Live TV means things can go wrong in real time, and people get to enjoy the car crash
from their couch.
While most shows are pre-taped and bumps smoothed out in the editing room, live interviews that
go pear-shaped still happen.
Here are live TV interviews that went hilariously wrong.
Wendy Burch, a reporter for KTLA Morning News, set out early one Fourth of July, wearing
a cheery red and white shirt, with her blonde hair gleaming in the sun.
Her assignment that morning was to cover the Ironman Competition in Hermosa Beach and,
according to a piece she wrote for Huffington Post in 2017, she was excited to spend a few
hours of her workday out in the sun.
As she details in her post, The Hermosa Beach Ironman motto is: "Run, Paddle, Chug!"
That was the first red flag that this assignment might be a bit more lively than she'd originally
imagined.
After each athlete in the competition ran, and then swam, a full mile, they returned
to the beach to chug not one beer, not two, but a full six-pack.
And Wendy, standing by to interview a few participants, got right in the mix...
literally.
As the participants exalted in their drunken revelry, Burch pulled one guy aside for a
live interview, not realizing he had a literal bullseye with the words "puke here" written
on his back in marker.
The interview started off smoothly enough, until another man enters the shot and throws
up his daily intake of beer and breakfast all over the guy she's interviewing.
"Noooo!"
"It's a locker room celebration, ladies and gentlemen."
A good amount splashes off of the man, who got his wish fulfilled that day, to be sure,
and lands on Wendy, sealing her in internet viral video stardom forever.
An on-air exchange between Good Day New York anchor Jim Ryan and chief reporter Dick Oliver
in 2001 turned hilariously snippy.
Oliver was field reporting in Chelsea regarding a tenant and landlord dispute involving a
broken elevator, but, according to Ryan, only got one side of the story.
Ryan set the feud in motion when he made the poor choice of calling his colleague out on
what he felt to be shoddy reporting, and the whole scene unraveled live, much to the viewing
audience's delight.
The NY Post posted a transcript of the incident and it's clear that Ryan was the one to cast
the first stone.
"Well, if I have to teach you how to become a reporter Ollie, I'll do that later."
Oliver kicks things up a notch himself with his reply.
"I'll give you lessons on how to become an editor because I was your boss once."
The station's General Manager James Clayton gave a quote to NY Post regarding the squabble
saying:
"It was a little tiff and both of them regret it.
Jim has wonderful reporting instincts and felt it was a story [Oliver] needed to pursue."
During a 2017 interview with the BBC, conducted remotely from his home office, professor Robert
Kelly's two small children barge into the room and right into viral video history.
Discussing a 2016 South Korean political scandal involving Choi Soon-Sil, Kelly is shown talking
into his computer's webcam, momentarily unaware that one lively child, and then another, burst
into the room, living life to the fullest, elbow dancing away as if the world at large
isn't tuned into their dad's office.
"What would it mean for the wider region?
I think one of your children's just walked in."
When Kelly is alerted to his kids being in the room by the person interviewing him, he
looks tense, but a bit of a smile crosses his face.
Escalating an already hilarious moment, Kelly's wife is then seen bursting into the room in
an attempt to discreetly wrangle the kids, but ends up making more of a production than
both of the children.
Kelly and his family later gathered in that same home office for an interview with Wall
Street Journal, and Kelly explained that the reason he didn't get up to move his children
himself during the original interview was because he was wearing jeans.
Just one of the many perks of working from home and conducting interviews via Skype.
"Blegh!"
"I don't know, man."
As of early 2020, the original BBC YouTube clip had over 33 million views.
Anyone who's ever walked into work on Monday morning and found themselves thrown into vapid
chitchat, while keeping their own silent cries just beneath the surface, can relate to this
video.
KTLA reporter Courtney Friel is reporting live, tasked with the assignment of interviewing
children about their upcoming first day of school, when she comes upon 4-year-old Andrew
Macias.
When asked if he's excited about his first day of preschool at City Terrace Elementary
in Los Angeles, Macias at first appears to be enthusiastic.
"Andrew, are you excited for pre-kindergarten?"
"Yes!"
From there, things start to unravel.
His true emotions surface right around the time Friel asks if he'll miss his mom.
What follows is a pure display of vulnerability during which Macias' face melts into visible
distress, and then tears.
Two years later, Friel caught up with Macias to see if he'd recovered and he was able to
keep it together a bit better.
When asked if he's going to miss his mom for his next first day of school he answers honestly.
"Are you gonna miss your mom?"
"Yes."
While working as a weatherman for KMIR, a NBC-affiliate station in Palm Springs, California,
Chad Pradelli learned the hard way that body functions wait for no one.
While conducting a live weather broadcast, Pradelli is in front of a weather map that
he probably stood in front of with no issue hundreds of times before, but on this particular
day the poop, if you will, hit the fan.
While pointing out weather patterns, Pradelli twitches and crumples, making small, desperate
grabs at his body, before finally asking for the station to cut to commercial.
"Oh.
Excuse me.
We gotta go.
We gotta go to a break."
When another camera cuts to the news desk, he's seen in the background, wildly maneuvering
towards what one could only assume is the bathroom.
According to his Twitter bio, Pradelli now works as an Investigative Reporter for WPVI
in Philadelphia.
Hopefully by now he's investigated exactly where the bathroom is.
On June 14, 2014 Detroit resident Charles Bothuell phoned the police to report his 12-year-old
son, Charlie, had gone missing from their family home, according to a release from the
prosecutor's office.
The day after receiving the father's call, police began their search for the boy, and
asked for anyone with info to come forward.
A timeline of the case published by WDIV Detroit reveals that Charles Bothuell took a polygraph
to determine if he had anything to do with his son's disappearance, but the results were
found to be inconclusive.
After police dogs were used to search the family's home, and the boy still hadn't been
found, the situation hit a dead end, but 11 days later, during a live appearance on the
Nancy Grace show, Bothuell was told on-air that his son had been found alive, behind
a "makeshift barricade" in the basement of his own home.
"Charlie, we're getting reports that your son has been found in your basement."
According to a report by USA Today, the child appeared to be very thin, and showed other
signs of abuse on his body.
When Nancy Grace breaks this news to Bothuell for the first time during the broadcast his
stumped expression says all there is to say.
"Sir?
...Mr. Bothuell, are you--"
"What?"
On January 19, 2016, the child got his revenge when his dad pled guilty to fourth-degree
child abuse charges and lost all parental rights.
Some would say the consequences should have been way more severe, but at least it was
something.
When 10-year old Jonathan Ware was approached by KGW local news correspondent Nancy Francis
during the Rose Festival in Portland, Oregon in 2007, he had one thing on the mind.
Turtles.
Wearing a t-shirt with a face fully painted to look like a zombie, Ware stood patiently
while Francis bent down to remark on his makeup.
"What do you think?"
"I like turtles."
Period.
Following the newscast, the clip was uploaded to YouTube and quickly went viral.
In 2010, Ware appeared on the show Tosh.0 and was asked about the whole turtles thing.
"Why do you think it's so popular?"
"'Cause I'm funny."
"Ha ha.
It was pretty funny."
Ware also got into what exactly had been on his mind that day.
"You had just seen a turtle exhibit."
"Yeah."
"That's in your brain!"
"Yeah."
"Someone asks you a question, I don't care if you're painted like Godzilla, you're still
thinking about turtles."
Makes sense.
In 2014 Bustle checked in with Ware to see what he's been up to since the whole turtle
thing and found that he manages his own channel entitled "TurtleTime."
There seems to be some Real Housewives of New York City crossover potential there.
"Turtle time."
During a 2010 broadcast of the Australian News show A Current Affair, a man named Ray
Graham gave a very lively re-enactment of how he was chased into his home by a vicious
seeming neighborhood dog.
"And as soon as they saw me, they came bounding over…" (barking)]
As the site Know Your Meme explains, A Current Affair followed up with the man after the
clip was uploaded to YouTube and quickly went viral, and he gave some insight into what
he was feeling the day of the original broadcast.
"Oh, I think it's hilarious.
Absolutely hilarious.
I've seen it dozens of times now, of course.
And every time, I just can't stop laughing."
Graham's wife Carrie, who he nearly knocks over with his dog impersonation in the original
clip, says that her main concern, looking back, was the state of her hair, which she
hadn't had a chance to get done before the interview.
"And all I can think was, Oh my god, look at my hair, I hadn't had my hair done, I was
going to get my hair done."
Fox 5's Ted Pretty set out one fourth of July to get some live reactions from townsfolk
regarding the holiday, and the best fireworks to purchase that season.
Broadcasting from a sleepy looking stand in Las Vegas, the reporter "happens upon" a youth
in a blue Under Armour t-shirt inspecting what looks to be a glossy fireworks advertisement.
"Here's an actual customer out here.
Uh, what's the best kinda firework to buy?"
"Wouldn't you like to know, weather boy?"
Seeming stunned, Pretty angles away from the kid.
"Where are your parents?"
The clip, which everyone took at face value to be that of a reporter having his ass handed
to him by a child on live TV, was too good to be true.
In a 2017 Esquire article, it was revealed that the sassy kid in the clip was actually
Pretty's own son, and the whole thing had been staged.
So the answer to the question "where are your parents?" in this scenario is: "At work, making
fake news."
Yet another example of the many ways a person's body can betray them, Nashville-based reporter
Alexandra Koehn battled live blizzard coverage for Channel 5 and lost.
While on camera, Koehn went into discussing severe storms that were currently hitting
Tennessee and parts of Southern Kentucky, when her nose began running ... a lot.
Now sure, she's only human, and runny noses happen, especially in climates as cold as
the one she was reporting from, but this level of snot reached code red status.
During her coverage Koehn was a trooper and continued talking, even though the snot was
now dripping onto her lips, and she was able to finish her broadcast without causing a
distraction by stopping to wipe her nose, although she probably should have.
Later, she tweeted from her personal Twitter account:
"People are cruel.
I guess that's a part of the biz.
I did 8 liveshots in a snow storm, and was working really hard!!!"
Given the footage, her level of dedication is, um, obvious.
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