Playboy – April 2006 20 Questions for Craig Ferguson By: David Rensin Q1 PLAYBOY: After only one year on the job, you’ve discarded many talk show traditions. You start the show with 10 minutes of comic riffing instead of a scripted monologue. You share your private life. Your guests are not preinterviewed to prepare questions. You eschew the fratboy antics of your competitors and attract a large group of female fans who never watched late-night talk shows before. Critics love you. Do you think you’re wasted on late night? FERGUSON: Do I think I’m wasted? I think I’m fucking lucky to be here. I never thought of that. I don’t take offense at the question; it just never crossed my mind—and that’s unusual. If you know me for more than five minutes, you know everything crosses my mind. Are you asking whether I want to move into an earlier slot? No. I think there’s a lot of danger in earlier, more visible slots. I think I’ll just stay here for now. Besides, the guys in there right now aren’t going anywhere, so that takes care of it. Q2 PLAYBOY: When and why did you toss the conventions? FERGUSON: It started the night Johnny Carson died. I was in a relationship with a girl who’s still my friend. I was staying with her in an apartment in New York, and I sat full upright in the middle of the night and said, “I’m not telling any more jokes.” She rolled over and said, “Delighted.” And I said, “And I’m not wearing a tie anymore, either.” She went, “All right, that’s good to know.” Then she said, “Please just go back to sleep.” And under my breath I said, “And you’re history as well.” Q3 PLAYBOY: You used to be a stand-up comic. What do you have against jokes? FERGUSON: Trying to tell monologue gags made me nervous every damn night. I think a wee bout of revolution is never a bad thing. Plus I get to talk about whatever I like. I am the Saudi Arabia of unhappiness. I have reserves of unhappiness I can draw on for years. I also came to this job late. I was 42, so I’d been around a bit. I wasn’t trying to impress people with my observations or talking about my analyst in comedy clubs when I was 18 years old. At that age I was fighting people or drinking in bars. I was living my life as opposed to reporting on it, and I think that helps. Q4 PLAYBOY: You’re always calling the audience cheeky wee monkeys, frisky little ponies and naughty little donkeys. What did you do, grow up in a porno toy store? What is a cheeky wee monkey anyway? FERGUSON: It’s not something I ever said before doing this show. When I started ditching the monologue scripts, I began to blurt out whatever I blurted. The cheeky wee monkeys thing is a combination of free association and panic. I think my granny used to say cheeky wee monkey. It’s a term of endearment I’ve used with kids as well. It’s like “You’re naughty.” It’s an energy, I suppose. When people are having slightly illicit fun, they’re being cheeky wee monkeys. Slightly illicit—I’m talking about hand-in-the-cookie-jar stuff, not big-time crazy perversion stuff. I’d call those people big-time crazy perverts. Maybe I’ll try that tonight: “Welcome back, my big-time crazy perverts!” Q5 PLAYBOY: You call some women cheeky wee monkeys but not others. Who makes the cut? FERGUSON: Jennifer Love Hewitt is a cheeky wee monkey. I think she’s quite a naughty wee girl. Well, I hope she is. I don’t know her at all; I’ve just sat across from her and interviewed her. She’s an attractive woman, no doubt about it. And women like Maria Bello, Mary McCormack, Amy Yasbeck and Sharon Stone—sparky, funny, independent, smart women. I’m not interested in meeting women I can’t call cheeky wee monkeys. Q6 PLAYBOY: Your Maureen Dowd interview was almost flirtatious. What was going on? Can you have as much fun with Ann Coulter? FERGUSON: I adore Dowd. I find her endlessly fascinating, endlessly sexy. She’s very female, and I like that. But one of the things I like most is that when I challenge her on something, she seems delighted. It’s what makes her such a good writer. Coulter thinks everyone who disagrees with her has a political stance contrary to hers. She’s strident and seems angry about something. Maybe it’s just an act, but she has kept it up every time I’ve met her. Q7 PLAYBOY: When you know you’re hitting it off with a female guest and there’s a date in your future, how do you handle it? FERGUSON: I’ve never dated anyone on the show. I’m like a doctor: I’ve seen people socially outside, but I’ve never actually…well, that’s not true. I’ve dated people on the show, but before they were on the show. Well, actually, no…. No, wait a minute. I have dated people who have been on the show but never that night. [laughs] That was the sound of a man wriggling. No, I’ve never followed anyone back to the dressing room and asked for a date. I wouldn’t do that. If ever I go out with a female guest, usually what happens is she calls me or in some way lets me know. Q8 PLAYBOY: When you play Larry King, Prince Charles or any other celebrity in a skit, what’s with the hairpieces? FERGUSON: I am so uncomfortable in a makeup chair. The last movie I did before I came here was Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. I was almost completely cut out of that movie—that was one of the unfortunate events. But the other thing was the makeup job we had to endure, for which the makeup people subsequently won Oscars. It took two and a half hours every fucking day. I hated it. When I came here and they said, “We want to try a sketch with Larry King,” I grabbed the nearest wig, threw it on and said, “That’ll be it.” They said, “No, no, that’s terrible.” I said, “Hey, they know it’s me anyway. If they’re going to like or not like the sketch because of the wig, that’s atrocious.” They know it’s me dressed up as Larry King or as a cartoon of Larry King. That desire not to sit in a makeup chair became our style. Q9 PLAYBOY: The guy who replaced Craig Kilborn before you is now a superstar. Are you feeling lucky? FERGUSON: I didn’t even notice that. I was on Jon Stewart’s show as a guest, and he said, “You know, we have something in common.” I said, “I don’t know what it is.” He said, “We both took over from Kilborn.” I’m a big fan of Stewart’s. I’m feeling lucky to have this job. I don’t think anyone, including me, expected it. I was a guest on Kilborn’s show, and I guess I did okay—I got his job. Q10 PLAYBOY: The legendary Peter Lassally, who produced The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Show With David Letterman, is your boss. Just how scary is it working with the godfather of talk shows? FERGUSON: Lassally is the reason I took the job. He’s the reason I still love it. It’s pretty much Lassally. He’d seen me as a guest on the show, and he asked me to come in and guest-host. I thought that would be fun and a lark. I was in the green room the night before I guest-hosted—I had come down to watch someone else host so I could see how things were done—and I met Lassally for the first time. I said, “Thanks for asking me. This should be a lark.” He looked me in the eye and said, “No, no, this is not a lark. This is what I do. And if I’m right, you’re the lightning in the bottle. You’re the one-in-a-million guy who actually does this.” I said, “Are you fucking crazy?” He said, “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. But this is what I do. I spot this. This is my talent.” I went, “Oh my God.” I actually thought he was just a little nuts. You meet a lot of nutty people in show business, and I thought Lassally was another one. But within 30 seconds of guest-hosting the show, I thought, I fucking love this. I still don’t know why. Maybe it’s the utter freedom of the genre and the every night of it. I don’t even get notes from the network. Not a damn thing. Q11 PLAYBOY: Every night you come out and say, “It’s a great day for America.” How did that come about? FERGUSON: Not every night. I didn’t say it the night Tookie Williams died. I thought that would have been inappropriate. I think there’s a little bit of OCD with these things. You get them, they become habits, and then you start to feel unlucky if you don’t say them. I’m a little bit of a throwback. I have a 19th century immigrant mentality. I’m like, “This is America. This is the New World. Thank God I’m here.” I’m very enthusiastic about America, and I guess that’s why I say, “It’s a great day for America.” I’m not particularly right-wing. In fact I’m not right-wing at all. You can love America and not be right-wing. That was hijacked for a while by a lot of people. Q12 PLAYBOY: You used to work with the American Dance Theater. When are you lightest in your loafers? FERGUSON: I did it because somebody asked me to and I’d never done it before. It was an unpaid position. I danced with them in the evening, and I worked on a construction site in Harlem during the day. I didn’t ask any of my construction buddies to come see me dance, nor did I invite any of the dancing guys up to the construction site—although they asked. No, not really. Q13 PLAYBOY: When you were drinking, what kind of scotch impressed someone from Scotland? FERGUSON: The best scotch in the world, bar none, is a whiskey called Highland Park. It’s the only whiskey made in the Orkneys, a bunch of islands off the north coast of Scotland. To my mind, Highland Park is much smoother than even the Macallan. They actually call it a woman’s whiskey because it’s so easy to drink. It’s beautiful. When I drank whiskey, that’s what I drank. I stopped drinking on February 18, 1992, but take it from someone who has investigated them all. Q14 PLAYBOY: While you were going through a divorce, you wrote a novel, Between the Bridge and the River. Was that good therapy or a form of revenge? FERGUSON: The novel is romantic and quite rough in places. It’s about love and death, which is what all books are about. It’s about drinking and fucking and fighting. I don’t know if it’s meant to be funny. I was going through a divorce, which is fucking painful. It’s utterly horrendous. And I have a young child. It wasn’t a particularly vicious divorce; it was just sore. My heart was broken. That fueled the writing. But I’m not someone who can write misery for too long without putting some form of levity in, so that’s the way it came out. When I finished, I thought, This is exactly what I wanted to do. I’ve never had that experience with a movie. I’ve never watched a movie and thought, That’s exactly how I would have had it. But I read the book now, and I think, This is exactly what I wanted to do. It’s only me. Q15 PLAYBOY: You played Drew Carey’s boss, Mr. Wick, on his sitcom. Now that it’s over and he can’t make any reprisals, what’s the deep, dark Drew Carey secret you’ve always wanted to reveal? FERGUSON: Drew would probably not want you to know just how sensitive he is. He’s quick to cry and very emotional, a very sentimental man. Sad movies, a picture of a puppy—he cried at my wedding. He may have known what I know now, as I’m divorced, but he cried. I think he was the only one. Q16 PLAYBOY: You often talk about your former marriage on the show. You live a couple of doors down from your ex-wife. Is there anybody else’s ex-wife you’d like to have a couple of doors down on the other side? FERGUSON: I don’t need any more ex-wives anywhere. Relationships with women are worth pursuing because I like women. But boy, I’ve had a few problems in that area. But who hasn’t? I’m going to keep trying. What’s the alternative, Brokeback Mountain? It’s not an alternative for me. It’s difficult sometimes, but I’m friendly with my ex-wife. And I’m friendly with everyone I’ve gone out with. Everything else in the universe has a beginning, a middle and an end, yet there is this lie that love shouldn’t have a beginning, a middle and an end. Love is somehow valid only if it is endless. I don’t agree at all. It’s unnatural. Q17 PLAYBOY: Speaking of what’s unnatural, defend the Scottish delicacy haggis. FERGUSON: Delicious. Haggis is sausage with bad press. I’d rather be a haggis than a hot dog. Are you kidding me? Actually I wouldn’t. It’s a sheep’s lungs, liver and heart cooked in a sheep’s stomach lining. What the hell is a hot dog? The horns, hooves, ears, feet and chewing gum from the slaughterhouse floor, bits of old crap, anuses and stuff from the cow, cooked in plastics and synthetics with E343 food dye. Haggis is probably better for you. Q18 PLAYBOY: If you were on a desert island, which book, movie and magazine would you want to have? FERGUSON: The magazine would have to be PLAYBOY. You’ve got a couple of different needs met with it: You can read, but you don’t have to read. The book would be either The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov or The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. I like the Russians because they’re very much like the Scots and the Irish—they’re literate drunks. If I had time, I’d love to learn to speak Russian, to read the Russian authors in their native language, because I’m sure it’s even better. The movie? This Is Spinal Tap. I could watch it again and again and it would never stop making me laugh. Q19 PLAYBOY: Not too many people know that in your comedy routine you used to play a character named Bing Hitler. What happened to him? FERGUSON: Bing Hitler was the first character I did in stand-up, like a Guido Sarducci. I did it for 18 months, from when I was 24 until I was just past 25, and it was enormously successful in Scotland. Basically the character was a rampant, enthusiastic Scotsman for whom if it wasn’t Scottish, it was crap. It was a very parochial thing. It had nothing to do with either Bing Crosby or Adolf Hitler, but I thought the name would get noticed on billing. Twenty fucking years later, yes, it gets noticed. It did occur to me when I was doing Bing that if you were really named Hitler, you’d have to change the name. Q20 PLAYBOY: If you could be a Bond villain, who would you be? FERGUSON: A Bond villain who harks back to the old days of the Bond villains, when you had a midget with a hat that could kill when he threw it at you. The Bond villains now are all Eastern Europeans with designer stubble. I’m not frightened of guys like that. Fuck off. No, I want a guy with a false hand, an eye patch and maybe an owl—an evil owl that might peck Bond’s eyes out. Oh, and whatever side you dress on, that’s the side you wear your owl.