosts. I’m talking about the guests.
Not the giddy new stars trying to project personality, even if they don’t have one. And not the megastars doing their pro-forma appearances because it’s in their contracts to do so.
I’m talking about the guests who regard an appearance on a talk show as another chance to perform, to take their career seriously, to be engaging and entertaining, not just because that’s what’s expected of them, but because that’s who they are.
I’m talking about Paul Rudd Day Drinking with Seth Meyers last night on NBC’s Late Night, which fans are already calling the show’s best installment yet.
Paul Rudd is a late-night guest like Stephen Curry is a basketball player. He’s got game. But he’s also got artistry. He knows the room (and the host), and he adjusts his performance to match.
Said artistry has been in display across late night over the last two weeks, beginning a week ago Monday when Rudd dropped by The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Since returning to the Comedy Central series last year one night a week, Stewart has leaned heavily into the on-the-news guest, mostly interviewing journalists, academics and government officials.
But like almost all great late-night hosts, Stewart’s own game is lifted when a grade-A entertainer comes for a visit. And so it went last week, when Stewart broke from recent tradition and reconnected with Rudd, who had guested with him over a dozen times when Stewart was The Daily Show‘s full-time host. Unusually, there were no cards on the desk; no evidence of a prepared Q&A.
Instead, the two spent much of their twelve-minute conversation riffing about enflamed perineums, a callback to a reference Stewart made at the top of the night’s show. Nothing about the news was mentioned, nor anything but a few crumbs about unicorns, the subject of the movie Rudd came to plug, Death of a Unicorn.
Throughout, Stewart could not have seemed more delighted and entertained. When he mentioned he needed to do 20 more years of hosting TDS on Mondays just so he could enjoy more visits from Paul Rudd, it sounded like he really meant it (the visits, not the years.)
While it was Rudd’s volley-back wit that took center stage on The Daily Show, three days later he was on another late-night show, The Tonight Show, fully committing to a very different kind of comedy: a “Soap Opera interview” with Jimmy Fallon, which took the form of a broad, more formal sketch.
Rudd has visited with Fallon over a dozen times during his tenure as Tonight Show and Late Night host, recording a series of viral shot-for-shot music video remakes and participating in Fallon’s first-ever lip sync battle.
And as they say on TV, that’s not all. Rudd has been raising the quality of late-night shows for more than two decades now, taping memorable appearances with Stephen Colbert, James Corden, and Conan O’Brien (whose fans revere Rudd for a very silly recurring gag involving the film Mac & Me that played out across various O’Brien projects over 15+ years.)
Many shows have special guest relationships, going back at least to Don Rickles with Johnny Carson. David Letterman had Teri Garr, Sandra Bernhard, and Jay Leno (until, well, you know).
Charles Grodin was unmatched as a regular, brilliantly acerbic foil to Carson, who liked the bit so much he put Grodin under contract for an exclusive appearance every month—no other talk shows need apply. Later, Grodin moved the bit over to Letterman with equal hilarious effect.
Norm Macdonald (also a Letterman favorite) had special rapport with Conan O’Brien. So did Will Ferrell. Justin Timberlake has long had a close association with Fallon. Bryan Cranston, who was funny long before he was an award-winning drama star, has been a dependably great regular for years with Kimmel.
But Rudd is a hall of famer in that category of the good-with-everybody, always prepared, virtually satisfaction-guaranteed guest.
You know the others: Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Martin Short are at the top of that list. One reason: they never show up without a new idea for something funny. They may get around to an anecdote about the latest film/TV show they’ve completed. But first they have something fresh and funny to bring.
Most of the great guests have a comedy background. Stand-ups like Martin and Macdonald, sketch comedians like Ferrell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Bill Murray.
But occasionally an actor with a wry enough persona makes a great late-night guest. Burt Reynolds was that for Carson. Bruce Willis for Letterman.
In many ways, the guest who lights up the late-night show is a throwback to the era when the foundation of these shows was still conversation: they were talk shows with humor, more than comedy shows with talk.
Jimmy Kimmel told Howard Stern a few years ago that making a great late-night guest is the same thing as making a great dinner guest.
Paul Rudd seems like he would come to dinner ready to engage with whatever subject rose to the surface, including an enflamed perineum.
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I was very disappointed that Paul Rudd didn’t appear on the Oscars and revive his running “Mac and Me” gag with Conan O’Brien. Fingers crossed, he does it next year .