The TV landscape of the 1990s is strewn with the corpses of sketch comedy shows that failed to last more than a single season (pour one out for The Ben Stiller Show, The Dana Carvey Show, The Edge, Exit 57, House of Buggin’, and The Idiot Box, among others). However, there’s one such series that was not only the first of its kind but—as of this writing—the only of its kind.
The Newz—yes, with a Z (and let’s just chalk that up to it being the ’90s)—was the brainchild of Michael Wilson, a man who one might argue was genetically predisposed toward late-night programming, given that his father was legendary Saturday Night Live director Dave Wilson. The younger Wilson was also an SNL behind-the-scenes alumnus: he spent two years in the mid-1980s working as a researcher and part of the production staff on SNL, which put him on solid ground to create a sketch comedy series of his own.
Mind you, The Newz didn’t exactly go the way Wilson had planned. He never expected to find himself putting together a sketch comedy series that would require him to deliver episodes five days a week, nor did he anticipate that he’d be saddled with a confusing title for the series. And when The Newz began to take off, Wilson certainly didn’t anticipate that the whole thing would abruptly go up in smoke in scandal.
Still, over the course of seven months in 1994, Wilson and a team of future comedy writing all-stars produced more than 60 half-hour episodes of The Newz.
Although its story is one that features a cast of characters that includes everyone from Shaquille O’Neal to Sherman Hemsley, as well as a scandal involving being booked on The Howard Stern Show under false pretenses, The Newz is a show that most people don’t even remember. With the series having just marked its 30th anniversary, LateNighter decided now might be a good time to try and change that.
The Newz
Creator: Michael Wilson
The Writers: Wayne Page (co-producer / head writer); Jeff McCarthy; Michael Price; Jon Ezrine; David Litt; Michael Glouberman; Andrew Orenstein; Joanne Liebeler; Shang Forbes; Terry Ward; Howard Nemetz
The Cast: Lou Thornton Keating; Nancy Sullivan; Deborah Magdalena; Tommy Blaze; Brad Sherwood; Mystro Clark; Dan O ‘Connor; Stan Quash; Shawn Thompson
Executive Producers: James McNamara; Michael Gerber
Special thanks to Wayne Page, who—in addition to serving as the show’s co-producer, head writer, director (single camera), post-production producer, and co-writer of The Newz theme song—also provided the majority of behind-the-scenes graphics for this piece.
In The Beginning…
Michael Wilson [creator]: The story starts at Paramount. There were two executives—James McNamara and Michael Gerber—and they were pitching a late-night show that was going to be a spoof on the news. They were hunting around for a showrunner to produce the show. It was going to be a newsroom, there was going to be an anchor desk, a weatherman… It was going to be another version of The News Is the News or That Was the Week That Was—although I’m giving them more credit than they probably deserve. I don’t think they’d actually thought it through that much. I mean, one of the pitches I remember when they came to me was, like, “The weatherman is a total lech, and you have this thing where he’s counting through all the panties that get sent into him, because he always asks at the end of the weather, ‘Don’t forget to send me your panties!'” I remember looking at the guys and saying, ‘Wow, we are on a different pentameter of comedy.’
But they pitched me this show that they told me was already sold; that Paramount was already in, that they’d met with so-and-so, and they said, “We’ve got station groups, and all we really need to do now is make a pilot and we’re good as gold.” At the time, I said to them, ‘I’m not interested, to be honest with you. I don’t get the show. It’s not my edge.’ And they said, “Well, could you give us an idea of what you’re doing?” And I said, ‘Well, when you’re talking about a five-day show in syndication, it’s very problematic. You’re talking about having to write that show and be on. You can barely get a good monologue in for late-night talk shows that’s topical enough and funny enough, and I’ve got news for you: that’s only about two-and-a-half, three minutes. And you want to do a half-hour every night of topical comedy? There’s only a certain amount that you can bank. Plus, the characters that you want to do, it sounds like you want to do a sitcom at the same time, and…I don’t know if you get what the show is that you’re pitching, or if I’ve got it wrong, but it’s not a show that I’m feeling any affinity for, and to be honest with you, I don’t think you can pull it off.’
But at the end of the conversation, I said, ‘However…’ [Laughs] ‘If you were just thinking about doing a nightly sketch comedy show, that’s something I could deliver.’ And they said, “What are you talking about?” And I said, ‘A half-hour of sketch. Think a version of Saturday Night Live, to an extent, but five nights a week.’ And, of course, their first response back to me was, “Oh, that’s impossible! They can hardly get 90 minutes done, and you’re telling me you’re doing it five times a week?” And I said, ‘Well, I’ve got a system. Saturday Night Live is where I came from, in many ways, and where I learned from. And I’d be taking it right out of their playbook.’ They’re, like, “What do you mean?”
I said, ‘What you don’t seem to get is that Saturday Night is 90 minutes. That’s three days of your week right there. But what you’re not realizing is that the way Saturday Night Live is written is that it’s written in two days. The host comes in on Monday, you pitch a couple of ideas, there may be some things in the hopper that were carried over from the weeks before that never got worked on or made it to air. But most of is written Monday night, all day Tuesday, and into Wednesday morning. Then the readthrough is Wednesday afternoon, which means they go into rehearsal for Thursday and Friday, and then they’re usually about 20 minutes over in material that they cut between dress rehearsal and air.’ They’re like, “I still don’t get where you’re going.”
I said, ‘What I’m telling you is, if you’re willing to give up the topical material, which I don’t think you need—especially not in syndication, because I’d like to create an evergreen show. The last thing I want to do is be topical, because what happens in the news tonight, it ain’t gonna hit in our syndication window. I want to go broad comedy. I want to go relationship comedy, observational, across-the-board comedy. Monty Python meets SNL, if you want, but comedy that is not day and date; [comedy] that can last because it’s premise-based. What I’d want to do is bring in a writing staff and write the whole show. We’re just going to sit down for a month and write sketches, hone them to get them right, put them up on the board, keep reading them through with the cast, and at the end of the month, I’ll have 20+ shows. And then we go into production and we knock out the shows, and then we come back, and we start the machine over again while you air the ones we’ve done.’ They looked at me as if I was from outer space. [Laughs]
And I was fine with that, because I didn’t really want to do a syndicated sketch comedy show. I’ve even joked that each one of those half-hours could’ve been a half-hour of a Fox prime time comedy show…and imagine if I had the ability to scale down the five days to just one half-hour a week? They would’ve thought I was the golden boy! It would’ve been insane! But I said, “So that’s my feeling. And I’m actually in the midst of developing a sketch comedy show, and I’ve got a lot of earmarks for talent that I’ve worked with already, so…that’s sort of where I’m at.” And we parted ways.
And I guess they ended up doing some research or homework or looking me up, but two weeks later, I got a call back from McNamara, who’s now back in L.A., and he’s, like, “We’d love to meet with you again.” And I said, “I’d enjoy the free lunch, but you’re not gonna change my mind.” And he’s, like, “No, no, no, no, maybe you’ve changed ours.” So I went in and met with them, and they said, “Do your show.” I said, “Really?” “Do your show.” I said, “Okay, but I don’t want to call it The Newz.” “But you have to call it The Newz.” “But it makes no sense! We’re anything but the news!” And he’s, like, “But that’s what we sold! We’ve already gone and pre-sold this, Michael. We’re gonna call it The Newz. It doesn’t matter.” And I kept saying, “You know, this isn’t going to play. It doesn’t make any sense.” But they said, “That’s the only caveat: we have to call it The Newz. Now go produce your show.”
Selecting the Cast
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: Michael and I were in the process of casting the show and looking for talent that brought different comedy skills and instincts to the show. So, we not only looked at sketch and improv performers from The Groundlings, Second City, Improv Olympics (I.O.) and Theater Sports, but we also looked at stand-up comedians that could bring a unique voice, and we believed could act and perform in sketch. And Michael already knew comic actor Shawn Thompson and stand-up/actor Tommy Blaze.
Tommy Blaze [cast member]: I was high school friends with a guy named Philip Morton, and he also went to school with Mike Wilson, and they end up getting jobs at SNL during the Eddie Murphy days, Mike because his father was the director—Davey Wilson—and Phil because… Well, he got a job! [Laughs.] So I used to visit the set back in the day, and I sort of met Michael Wilson at that time. He was really good friends with Phil Morton. Then they go their separate ways, and Michael Wilson gets a job as a talent coordinator for the David Brenner show Nightlife. And because he kind of remembered me and my friend Philip Morton, Michael booked me as a standup comedian on that show, and I ended up doing three appearances on the show. It went very, very well.
So that’s how I really came to work with Michael, and then when he had a shot at doing this syndicated show, he just called me up and said, “Do you want to do it?” And I didn’t really want to do it. I was up for the role of Joey in Friends. It was between me and Matt Le Blanc. And I obviously didn’t get it, but I ended up doing the season [one] finale. But at that point… There’s a video of me somewhere at Christmas or something, and I’m saying, “You know, I’ll bet you that of all the things that’ll happen in my life in the next few months, I’ll bet I end up going to Orlando and doing this sketch show.” [Laughs.]
I’ll just speak for myself, but at the time, I think we’d kind of lost perspective. Our friends that were doing sitcoms were getting $25,000, $30,000, $40,000 an episode, and we were only going to get paid a fraction of that for this show. I remember that even Brad Sherwood was, like, “Ugh…” Because our mutual friend, Kari Coleman, she was doing a sitcom at the time, and we were all bemoaning the fact that she was making so much money and here we are on this show. Anyway, that’s how I came to do it.
Michael Wilson [creator]: A chunk of the talent—Tommy was one of them, certainly Shawn Thompson from Canada was another one, and one or two of the writers—came from a production I did called On the Air, which was a much better title. [Laughs.] It was a sketch comedy show that I had produced for ABC for a summer workshop about a year or so before. So when I said to McNamara and Gerber, “I just need to add water, I can do this,” I wasn’t making it up, because I had all this talent and everybody sort of lined up in my back pocket and had been going through and seeing people at Theatersports and other improvs, and making note of writers that I’d read scripts from from the agencies for the better part of a year, trying to do my show.
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: At the Improv comedy club, Michael and I saw Stan Quash. He was fearless. His comedy was loud, angry and in your face. Stan didn’t care who he offended… and was hilarious. He was yelling at people and ranting about life’s issues… He was the comedian where people either laughed hysterically out-loud or didn’t laugh at all. And we were, like, “That’s exactly who we need.” [Laughs.]
Brad Sherwood [cast member]: Michael Wilson came to see me in an improv group I was performing in at the Laugh Factory. We were the regular group there on Sunday nights, and both Dan [O ‘Connor] and I were in that group, along with Kari Coleman, who was in the pilot for The Newz as one of the cohosts with Tim Conlon. Michael came to see us and wanted to use me, and he wanted Kari to be one of the cohosts, and then along the way he was, like, “What about Dan?” And I said, “Yeah, Dan’ll be great! I work with him all the time!” Because we also did Theatersports together and this other side improv group as well.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: I went in on an audition, just a regular old thing through my agent. I was a sketch player, but I do not look like who I am inside. I have a very twisted sense of humor. But I make my living being a straight woman because this is what I look like…and, hey, I’m smart enough to know where my money is! [Laughs.] And I did play the straight woman in a lot of the sketches, but there was so much funny going on. I was, like, “I’ll do that!”
Lou Thornton Keating [cast member]: I auditioned for the show. In fact, I probably auditioned multiple times. I probably had to do some of my own characters. I had just started doing the Groundlings’ Sunday company—there’s the main stage, and then there’s the Sunday company—and in my Sunday company was Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan, Cheri Oteri… There was a good group there. So I had some characters, so I probably did some of those. But I remember the chitter-chatter: “They need a blonde! They need a brunette!” [Laughs.] They wouldn’t talk about the men that way, but that’s the way they’d talk about the women. And then they got a Latina in the end [in Deborah Magdalena] as well, so they had three women!
Dan O’Connor [cast member]: Brad Sherwood had gotten cast, and I know they were looking for one more person, so Brad very generously offered to audition with me, and they liked me and liked the fact that I was really going for trying to be that great utility character guy and straight man. So that’s how I got cast. I think I was the last—or maybe the second-to-last – person cast.
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: At that time, I was doing The Apollo Comedy Hour, and I got booked for The Newz off of that. The casting director was looking for that one more cast member, they didn’t know who, they didn’t know what, and she was up late one night and saw me. She got to my manager through the union, they flew me out, met me, and I was just booked. I was signed. Which is the dream, right? When I was at The Apollo, I was very creative, I was able to do a lot of characters and things, but once I got hired for The Newz and saw the caliber of the cast… To me, that’s still a dream cast. Every single one of them, unbelievable. But I quickly found out that I was the cute Latina bonus cast member that didn’t have a lot of speaking opportunities. But even so, let’s say that if The Apollo Comedy Hour was college, then The Newz was my master’s and doctorate. The whole world: the writing, the pitching, everything about it.
Mystro Clark [cast member]: My manager at the time knew somebody that knew they were looking for funny people. I’d been doing standup for about five or six years. I moved to L.A. from Ohio about two years before that. And I just went for an audition, and at the time I think they were actually pretty much done, because they were, like, “Yeah, I think we got it, but we want to see you anyway based on a recommendation.”
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: When we cast Mystro, the show was already cast. But his manager, Reno, was just pitching him. Reno would call me all the time: “Oh, I got this guy Mystro Clark…” I’m, like, “Reno, we’re cast.” And he’s, like, “You gotta see him!” And finally I was, like, “Okay, send him over.” And I think Michael and I sat in the stairwell—we’re, like, on the landing—and Mystro comes around the corner and goes, “Hey, how y’all doing?” Like he’s walking onstage. And he did his act for us. So Michael and I saw him first.
Mystro Clark [cast member]: I ended up going into one of the producers offices, and they just called everybody into the office and I ended up doing just some impromptu freestyle comedy while they sat on the floor. [Laughs.] That was my actual audition. No sides or nothing. They just came in, sat down, and said, “Okay, be funny.” There was, like, 10 or 12 people in there. I was, like, “Holy crap…” I mean, it worked out, luckily. I was quick enough on my feet that I think I just went around the room and started talking about everybody in the room. And once I got ’em laughing a little bit, it was cool. I think it was like a day or two later when they called back and said they wanted me on the show. I was, like, “Great!” And that was it.
Hiring the Writers
Michael Wilson [creator]: Beyond the cast, the other caveat, which was crazy as well, is that I was a Writers Guild of America member, but now I was entering this syndication situation where they had to go non-union. But I knew a ton of writers that had yet to really get their shot who were vastly talented, so I said, “As far as the writers go, I can probably get you around that.”
We had Michael Price; Andrew Orenstein and Michael Glouberman, or as I used to refer to them, “The Boyz”; their friend Howard Nemetz, who I loved as well; Leonard Dick; David Litt; Jeff McCarthy and Wayne Page… These guys were seriously talented writers. I mean, it shows just by where they went after The Newz. But none of them had their chops yet. I mean, in many ways, this was their first real gig, y’know? And I used to say to them—and I knew it just from my perspective of being with the Franken and Davises and the James Downeys and the Jack Handeys and the Robert Smigels before that—I said, “You guys don’t know it yet, but you’re as good as them. You’re that good.” They really were.
Jon Ezrine [writer / performer]: My father knew Jim McNamara. He was one of the executive producers, and because my father knew him, he introduced me to him. I worked in another realm—horror—before I did The Newz, in horror. I did an episode of Friday the 13th: The Series and Swamp Thing. I also worked on Super Force. And then I was on Guys Next Door, which was a children’s sketch comedy show, and then I did a bunch of pilots that never went anywhere.
But one of those pilots—Rhythm and News, which was basically the same concept as The Newz, if not necessarily the same format—Jim liked that, and he liked me, so he brought me in on the pilot of The Newz. Michael Wilson was the producer of the show, he was the showrunner, and he liked my material. He said, “Oh, this is really good, so I want you to be on the show.” I mean, he kind of had to let me me on the show because of Jim McNamara… [Laughs.] But anyway, I was on the show!
Michael Price [writer]: The Newz was my very first paying job in TV. I’d been in L.A. for almost two years, knocking around. I had an agent, but nothing was happening, but I’d written a packet of sketches among my other sample material. And I got a call from my agent saying, “You have a meeting for this thing, it’s called The Newz.” So I had a meeting with Michael Wilson where he was just a delightful, great guy. Around my age, maybe a tiny bit older, super great energy, really fun, and had this whole vision for this show, and he was, like, “This is what they think the show is gonna be, but it’s really gonna be this!” I don’t know where they found me. I guess my agent just submitted my stuff and he liked my packet of sketches.
Michael Glouberman [writer]: I was trying to break into writing, and I’d just gotten married, and I decided, “You know what? I’m going to go back to school. I’m going back to grad school!” So I applied to UCLA grad school, I get in…and then my agent gets me to work on the pilot for The Newz, which was about two weeks of work, but it was the exact same time that grad school was starting, so I had to make a decision. And I’m, like, “All right, I’ll just take this pilot, and who knows? Hopefully this’ll lead to something!”
So I do the two weeks of the pilot, and then…nothing. I didn’t hear anything for months. And I’m, like, “F*ck this!” I reapply to UCLA, they accept me again, and then again, literally about a week before I was supposed to start, I get a call saying, “The Newz is picked up for series!” And I was offered a job to write on it. So I call back to UCLA, and they’re, like, “Well, don’t ever apply to us again!” [Laughs.] So it kind of solidified it: “Well, I guess I’m stuck doing this!”
Writing the Show
Michael Price [writer]: Originally I was just hired for two weeks to work on the pilot. We wrote it in these tiny offices in Studio City, and then they cast it with this great cast, and the cast for the pilot was pretty close to what it ended up being on the show. But there was Brad Sherwood, Stan Quash, Mystro Clark, Tommy Blaze… All those guys were in the original pilot, and then they changed some of the other people for the series. But then we went off and filmed it in Orlando, Florida. We filmed the pilot at Disney Studios, and then we waited months to get it picked up.
Jon Ezrine [writer / performer]: When we did the original pilot, Michael Wilson blew my mind. He had a meeting with us, gathering everyone into his office, and said, “Here it is. Here’s all our future.” And it made me cry, what he said, because it was so inspiring. And we went out there, and…that was the night that Jim McNamara came up to me and kissed me on my face and said, “You were so good tonight. Thank you so much. I am so glad I know your dad and got you in here!” [Laughs.]
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: When we walked out of shooting the pilot, even before I edited it, we knew that it was gold, that the show was going to sell. Michael and I sat down on the steps outside the studio at Disney MGM Studios in Orlando. We said that we promised that we could do a scripted sketch comedy series five nights a week on a tiny budget, with only a handful of writers, something no one had ever done. Now we actually had to do it.
Michael Price [writer]: When it finally got picked up to series, suddenly we were making the whole show, and then it became this…kind of industrial comedy process!
Michael Glouberman [writer]: We were writing, like, an episode a night for three weeks straight, which is like a season of Saturday Night Live in three weeks. And then, of course, it couldn’t be topical, so it was, like, “Oh, write whatever you want.” It was kind of schizophrenic. There were no parameters. Anything you thought was funny… If something dopey happened to me on my way to work, I’d write a sketch about it. And it was such a grind, which was the good part and the bad part. Because it was always, like, “I need a sketch about anything. Anything! What do I got? What do I got? Oh, a cup of coffee! Okay, I’ll write a sketch about a cup of coffee! I’ll come up with something funny about that!”
But we also wrote dopey sketches about, like, Bert and Ernie getting high as roommates, which was kind of edgy back then. Also, there was a sketch that I wrote with two others that was about a NASA convention where they wouldn’t let Michael Collins in because no one had ever heard of him. And he couldn’t convince them that he was the one who didn’t walk on the moon during the first landing, the one who stayed on the ship. So there was some highbrow stuff that went in. But it was mostly lowbrow. A lot of stoner stuff.
Jon Ezrine [writer / performer]: We’d do 21 shows in 21 days in Florida … We’d do a dress rehearsal, and then we’d do the real show, and if there were mistakes, you could cut between them. On Saturdays we’d do four shows—so two episodes—and these were all in front of a live audiences, and then on Sundays we were off and went swimming and drank a lot of liquor and just basically hung around the hotel or went to the Crab House or went to Disneyland or wherever we found stuff to do. But generally we slept.
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: Not only did we have to write 30-40 usable sketches a week, but create the wardrobe, set building, props and set dressing required for them DAILY. I mean, we did six to eight sketches a day in Florida, and in sketch comedy, there are no recurring sets. It’s not like on a sitcom, where you have, say, the kitchen set, or the coffeehouse set. We’re doing medieval times one day and the Old West the next. There’s no continuity. So, we’re building new sets every day. We produced six to eight sketches a day, and each sketch might have one to three sets. So that means we’re building anywhere from 6 to 15 sets per day. A day. Building them and then tearing them down, every day. And we had NINE cast members. If there’s six to eight sketches, and they might be in 2-5 sketches each plus dressing extras… routinely 30-60 pieces of wardrobe a day. That’s 150 to 300 pieces weekly! People don’t think about that. Our crew in Florida was incredible. They would hit flea markets. Bring things from home and “borrow” things from other productions on the lot—thanks, Nickelodeon!—anything to help make each sketch as funny as can be.
Brad Sherwood [cast member]: It was so creative, and because it was at that crazy pace, we were just constantly going. It was like this crazy comedy production line, and it felt like it never stopped, because we’d go out there for three weeks, come back and riff and write for three weeks, and then go back out there. It was unrealistic to even have that timeline, and somehow we all rose to the occasion and actually did it. So kudos to Mike Wilson for getting that done, because by TV standards, that had never happened, because it was just too many moving parts to have that much content churned out that quickly. And for that kind of a pace, I thought the content was pretty silly and fun, and certainly you could hold it up to In Living Color or Mad TV.
Michael Glouberman [writer]: It was a lot of guerilla writing. It was my first time being on set for anything, really. It was really my first experience in Hollywood. A lot of good guys. The actors were always up for anything. Kind of like Saturday Night Live, they would wander around from office to office if they had an idea, looking for someone to write it. Most of them weren’t writers, so they would come in and say, “Oh, I have this idea where I work as a cashier!” And I’m, like, “Yeah?” And they’re, like, “Well, yeah, and it’s funny!” “Well, okay. Uh, why is it funny?” “Oh, you’ll come up with why it’s funny!”
Brad Sherwood [cast member]: I did a lot of writing on the show. I would go into the office a lot and hang out at the studio with a lot of the writers and work together with them on character ideas and fleshing out stuff and just riffing with them and trying to make them laugh. And that would turn into sketches along the way. I loved it so much. For me, even though it was more work than actors or writers would normally do on a show, it was so fun.
Mystro Clark [cast member]: I helped write a little bit. I wasn’t writing as much as it was that when I had a character idea, I’d just go in and talk to certain writers that I would vibe with. We’d sit down and write it together. They’d be doing all the typing, I’d be mostly just talking it out. So we kind of co-wrote a couple of characters, but I didn’t really get a writers credit for it because it was more them writing and me describing it.
Michael Wilson [creator]: When we were doing The Newz, there were no cake walks. It was a constant sprint to put the show on the air. In fact, it was the first—and remains the only—scripted half-hour comedy in syndication that was a daily show. And I defy anyone to ever attempt to do it again, because I don’t think they could. I mean, they could. We did, and what one man can do, another man can do. But at the end of the day, I don’t think anybody would have the chutzpah to take it on. And so far, no one has.
Jon Ezrine [writer / performer]: Nobody could do it now, because you’d have to pay people too much to work that long and that hard.
Michael Wilson [creator]: But I’ll tell you: there was a camaraderie of “Hey, gang, we’re putting on a show!” And there was some ideology that we were sort of in it together, sans the McNamara and Gerber part of it, which I tried to keep blocked from everybody as much as I could.
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: I think Michael got stuck in the middle for a lot of things. He was just the messenger for a lot of things that I can’t even fathom. But, y’know, even though I felt like a bonus Latina and all that, whenever Michael had to defend his team, he really did. And for that, I will always be grateful.
Michael Price [writer]: Michael was a wonderful guy, but he was always kind of keeping a lot of balls up in the air and saying, “We’ll figure this out! We’ll make it happen!” But we had these two guys who were kind of the money men—the non-writing executive producers, as they say—and one of them was sort of nice, a guy named Michael Gerber, and the other guy was this guy named James McNamara, who was kind of a jerk and would kind of boss us around. He’d try to get us to skew our sketches to be more anti-Clinton, because he was a Republican. So he wanted us to write sketches about how Clinton was ruining the country. [Laughs.] And we didn’t want to do that!
Brad Sherwood [cast member]: I think I remember something along those lines, to which I think there was a unanimous “what the f*ck?” And that Michael Wilson and Wayne Page were, like, “We will never delve deep into a conservative ideology just because of your political bent.” What an asshole.
Michael Price [writer]: I remember one time they called us in… Because, a la SNL, we’d have a dress rehearsal show, and then we’d have an hour in between, and then we’d have the taped show. And in between the dress rehearsal and the other one, there was a sketch that wasn’t working, so we got called into those guys’ offices, and McNamara was like… [Growling.] “The show isn’t funny enough! Why didn’t you write that thing about Clinton?” And we’re, like, “Don’t tell us what to do!” And he’s, like, “C’mon, you’re funny!” And he turned to…I think it was David Litt, and he said, “You’re supposed to be funny! Tell a joke!” In just a really sh*tty way. So Litt goes, “Two guys walk into a bar…” [Laughs.] I mean, we were all at the end of our ropes.
Jon Ezrine [writer / performer]: It was terrible. We hated that. And then it came to a point where he and Gerber, they had their own ideas of how it should go, and it was very contrary to what we wanted to do and what Wilson wanted to do. And one night they demanded that we do a certain piece a certain way, and it was just stupid, because they weren’t funny! They were financial guys. It was, like, “You’re not Eddie Murphy. Stop trying to be funny! You’re not!” So we just refused to do it. And they got so mad. But we were with Wilson. He was an incredible leader.
Taping the Show
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: For me, it was like Almost Famous meets Broadcast News. The scene where Holly Hunter is running down the hallway to get to the network news control room with the videotape they need to play on-air. That was me nearly every day in Florida before we started taping each episode daily. Monday thru Friday—after blocking, writing, set dressing, lighting, dress rehearsal and two performances were completed, everyone would leave and go to dinner and go to bed. I went from the end of the taping right to post-production and would be up all-night editing with numerous edit rooms at the same time. I would take the best performances from the two tapings of each episode and build the final episode that aired. I routinely got only a few hours of sleep nightly, and there were nights each week I only took naps in the edit suites. Right after dress rehearsal each afternoon, I would hurry back to the post-production facility to get the final tape from the editor, then hop in the golf cart, drive frantically across the lot, and run with the tape in my hands to the control room where Tony Marino, our Director, and the crew would be waiting to start the show. I would hand the tape to the Tape Op, then our Assistant Director and Tony would count us down into the show.
We filmed in the Universal Theme Park next to “The Flintstones” live show. I loved the idea. There’s half a Nielsen point walking through the door every day. Your audience is right there in the theme park. In Burbank, the audiences… are like herding cattle. In Universal, they’re coming in to see a show, and it’s this joyous thing where they’ve just come off a ride, they’re on their way to another, and they go, “Hey, let’s go in and see this show!” And it’s an actual real TV show. What’s more fun than that? And it’s only a half-hour, so they’re not going to be in there forever. So, I loved it. I thought it was a great idea.
Lou Thornton Keating [cast member]: I remember it was a short walk to the amusement park rides, so one afternoon when we had a light day, we went over and rode rollercoasters and stuff.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: One time Shang Forbes—who was a writer, but he was also our warmup guy—just bombed. He couldn’t get any reaction.
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: That was actually the first episode. We were all excited, the actors start performing our first sketch—but nobody’s laughing. Like, nobody. There’s 200 people in the audience. And then someone does a physical comedy beat…and everyone laughs. But then funny lines are being said, and nobody is laughing—at all! And then another physical comedy beat, and everyone laughs. And I see Shang, who was a writer on the show, and since he was also a stand-up, he did the audience warm-up… and I said, “Shang, what the hell is going on? Do these people not speak English?” Shang goes, “No! They don’t!” Stunned, I said, “What?!” Shang explains, “The World Cup is here! These are the families of the World Cup soccer players!” I said, “What the hell?” I run over to our Audience Coordinator and ask, “Did you check to see if everybody spoke English before you brought in the audience?” She says, “No. You didn’t say to do that. You just said to get hip, young, cool-looking people!” I stared at her and explained, “Okay, next audience, make sure everybody speaks English FIRST… then the rest.“
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: Generally, though, we didn’t really care about who the audiences were. We were just gonna do what we were gonna do anyway. No matter what went on with the audience, even the ones that didn’t speak English, we were kind of doing it for us. Of course we were performing, but we were really just having a good time. And it was so great in that sense.
By the way, everyone always thinks that things that are on the air are so glamorous, but one of the exciting parts about doing a show live like that—even though it was taped—was all the quick change that you have to do and the craziness that goes on trying to get ready for the next sketch. All we had was an area that had, like, a blanket hanging between the guys and the girls, and you’d hear everything, and everyone would be talking, and…I remember one time Mystro was farting. [Laughs.] And we were, like, “Mystro!” And he goes, “That’s a shout-out from my digestion! My colon’s going, ‘Hey!'” It was really hard to ever get mad at him, because he was always such a charmer.
The Sketches
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: The first sketch of our pilot was “The Menendez Brothers Comedy Hour,” and it was a take-off on the classic The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and it featured Lyle and Erik singing “If I Had a Hammer.” That was the Cold Open for the show. The breakout sketch was “Hillary’s Instinct,” a group written sketch. I think it was Price, Ezrine, Litt, McCarthy and me. We did it in the pilot and then redid in the series. It was Hillary Clinton doing the Sharon Stone scene from Basic Instinct, with her crossing her legs, but instead it was in front of a Congressional panel, with Bob Dole and Strom Thurmond dumbfounded as Hillary’s trying to manipulate them. Kari Coleman played Hillary in the pilot, and then Nancy Sullivan performed it in the series. Legend has it that Nancy put a big “smiley face” sticker in the spot of focus—to make sure the four male Congressional cast members truly looked stunned. They were—and tried not to break out laughing.
Michael Price [writer]: We had this guy who played Bill Clinton, his name was Tim Watters, and he was a very nice guy, and he was a professional Bill Clinton impersonator. Like, that was his business. He looked like Bill Clinton, he sounded like him, and he’d go speak at dinners and do comedy bits and stuff. So we did stuff for him that was sort of along the lines of… Well, the style of comedy of Clinton in those early years of his administration were more about, like, eating hamburgers or whatever. [Laughs.]
And then we had another bit… Jon Ezrine and I created this character that was based on Boxcar Willie called Earl Tillotson, the White Trash Troubadour, and he had done these record commercials for all these really horrible backwoods songs that he’d written that were, y’know, Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel type stuff! So we brought him back, and we had Tim play Clinton as if Earl Tillotson was doing a command performance at the White House. So there were all these jokes about Hillary and George Stephanopoulos and all the people back then.
The one thing we did that I was really happy with was a thing that was very absurd, but it was the State of the Union Address, and they said that Clinton had decided to switch things up, so instead of delivering the usual State of the Union as a speech, he was going to perform it as a ballet. So he came out in ballet costume and was dancing around, and the commentators were saying, “He appears to be saying that the Republicans are stonewalling.” And then Stan Quash came out dressed like the Devil, holding a pitchfork, and they’re saying, “He’s Bob Dole being an obstructionist.” It was all very, very silly. And…it was a different time, but a lot of the jokes were about how Hillary wore the pants in the family, so the big joke at the end was, like, “Next week Hillary’s going to do her own speech, and it’s going to be The Nutcracker.” Something like that.
Dan O’Connor [cast member]: We did the “Star Trek Red Shirts” sketch, and…we did two or three Star Trek sketches, because they found out that I could do Shatner. My Shatner was somewhere between Kevin Pollak, my friend—and great stand-up—Ron Darian, and Jim Carrey. It was kind of an amalgam of all three. But I think at one point we were, like, “Maybe we should ease off on Star Trek stuff.” [Laughs.] But “Star Trek: The Opera” was hilarious, and it was just a quick-hit thing. It wasn’t a gigantically long sketch, and I think that was something that we did pretty well: sketches that were only two or three minutes.
Michael Glouberman [writer]: One of my dad’s favorite sketches, and he still brings it up… I don’t think it was one that I wrote, but it was called “Whoopsie-Digit,” and it was a board game where, if you lose, you get one of your fingers chopped off. It was a fake commercial, I just remember that Mystro Clark was, like, “It’s so much fun!” [Holds up hands to look like they’re missing a few fingers.]
Brad Sherwood [cast member]: I had one sketch where I was a ridiculously arrogant lawyer who was trying to get rid of a lawsuit based on an umbrella policy, because I couldn’t believe that anyone would have an insurance policy on their umbrella. It was a very Jim Carrey-esque character, cut from the same cloth.
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: Jeff and I loved to write sketches that were off-beat and had numerous turns. “Poker” was an Old West gun dual skit where gunslingers Tommy and Shawn draw their revolvers. When Shawn threatens Tommy, he replies “Smile when you say that.” Shawn says, “No.” Tommy urges him, “Come on, smile.” It goes back and forth as Shawn starts an “aww shucks” smile creeping out. Building the comedy on each back and forth. “Sandwich” was a Monty Python-esque sketch in a hotel where Stan is a bizarre concierge frustrating guests as they simply attempt to order a sandwich from their room. “Trick or Treat” featured Shawn as a Dad who opens his front door and is shocked and confused to see that every trick-or-treater is dressed exactly like him.
Michael Price [writer]: One of the sketches from my original packet made it onto the show eventually, which I was really proud of. Actually, when they did it, they brought in as a guest star the great James Karen. It was about a guy who was a businessman who was telling his subordinate, “You know, everyone has a moment in life where it’s their moment to grab the opportunity, to grab the brass ring. When that moment comes, you’ve got to grab it. And your moment is…” And just before he says, “Now,” the phone rings, and he answers it. “Yes? Oh, okay. Okay, great. Very good. I’ll get on it.” And then he hangs up, and the guy goes, “Yeah?” “What?” “What about my moment?” “Oh, I’m sorry, it passed. That was it, and it’s gone now.” [Laughs.] He goes, “What do you mean?” “Well, your moment came and it went, and now it’s the other guy’s moment. Send him in!” And it became this whole big thing about whose moment it is, and it turns into this big farcical thing where he ended up shooting people. It was really Looney Tunes. But we did it, and James Karen came in just for that episode to play that boss. So that was really fun.
Jon Ezrine [writer / performer]: Sherman Hemsley guested on an episode, and he and I got in a wrestling match one night, we were so looped. Like, rolling around on the floor, wrestling. All in good fun, of course. But can you even imagine wrestling with Sherman Hemsley? [Laughs.] He was funny.
Dan O’Connor [cast member]: Shaq and Dennis Scott from the Orlando Magic came by the show. I played a sketch where I turned into Shaq. I put on the shoe, and then there’s a puff of smoke, and then Shaq was there as me.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: I think I have Shaq’s footprint, that I traced on one of my scripts, and he signed it.
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: The big thing with Shaq when I handled him, was that we had to have in his dressing room… like 28 double cheeseburgers from McDonald’s. It was a really specific number. I thought it might’ve been a thing like Van Halen and the big jar of M&Ms with the Brown ones removed, where they just wanted to have a simple way to make sure people had read their contract. So, I didn’t know if Shaq had ordered those because it was something like that, or if it was a legitimate request and he was really going to eat 28 burgers. [Laughs.] And because I was there all night working on the editing, and all the food services were closed at night, I was eyeing those friggin’ cheeseburgers. I was, like, “If he doesn’t eat those, I am bagging them up, and they’re going with me!” And in the end, me and my editors happily had a feast of cold McDonald’s for craft services that night. Thanks, Shaq!
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: I enjoyed doing Rosie Perez and Mike Tyson with Mystro, where it was Rosie and Mike doing Romeo and Juliet. [Goes into Rosie Perez voice.] “Romeo, Romeo / Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” [In a Mike Tyson voice.] “I’m right here. Can’t you see me?”
Mystro Clark [cast member]: There was one where I played Michael Jackson, but it was kind of a behind-the-scenes thing, where I was supposed to play him in a Michael Jackson sketch, and Mike came to my dressing room to tell me that it was cut. And I already had all of the makeup, and I was dressed like Michael, doing the voice and everything. And he tells me that they ran out of time, so I’m, like, pushing all these people out of my dressing room, and I had the chimp in there and everybody from Michael Jackson’s life was in there. I was actually sitting on the couch, waiting to do the intro, when they played that sketch [for the audience]. That was the cold open. I was sitting there in the dark, facing the audience before the sketch ended, and I just remember how loud the laughter got when that sketch came on. And when the lights came on and I was sitting there, people literally started applauding and screaming my name. I was, like, “Wow, this is cool!” It was the first time I ever remember the feeling of “Holy sh*t, I’m famous!” That was a good feeling.
There was another great one—I think Shang wrote it—with me and Deborah Magdalena where she had a killer cat. I went to pick her up for a date, and every time I left the room, her cat would start talking and tell me he was gonna kill me. I got to ad-lib a lot in that one, so I remember that one being pretty fun. Me and the cat were going at it, and every time she came back in, the cat wouldn’t say anything, and he’d just be sitting there all calm. That was a good one.
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: This crazy cat, with the crazy voice, looked like this distorted stuffed animal, was doing everything to ruin the date…and succeeded! I remember having lots of laughs, and the cast and crew really enjoyed that. Just the [cat’s] voice and the creepiness. You know the GIF with the cat filing its claws? [Laughs.] That’s what “Killer Cat” was all about. But that sketch was cool because it was just me and Mystro. It was just nice for he and I to shine and do a bit.
There was also one with Lou, and…was it Shawn Thompson? I think it was. And Tommy was definitely in it, because he broke. But we were all out on a date, Lou and Tommy were a couple, and Shawn was my blind date, and he was just obnoxious. And he went off-script completely. The way the sketch was supposed to end, he was having soup, and he’s supposed to flick the soup on my shirt…and it was a beige shirt, so I was supposed to be, like, “This it it! I’m done! I’m leaving!” But he ended up pouring the entire bowl of soup on me. And I was so shocked…but I played it! I was just like… [Screaming unintelligibly.] I’m dripping, and you see Tommy hiding behind his napkin, because he knew that wasn’t supposed to happen. And then I stormed out of there, and I was slipping everywhere, because the soup was on the floor. So I made it even bigger than it was supposed to be!
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: Besides editing the full episodes, I would also be editing “roll in” opening sequences for sketches and stand-alone skits, like parody commercials, that were shot ahead of time. Often, I would get the actors and run around the Universal Theme Park in a golf cart to different locations and shoot the scenes. These pre-produced skits I shot and edited, no one actually saw until they were rolled live into the show during the taping. Sketches like the Real World MTV parody, “The Clintstones“, a Flintstones theme song parody and opening title sequence featuring the Clintons and Gores, a Natural Born Killers parody, and Dead Girl, a parody of the famed opening title sequence and song for the Marlo Thomas sitcom That Girl with Dan and Deborah.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: “Dead Girl” was one of my favorites! It was a spoof of That Girl, the 1960s comedy with Marlo Thomas, and Deborah Magdalena was painted ashen and…she was dead! And I played the mother, and somebody brought her home—I think it was Dan—as his girlfriend for dinner. And he’s, like, “Mom, Dad, meet Dead Girl!” And the most hilarious thing was the theme song, because it was, like, “Doot-doo / Coffin / Doot-doo / Dead Girl!” She’s, like, floating face down. And then she’s sitting on the couch and falls face down into the potato chips. It was really dark. But it was hilarious!
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: Oh, my God, I’m gonna cry…because she remembered that! That’s awesome. “Dead Girl” was going to be a recurring sketch! When they gave me “Dead Girl,” it was like they gave me air to breathe. They loved it, they all laughed, they all enjoyed it. And before the shutdown, we did have rehearsals and readthrough, so…remember back in the day when Revlon would have the commercial for the fragrance Charlie, with the whole runway and everything? So there was going to be “Dead Girl: The Fragrance.” And they had, like, three or four Dead Girl sketches that were going to be in the next batch. But it just didn’t happen.
JoJo Liebeler co-wrote that. She was great. Because she was also the woman in the writers room. And she had this really loud cackle of a laugh. But it was necessary. Her laugh was almost like the stamp of approval. At least for me, I knew things were working if she laughed. Even if I wasn’t in the sketch. If she laughed, it was working.
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: Another favorite sketch, one that featured the entire cast, was “Idiots,” where Brad played the leader of a group of medieval England peasant idiots trying to warn villagers led by Dan of the Black Plague. But the idiots are too stupid to describe the plague. “What color is the plague that is devoid of color, ye village idiots?” So, the idiots instead sing the description of the Black Plague’s impending doom with Mystro as the lead singer of the parody song I wrote with Jeff to the tune of the Village People’s “YMCA” (“Black Plague it is coming to town. Black Plague will put you right in the ground… If you don’t run, you’ll be D.E.A.D…”). As soon as the music started the audience went crazy, getting the Village Idiots / Village People parody, with Mystro doing his best Village People lead singer impersonation.
Brad Sherwood [cast member]: There was one sketch where I was playing Bob Dole, talking to people in my offices and doing some Republican dirty dealings and complaining about liberals and this and that, and after they left, this music came on—I think it was “Low Rider”—and I start dancing around. And I start taking my suit and clothes off. And I open this wardrobe, and I put on a camisole and a dress and a wig and a bra and high heels…and I become Janet Reno! For some reason, they were the same person: Janet Reno was actually Bob Dole. Strangely enough, I also was one of the regular cast of characters on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and I played Janet Reno several times on there because I was so tall, and putting me in a dress was funny. So the fact that that’s a character that I sort of carried on beyond The Newz is funny.
I remember one that I did, and the fact that it got made… [Laughs.] I was at a polar expedition outpost somewhere, and I was reading my journal aloud, and it was, like, “Day 1: I haven’t seen anyone in two weeks, and I’m waiting for provisions, so it’s just me and these two rabbits.” And then they cut away, and then it’s, like, “Day 4: It’s just me and these twelve rabbits, and I’m running out of food because I have to feed these rabbits.” And then… “It’s been three weeks and still no supplies.” And they pan back, and it’s just all rabbits behind me, and I’m just not thinking that I could just eat one of these rabbits. I have no survival sense. And I’m narrating my journal entries, so it’s all voiceover with me and the quandary and conundrum: “I don’t know how much longer I can make it.” And I’m surrounded by, like, a thousand pounds of meat!
Jon Ezrine [writer / performer]: We had this one sketch that Litt and I wrote together called “Fecal Family Matters,” and they actually created these suits that were gigantic pieces of sh*t. And it was a family, so the guy comes home, a piece of shit with his lunchpail, and his wife goes, “How was work today, honey?” And he goes, “Crappy!” [Laughs.] And they have pieces of corn for eyes, and…it was disgusting. Everything was a joke related to that. But we read through that one probably six or seven times, and they almost put it in, but…it never made it.
Mystro Clark [cast member]: In the last batch of sketches that we’d finished right before being canceled was a character I was gonna get to play for the first time. It was a real character from start to finish that I came up with and wrote lines for it with one of the writers. I think it was called “Billy Woods, Vampire Slayer.” [Laughs.] It was basically Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except this dude was a dude who went around to celebrity parties and accused everybody of being a vampire, wearing, like, a garlic necklace and all that sh*t. I had some funny moments in there I thought I could’ve brought it to life, so I was excited about that one. But I never got a chance to do it, just because that was when it got canceled, right there. I was, like, “Damn!” We’ll never know whether Billy Woods would’ve took off and become a recurring character or not.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: I had an idea called “Mom’s a Mermaid,” and I went to Ezrine, because I knew he was gross, and we wrote this. I did it at readthrough a couple of times, and we couldn’t get it through. But a guy comes home, he brings his friend home with him, and his friend goes, “What’s that smell?” And the guy goes, “Oh, that’s my wife.” And I was the mermaid, and I’m at the top of the stairs, and…I’m kind of like Roseanne. And I stink, and I’m in a wheelchair, and I’m smoking, and I’m, like, “Get me some chum!” It was just this disgusting thing where he’s, like, throwing fish and stuff. But we could never get it through. But “Mom’s a Mermaid,” we just thought it was so great that she was gonna be so disgusting. And I wanted to do it because it was going to be such an extreme character.
Jon Ezrine [writer / performer]: There was a sketch that I think Mike Price, myself, and JoJo Liebeler wrote, but it was “Jeffrey Dahmer Sings the Broadway Hits.” So it was, like, “Old Man’s Liver,” “Ate Some Guys” to the tune of “Edelweiss,” and that kind of thing.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: That Jeffrey Dahmer sketch caused a sh*tstorm. They blacked that sketch out in the Midwest because people just went insane on them about it. It was so offensive to the people who had been victimized by his terror. Maybe they didn’t black it out. Maybe they substituted something else. But they definitely didn’t show it again. [Shrugs.] We thought it was hilarious.
Brad Sherwood [cast member]: As far as recurring characters, there was Tom Slack, who was a narcoleptic bomb defuser, pilot, detective… The list goes on. He’d get himself into these critical moments and then fall asleep, and then it would end in an explosion or something horrible would happen as the problem, whatever it was, was on the precipice of being solved. That was a funny running gag.
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: Jeff McCarthy and I ended up writing a lot of stuff for Stan. It started with “Bag Boy” where Stan plays an angry supermarket checkout bagger who is triggered into philosophical rants of what’s wrong with the world and people—when a customer simply asks him to bag their groceries. Stan was brilliant. The sketch was then done in the Pilot and again in the first episodes of the series, and spawned a runner of funny “Boy” sketches of Stan lashing out in other mundane service jobs: “Caddy Boy,” “Cupid Boy,” “Flight Boy,” “Mime Boy,” “Elf Boy,” etc.
Dan O’Connor [cast member]: He was always this disgruntled, pissed-off employee somewhere who didn’t give a flying f*ck about anything.
Mystro Clark [cast member]: The one recurring character I remember the most was Malcolm Xtra. That was the one where we would take off on Malcolm X and put him in various scenarios where he was, like, Malcolm FedEx, and then he was Malcolm Excalibur, and it would always end with me basically breaking into a two-minute rant about how white people were trying to trick the black man into doing something I didn’t want to do, whatever I was doing. [Laughs.] That one turned into a little bit of a recurring character, but then after about five or six of ’em, I started getting worried, because I didn’t want to make it look like we were making fun of Malcolm X, so I kind of asked them to tone it down. I said I didn’t really want to do a bunch more of ’em, because I felt like it was getting a little silly.
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: Other sketches that became “runners” were “Good Cop…” where it was “Interpretive Dance Cop,” “Keystone Cop,” “Ventriloquist Cop”; Brad’s clueless Scotsman Fergus McDougal; Stan’s long-haired hipster heckled by hillbillies Dan, Shawn & Tommy in “You Look Like A Girl”; “Bad Ideas”; “Chips Across America” with Stan and Lou as lazy slobs. “What would it kill ya, to sick a potato chip in my mouth?”
Jeff and I wrote the original “Tom Slack: Narcoleptic…” sketches that became a favorite runner with 8 sketches and cold opens for the show because of the always surprising hilarious tragic ending on each… “Tom Slack: Narcoleptic Airline Pilot” was first, then “Driving Instructor,” “Bomb Squad Technician,” “Zeppelin Pilot,” “Heart Surgeon,” “Hostage Negotiator,” “Race Car Driver” and “Downhill Racer.” All featuring Brad playing a character in a stressful situation with life and death stakes, who falls asleep at the critical moment. You don’t know Brad is Tom Slack until it’s too late!
Lou Thornton Keating [cast member]: I don’t think I had any recurring characters on The Newz. Really, you’ve got to remember that this was the ’90s, and the women weren’t featured like the men. Shawn Thompson would make his own films, and Tommy had a comedy bit that was kind of like the news, but the women were not considered like that. They didn’t think, “What would Nancy be good at?” or “What would Lou be good at?” And maybe if we’d had a second season, they would’ve said, “Okay, that character worked, that’ll recur.” But I don’t know that much was allowed to recur organically. It was kind of set at the beginning.” Nancy had “Abby and Andy,” with Tommy Blaze, but even that was heavier on Andy than Abby.
Michael Glouberman [writer]: “Abby and Andy” was a recurring thing, but nobody liked doing them. I think Michael Wilson kind of forced us. “Who’s writing an ‘Abby and Andy’ this week?”
Michael Price [writer]: We hated writing “Abby and Andy,” and they hated doing it. Tommy Blaze would mug like crazy. I’m sure it drove Nancy up the wall.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: I hated “Abby and Andy.” I hated it. I just hated it!
Brad Sherwood [cast member]: It was kind of a chauvinistic screed, and it didn’t really resonate with anyone other than the persona that Tommy had crafted for this opinionated guy. It was this kind of loud New York cab driver persona that had a gripe about everything.
Dan O’Connor [cast member]: I think Tommy was always Tommy. He was just one of those stand-ups whose persona was really strong.
Mystro Clark [cast member]: I think in his mind Tommy was doing Andrew Dice Clay and John Belushi all in one. On the show that seemed to be the mold he was in, from what I remember. He had set pieces built around his stand up from the beginning.
Tommy Blaze [cast member]: “Abby and Andy” was more or less from my stand-up. I used to do a lot of “men and women are different, isn’t that funny?” material, and that was it. I just played a complete jerk. This was about the same time as Andrew Dice Clay. But to me, the character of Andy was a well-spoken, well-thought-out guy who was insightful, whereas Dice was a cartoon. Andy wasn’t like that. He was trying to explain to the uptight, buttoned-down Abby why men think it’s sexy to watch two women together or whatever. He wasn’t mean-spirited, he was just kind of earthy. “You got four breasts and two vaginas. What’s not to like?” Or we’d talk about how men have a sexual thought every seven seconds, and I’d just keep talking and talking. Andy was very innocent and very wide-eyed. That was the character. And Abby would just stare at me like, “You actually think this?!” [Laughs.] And the reason why it holds up when I watch it to day is because he wasn’t Dice. He wasn’t going, “Hickory dickory dock!” It was more of the average man.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: It was tired. I felt like at that point in 1994, 1995, that trope… It was like a cheap Dice imitation. We were beyond that. I didn’t like the premise. And I didn’t like the dynamic between my co-star and I.
Michael Price [writer]: They did not get along.
Tommy Blaze [cast member]: Abby was more of a cartoon. She was…not particularly based in reality. Although Nancy, who played Abby, actually was that way. She was very buttoned-down. I remember I said the phrase “period underwear.” It was a joke about how you could tell if a woman’s going to have sex with you on the third date because she’s shaved her legs, she’s matched her bra and her panties, but if all she has to wear is some period underwear, it’s not happening. You’ll have to wait for the next time. Or something like that. And they were so afraid that that wasn’t going to make it past the censors that the writers were trying to figure out euphemisms for “period underwear.” They were, like, “How about ‘once-a-month grundies?” Uh, guys, that’s not gonna work. And Nancy was, like, “Don’t say that on television. That’s disgusting.” It really bothered her. I was, like, “Wow, you really are Abby! You really are that woman!”
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: Oh, he’s such an a-hole. Tommy was such a sh*t-stirrer. He just liked to start trouble. He was an instigator, and he would just piss everybody off. And he loved it. I really did not like “Abby and Andy” one bit, and I think it’s a really weak piece, no matter who did it. I felt very restrained in a very stereotypical, unrealistic, unfunny character. And I was basically just there as a backboard for Tommy to bounce off of with his rants. And having to act prim like that… I don’t know.
You know what? Tommy’s the only person I didn’t get along with. And it wasn’t like an active problem, because I get along with everybody. But I guess it stuck out because I had to work with him on this piece that I did not care for, no matter who I would be doing it with. I’m getting myself in trouble here, but…I don’t care! [Laughs.]
That sketch, honestly, felt like part of the job. But a lot of the other stuff was very exciting to do. Even though you bring your creativity, there’s a part when you’re in show biz where it’s not about you, and you’re part of the ensemble, and you’re a craftsperson, and you have to serve the writers and the script and…you’ve just got to jump in and do it.
I will say that Tommy did a very funny sketch with Jon Ezrine where Earl Tillotson teamed up with Tom Jones, and Tommy played Tom Jones. It was called “The Glitter and Goiter Tour.” They did this really funny, vulgar sketch that they actually had to censor somewhat, because there was one part where Tommy would go, “What’s new?” And Jon would go… [Growls.] “Pussy.” And Tommy had underwear thrown at him, and Jon reached into his paints and pulled out his own huge stained tighty-whiteys and threw them into the audience. If that show could’ve been totally uncensored, if it had been on HBO or something, it would’ve been insane.
Lou Plays the Fool
Michael Price [writer]: Lou Thornton was the star of a sketch that I was really fond of that I had written. I believe it’s called “The Office Fool,” and it was my version of a Sid Caesar / Your Show of Shows type sketch, where everybody is trying to act normal but one crazy thing is happening.
Dan O’Connor [cast member]: “The Office Fool,” if I’m depressed, if I’m feeling a little blue or whatever, I used to go and find that on YouTube and watch it.
Michael Wilson [creator]: It’s a great sketch, and it’s a tour de force for Lou, for sure. She just shines.
Michael Price [writer]: It came about from a young guy working in the office, kind of a pompous guy who was working as a production assistant, and he used the phrase, “Well, he doesn’t suffer fools gladly.” And I hate that phrase. It’s really trite, I feel. It’s always trotted out. So I said, “Well, who does?” And I came up with this sketch where that’s basically what it was. These guys are in a board room, and someone says, “Well, we’ve got a new boss coming in today, she’s supposed to be a real tough cookie,” and another person says, “Well, let’s face it, the other guy was really rough to work for. He didn’t suffer fools gladly.” And the first guy says, “Well, this one does.” “What do you mean?” “You’ll see.” So then Nancy Sullivan comes in, playing the boss, and she’s, like, “I’m here to turn this company around, but first I want you to meet my fool.” And Lou comes in.
Lou Thornton Keating [cast member]: That was not a sketch from that first chunk of three weeks of filming. I think that was probably the second three weeks. We were all more relaxed. We knew how it went. The game became for me a little bit like, “How do I surprise my fellow players?” Kind of like you would on a Groundlings stage or something, where you’re doing it for the audience, but you’re also trying to tickle each other a little bit. Not make them crack up as much as “be in the moment” actor kind of fun. A little more improv to it. So that was a sketch where I just decided from the start that I was going to explore the room… Explore the spaces and have a moment with each person and just sort of see how big I could blow it up. And if the director told me to just knock it off and stick to the script, I would, but I felt comfortable enough to play at that point.
Michael Price [writer]: She was playing this character named Beebo—the “Fool”—who wore overalls and was jumping around and throwing things everywhere, and all the other guys had to sit there and just keep a straight face and do this board meeting while she’s running around and, like, throwing water at everybody.
Jon Ezrine [writer / performer]: I was actually supposed to play the fool in that sketch, kind of as the Earl Tillotson guy, but Lou wanted to play it so bad. She begged and begged. She said, “Please let me do it!” So I said, “All right!” It wasn’t how I saw it in my head, but she was so funny in it that the actors couldn’t control themselves. They broke, where they were just laughing hysterically. Both in the dress and the regular taping! It was like Carol Burnett with Tim Conway.
Dan O’Connor [cast member]: I think Mystero is the only person who doesn’t break in that sketch. Or Nancy. And, of course, Lou, playing the Fool. But me and Brad and Stan, we were weeping. Weeping.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: I pride myself as being someone who does not break easily, and I just caught myself smiling…but I did not break! And neither did Lou. It was hard, too! I was allowed to smile at her, because she was my fool, but that’s as far as I got. She was running under the table, and they were all standing up as she’s disappearing under the table. Lou was hilarious in that. That was just classic Lou, going from a beautiful young lady to insanity.
Lou Thornton Keating [cast member]: I just remember that it was hard to make Brad Sherwood break. But I think I broke him.
Brad Sherwood [cast member]: I could not even get through it. I mean, almost everybody was breaking up, but I, for some reason, had a disproportionate number of lines to be said, because I was sort of running the meeting, I think. And I could just not get through it. I was just crying. I love being unprofessional onstage and in front of a camera, so I had no problem with it. I wasn’t angry. I was just, like, “This is the funniest and stupidest thing that’s ever happened on TV, so I’ll just go with it.” It’s the most I’ve ever been broken…and I’ve done something like 30 seasons of Whose Line Is It, Anyway? at this point.
Dan O’Connor [cast member]: That was one of the only ones where I was watching the lights of the camera, so I’d know when I could take a moment to try and get my shit together, because it was just so funny. Lou was just so funny. Even thinking about it now makes my cheeks hurt, because I was laughing so hard. And it didn’t get any better from the dress to the taping. It didn’t alter anything. I didn’t suddenly get the power to not laugh. In fact, what I did was, I just got more angry as the character in order to try and keep a straight face!
Mystro Clark [cast member]: I was usually the one that wouldn’t break. They were always trying to get me to break, but I was one of the ones who could keep it together the longest. But I think Lou got all of us. I just remember everybody else losing it, and I think eventually I finally let one go, just to be, like, “Okay, you got me.”
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: I wasn’t even in the sketch. I just remember everybody wanting to watch. Even if you weren’t in it, you wanted to watch. And Lou was just so agile! I remember thinking at that moment, “I’m seeing a master at work…and I will never do that.” I just knew that the power she had, I wasn’t capable…and I was okay with it. Because if you’re seeing a master at work, if you’re really a true artist, you’ve just got to give them the respect for that. And she was incredible.
Sexism, Racism, and the Howard Stern Incident
Mystro Clark [cast member]: I remember at the beginning, the executive producers (McNamara and Gerber) were trying to offer suggestions like, “We need a pretty girl,” so they tried to hire someone who…wasn’t a comedian. They just wanted her on the show to look sexy, I guess. But whoever she was, she disappeared!
Lou Thornton Keating [cast member]: I didn’t know anything about [McNamara and Gerber], but I didn’t like them, and I didn’t like how they dealt with the women. McNamara would say, “Lou needs to show more chest or leg,” so I’d get these notes.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: I used to feel awkward when we used to have to do those little sit-down openings and…we kind of liked them, depending on what the pairing was, but I remember Lou and I got very pissed because they [McNamara and Gerber] demanded that we wear dresses to show our legs.
Lou Thornton Keating [cast member]: Now, look, for a character, I’d do anything. But when you have to stand up and say, “Hi, I’m Lou Thornton! Welcome to The Newz!” I felt like I should have some say and not be dressed like a hooker. I was a young woman and wanted to dress provocatively, but…he [McNamara] would go to the wardrobe people and pick out these, like, stripper dresses, and they’d put those in your dressing room, and I’d go, “What are these? This is cheesy!” And they’d be, like, “Well, the producer wants you to wear them.” Anyway, I went into his office and said, “Hey, look, I understand what’s going on, and I want to be helpful, but do you mind if I pick my own slutty outfits? Because these really look like a stripper, and I feel strange saying, ‘I’m Lou Thornton’ wearing those.”
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: I wanted to be funky. I wanted to wear things like a bustier with jeans. I wanted to be very hip-hop but sexy. It was gorgeous, it had flowers, and it was full to the waist. And I thought, “You know what? I’m gonna wear that with jeans. Yes!” I felt sexy and empowered and comfortable and funky. So we did the dress rehearsal, and I felt like I was hot as f*ck. Don’t tell me otherwise! [Laughs.]
But then afterwards… They didn’t have the virtual world, but the studio was always watching. Big Brother was always watching…and they said, “They want you to wear this short skirt with it instead.” And I’m, like, “Absolutely not! I’m trying to show a style. I’m trying to be a trendsetter. I want to do it funky and keep the jeans on.” And I fought for it, and I argued for it, and…they said “no.” It was always this vague “they.” They didn’t necessarily say that it was McNamara or the studio or who. But anyway, I said, “You know what? Now I’m not gonna wear it at all.” So when I came out the second time, I came out with a turtleneck and pants. [Laughs.] That, for me, was an absolute turning point … I don’t mind being sexy, but I have to be comfortable with my sexy.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: I felt like we were in Mad Men all of a sudden. It was very bizarre.
Lou Thornton Keating [cast member]: That same week I also found out that our cast party was at Hooters. And I was, like, “Okay, he [McNamara] only thinks of women one way.” And it’s hard when you’re respected by your peers but not by the boss, really, at all.
Mystro Clark [cast member]: That was back in the day before equality was imperative in the mix, so they were still doing whatever the hell they wanted in the old system. I wasn’t even a big Hooters fan anyway, but for a cast party? I was, like, “That’s weird…” But back in the day, studios didn’t worry about that.
I remember Mike [Wilson] telling me once—I’d already been hired, and I think Deborah Magdalena was hired a couple of weeks later—that the one of the studio executives, a female executive, said, “Oh, great, now Mystro’s got somebody who can play his wife in a sketch!” I was just, like, “Wow, yeah, that’s racist…” I mean, this was 30 years ago, and I still remember thinking, “Really? She said that sh*t?” And he was, like, “Yeah, I can’t believe it, either!”
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: [After hearing Mystro’s story.] What. The. F*ck. That, I never heard. I guess my friends really protected me, because…wow. I mean, I do remember feeling like the token hot Latina. Which, at the time, I didn’t mind. I had this awful saying to try and deal with the circumstances: “People love an intelligent woman with a great push-up bra.” I don’t mind wearing that push-up bra, because once I open this mouth, you’re gonna be focused on what I’m saying. So I didn’t mind playing that part. But when it got to the point where I was not being able to explore my talent to do characters or to do anything else, where it was always the wife or the girlfriend or the intros, it was exhausting. And it was exhausting, because I wanted to play!
“Female cast members are still seething over the Howard Stern incident. Last November, McNamara hired Stern’s public relations firm Dan Klores Associates to publicize the show. One idea was to get the female cast members an appearance on the Stern show. What the cast did not know is that Dan Klores Associates told Stern producer Gary Dell’Abate that the cast would strip.”
—Variety, February 26, 1995
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: Ugh. I seem to remember that we couldn’t get any information about the appearance, and then I went to Wayne Page’s office, because I think we were supposed to get on a plane the next day or something, and I said, “We need to talk to Gary Dell’Abate. Can you get him on the phone?” And I’m sure not sure if I’m remembering this right, but either Gary was on speaker phone or Wayne just told me about all of this stuff, the pictures they [McNamara and the P.R. firm] had sent, all of the bullsh*t… So I remember going to Lou and Deborah and saying, “We’re not getting on that plane!” Because we almost got on that plane!
Wayne Page (Co-Producer / Head Writer): I remember this and was dumbfounded and horrified. Michael and I already thought McNamara was not someone who actually respected or appreciated any of us. Nancy or Lou told me that Howard was expecting them to strip. I immediately called Gary at the Stern show. I was pissed and told Gary no way the actresses would take off any clothes. They were comedians simply being booked on a radio talk show hosted by Howard, a fellow Comedian. Gary said that he thought it sounded weird, but that the PR agency told him they would strip.
I hung up and called the agency and spoke to the PR person, and she said McNamara had ordered them to tell Howard that Lou, Nancy and Deborah would do this. McNamara essentially thought so little of our actresses—and, frankly, all of us—that he would put them in this humiliating situation to fend for themselves. Unforgivable behavior by anyone, especially a boss. So I called Michael and told him my conversation with Gary and the PR person. Michael called McNamara. I spoke to McNamara after Michael. We both said he had crossed a line, and it was unacceptable behavior. I think it was at that moment that Michael and I both knew from then on we were making the show in spite of McNamara and Gerber, not for them.
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: Not only was I disgusted… Well, my first response was shock. Second was disgusted. And the third was fear. And the reason why I had fear was because I was in a toxic relationship, and if we had to go and “play” with Howard, it would not have been good. But I remember the studio calling the three of us individually and apologizing for that, and… [Sighs.] It was the ’90s. But can you imagine that happening now? It was like we were Playboy bunnies.
Lou Thornton Keating [cast member]: They signed my name to something saying that I would take my clothes off and sent lingerie… It was horrifying. And there was no recourse, really. I think it was the assistant director’s husband who was a lawyer, and I asked him, “Am I supposed to do anything about this?” And he said, “If you’d gone on the show, you could say it ruined your career, but there’s no damages, because they pulled it..”
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: Oh, my God, I forgot about [the letter and the lingerie]. You know, it’s so interesting. I wonder if I’m having a moment where…there are a lot of things that I don’t remember about that, and it may be just where you compartmentalize. Because, my God, that’s not a memory that would come up with me right away with The Newz. But you have to mention it. It’s part of the story. It happened.
Dan O’Connor [cast member]: I remember it distinctly, because I was in the car, I think we were going to lunch at Sunset Gower, and Nancy and Lou were in the car, and they had just found out that this was going to be the deal. They couldn’t believe they were going to get to do Howard Stern based on this unknown sketch show that hadn’t even aired yet. It just smelled fishy. And Nancy’s pretty straight-ahead, not a shrinking violet, and she found out that was the deal and was, like, “F*ck that! We’re not doing that!” To put the girls in that horrible position, getting there and… Well, who knows what would’ve happened?
Michael Wilson [creator]: When I found out about it, I killed it. I remember that distinctly in my office. Someone on the show knew Gary Dell’Abate, and he was saying something like, “We need 100% confirmation that they’re gonna flash Howard, that’s how you get talent on the show.” And I told them unequivocally that we were not okay with that. I don’t know what Lou or Nancy told you, but I remember at one point they were thinking they could handle it. “We can handle Howard. We won’t have to do it. We’ll get around it. We’ll figure it out.”
McNamara came into my office and said, “You have to convince the girls to go!” And I remember saying, “Not only am I not convincing them to go, this isn’t good for the show! This isn’t how you want to represent the show. Do you think you had Gilda Radner flashing people?” He was, like, “Michael, you’re out of time. You’re out of step. You don’t get it.” I said, “No, I do get it. You’re the guy who wanted to do the weatherman saying, ‘Send in your panties!’ That’s not what we want. If they want to interview the girls from The Newz, if they want to be playful with them or whatever, fine, let the girls go on. But if you’re telling me that they’re only going on to flash Howard? F*ck that!”
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: The thing that drove me crazy… I did this “Dominatrix Hillary” sketch where she’s trying to get her health plan across, and I had, like, lingerie and a whip and everything, and they made me pack it up and were, like, “Yeah, you’re gonna do that for Howard.” And I’m, like, “You don’t do that for Howard! He’ll chew me up and spit me out if I perform something sexy! He’ll tell me to take my pants off! C’mon, I’m not going in there trying to one-up Howard!” And that costume was in a box that was supposed to go with me! We were horrified.
Michael Wilson [creator]: I remember there was another part of that deal, where they wanted to put Stuttering John in a sketch. Of course, because the girls never went, we never wrote it.
Lou Thornton Keating [cast member]: I ended up having a phone conversation with Howard Stern on the air. I still have a cassette tape of that interview. They called to say, “What was this all about? I thought you were supposed to come here and get naked!” And I was, like, “No, we were gonna come and just be charming!” [Laughs.] It would’ve been awful for me to be in that room and have Howard Stern tell me that I promised him that I’d get naked. That would’ve been really awful. But that happened all the time then, right? I mean, on The Howard Stern Show it certainly did. He was asking people to get naked. But the fact that the producers [McNamara and Gerber] hired a publicist to do that…? Ew.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: Oh, God, it was so desperate. It didn’t have to be that way. And Howard didn’t know who we were. They could’ve just sent a sizzle reel, and he could’ve just played with us. You send three cute girls, he doesn’t know who we are… Howard can figure out what to do, right? [Laughs.] But it was a shame, because it would’ve been a wonderful opportunity. It probably still wouldn’t have saved the show, though.
Financial Difficulties—Please Stand By
Michael Glouberman [writer]: When the show ended… I still remember that I was somewhere out of town with my wife—I think it was the weekend of the Northridge earthquake—and I get a call from one of the other writers, and he says, “It’s not as bad as you’ve heard.” And I said, “I haven’t heard anything, so it’s got to be a lot worse than that!”
Michael Price [writer]: We were about to go off and film the last block when we were summarily canceled without any notice to us because [the show] was over budget.
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: I remember they said, “The show is over budget.” And I said, “We’re not over budget, as far as I know. We’re only under budget by, like, 12 cents, but we’re definitely not over budget.”We were so incredibly careful on all costs. But I didn’t know if there was full budget transparency to Michael and me.
Mystro Clark [cast member]: I remember we were ready to roll, because we were on our way to the airport the next day. I’m pretty sure I was at home in Woodland Hills when I got a call saying, “Don’t get on the plane tomorrow,” or whatever. I can’t remember if it was Michael Wilson or who, but it was, like, “Yeah, we got a problem with money, don’t get on a plane, everybody stay where you are.” It was one of those emergency calls where we thought it was just being postponed, not canceled. It wasn’t, like, “The show’s over.” It was more like, “Stay where you are, we’ll get back with you.”
Tommy Blaze [cast member]: I lived in Florida by then, and I’m driving down to Universal, because my pass still worked. So I’m going in there, and I’m talking to Kim Dawson and all the people who are in Orlando who aren’t cast members or writers. I was the only above-the-line person there. And I got to see what was happening. Suddenly people weren’t getting paid. And Kim Dawson, who was the line producer, he gave this big speech where he was, like, “Look, cooler heads are gonna prevail, the ratings are good, they’re gonna save this, it’s gonna work out, we’ve got all these episodes in the can… It’s gonna be fine.”
Lou Thornton Keating [cast member]: I actually had the misfortune of flying out there the day before we found out, because my dad had business in Orlando or something like that, so I just said, “Change my ticket, I’ll stay in his hotel for a couple of nights and then I’ll start work.” So I was already out there, which made it really awkward to be told, “Oh, the show’s not happening anymore.” I was just… [Stunned expression.] “Um… But I’m ready to start work!”
Columbia TriStar Television Distribution is in tense negotiations to save its latenight comedy strip The Newz. Cast and crew have not been paid in months and the studio is still owed 30 episodes from Production Services Intl. (PSI), the show’s producer and subsidiary of Celebrity Entertainment Inc.
According to several sources close to the show, Columbia TriStar Television Distribution (CTTD) can’t account for more than half a million dollars given to Celebrity Entertainment Inc. (CEI) president and CEO James McNamara for production of the show. CTTD won’t comment about the Newz fiasco, but sources say at least $600,000 was given to McNamara to be deposited into the Newz Prods. Co. for the show.
—Variety, February 26, 1995
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: The plug was just pulled. I think that we were home, and we just found out that we weren’t going back, and then we heard that our first-run residuals had been spent. I don’t believe we ever worked again after we found out. I think it was just, “You’re not going back.”
Mystro Clark [cast member]: Being newer to the business, I didn’t get the whole gist of it. But I believe the story they told the actors was, “Hey, we got the contract to shoot 20 more episodes, but for some reason, all the money’s gone now, and they’re blaming the producer and McNamara’s company for spending the money, his accountant or whatever.” So that was all I ever heard. I never really got a full accounting of what happened. But the way they told the story, it was McNamara’s fault for misusing the money. All of us young and bright-eyed actors and comedians were looking forward to making a name for ourselves, and he apparently just decided to use some of the money for whatever he wanted to use it for, I guess.
Michael Glouberman [writer]: And then there was this uncertain time where it was, like, “What’s going to happen? Are we gonna get paid? Is the show gonna get canceled?” And then we found out that we weren’t gonna get paid our week or two of pay, and there was, like, a writers riot, where we were ripping out printers and stuff that we were stealing. [Laughs.] We were, like, “If you’re not gonna pay me, I’m taking this printer…and I’m taking these dozen pens!” Sh*t like that.
Brad Sherwood [cast member]: They f*cked us all over. They f*cked the crew, they f*cked the writers, they f*cked the actors, they f*cked the studio…and they had a winner on their hands! And the studio was literally wanting to throw us more money, to give them another batch of money and maybe even increase the budget because they were so happy with the product. But we were the Little Engine That Could, we weren’t some big juggernaut that they would try and restructure. We were just a cheap syndicated late-night group of talented writers and performers making people laugh…and we were so completely disposable, especially when something nefarious like that was going on.
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: I remember that Michael and the studio didn’t avoid us. They were very transparent. It was, like, “Hey, guys, this is happening because homeboy… The studio hasn’t gotten paid, but we’ve sent him X amount of millions of dollars, and the checks have been deposited, but Universal hasn’t gotten paid once since the recording and filming started!”
Michael Wilson [creator]: The reality of it is that McNamara was taking the money and funding deficit on other projects that he had run over budget with. I guess he and Gerber figured that they were going to come back in and renegotiate with Sony and get more money, and no one would be the wiser. And the new money would come in, and a lot of it would be used to fill up the coffers that had been pillaged, and then they’d move forward from there and no one would’ve been the wiser for it.
I had a big meeting over at Sony, and Sony’s whole thing was that they’d done all of their due diligence, they’d brought in their forensic accountant, and they said, “We brought you in here for two reasons. One, we want to let you know that we know you had no responsibility in this. Number two, we want to let you know not to cash your checks, because they’re gonna bounce. There’s no money in there. But we’re going to make you whole. We’re going to pay you. But we also want to let you know that, moving forward, McNamara and Gerber are going to be out. And we’re discussing how to move forward and how we handle you creatively running the show, but we may need to bring a Sony exec in to start handling payroll and whatnot.”
I said, “You can bring in anybody you want, but I don’t want to get marked with another ‘creative’ person.” They said, “No, no, no, no, we just want to make sure that we can bring in somebody on our side, because we’re essentially going to assume the production.” They just wanted to make sure that I was going to stay and be okay with that and work with them through this. I was at that point just excited that it was going to go forward, to be honest with you…and, yes, that I was going to get paid. [Laughs.] Because I literally did not cash a check from the summer until November. I realize my financial situation was different, because I wasn’t living on this money, but I still assumed that I was going to get my money, y’know?
But what I guess a lot of people don’t know is that, based on that meeting, the show was not going to be canceled. They were trying to figure out when we could pick up. It was coming in towards the end of the year, they’re dealing with the station groups, they’re trying to hold time periods… But they were realizing that they were getting some ratings growth. And they had now aired some of these shows three or four times. So they were starting to see, “Oh, you know what? This isn’t just like another late-night talk show. These do have some evergreen value. We can roll these more and more.” They were starting to get that data back and were figuring out a way to move forward into ’95. And I was, like, “Okay, well, this was bad, but it’s all gonna be good.”
And then Variety, with their sleuth hounds and whatnot, found some blood in the water, and…I don’t know who it was, and I don’t blame whoever it was, but somebody was an “unverified cast member” who anonymously verified to Variety that nobody had been paid and that money had absconded from the budget. And Variety ran the article. And it was that article that caused the collapse of the show. Not McNamara and Gerber stealing. It was that article. Because Sony said, “We have to distance ourselves. We can’t be a part of this.” Now, if we were a huge, massive success, everybody finds love in that. But we were on the bubble. And when that article hit Variety, and then all of a sudden the station managers start calling Sony, and Sony, from their auspices of “we’re Sony, we can’t be dragged in any of this mud,” had to sit back and start to defend itself…. Well, as soon as that happened, it was over. They just decided to burn out McNamara and Gerber, and that was it.
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: Plus, the stations… I don’t think most stations have too much concern about non-creative Executive Producers fighting with the studio over getting more money. It’s, like, “That’s all nice, but when am I getting new episodes?” The original order for the series was 90 episodes. We had produced 63 to date – 61 aired, but I edited two extra best-of episodes including some extra sketches that never aired – and had another 29 episodes ordered, written, with sets being built and plane tickets for cast and crew to head to Florida to tape the next batch of episodes. Michael and I were ready to start filming those next 29 episodes.
But from what I understood, McNamara and Gerber funneled a bunch of the budget to other projects of theirs and claimed we were over budget. But we were not over budget, and they got caught by Columbia TriStar / Sony Pictures Entertainment accountants. If I remember correctly, The Newz went off the air beating The Late Show with David Letterman and The Tonight Show in some major markets. It had great demographics. The show was a hit, and it kept going up in the ratings as they re-ran the episodes—all while they were trying to iron out their financial disputes. If McNamara and Gerber had not done what we were told that they did, I think the show would still be on the air. But when new shows weren’t coming anytime soon, the TV stations just kind of one by one started dropping the show.
Sony told Michael and I to stay available, and they would separate McNamara and Gerber from the show, and we could go on producing the show. But they couldn’t get a separation agreement done. I don’t know if we were actually ever canceled in the traditional sense. I think I was probably owed the most money at the end, because after we finished production, I still had to edit all the shows, and I was never paid. It was such a missed opportunity. It was the funniest show on the air Monday thru Friday nights. It just was.
Michael Wilson [creator]: There was a period of time when everybody was coming to me: “Well, Michael could take the show and we could go somewhere else, now that we’ve got it all together!” And I said, “Guys, listen, I sold my soul to the devil as much as you guys did. I don’t own the show. It’s not mine. We can start from scratch and do something new, but I don’t have the ability to take that over. I don’t even have the ability to get you guys paid!”
Jon Ezrine [writer / performer]: Michael Wilson… His heart was completely broken. But all of our hearts were. Tony Morina, who was the director, said, “I don’t know if I’m right or wrong here, but…didn’t you get on the show because your father was connected to McNamara?” Well, McNamara ripped my father off, too. My father was an investor in the show to some degree. Smaller, but still. And I said, “Do you really think there’s some way that I’m involved?” Tony said, “No, you work too hard.” And it’s true. That show was my whole life. It was the greatest thing ever, and it sucked when it ended.
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: It sucked. It just sucked. We just couldn’t believe it. And I’m, like, “This motherf*cker here…” Because I was living in Miami, and I was invited to McNamara’s house! He had a mansion, it was right next to Donald Trump’s. I was with someone at the time who was a producer, so he wanted to groom me and my ex to see what other things could happen, so that maybe we could do more shows with him. I probably didn’t even share this with anybody on the show just because I wasn’t discussing my relationship with anyone. And this was all about him getting something off of McNamara, him getting his show. And me, I was just a cute Puerto-Rican, looking cute, skinny, and fine. I was just quiet and held his hand. But he and I had the tour of the original Dalis and the original this and the original that. And wifey had everything from headpin to toenails of Cartier jewelry, and then the dinner, the bottles of wine… I was, like, “Wait a minute, did I pay for that? I paid for that!” Because the last round of checks, we didn’t get paid!
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: Deborah Magdalena and I ran into each other after The Newz, years later, and she told me… She lives in Miami, and she was sitting with binoculars at a Miami Heat basketball game, and she saw McNamara sitting V.I.P. across the arena from her. There were a couple of celebrities around him, but she saw him, and she just started to burn. And she went over there, she walked down, and he saw her, and he got all excited, and she was, like, “No, no, NO, Jim McNamara, don’t you open your mouth! You owe us all twenty-something thousand dollars, you ripoff artist!” And she just laid into him verbally. And everyone was looking at him. And she said she went back to the other side and she watched him sulk for the rest of the game. [Laughs.] And I said, “Well, you didn’t get us paid.” And she said, “No, but it felt really good!”
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: That is true. I completely forgot about the binoculars, but she’s right! [Laughs.] My brother is Nestor Torres, and he’s a super-famous jazz musician, and I was there with him. We were at the playoffs with the Bulls, and Nestor played. So it was a big deal. And then I see this motherf*cker and his chick. And when I approached them, she was so happy, and he went to hug me, and I was like… [Stonefaced.] And I do remember that I said, “You can’t pay your actors, but you can be here hanging out with the Miami Heat.” And then I walked away.
Brad Sherwood [cast member]: Good for her. I wish I had a video tape of that! But this was obviously before cell phones. Yeah, we all wanted to extract our pound of flesh from him. Especially because… It’s, like, “You killed a show that could’ve survived!” Or at least gone a full season, and then seen how it did based on its own merits, instead of dying while it was still growing.
Jon Ezrine [writer / performer]: I hate McNamara for what he did. I hate him. I hate his guts.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: I literally had an Italian boyfriend who told me he had acquaintances who could help settle this for us. And he was serious. [Laughs.] And I said, “I… I don’t think that’s my style.” He was going to send someone down from Detroit or somewhere. It was just crazy.
Lou Thornton Keating [cast member]: I don’t fret about the money much. Yes, we got ripped off, that’s true. I think we tried to get organized and file complaints or whatever, but I can’t remember how that ended. Dan probably knows. The whole thing was disappointing in so many ways. I had a lot of complaints, not just that it ended so abruptly and that we were robbed. [Laughs.] But what’s funny is that I just kind of dusted myself off and went on to the next job. And it wasn’t a time when people really wanted to hear you complain about that. In a lot of ways, it was like doing theater, where sometimes the house just closes. The attendance is bad, you’re done. And it was also kind of rough that way. We were scrappy about it. We were producing a lot of stuff and getting it out there.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: One of the people on the production side… I had dinner with them after, and I said to them, “How soon did you know we were in trouble?” And he said, “Right away. Very soon.” And I said, “So you just decided to keep going?” And he said, “Yeah, we just thought we’d ride it out.” And I thought, “Okay, yeah, I probably would’ve stayed in it, too.” And I’ve asked myself over the years, “Would I do this again, knowing how it ended?” Absolutely. Because looking back from where we are today, it was a bump in the road. And we still did 61 episodes.
In the End…
Dan O’Connor [cast member]: When it ended, I was genuinely bummed. I’d been so excited, because it was, like, “Oh, this is challenging, but I’m figuring it out, and this has some legs…” I thought there was a real possibility of us becoming an institution. And then maybe what may have happened is that we would’ve found ways to have more recurring characters and to get good enough that we could slow down part of the process. I really thought we were gonna go on for a few years and eventually get paid real money. Instead of being owed money.
Michael Glouberman [writer]: For all the drama and how it ended, I have a warm place in my heart for it as my starting place. It’s hard to explain to people that you make a living basically sitting around and laughing and joking. But we’d all be off writing on our own, and then we’d come in and have lunch together, and if we were excited about a sketch, we’d tell the rest of each other what the sketch is, and everyone would laugh. There was a lot of camaraderie. I know on Saturday Night Live there’s a lot of competition, and you want the other writers to fail so your stuff gets in, and I guess it’s because it was only about an hour a week for sketches. With this, it was always, “We need stuff! Whoever’s got anything, bring in whatever you’ve got! This is funny, can you make it two minutes longer?” [Laughs.]
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]: It was a good time. It was stressful, but everyone had each other’s back. I miss it. I feel disappointed that the show didn’t last, and also that many of our careers went different paths, and I think that if it had lasted a little longer, we may have had better paths. I choose to think of and remember the highlights of The Newz because it was such a dark time in my personal life. Whatever was happening, I was afraid to share it with my castmates. But I remember the gentleman who was doing our hair in Orlando… They paid for a hairstylist to come to my home to take care of me for a photoshoot, and I think that after he came back, he started telling people about the kind of life I was really living. So everyone just gave me love and extra protection after that,
I’m also grateful for the friendships I made. Mystro Clark… I haven’t spoken to him in so many years, but during that show and after, he was my brother. He… [Long pause.] He knew everything I was going through. He just always checked in on me. And even years later, he was always there for me. And when I finally moved back to L.A., at that time he was ballin’. [Laughs.] So I stayed in his guest house, and he gave me a TV for my studio apartment. I carried that damned TV back to Miami. I didn’t want to get rid of it, even though it was a big-ass old TV, because Mystro gave me a TV! So I’m grateful for The Newz. And I’m grateful for this piece, for this epic throwback…and the epic healing it’s providing. This is awesome.
Mystro Clark [cast member]: I just wish The Newz had lasted longer and ended better. It ended so abruptly, we didn’t even really get to finish it out or say goodbye to each other and all that. But that’s kind of Hollywood. Now, looking back 30 years later and the various series and sitcoms I’ve worked on, I don’t think any of ’em have ended smoothly, where I got to say goodbye to coworkers. It was always just, like, “Don’t come back to work tomorrow.” [Laughs.] “We’re canceled. Bye. Good luck.” I guess that’s pretty much always how it ends.
Nancy Sullivan [cast member]: What was such a shame was that, after we found out that we were not coming back, I was walking through Port Authority in New York, taking a bus from the airport, and I heard somebody yelling, “Sullivan! Sullivan!” And there was a grown man in a suit, running, saying, “I’m a big fan of The Newz!” And I knew at that point that we weren’t coming back, and I was, like, “Oh, dude…” And then I was filling my car with gas when I got back to L.A., and some kid on a bike was going around, and he goes, “Hey! Hey, Sullivan! The Newz!” So the thing that was so heartbreaking for us, I think, is that I think we were really starting to catch fire at that point.
Deborah Magdalena [cast member]:It’s sad that someone didn’t really allow for that to come to fruition. If it had, not only would it have changed all of our lives, but…humor is a place of healing, and people need to go somewhere sometimes just to disconnect from the world. So it wasn’t just about him messing with the money and all that. He messed up something that was so rare, so new, something that’s never been done again still to this day. So shame on him for that.
Wayne Page [co-producer / head writer]: What we did was a miracle. Doing five shows a week on the small budget that we had… It was amazing. Truly. And even though we only did 63 episodes, we could’ve done 500 or more. It was such an incredible TV series. So funny. Just a great team we assembled of talented writers, performers and crew across the board. Everybody was rooting for everybody on the show. Everybody wanted it to be funny. Even though there is always competition for writers to get their sketches in each episode, I really remember it as super collaborative, that everybody was a fan of each other. And that’s what I really think made it wonderful. Everybody that I worked with—not only Michael Wilson, Tony Morina, Kim Dawson, Jim Moroney, Richie Wirth, Richie Namm, Kent Weed on the pilot, and all the writers and cast members… but everybody who was in production and post-production… from control room and stage crew, camera and audio operators, lighting, editors, graphics, art department—designing and building sets, props, set dressing, wardrobe, make-up, music, and our amazing speed-writing cue card crew! I have such heartfelt gratitude to all of them for being a part of something that everyone said “could never be done,” and yet that we did flawlessly.
Michael Wilson [creator]: It was just an immense saturation of talent, to be honest with you, and I still look back to it as a very fond experience. It didn’t have the success I thought it should, and we had to find ways to do it so inexpensively. There are things I could’ve done if you weren’t just trying to chop this stuff out and get it done, get it edited, and on the air. It truly was a miracle of birth, to be honest with you, that it’s held up as well as it has. I mean, I haven’t watched some of it in awhile, but there are sketches in that mix that I still think are some of the best, that still hold up today.
