The Point Radio: Richard Coyle Plays Pirate on CROSSBONES
Noted British actor Richard Coyle gets a chance to play pirate weekly on the NBC series CROSSBONES, as well as work next to John Malkovich. He comments on both with us, plus Dave Berg was the guy who put the big guests on the TOINIGHT SHOW couch and he reveals his secrets to success in his new book and we get a preview here.
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It's the point radio. It's my prob. Actor Richard Coyle talks about what it's like to handle a sword, be on a ship, and work with John Malkovich on the NBC series Crossbones. Plus for almost two decades, producer Dave Berg kept Jay Leno's Tonight Show on top by
bringing in some of the biggest guests in the world. We find out how he did it in a new book, and he gives us a little preview of that coming up. Let's get to the point. This is the point, the point radio.
Get the point radio. Celebrated British actor Richard Coyle stars as Tom Lowe in the NBC summer series Crossbones. Richard's talent and on-screen presence has made him one of the most sought-after actors in Britain today. So I ask him what moved him to take on American series television.
Well, I suppose it was a great script. And I immediately liked the padre deux between Lowe and Blackbeard, which was fascinating. And in fact, obviously it's a series-long arc between these two characters. But in the pilot, the first episode that I read initially, it was very, it's very much like a boxing match.
It was very, you know, these two characters going toe to toe. I found that very interesting. The idea of an agent of the crown squaring up to an Osama bin Laden-like terrorist. And the potential for where that would lead. So it was intriguing.
And the biggest challenge so far? Some of the learning, the sheer volume of some of the dialogue probably in a shorter amount of time, as the series progresses, there are some incredibly wordy exchanges between Lowe and Blackbeard. You know, like anything, it's like you have to make it, you have to own it and make it
truth and you have to make it native to you. And sometimes that takes time and you need the luxury of time sometimes to make that really land. So the challenge, I suppose, was making all that stuff work with a time limit. How about working with series star John Malkovich?
Well, obviously, I mean, I worked with John Malkovich before I worked with John 10 years ago on a film. And I had great memories of, you know, being around him and what he was like. And I wasn't much, you know, I wasn't out of drama school that long when I worked with him then.
And it was a pretty starstruck. And you know, it's amazing to work with John because, you know, he is almost unique amongst actors in that he's become this kind of cultural icon. He's more than just an actor nowadays. He's one of the only actors who's actually got a movie named after him, you know, with
his own name in the title. And he designs clothes and he's sort of a, you know, he's like a cultural behemoth. He's an amazing character and an amazing man to be around. It was a great thrill and a real privilege to be able to square up to John in character or some low.
And he's very generous and he was just amazing. Like a couple of other series this year, Crossbones plays into America's love with pirate stories. And I ask Richard exactly why he thinks we are so fascinated with that genre. I think it's probably something to do with the romance of it. I mean, it's, you know, it's a bygone era.
We don't have that anymore. It's gone. It's a time of romance and thrill and swashbuckle and all that, you know, and we've made pirates into these sort of romantic figures of villainy. And I don't know, I think there's kind of an enduring appeal and it's like we can make
it anything up, anything goes because we don't really know much, to be honest, about pirates and say they can exist in any sort of way we want them to. And I think there's something appealing in that in itself. It doesn't mean that we don't have any definite really pirates or figures of mystery and fear and, you know, and they still are in a way.
So I think you can almost tell any story and we find it fascinating, any pirate story, because they can be anything we want them to be. It's amazing. New episodes of Crossbones every Friday on NBC. You can catch up to right now at NBC.com.
Things weren't hot enough. Here's the latest in pop culture. Look for some familiar names, Brian Fuller and Michael Green that will be involved with the TV adaptation of Neil Gaiman's American Gods. Fuller and Green will write the pilot and run the show should it go to series.
And right now it looks pretty solid for that to happen on stars, assuming they do like the pilot. Back in 2011, the property was scheduled to be on HBO for a six season run, but that ended up not working out. Mark Wade is returning to boom for a new creator owned series that he's basically
just teasing about. Wade described the new series as dangerous and not the kind of thing any other comic company would touch. He also said the artist attached is one of the most revered in comics. Not much else has been revealed.
More than likely we'll get the full story coming up in a couple of weeks at Comic Con. Fox has now gone one step farther and canceled the show before it even aired. In fact, almost eight months before it was set to hit the network, Fox has decided not to move ahead on the mid season drama, Hyrule glyph. Despite giving the project a straight to series ordered as the few months back, the show was
an action adventure set in age of Egypt. And they say that the script's not coming together with the main reason that Fox has pulled the project. What is it they say on big brother? Expect the unexpected.
Well, a few days ago, we told you that was pretty much the end of the road for community with no hope for that to go on to Netflix or any of the other possible outlets. Well we were wrong. It looks like the community will see that sixth season and a full 13 episodes too on Yahoo screen.
Creator Dan Harmon, who obviously was thrilled about this new move, is now turning his attention to talking about the possibility of a movie that's been around for well a couple of years. Justin Lin from the Fast and the Furious franchise is still considered to be a contender to direct the feature. Peter David gets a turn at Deadpool in a new four issue miniseries that mashes up Sun Tzu's
Art of War and Deadpool in Deadpool's Art of War. Art and cover for the series will be by Scott Koblish and it'll hit comic stores in October. It's official set aside Saturday, August 23 for the premiere of season eight of Doctor Who. There's a new teaser out about 15 seconds long released by the BBC.
Also of course that the Doctor, his companion and others involved in the show will be on a worldwide publicity tour that begins in New York City on August 14. The point, the point. For almost two decades co-producer Dave Bird was an integral part of the Jay Leno Tonight Show.
In fact Dave's job might have been the most crucial because he was the guy who managed to get the biggest and the best guest to sit on stage right next to Jay. Right off the bat I was fascinated to find out how he got into this end of show business. I did not have a background in entertainment. I was a news producer.
I had worked many many years and I had been at NBC News in Burbank and after ten years they laid me off. I got on the phone with my wife Mary and I told her what happened and I said you know this is so bizarre. Here I am, you know, lost my job but interestingly this new Tonight Show with Jay Leno, their
staff is moving in down the hallway. That's kind of interesting and she said it's very interesting and she said so what are you going to do after we're done talking on the phone? I said I know, I know I need to go out and look for a job and she said yeah you're going to go down the hallway, you're going to go into the offices where Jay Leno and the Tonight
Show are and you're going to apply for a job and two days later I was hired. After eighteen successful years with the show it's no wonder that Dave's been called the best booker in the business and I asked him what it took to be successful. Well I couldn't have achieved anything if we didn't have the host that we did, if we didn't have Jay Leno.
When you're working at this iconic show called the Tonight Show for this incredible comedian Jay Leno it makes your job a lot easier and basically what I did is I booked a guest and worked with them to develop material on topics that they could talk about but it really helped to have the name Jay Leno and the Tonight Show that you could refer to. So what was the toughest guest you ever managed to grab?
I would say that probably the biggest guest, the most significant one was booking Barack Obama as the first sitting president ever to do a late night show. He came on this show on his fifty ninth day in office and I had started tracking him five years earlier when he appeared as the speaker of the Democratic convention in 2004 in Boston and had started courting his people at that time.
And as far as favorite moments on and off screen? I think I treasure working with Dennis Rodman. Dennis in his halcyon days as a basketball player for the Chicago Bulls, Dennis was a huge draw. Whenever he came on the show the ratings went through the ceiling.
He was just riveting to the viewers for some reason and we formed a very close friendship. But what happened is when you worked with Dennis you were sort of in Dennis's world and you sort of played by his rules and Dennis had this little ritual that he would go through which is he was always white, always always. I would send a limo to his house, he wouldn't get in the limo on time, it would drive me
nuts so after a while, you know he lived fifty miles away in Orange County, after a while I started sending a limo to his house to take him to the airport where I had a helicopter waiting to pick him up. So he always showed up to the show but again I always came very close to having a heart attack.
Talk shows currently have broken away from the models set originally by Johnny Carson and Jay Leno. The guest sitting on the couch talking personally with the host has now been replaced with well, well, a series of games and stunts and a whole different way to look at late night television.
I asked Dave for his cut on these changes. Yeah I actually think that's a very perceptive question because as I would always describe if people were watching a late night show with me and I would see a guest doing little stunts, doing one stunt after another. To me that was always a cue, that was a tip off that they had nothing to say.
But that was the standard, that's how Iowa's looked at it. But I do think that today's late night shows have sort of gone in a different direction where basically we're talking more about performances. Now I'm a big fan of Jimmy Fallon, I like Jimmy Kimmel, but I think we're seeing a transformation in the late night shows, we're seeing much less of the interview and much more of performances.
It's all about comedy bits and performances. For so many years we heard about the late night wars with a book and a movie and well a lot of gossip. So was all of this really true? Oh the late night wars were for real, but Jay never had an animosity toward David Letterman.
I think it came, I think it was coming from David. However, I have to say as time has gone by and now that Jay has stepped down, I think that whole relationship has patched up. They go way back to the days when they were doing stand up in Los Angeles. And of course Jay was always a guest on David's late late night show.
And I think that their, I don't know if you'd call it friendship, but their relationship is coming back and I would not be surprised if we see Jay making an appearance on Leonard. And as far as the biggest surprise over two decades? What was the biggest surprise that happened at the tonight show? For me?
That I actually survived there for 18 years. Dave has a lot more to share in his new book and insider's view of Jay Leno's tonight show, which by the way has a forward by Jay. It's available on Amazon, in good bookstores and in digital form too. That does it for the podcast, but fireworks notwithstanding, we're going to keep the pop
culture coming all weekend long and get the point radio where you can listen free online right there and get the point radio.com or take us anywhere with an app called iNet Radio. You can get that in your app store for Apple or Android or at iNetradio.com. Now this podcast is back in just a few days in the iTunes podcast directory and websites like ComicMix.com and michaeldavisworld.com too.
And you can always follow us on Twitter at The Point Radio. Have a great Fourth of July weekend. See you back here in a few days.
