Q&A Hollywood
Q: Remember “Mad TV”? Did any of the cast members go on to do anything big?
A: A show with a record like “Mad TV,” on the air for 15 seasons, would normally not be considered an also-ran. That is, unless it's working in the shadow of a show like “Saturday Night Live” (48 seasons and counting).
So many comedy giants got their start on “SNL” that we forget that many owe a similar debt to “Mad TV,” a similar sketch-comedy show that ran on Fox, CW and elsewhere between 1995 and 2016.
Two names in particular rise to the top: Key and Peele. Keegan-Michael Key (“Schmigadoon!”) and Jordan Peele (“Nope,” 2022) have gone on from “Mad TV” to huge success, together as stars of aptly titled the “Key and Peele” sketch show, and later separately. Peele, for example, is now raking in accolades as he revolutionizes the horror-movie genre with hits such as “Get Out” (2017) and “Us” (2019).
But they're far from the only famous alumni.
Ike Barinholtz, for example, went on to other TV-comedy fame, including the recent hit miniseries “History of the World: Part II,” which he wrote, produced and starred in.
Alex Borstein was a cast member on “Mad TV” before finding fame as Lois Griffin (and a million other characters) on Fox's “Family Guy,” and now in Prime Video's “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
Orlando Jones was a regular on the first two seasons of “Mad TV,” prior to launching a varied entertainment career that's included hit TV shows (“Sleepy Hollow,” “American Gods”), films (such as 2002's “The Time Machine”) and even his own talk show (“The Orlando Jones Show,” which only lasted a season on FX).
I could go on. Like “SNL,” “Mad TV” had a rotating cast list and liked to gamble on fresh young talent. As such, it is also a show that's launched a huge number of comedy careers.
Q: Where did “The Biggest Loser” go? Will it be coming back?
A: Currently, the answer is no. But that's changed in the past.
“The Biggest Loser” was once one of the most famous and successful reality shows on TV, part of the first wave of shows (along with “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race”) that defined the genre's look and feel. Until it was cancelled in 2016.
USA Network revived the show in 2020, but only for a single season. There was no official cancelation announcement after that (there rarely is), but they haven't produced any more in the three years since, which suggests they aren't going to.
But you can't count out a good piece of intellectual property.
The format and the name of “The Biggest Loser” clearly still mean something to people. For example, while the show is over, there's still a Biggest Loser-branded vacation resort in New York's Niagara region.
Q: Who played Felix Chavez, the fighter Adonis is promoting in “Creed III”?
A: As is so often the case with the Creed series of movies, and the Rocky movies that came before, Felix Chavez was played by a real professional boxer.
Jose Benavidez Jr. is a top-ranked super-welterweight boxer who has challenged for titles and comes from a boxing family (his father, Jose Sr., is a trainer, and his brother David is a top pro as well, and a former champion). Nonetheless, he said in an interview that he had to audition for the role of Felix Chavez in “Creed III” (2023) — against more than 200 applicants, much to his surprise.
He was surprised because he didn't know how big the role would be. “When they told me about this, I thought it was just going to be, you know ... it would be something like a little background [role],” he told EssentiallySports.com. “I feel right now like I still can't believe it.”
It was not just a background role. Instead, he played a protege of the now-retired Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan, “Black Panther,” 2018), whose defeat at the hands of the villainous Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors, “Lovecraft Country”) convinces Adonis to give up retirement and gain vengeance (a plotline that echoes 1985's “Rocky IV”). That made for a lot of screen time for the rookie actor.
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