Letterman yearns for ‘carefree days of nonsense’
TARRYTOWN, New York — A few days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, David Letterman sat behind his desk at CBS’S “Late Show” and shared the story of a rally in Choteau, Montana, to raise money for New York. Getting choked up, he told his viewers, “If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about the spirit of the United States, then I can’t help you.”
Nineteen years later, with the U.S. in the midst of a monthslong pandemic, Letterman found it difficult to conjure up any similarly inspiring anecdotes.
Though he, his wife, Regina, and their son, Harry, have remained safe, he knows several people who were stricken by the coronavirus, some of whom died from it. And he is deeply frustrated by what he feels have been inconsistent efforts to inform people about the pandemic and mitigate its spread.
Letterman’s Netflix interview show, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction,” has returned, but it nearly came to a halt. He had recorded two episodes, with Kim Kardashian West and Robert Downey Jr., respectively, before the pandemic, and Letterman believed the season — if not the series — was finished.
Instead, he was able to produce two more episodes over the summer, under substantially different circumstances: one with Dave Chappelle, which was recorded at an outdoor pavilion in Yellow Springs; and one with Lizzo, at her home studio in Los Angeles, which had no audience at all.
For Letterman, each of these episodes offered him a further education in the evolution of entertainment and deeper insights as an interviewer and observer of human nature. Even so, he found himself yearning for what he called “the carefree days of nonsense.”
Letterman spoke further about his pandemic experience, the making of his Netflix series and what he hopes the future might hold for him. These are edited excerpts from that conversation:
Question: How has the pandemic been for you? What is it like for you now?
Letterman: Like everybody else, you forget about it. Six, eight months into it, you go on talking as though things are normal, and then it’s, oh, no, we can’t do that because of the pandemic. In the beginning, it was more than ghastly. The husband of a woman that worked at (“Late Show”), he died. A teacher at Harry’s school died.
Q: After the 9/11 attacks, you gave several “Late Show” monologues where you tried to rally your viewers’
spirits and bring them together. Do you ever feel like saying anything similar now?
Letterman: Something applicable to these times? I wish I had the wherewithal to say something meaningful. But all of these people who are resisting the idea of prevention, I just keep thinking: What about the families of the 220,000 people who are dead? I wonder how they’re feeling. I don’t get it. I have no solution other than to do what is told: Take care of yourself and your family.
Q: How did the pandemic affect your work on your Netflix series?
Letterman: I thought we were done for good. Really. In the beginning, it really seemed like, holy God, they’re coming over the wall, we’re all going to die. People keep reminding me that, at my age (73), I’m particularly vulnerable. Which I don’t appreciate at all. “Dad, you know you’re close to 100, you’d better not go out.”
Q: How did you decide to continue with your season?
Letterman: We had two more episodes (with Lizzo and Chappelle) in preproduction, and we were eager to do something. We did them within a very short period of time, and then we came home. By that point, there were protocols in place from the production company and from Netflix that we had to observe, gladly, and we got through it OK.
Q: Kim Kardashian West, who is now a prized guest on your Netflix series, was a frequent target of mockery in your “Late Show” days.
Letterman: Oh, I was at the head of that list. I can remember when she would be booked on the show, it was like, “I don’t know anything about her, and I’ve never seen her show.” And then when we went to talk to Kanye, I thought, “oh, I’ve misjudged this woman.”
Q: What changed your mind about her?
Letterman: After we met with Kanye West (for the previous season of the Netflix series), I had a long talk with her at their home, and I started to think about how I had used her as a joke and regarded her as someone not to be taken seriously. I found that that impression was not the end of the story. She had a family. She has her prison reform program. I won’t comment on the ease of being married to Kanye West. And if she can keep a show like that on the air for all those years, that’s an accomplishment. If you can stay in business on television that long, good for you.
Q: You went to Yellow Springs to interview Chappelle. Did you perform at his outdoor comedy show there?
Letterman: Yes. I think I did it. (To his publicist) Did I do it? (Publicist answers: “You did it.”) I’m being told I did it (laughs). It was grand. The setting is unique. It’s outdoors. Everybody’s tested, everybody social distanced. He had three or four comics on and each comic made my heart sink deeper. Because when I was doing comedy, a lot of it was (weakly) “Hey, where you from?” But these men and women, whoa — the level of it, the intellect of it, the presentation of it is so much more than it was when me and my little buddies were, “Hey, how ya doin’, I just got in from Indiana.” Really? No one cares. Get outta here.
Q: Do you ever have moments in these interviews where you feel as if you don’t have a shared frame of reference to talk to some of these guests?
Letterman: Yes. Because the experience is barely parallel. We’re all in show business, but that’s as close a comparison as you can make, culturally. I did feel like, is this going to look stupid? An old guy here, trying to talk to people who are thriving and alive and dominating the world through social media? I felt like it was a wreck. That’s the inner dialogue.
Q: How do you get past this? Letterman: Like anybody else that you talk to, every human being, there are situations that helped develop into what they are. So you’re going to get a story out of anybody. It may not happen in the first five minutes, but in every one of these experiences, there’s always a conduit for mutual experience. “Oh yeah? You think that’s something? Well, one time I choked on a peanut-butter sandwich and nearly died.” You have to make everybody a good interview.
Q: Please don’t mistake this for a suggestion, but do you ever think about packing it in as a broadcaster entirely?
Letterman: First of all, you can’t hurt my feelings because I’m dead inside. But the Netflix people put me back in business in a way that has been, for me, really, really fun. On the other hand, I recognize my own shelf life. I’m way overdue. When it happens, I still will enjoy little things here and there, and that’ll be enough. But there are other people more capable. I got no problem with that. If there is any kind of schedule, it would be when my son is finished with high school. But if it’s tomorrow, that’s fine.