| Late Show with David Letterman - 5/12/2003 |
Right before Megan came out, Dave was joking around with Paul that he was going to start drinking on the show. He then introduced Megan:
Dave: Our next guest stars on the hugely popular television series W&G, here is the lovely Megan Mullally, everybody!
(Megan walks out holding a beer. Dave walks up to her, kisses her hand, kisses her cheek, then holds her hand as she walks up to the chair. Megan sits down, waves to the audience, and blows a kiss to the band, then holds up the beer to Paul and laughs)
Megan: This is for you!
Paul: She’s started already. Amstel Light.
Megan: They’ve got a very quick prop department on this show!
Dave: How you doin'?
Megan: I’m great!
Dave: Before we get started here, in fact if we ever get started, I want to thank you. A couple of months ago I was stricken by the lousy shingles, and you were kind enough to do the show for me. Thank you very much.
Megan: Oh my gosh, I was absolutely thrilled that I was asked.
Dave: Was Paul nice to you?
Megan: Paul…Paul was heroic, and the entire band, because you know they were running the show over there, Paul and the band. And Paul, you did such a great job...that was exciting.
Paul: We had fun working with you!
Megan: Yeah, we really had fun. Thank you so much for asking me to do that, I had such a blast.
Dave: Did everything go alright?
Megan: Yeah, yeah it was a little bit flying by the seat of your pants-y, you know.
Dave: Yeah
Megan: Didn’t get a lot of preparation, although the one piece of wisdom I received is when I came out at the beginning...there is this big kind of iron curtain-y kind of thing that lifts up, and you come out, and it comes up...and they said, "Don’t pause there, or it’ll cut your head off."
Dave: (laughs) Yeah, we’ve lost a guy or two every now and then.
Megan: Yeah and, you know, "Have a good show!" and I said alrighty, well...
Dave: Who were the guests the night you were on?
Megan: Molly Shannon, who is a friend of mine and she was fun, and sparky. Then we had (she looks over at Paul, she might have forgotten the name at first) young Isaac Mizrahi, and then I was my own musical guest.
Dave: Oh good, you sang.
Megan: Mm hmm, I did. I warbled like a thrush.
Dave: Well, thanks again (laughing). Now, we had the mothers out here [Dave had just done his Top 10 list, which was read by 10 different celebrities’ mothers, ending with his own.]. Have you ever done anything with your mother professionally, ever worked with your mom?
Megan: My...not particularly. My mom can kinda take care of herself. She’s a little bit of a bad ass, if you’ll pardon my French.
Dave: Really?
Megan: Little bit, yeah.
Dave: In what sense?
Megan: Well, I’m gonna get in trouble because I always tell her age, but here we go again. My mom is 81...
Dave: 81?
Megan: Yes, she is.
Dave: Well, good for her.
Megan: Yes, and she’s very, uh, you’d never know it...except that I always tell it on national television.
(Dave laughs)
Megan: (sigh) So anyway, we...she has a...she actually might have been on of the earliest pioneers of road rage, she...
Dave: Oh! (laughs) Well, that’s good!
Megan: She is very, she’s a very very sunny, even tempered person. I’ve never seen her lose her temper or be surly, or angry or upset in any way, except when she clicks the door shut of that Lincoln Continental, it all goes away.
Dave: Well, that’s a nice ride!
Megan: Yeah. She gets out there, and I’m telling you she will flip people off like it’s going out of style.
Dave: Really?
Megan: And I mean, one time, Nick and I, my fiancée Nick, we were in Oklahoma City and we were with her, and she had dropped us off to go run into a store for a second. We come back out, and apparently she had been blocking the entrance to the parking lot. And somebody pulled up behind her and honked their horn and she just (mimes rolling down a window) rolled down the window and (pretends to give the finger) boop, does her thing, and um, and we come out from the store, and this guy, this like...oh, I can’t use that word, an Oklahoma expression, a...a...mmm...
Dave: Some kind of kicker, I’m guessing?
Megan: (laughing) Yeah!!
Dave: (laughing) Yeah!
(Audience claps)
Megan: Thank you. And we’re not talking football. He is pretty much halfway inside the passenger side window of my mothers car, trying to throttle her when we came out. We had to sort of pull him out.
Dave: Grabbing the spirit of the...
Megan: Yeah.
Dave: That’s encouraging, I think!
Megan: Yes, I think people are always shocked when they actually get around to the car and see who’s in there, you know?
Dave: (laughs) So, how are things on Will & Grace?
Megan: Every thing's...
Dave: You’re done for the year, obviously...
Megan: Yeah, we’re done for the year. We have, I think, an episode tonight where my uh, husband on the show, Stan, who we never see...
(The audience starts laughing and she sort of gives them a look and smiles)
Megan: He’s supposed to be about 900 pounds and very hairy...(laughs) So it’s hard to cast that role! Uh...he dies.
Dave: Really? Passes away?
Megan: Yeah, dead. Gone dead.
Dave: Well, I’m sorry to hear that!
Megan: Yeah. He dies having sex with Minnie Driver. But then again, who wouldn’t right?
Dave: Ho ho! Are you kiddin' me?
Megan: No, I’m not!
Dave: Well, that certainly seems...
Megan: Not on camera, of course.
Dave: No...and then how is this all explained and revealed then?
Megan: I can’t remember.
Dave: Ah ha!
(Megan and Dave laugh)
Dave: Do you like coming back to New York City?
Megan: Yes, I do!
Dave: What kind of things do you do while you’re here?
Megan: I like to take in some theater. We saw, uh, we went to the very fancy opening night of Long Day’s Journey Into Night...with Vanessa Redgrave. Woo...that’s good.
Dave: That’s real stuff. That’s like big league theater.
Megan: Yeah, that’s like the real thing. She is just amazing and she’s the only, like those British actresses and Meryl Streep are the only ones that haven’t had the, had the lift and tuck.
(Dave laughs)
Megan: They’re the only ones, so that’s refreshing. And uh, she was awesome but the show is 4 hours long, although it doesn’t seem 4 hours long, but we had an unfortunate, it’s like a theater nightmare. We were about 8th row, center, and directly behind us, and I’m talking, this is a famous, Eugene O’Neill, it’s one of the great American plays. It’s very dramatic, I mean you don’t get any more dramatic, and we had directly behind us for the entire 4 hours, a gentleman who, every 7 seconds on the nose, rhythmically, for 4 hours, went (gives a big, hacking cough).
Dave: (laughs) Rhythmically!
Megan: And I am not kidding you, for FOUR HOURS!
Dave: And did anybody assault the guy?
Megan: Well, there were some words exchanged at one point, and his excuse was that he was a lifelong New Yorker. (laughs)
Dave: And a patron of the arts, I’m sure! We’ll be right back here, with Megan Mullally.
Dave: Megan Mullally is here, and also Marilyn Manson. Now, tell me what you do in your free time. Do you go on vacations, I guess, like regular people?
Megan: Mm hmm.
Dave: You have any time off lately?
Megan: Well, yeah. We recently had a little time off. I had, we had to go to Washington DC, our nation’s capital...
Dave: Yeah... (laughs)
Megan: ...to do a little thing, and then we had some time, we actually...
Dave: Wait, what do you mean, do a little thing? What does that mean, do a little thing?
Megan: A little thing, I guess would be uh, I sang (laughing) it’s not... I sang with the National Symphony Orchestra...
Dave: Oh my God!
Megan: Two Gershwin songs for the Kennedy Center Gala that’s, yeah (audience clapping)
Dave: Nice going! That’s not exactly a little thing.
Megan: No, it’s not a little thing, no.
Dave: No.
Megan: We also had occasion to go to the White House Correspondents Dinner. What an eye-opener.
Dave: Mm hmm. Now what is that exactly?
Megan: I don’t know.
(Megan and Dave laugh)
Megan: But there were 2000 people at their tables, and the President was there...
Dave: Ahh, very famous journalists and politicians?
Megan: Yeah, and everyone just talked the whole time, nobody listened to the speakers, which was fascinating. To my left was seated the Honorable John Snow, who is the Secretary of the Treasury. You can imagine how the conversation was flowing between the two of us.
(Megan and Dave laugh)
Megan: I, at one point I found myself explaining the premise of W&G to this elder- I mean, he’s an older gentleman. Now Nick, my fiancée, who was to my right, maintained that the Honorable John Snow was (sigh) looking at my cleavage for the entire conversation. Now, I’m sure that’s not true, I’m sure it’s not true but...
Dave: (sarcastic) YEAH.
Megan: But I had to explain the premise of W&G and I sort of fumbled through something, and there was a pause, and he said, "Are you talking about homosexuals?"
(Dave laughs)
Megan: Yeah. I sure am.
Dave: So there you go.
Megan: Yeah. Another recruit!
(Megan and Dave laugh, audience claps)
Dave: How’s everything going at home now?
Megan: It’s good. We got, I got a little busy after the first of the year. I was doing W&G and my fiancé and I were doing a play at the same time, and a few other things, so it was a little bit of a jumble. But I took to, I decided that if, the last straw would be if I got up in the morning and try to pick out like a cute outfit to wear.
Dave: Yeah, I hate that, don’t you?
Megan: Yeah, I really do. I basically started wearing a uniform, which consists of, it’s kind of a, one of the writers of W&G called it a stylish tracksuit.
Dave: Ah, that’s good.
Megan: So I took to wearing that every single day, from about the middle of January. And around the middle of April, I said to Nick, I said, "Well, time to put on the uniform again," and he said, "What are you talking about?" I said, "Honey, I have been wearing the exact same outfit everyday for the last like 4 months." (Dave laughs) Never noticed.
Dave: That’s a darn shame.
Megan: Yeah.
Dave: There’s something very comfortable about that, you don’t have to worry what you’re gonna put on.
Megan: You don’t have to dress...
Dave: If you find something you like, get 1000 of them and wear them everyday.
Megan: Yeah, yeah.
Dave: Exactly.
Megan: I think that unless you’re pretty much stripped down, they don’t notice.
Dave: Yeah. (laughs)
Megan: So don’t spend a lot of money on the designer clothes!
Dave: And what do you have in the future, what are you doing for the summer?
Megan: Well, I’m trying to take the whole summer off, which would be refreshing, and we’re getting another dog.
Dave: How many dogs do you have?
Megan: We have one, we have a poodle (a few people clap, Megan looks out at them)…we’re gonna get another dog.
Dave: (laughs) People applauding poodles.
Megan: We have the poodle team here.
Dave: That’s really sad.
(Megan and Dave laugh)
Megan: We did this play together in Los Angeles, Nick and I, and it had, it was an adult themed, it was an adult content, the play, it had a lot of bad words, as they say. And I had forgotten, when I did this play, that a lot of my fanbase is apparently 11 year old girls.
Dave: Oh, oh.
Megan: So we would have these children, who would come to the show, and just be stripped of all, of their entire innocence, their childhood torn away. (Dave laughs) The little light in their eyes had just gone out. (Dave still laughing) You’d see them after the show, just shattered little husks.
(Megan and Dave laughing)
Dave: Nice job!
Megan: It was horrible!
Dave: Mission accomplished!
Megan: It was just horrible!
Dave: Well, somebody has to do it, don’t you think?
Megan: Yeah, I guess (laughs)
Dave: Well, listen, I hope you have a lovely summer, give my best to the new dog, and the old dog, and of course the fiancée Nick, and continued success.
Megan: Thank you!
Dave: Nice to see you again.
Megan: Yeah.
Dave: Megan Mullally everybody! We’ll be right back with Marilyn Manson.
In The Motherhood
