• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Paley Center Bids Farewell to 'Ferguson' With Live Onstage Chat 12.16.2014 "If it's not fun I don't want to do it." So said Craig Ferguson, in a conversation Monday night with Community star Jim Rash. Participating in a live onstage interview at the Paley Center for Media, the comedian was talking about an improvised bit he did with Kristen Bell at the Palace of Versaille in 2011, during a stint shooting episodes of CBS' The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson in Paris. But the quote also served as an apt description of how the Scottish comedian has conducted himself throughout the 10-year arc of his show, which comes to an end Friday, December 19. Ever bemused and unpredictable, Ferguson has bucked talk show convention time and again, eschewing a traditional sidekick for a robotic skeleton named Geoff Peterson and typically tearing up interview cards to have a casually goofy chat with the guest at hand. But then, the native Scot, former Drew Carey Show star and huge Doctor Who fan was never exactly an orthodox choice for the role. If Ferguson has honed any brand during his show's run, it's been one of an outsider both astonished by and in love with the country in which he has found himself. That approach might have alienated some, but also cultivated a fiercely loyal fan base of viewers who feel outside the mainstream as well. "I didn't fit myself and in trying to fit in I was making myself uncomfortable," Ferguson told Rash, talking about The Late Late Show's early days and why he began breaking from tradition. "Trying to behave like I was always dreaming of becoming a late-night host… that's not my story. It's hard night after night to tell a story about yourself that isn't true." Reflecting on his atypical interview style, Ferguson said he was "glassing over" in the beginning "as people were talking to me. I wasn't asking them questions I had any interest in the answer to. I'd be like, 'What was it like working on this movie?' - I didn't f--ing care. So I started putting questions in for me." He realized he was on the right track when South African social rights activist Desmond Tutu came on the show. "At the commercial break, he said, 'You are crazy, but you are the type of crazy that we need,'" Ferguson said. "This is not your agent, or your manager. This is Desmond Tutu telling you to be as authentically crazy as you are. It's kind of like god saying, 'Just be as crazy as you like.' I felt weirdly released by that." Whether interrupting a guest's story to ask them if they'd ever ridden a kangaroo or eulogizing his own father on-air, Ferguson has always spoken his mind, generally dodging hard-hitting news for absurd comedy riffs or rambling personal monologues. Throughout, his shaggy method has never been anything but good-natured, with Ferguson's sincere fondness for his fellow humans relentlessly shining through. During a rough weekend for Britney Spears, for instance, Ferguson remembered that she "struck me as someone who was in a desperate time in their life and was being mocked… I felt terrible for her. I thought there were very good jokes that could be made about her, or I could try to not do that. I could try to follow some kind of more dignified, for me, approach to it." Of the show ending, Ferguson expressed no regrets. "I love the format, but it's constrictive," he told Rash. "It has a limit where I thought, 'I think I'm done. I've reached all of the corners of this box and now, I need to change boxes.'".

Load more

  2

Copy Link