-James Spader, welcome back to our program.
It's always great to have you on.
I was telling you that we're playing a segment called
"Do Not Play" with weird songs, and you go,
"Yeah, I have this song that haunts me."
-A whole record, actually.
I -- It was a -- Should I show it here?
-Yeah. Show the --
-So, this is what the cover looks like.
-Yeah.
-So... -Yeah, let me see it. So...
-So, it's Mother Goose nursery rhymes, right?
-That's a little frightening right there.
-But -- And I grew up with these.
And I must tell you, I am like the third child.
My parents raised two daughters before me and then me,
and we were all raised --
This was our Mother Goose record.
-This is a hand-me-down.
-A hand-me-down.
-Yeah, it's been in the family for years.
-Right. Yes.
And they're recorded by
Cyril Ritchard, Celeste Holm, and Boris Karloff.
Boris Karloff, you know,
who famously played Frankenstein's monster.
-Yeah, I mean, he's a very famous monster.
-And beautiful voice.
But it's them reading nursery rhymes
that are absolutely terrifying.
-Now, we were talking, and you go, "I gotta find it.
It's at home. I'll go home. Next time, I'll bring it on."
And I go, "We'll find it."
We found it for you. -But you have a whole --
-This is real.
Now, this is Boris Karloff doing "There was a Crooked Man."
And you heard this as a child.
-Yeah, so listen to this and imagine if you're 4-year-old.
-He bought a crooked cat, who caught a crooked mouse,
and they all lived together
in a little, crooked house.
-Oh, my God. [ Cheers and applause ]
-No! Wow! Wow!
-The temperature just dropped over here.
-"Little crooked --" Like, "What are you doing, buddy?"
-It was like an experiment, I think,
that my parents were conducting.
-Oh, my gosh. -Congratulations, Questlove.
-Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. -I appreciate it.
-Questlove -- -Thank you.
-He's amazing.
-I want to talk about "Blacklist,"
because now you're in your ninth season.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Yeah, you got cheers as I'm talking about it earlier
in the show, because you're just fantastic as Red.
-We just got picked up just this afternoon.
Word came out.
They -- Everyone was hustling around to try and do it
so we could announce it on the show.
We just got picked up for a 10th season.
-Come on. [ Cheers and applause ]
Well-deserved.
Wow! 10 seasons of "The Blacklist."
-10 seasons.
-Again, I will say this.
I say this every time you come on.
But when you watch "The Blacklist,"
it doesn't look like -- It's not like a show.
It's a movie you are making every week.
And it's explosions and it's stuff.
And it is work. It really is. I mean, it's work.
And the fact that you made this also during the pandemic
and during COVID.
-Yeah, no, it was really -- You know, we shut down
on March 13th of -- What the hell year was that?
-Yeah. We all erased it. -'20, I guess.
-Yeah, 2020. -Right? '20? Yeah.
And we shut down on the 13th -- it was a Friday.
And we were in the middle of Episode 19 of that season,
and it became clear we weren't coming back for
the last few episodes of the season.
So we decided, with 19, we wanted to end with
some sort of satisfaction for the viewers,
so we -- so they animated
the second half of that Episode 19.
And then we spent really the rest of that summer,
during lockdown, trying to discuss with Sony and NBC
and the producers, other producers on the show,
how we can could back and how --
You know, what the shape of that would be
and what the ramifications would be and so on.
So, that year, 2020, we came back.
And NBC and Sony -- great partners on this show --
they had ordered 22 episodes for season -- for that year.
And we shot all 22 episodes.
We didn't shut down once, all during the pandemic.
It was all really due to this incredible effort
from our producers and --
-NBC does a great job here, and I should props to
my crew and everybody,
the camera operators, everybody here.
Safely -- And doing it safely and doing it right,
because, well, we all need entertainment.
-And the same this season, too,
with Omicron and everything else.
We did not shut down once.
We were able to do -- We're doing a full
22 episodes this year.
And we're gonna carry on and do another one next year.
-That's amazing. And that -- [ Cheers and applause ]
I want to show everyone a clip.
Here's James Spader in Friday's episode of "The Blacklist."
Take a look at this.
-Absolutely not. -Come on. Harold --
-Hedwig Hawkins was caught with over a million dollars
worth of pirated soybeans.
-Pirated?
Heddie was just selling seeds to farmers at a price.
If my associate is guilty of anything,
it's simply trying to ease the economic strain
on the hard-working men and women
who put the tofu in your turkey, the cotton in your shirt,
the beans in your coffee.
Everything it means to be human.
-But our immunity agreement is with you,
not with your employees.
-If she talks, it will be damaging.
How much is hard to tell, but it would certainly have
repercussions for me and for this task force.
-That's right. [ Cheers and applause ]
James Spader, everybody.
"The Blacklist" airs Fridays at 8:00 p.m. on NBC.
Boris Karloff reads Mother Goose,
available wherever you can find it.