It used to be so simple. In the 1940s, actors dispatched on publicity duty could just stop by radio shows like NBC’s Kraft Music Hall, exchange five minutes of patter with crooning compere Bing Crosby or Al Jolson and endure the announcer’s periodic interjections on the simple joys of Philadelphia cream cheese.
Then along came television and, in 1950, What’s My Line?, a family game show on which movie stars found themselves obliged to guest as “mystery challengers”, putting on mock accents to fool the blindfolded panellists seeking to guess their identity. The late night chat show, much as we know it today, followed in 1954 when The Tonight Show first aired. Originally hosted by Steve Allen, the programme was designed to succeed the variety format popularised by The Ed Sullivan Show. Johnny Carson took the chair in 1962 and stayed for 30 years, his relaxed, breezy style putting the stars at ease and making for a ratings winner. A number of rivals and imitators emerged over the years, including Merv Griffin and Dick Cavett, but only David Letterman really challenged Carson, holding court from 1983 until earlier this year when he finally retired, replaced by Seth Meyers.
The current crop of hosts – Jimmys Fallon and Kimmel, Meyers, Conan O’Brien, Ellen DeGeneres and now James Corden – are no longer satisfied with the golf-resort-bar approach of their precursors. Helpless guests on their shows are increasingly expected to take part in ludicrous parlour games, quizzes and other spirited activities to demonstrate what good sports they are.
Ellen forces her guests to dance for her before they take their seats. Kimmel asks his to read out mean tweets about themselves – which is great – as are Jimmy Fallon’s lip-synching battles, an idea that’s proved so popular it’s since been given its own series. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emma Stone and especially Anne Hathaway have all excelled at this; poor Lena Dunham less so.
The likes of Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt handle this pressure to be fun effortlessly, the latter recently sending up the sexism controversy surrounding his Jurassic World co-star Bryce Dallas Howard by gamely running around the studio in heels on Corden’s Late Late Show. This bit of business endeared him to the millions who saw the clip online and deftly diffused a difficult situation.
Jeremy Renner likewise had a good time on Fallon’s Tonight Show earlier this summer, taking to the piano to sing a heartfelt Ed Sheeran ballad dressed as Hawkeye, lampooning the archer’s relative lack of superpowers compared to his Avengers teammates. Renner may have risked his character’s integrity, but it paid off handsomely.
Another model chat show performer is the terminally adorable Anna Kendrick, whose reprisal of her Cup Song party piece from Pitch Perfect for Letterman in 2013 was delightful. Like Daniel Radcliffe’s word-perfect recitation of Blackalicious’s Alphabet Aerobics, Kendrick’s performance felt spontaneous and genuine and betrayed hours of practice. Neither showing will have done either party any harm at all.
Saturday Night Live (SNL), another US TV institution, makes the same demands of movie stars on the promotion circuit. Actors are expected to take part in topical or self-referential skits, often riotously sending up their best-known work. Scarlett Johansson’s recent appearance on SNL imagining an Avengers spin-off movie for her character Black Widow is a textbook example of how to do this well and make a serious point at the same time.
Such appearances are not always a success, however. Fallon is the most insistent on these sorts of mutually congratulatory shenanigans – playing Pictionary with Megan Fox, arm wrestling with Channing Tatum, riding a rollercoaster with Kevin Hart – and is sometimes in danger of coming across as a tad desperate. One of his least inspired bits is “Water War”, a Russian roulette-style frat boy game that sees the host and his guest turning over playing cards and throwing pitchers of H2O in each other’s faces. Overlong, highly repetitive and more fun to take part in than watch, Water War made for uncomfortable viewing when Jake Gyllenhaal was invited to play, the actor launching into it with a certain amount of reckless abandon but clearly finding the whole mess beneath his dignity.
All of this postmodern in-joking and mandatory sportsmanship of course lends itself to viral-ready YouTube clips, which in turn keeps the wheels of the publicity machine spinning. They can also help a dramatic actor shake off an audiences’ expectations and challenge unhelpful preconceptions: namely, that they are humourless or one-dimensional and thus only suited to particular types of role. The cameo culture of Hollywood comedies and series like 30 Rock further serves this end, helping actors liberate themselves from an otherwise fixed public image: “Think Marion Cotillard is worthy and dull? Here she is in the Anchorman 2 gang fight!” An earlier generation of cinemagoers would have been disarmed by a comedian suddenly fronting an action blockbuster, but look at Paul Rudd in Ant-Man. These days we like our performers human, relatable and on Instagram.
One day we may grow weary of watching celebrities leap through flaming hoops for our applause, but so long as these guest spots continue to translate into ticket sales at the multiplex, everybody wins.
And, of course, some performers will forever be immune to all of this anyway. Good luck trying to convince Christian Bale to bogle to Beyoncé for a baying crowd.
