I wonder if Kiefer Sutherland does some sort of Zen meditation before coming out for a talk-show appearance. It seemed that way on his recent visit to The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson to promote his new film, Mirrors. Sutherland is so unnervingly calm at times that it almost borders on boring. Any regular viewer of Ferguson’s high-energy antics would realize that this contradiction of styles could spell disaster for anyone’s appearance.

What happened was an interesting relationship with host Ferguson resulting in several mildly entertaining exchanges. When Sutherland mentioned he has shot the two-hour 24 prequel movie in Africa. Ferguson asked “Africa or South Africa?” Sutherland replied, “Is there a difference?” Ferguson jousted back with “[well,] one part is in the middle and one part is in the South…and then there’s that part around the top…what’s that called?…North Africa!” (So much for the awkward geography lesson.)

And later, in a discussion about hippos in Africa, Ferguson trapped him once more warning that hippos have very strong “unions” and Sutherland should be careful. Caught off guard again, Sutherland finally got the joke and then admitted to the audience that “My whole evening now is just about trying to derail him…and it’s impossible to do.”

Believe it or not, they did finally get to the movie…but only after Ferguson had said they were done with his patented bantering. I think even he realized he hadn’t done his job very well either and needed to talk a little (very little) about the film. Literally less than a minute.

So, to wrap up, Kiefer Sutherland’s appearance was nice. Nice is not great. Great is what you want. I’m not saying you need to jump up and down and be crazy, but you do want to have a certain level of energy and excitement that is going to play well with a high energy host.  Sutherland knows better, but sometimes he just doesn’t seem to care.
Good thing he has that hit TV show, at least for now!

Tags: 24, Craig Ferguson, Kiefer Sutherland, Mirrors, The Guest Whisperer, The Late Late Show

Email Me | Email to a Friend

This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under 2 out of 5 Whispers, 24, Craig Ferguson, Kiefer Sutherland, Mirrors, The Guest Whisperer, The Late Late Show. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.