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TCA DAILY BLOG: A recap of sessions held at the 2006 Summer Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena, CA.
Bombshells dropped by ‘Different World’ cast; ‘South Park’ creators still don’t talk to Isaac Hayes, Mr. T puts away his gold chains; Spike talks up ‘Levee’: 'Wire' heads to school.
THURSDAY, JULY 15: MTV NETWORKS, NBC UNIVERSAL
*Thursday morning started with a fresh cup of Mr. T, who was trotted out by MTV Networks’ to promote his upcoming TV Land series, “I Pity the Fool.” The former “A Team” star, sporting his trademark Mohawk, no chains and a grey business suit, was all about business regarding the promotion of his new show – which he repeatedly said, “ain’t no Dr. Phil.”
Each episode has Mr. T traveling to different cities offering his own unique advice to folks who have issues and could use an outside perspective. But enough about that. The headlines out of this session were his answers to two burning questions, why he chooses to “pity the fool” and why he decided to stop wearing his gold chains.
“You pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool,” T barked, answering the first question. “You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better.”
His decision to stop wearing jewelry came about following Hurricane Katrina and his visit to the Gulf Coast.
“As a spiritual man, I felt it would be a sin against my god for me to wear all that gold again, because I spent a lot of time with the less fortunate,” he said. “I saw the people starving and crying and pleading just for water and suffering, losing everything, and I saw some, I call it ‘sorry celebrities.’ They’ll go down there and hook up with the people to take a photo-op. I said, ‘How disgusting.’ If you’re not going to go down there with a check and a hammer and a nail to help the people, don’t go down there.”
“I Pity the Fool” premieres Wednesday, October 11 at 10 p.m.
*The most intriguing panel of the day was Nick at Nite’s session for “A Different World,” which will be added to the network’s lineup Monday through Friday beginning later this month.
Kadeem Hardison (Dwayne Wayne), Lisa Bonet (Denise Huxtable), Darryl Bell (Ron Johnson), Dawnn Lewis (Jaleesa), Cree Summer (Freddie Brooks), Jasmine Guy (Whitley Gilbert), Sinbad (dorm director Walter Oakes) and director Debbie Allen appeared on stage together for the Q&A session, and quickly dropped dime on the politics that went on behind the scenes of the show during its 1987 to 1993 run.
• Remember Marisa Tomei starred as Denise’s roommate Maggie during the show’s first season? When Debbie Allen came on as producer and director for season two, she had big plans to expand Tomei’s character as one of the only white students at the fictional HBCU, Hillman College. Allen explained: “I thought that [Maggie] and Dwayne would be really good friends and we could do an episode where she eventually goes home with him for Thanksgiving, and it would be ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.’ And then his mama would not like him coming home with a little white girl. I thought this would be great to show the reverse racism and those kinds of challenges. Well, they [the execs] didn’t like that idea. I said, ‘How can you have one white character in an all-black dorm and you don’t deal with that?’ It was the executive’s decision to take her off the show.”
• “A Different World” was supposed to have a spinoff featuring the characters of Whitley and Dwayne, but neither actor was interested in continuing the characters for several more years. Guy adds that maybe their decision would’ve been different had she and the other actors received more respect from executives for their careers outside of the show: “We wouldn’t had to have given up ‘A Different World’ to do the things we wanted to do,” she said. “They didn’t’ let us out for movies. I mean we were very popular actors at that time and people wanted to work with us. The synergy that could be created by us doing other projects – Cree sings, Dawnn sings – we had so much to give and it was very hard.”
• Allen said that advertisers pulled out of their episode dealing with AIDS (when a student gets infected from her football player boyfriend). “We couldn’t even show a condom in a wrapper,” Allen said. “We had to point to the case and Whitley was like, ‘It’s in there.’ We did the best that we could, but that show wasn’t allowed to be advertised – and it was our highest rated episode, in spite of all that.”
Bonet, who remained pretty quiet during the session, was praised by her cast-members for getting the spinoff rolling. After all, it was her “Cosby Show” character Denise who brought that audience over to “A Different World.”
“When people approach me, it’s usually people who are so grateful to have someone that they can identify with, because that just wasn’t out there yet,” Bonet said of her role, which she abandoned after the first season. “People were grateful to have a reflection that represented something they could relate to. I’m happy I could do that for people.”
“A Different World” will air weeknights at 10 p.m. beginning July 22. A four-hour marathon will precede the launch on July 19 at 10 p.m.
*Comedy Central, also under the MTV Networks umbrella, brought out “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to talk about the upcoming 10th season of the irreverent series, which begins Oct. 4 at 10 p.m.
On July 19, the network will rerun the Emmy-nominated episode, “Trapped in the Closet,” which poked fun at Tom Cruise and his Scientology antics and was subsequently pulled by Comedy Central after its initial airing following rumored threats from Cruise himself.
The Scientology episode also led to the dramatic death of the beloved character Chef, voiced by Isaac Hayes. A practicing Scientologist himself, Hayes cited the episode’s skewering of the religion for his decision to exit the show.
According to Stone, Isaac came to their office the following week after its November airing to express how upset he was over the episode.
“I had about a two-hour meeting with him, and he was actually really upset,” Stone explained. “He really loves Scientology and he really loves ‘South Park,’ and those two things were at odds. And he asked us to go to the network and have them pull the episode, and don’t ever have it made into DVDs. We said no, we’re not gonna do that. He said okay and he left, and we didn’t hear anything.”
“Then we were at the office and we heard Isaac’s quitting,” says Parker. “[Execs] got a letter from his lawyer. We kinda honestly knew that might happen when we made the episodes, but we didn’t wanna be hypocrites. We always say, ‘It’s all okay to make fun of or none of it is.’ So when we had this good idea for a Scientology episode, we’re like, this could piss Isaac off, but we’re hypocrites if we don’t make it for that reason. To be honest, Chef hasn’t really been a big part of the show for five years, so it wasn’t like a devastating blow or anything. We were bummed out, but he has a right to [quit] and it was sort of gonna be the end of it.
“Then this press release came out where it said ‘Isaac left the show, Trey and Matt are bigots,’ etc. It was so crazy because we got along so well. And that’s why we were like, ‘Wow, you thought the show was fine until we did your religion. Now we’re bigots.’ So then, we’re like, ‘Okay, game on mother f***er,’ and we did that episode [depicting Chef’s violent demise].
WEDNESDAY, JULY 14: HBO
*A chair was provided for Spike Lee, but he opted to stand for the entire presentation of his upcoming four-hour Hurricane Katrina special called, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.”
Dressed in white with a navy blue yachting jacket, he worked the stage like a professor in a lecture hall, fielding questions and sharing stories that he came across after his camera crew touched down in New Orleans the day after Thanksgiving.
‘Levees’ dives into the deep end of the murky, disease-infested waters left behind by the Aug. 29 storm and highlights the obvious topics: FEMA’s slothful response; the media’s initial use of “refugees”; the AFP photo captions describing pilfering white folks as “surviving” and black folks as “looting”; Condi Rice’s shoe-shopping trip in New York as the Gulf Coast suffered; George Bush’s “Brownie” comment; Kanye West’s Bush remark and the various conspiracy theories about the levees.
But the true heart of the show lies in the stories of the people interviewed by Lee; stories he shared somberly with reporters during the presentation. One particular piece involved a man searching for his mother after the flood, only to find out she was in her house all along, dead for months under the refrigerator in her kitchen.
“Even though we gave in record numbers to Katrina relief stuff, people have Katrina fatigue and look at [the victims] with scorn, like what idiots would want to live below sea level in New Orleans,” Spike told reporters. “Right here in California you guys can go anytime – the San Andreas Fault. This stuff affects all Americans, not just New Orleans.”
“When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” premieres Aug. 21 and 22.
Acts I and II debut Monday, Aug. 21 (9 to 11 p.m. ET/PT)
Acts III and IV debut Tuesday, Aug. 22 (9 to 11 p.m. ET/PT)
*HBO also ran a promo for the new season of “The Wire,” a show about Baltimore’s drug-infested streets that critics have embraced ever since its debut three seasons ago, and one I admittedly had not watched since the first season.
After HBO’s “The Corner,” and NBC’s “Homicide; life on the Street,” both gritty Baltimore-based dramas dealing with the city’s criminal element, I just wasn’t trying to see our people on TV – yet again – selling crack and gunning each other down over nonsense, whether critically acclaimed or not. As a reporter based in the D.C. area, I can go 30 minutes up 95 and see the real thing. But based on clips shown of the upcoming season, I will definitely be watching when season four premieres on Sept. 10.
Creator/executive producer David Simon and writer/producer Edward Burns continue to focus on West Baltimore’s drug problem, but this time it’s through the theme of education and the experiences of four African American male high school students. AS HBO puts it, the drama asks viewers to “further consider the world that awaits these boys and to further consider the American commitment to equality of opportunity.”
Burns – who also co-wrote “The Corner” with Simon and pens “The Wire” based on his experience as a teacher in Baltimore’s inner city – was on hand at the session with Simon and the four young African American actors portraying the high school students this season: Tristan Wilds, Maestro Harrell, Julito McCullum and Jermaine Crawford. The four kids are composites of students Burns encountered during his seven years as a social studies teacher in the Baltimore school system.
Here’s the season four synopsis of “The Wire” from HBO: “The stories of [high school students] Michael, Namond, DuQuan and Randy take place against the rise of a new narcotics empire in West Baltimore – replacing the fallen Barksdale organization – and the resulting struggle by Baltimore detectives to mount an investigation against this new power.”
*Another HBO project to watch for this fall is “Tsunami, The Aftermath,” which moves a level beyond a mere depiction of the December 2004 disaster because of stars Chewetel Ejiofor and Oscar-nominated actress Sophie Okenedo.
The dynamic duo first teamed for the critically-acclaimed British film “Dirty Pretty Things.” This time, they play married couple Ian and Susie Carter, who are in the midst of vacationing in Thailand when the tsunami strikes. Ian hung onto his child as long as he could, but the monstrous wave was too strong. The film follows the Carter’s search to locate their only child.
