Live From New York - James H. Miller [270]
Now I will admit that I was still very shaken about September 11, in part because I lived so close to the towers, and I was scared out of my mind, so maybe that helps explain why I just went crazy. I said, “How dare you call and cancel like this? Ben is from New York. He should be fucking showing up with bells on to help the city through this! Haven’t you heard what the mayor said?” She started saying he was canceling because of September 11th, and I said, “Wait a second. Reese Witherspoon, who has never done the show, who doesn’t even really know if she can handle this — and, unlike Ben, was never even a cast member — is doing the first show. Don’t you think Ben ought to maybe rethink it for a second?” And she said to me, “I can’t believe you would be so insensitive.” I said to her, “Listen, let’s just be clear about one thing: The world isn’t going to come to an end because Ben Stiller doesn’t host Saturday Night Live. On the grand scale of things, I just saw three thousand people die out my kitchen window. That’s what matters.”
I was freaking out. I just said, “Fine. If that’s the way he feels, I’m happy to let it go.” I think she was surprised. I couldn’t believe he would cancel like that. And then I hung up. Someone in my office who had overheard the conversation then said to me, “You don’t understand. I think he’s dropping out because we were saying no to a lot of stuff that he had wanted while he was hosting.” I told her I thought it was more than that: “He’s just scared of not being funny.”
With that, I call Lorne and tell him what happened. I said, “I dis-invited him,” and Lorne said, “Fine. We’ll get someone else.” We were just dumbstruck. Ben never called Lorne, he never called me, he never wrote a letter to the show, nothing. Then, I turn on the fucking TV a couple days later and who do I see but Ben Stiller. He’s on The View, the Today show, he’s on every show doing press for his movie. I said to Lorne, “Something’s not right here.” Turns out they had moved his movie up a week because, they said, the world needed comedy. So what really happened was, Ben’s people wanted me to move Ben to the first show and reschedule Reese, you know? I just think it is so wrong what he did.
On the day of the anthrax discovery at 30 Rock, I was at home, and when I called my office after hearing the news, a lot of people there were obviously hysterical. Drew Barrymore was the guest host for that week’s show, and she said, “I am going to leave, calm myself down, and go back to my hotel.” I completely understood. Then I made sure to tell everyone that if they didn’t feel comfortable staying in the building, they should go home. Some people did say, “I am getting out of here, and I will come back when it is fine.” It was a very scary situation. Just horrible.
STEVE HIGGINS:
Marci was in control on the anthrax crisis, and so it’s one of those things where you go, “Too many cooks spoil the broth. If they need me, they’ll call me.” I did talk to Drew about it after she talked to the doctor. She was freaked out in the beginning, but then in the end she put on that game face and went ahead with it.
MARCI KLEIN:
I calmed Drew down, but I felt bad for her. Everyone thought she had left town and she didn’t. She stayed and she did the show. And this show is really scary to do under the best of circumstances.
ANA GASTEYER:
When I found out I was pregnant, I tried to keep it secret. I was really paranoid. I was a wreck. I just didn’t really know how my being pregnant was going to go over. I had a good feeling about it, but I didn’t know if they would want me to leave or what. Tom, in wardrobe, I told right away, because he knows my body so well with the weekly fittings — a nightmare, by the way — but I also knew it would be our challenge to