Live From New York - James H. Miller [159]
JAMES DOWNEY, Writer:
We opened the season with Madonna hosting the show, and there was tremendous hype. It was an offensive, dreadful show. I don’t know how many shows there’ve been — more than five hundred. I would say the Madonna show has got to be considered one of the top five — I mean in an entirely negative way. It really crippled the season from the get-go, particularly since there were a lot of people anxious to see that new group of actors fail. That first show was like an albatross for us. Years later people would still say, “I haven’t watched the show since that Madonna thing.” It did so much long-lasting damage.
When we left in May of 1980, we averaged something like a 12 rating and a 36 share — something pretty high like that. And then after Jean Doumanian’s third show, it was consistently halved. So it was like a 7 rating or something. When Ebersol did the show, he stabilized it and solidified it and kept it on the air, which I think he deserves a lot of credit for, but the numbers were never really huge. That Madonna show got like a 10 rating. That was big.
It was almost like, “The bad news is, a lot of people were watching.”
ROBERT SMIGEL, Writer:
I wrote a song for Madonna to do in a Spanish talk-show sketch and it was surreal, because she was the biggest star in the world and I was just stepping into this show for the first time. I’d half-written this sort of medley for her to sing, and I was one of the backup singers in the sketch. It was a very, very strange way to start.
Then I didn’t get anything on for four weeks and I was worried about getting fired, because the show was such a disaster. George Meyer was a great writer who took me under his wing, and he told me, “Don’t worry, no matter what, Lorne doesn’t fire people, he gives them a chance.” But after about five shows, people started telling me, “Things are tough and the network’s clamping down.”
ANTHONY MICHAEL HALL
Madonna moves like a train. Everything is forward and she is very focused and very intent upon getting it all done right.
DAMON WAYANS, Cast Member:
But the thing about Madonna was, she was terrified. She had never done this before. They were doing the “five… four… three” count-down for the show to come on live. And I looked over at Madonna and she had the biggest facial tic, like her skin was jumping off. One of her eyes was like jumping off her face. She was a wreck.
Do you remember when that light fell on Madonna? Was it seen in the frame? I think you can see it. A light fell, yeah. Actually it was a sketch where I played a gay actor in the closet. I was acting really supermacho. But when the light fell, I screamed a really high-pitched scream, because the light actually fell. So you see a lot of realism in that scene.
Madonna’s not the friendliest person in town but she was very, very professional, and throughout the week she kept saying, “Let’s do it again, let’s rehearse it again, let’s rehearse it again.” She worked her ass off.
JACK HANDEY, Writer:
The Madonna show was considered in bad taste. It was viciously attacked and the ratings started going down. We were actually worried. That was one year, I think, that people wondered whether the show was going to get canceled. But we had a good writing staff then, with people like George Meyer and Jim Downey and Franken and Davis.
TERRY SWEENEY:
Chevy hosted the second show, and we were all so excited because, to us, Chevy was like a god. This was someone returning who’d been one of the original people and was this legendary figure. And we were just excited to work with him. And when he got there, he was a monster. I mean, he insulted everybody. He said to Robert Downey Jr., “Didn’t your father used to be a successful director? Whatever happened to him? Boy, he sure died, you know, he sure went to hell.” Downey turned ashen. And then Chevy turned to me and he said, “Oh, you’re the gay guy,