Robert Downey, Jr. was a crack up from the moment he came out to greet Craig Ferguson. Playing to the audience, posing and eliciting massive amounts of cheer, Downey immediately established as strong rapport with everyone including the host. His casual, gum-chewing, jeans & jacket wearing persona is much more relaxed and much less cocky than previous talk show appearances and lends itself to accessibility, even while his intellect and quick wit kept Ferguson on his toes.
The discussion of his new film, Tropic Thunder, was interestingly handled in that it was talked about for several minutes without actually saying anything substantive other than Ferguson saying, about Downey’s character, “You can’t do that!”  Then there much discussion about Downey’s new mustache (is it more “Star 80 porn” or “Super Mario Bros?”) but he further showed his non-stop entertaining qualities by easily slipping in and out of accents, winning much praise from the lucky studio audience.

Guest and host were so in sync that Downey even commented on it “…we have a spark going between us.”  From “Googling” masquerading as “masturbation,” to thinly veiled allusions to Downey’s drug years, much ground was covered here – all of it with energy and style. I actually laughed out loud…twice! Not an easy feat at that ungodly hour.
You can’t buy good chemistry, but you can learn to play off the audience and your host by listening intently and drawing retorts from your arsenal well rehearsed anecdotes. For Downey, it just comes naturally. Probably just another reason why he’s such a good actor.

Every time I see that Will Ferrell is booked on a show, I make an attempt watch it.  Probably because I am a huge fan of his work in films like Anchorman and Blades of Glory, I just expect him to be a great guest.  But like the fans of the glory years of SNL who tunes in week after week only to be let down most of the time, I find myself in the same boat when I tune in for Ferrell.  I so want him to be great on talk shows, but he just isn’t.

Ferrell’s appearance on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson for some kind of late-in-the-day promotion for Step Brothers is a case in point.  As usual, the segment kicked off with a clip from the movie, in contrast to most shows displaying a clip near the end of the interview.  After some amusing interplay over their respective wrist bracelets – Ferrell’s promoting global warming and Craig’s a gift from his son – the comedy advanced in fits and starts.  Ferrell kept trying to ride the Ferguson tidal wave, but his attempts to connect seemed off the mark and scattershot most of the time.  He summoned up his father in the audience.  He let Craig feel his butt.  But mostly, he somewhat timidly (for him) followed Craig’s lead, with both of them finally getting in harmony near the end with a wacky image of a Lord of the Dance extravaganza with Stairmasters on the stage in Las Vegas.

Was it entertaining?  Pretty much so.  But this gets only 3 Whispers because Ferrell came off as a hesitant second banana.  There seems to be only two ways to shine in the Ferguson maelstrom: aggressively take charge and compel Craig’s respect (see our Archives for Kathy Griffin’s star turn on his show) or lay back, feed Craig opportunities and watch for the perfect opening to get in your own comic shot (ditto the Archives for Thandie Newton on The Late Late Show.)  The only certain thing: your standard approach will fail, because this show never depends on old talk show traditions – it’s a pacesetter.

As for Ferrell himself, I’ll keep watching and praying.

One of the Guest Whisperer guidelines for talk show appearances is to keep stories and pitches in the 30-to-60 second range.  This is partly because audiences are conditioned by the fast pace of shows to expect bite-sized nuggets.  Another reason is that short anecdotes keep the guest on track and moving forward.

Rules are made to be broken, of course and Luke Wilson has a Jimmy-Stewart-aw-shucks kind of persona that would feel straitjacketed in a rushed approach to guesting.  Yet I was still worried at first when he launched into a wandering story about shooting a movie at a girl’s college.  You could feel the natives in the bleachers getting restless.

But his laid back approach began paying off, though, as he pulled the audience into his ordinary-guy-in-a-star’s-world life with stories like the teamster driver who picked him up for an early morning shoot.  Wilson was dragging his feet, prompting the driver to admonish him with, “Look, I’ve driven Oliver Stone and Val Kilmer and I’m not in the mood for any of your B.S.!”  When he related how fans often accosted him with “Hey, you’re one of the Owens brothers, right?”, we know the universe is keeping his ego in check.

Promoting his new movie, Henry Poole Is Here, was a tough task, since it is a quirky little, low-key comedy-drama.  As Letterman noted: “A nice simple story – no explosions, no lasers, no Martians…”  At which point Wilson interrupted with “A lotta nudity, though!”  It broke Dave and the audience up, letting us know that the movie, like Luke Wilson, might have some surprises up its sleeve.

We have to hand it to James Franco – he did warn us right from the start.  He did his best to lower our expectations.  “I did one other talk show before this [that scintillating talkmeister] Tony Danza…I’m really nervous.”  But even that failed to prepare us for his scattered performance during an appearance to promote his new movie, Pineapple Express.

The ingredients were there.  He had a pocketful of great stories:

•    His grandmother named her dog Dave and decided to teach it Stupid Pet Tricks.
•    His parents hated the idea of him being an actor – now the whole family is in show business
•    In his struggling actor days, he worked at McDonalds and used to pick up girls by doing a fake Italian accents

All terrific stuff, but here was the BIG mistake: these stories were woefully under-rehearsed.  Even the best actors (and James Franco is a real pro) often fail to realize being a talk show guest is about performing.  It takes prep, people!  It’s hard work being naturally you, and just dredging up a few stories (however cute or funny) doesn’t cut it unless you rehearse.  And don’t depend on the show’s producers to get you up to speed – this is a task that should be tackled well in advance.

It’s all so hard on TGW because Franco is just so damn likeable!  He has the potential to be a great guest, once he focuses his anecdotes and gets some feedback (are you listening, managers, agents and publicists?) to help him gauge how his stories work.  We’ll certainly watch for him on his next outing.

In 1996, readers of FHM voted Gillian Anderson the “Sexiest Woman in the World.”  Over a decade later, now 40 years old and sporting an admitted baby bump, Anderson is still major sexy, and she scored big in her Late Show appearance by making David Letterman look sexy, as well!

Although she began her career as a young actress with a punk edge, Anderson has always walked the line between rebellious counterculture icon and respected mature professional.  That balance was evident when she walked onto the Late Show stage, dressed in sleek taupe and black, but with stray wisps of hair escaping her do, looking both elegant and mom-like.  Flirty and irreverent from the start, she asked Dave if he was sucking up to her.  He denied it but, glancing at her b-bump, replied “It looks to me…”  “…like someone else has sucked up to me!?” she finished.  The big laugh that got paved the way for the story of how she and Dave had made out the last time she was on the show.  (A clip provided proof.)   “You didn’t write, you didn’t call,” pouted Anderson, while Dave blushed and ate it all up.

Anderson connected to the show’s ongoing comic campaign coverage with a story about meeting Bill Clinton on the campaign trail.  When Dave turned the focus back to her motherhood, she still kept him tightly in the circle of attention by asking about his being a father.  And she always maintained the flattering flirtatious edge to the banter.  Referring to her ex-pat residence in London, she rued, “After you rejected me, I decided I was going to move…countries.”  By the time a clip from “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” was shown, all it needed to provide was a reminder of her chemistry with David Duchovny; she had already won us over as a star.

How does a deft display of talk showmanship like this pay off?   Anderson’s presence was so memorable that when Simon Pegg came on after her (it’s always good to have a comedian as a closer), he and Dave spent the first part of his appearance talking about…Gillian Anderson!

George Clooney exuded star quality the moment he walked onto the Late Show set, looking like he had just stepped out of Ocean’s 14.  And while being George Clooney is something none of us can ever hope to achieve, there’s a lot to be learned by observing his high-wire balancing act as a talk show guest, striking the perfect balance between being A-list and accessible.

Clooney has the self-deprecating act down to a science, blending the “I wish I was a star like him” and a viewer’s desire to see the all too human side of the high-and-mighty.  Watching George and Dave pal around and share celeb stories, we think “Oh, I want to belong to THAT club!”

Clooney knows the trick to spinning a great story is to have it so well rehearsed that it never seems rehearsed.  He made it look like he just remembered the hilarious incident that happened when police helicopters swarmed neighbor Britney Spears’ house.  And he got plenty of plugs in for his new movie, Leatherheads, by telling funny stories that generously showcased the other actors, at his own expense.  His guest stint was a textbook example of how to look ridiculously cool while telling stories about appearing ridiculous.  Not so easy when you come to think about it.

Clooney secured the Perfect Guest title by giving Dave what ever talk show host craves: a bankable celebrity who not only charms the audience, but hangs around to do a comedy skit as well.  Dave said it best, “If everyone were like George Clooney, show business would be a much better place.”

Sometimes talk show appearances are bad on-camera lab experiments.  All the elements are in place, but the chemistry fails.  The charming and unaffected Kate Bosworth popped in on Letterman to plug her new flick 21, but somehow the vast bulk of her segment centered around another movie altogether.  (A publicist’s worst nightmare.)  She and Dave swapped gags about skydiving, followed by a clip of her first parachute venture, while in New Zealand, where she just shot The Laundry Warrior by a Korean director.  She then wandered through a story about wandering through NZ with her boyfriend.  The movie she was on the show to promote barely got a mention before she vanished into the commercial break.

How much of this lay on Kate’s shoulder is hard to tell.  She showed up lovely and lively, looking trimly gorgeous (fortunately still above her alarming waif weight of 2006.)  She made all the right moves, having fun with both Dave and Paul Shaffer and relating to both like old pals.  Yet the whole act felt stage managed, undercutting her natural appeal.  Even Dave seemed working from a shoehorned script, as though Kate’s handlers and the show’s producers had concluded the Las Vegas-based movie 21 couldn’t carry the segment.  She wove a brief story about being stranded in Vegas for six weeks, while co-star Kevin Spacey had fun across the state.  Surely after working with Spacey in three movies, there were more stories connected to the movie she was there to support.  But perhaps none she could tell.

It was far from terrible, yet less than anticipated.  We had terrific professionals out front, which is why The Guest Whisperer suspects the fumbles came from backstage.