-Our first guest tonight is
an Emmy Award-winning actor
you know from hit shows like "Cheers,"
"Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "The Good Place."
He stars in "Mr. Mayor,"
which airs Thursday nights at 8:00 p.m. here on NBC.
Let's take a look.
-Now, I know
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wouldn't even wear masks, but what about helmets?
It's simple. Download our free
helmet-sharing app, Safe LA.
Use the map feature to locate a helmet.
Now, you're ready to enter the unique 14-digit code
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You then have 20 seconds to --
Are you kidding me?
Couldn't we just them in a bin or something?
-[ Laughing ] I don't know. -Okay. Alright.
[ Laughter ]
-Please welcome back to the show
one of the best, Ted Danson.
How are you, Ted?
-I'm great. How are you?
Nice to see your face. -It's nice to see your face, too.
Are you in a sitcom kitchen, right now,
or your personal kitchen?
-It's a new-build rental up in Vancouver,
so it is very similar
-[ Laughing ] -to a sitcom kitchen.
-That's right, now,
you were in Vancouver, I should say,
with your lovely bride, Mary Steenburgen.
And you guys seem to work out your schedule very well,
that you are not shooting at the same time that often.
-Yeah. You know, you would think that it'd be more fun
to work at the same time and then be able to go off
on this wonderful vacation together, but, truth is,
especially nowadays, it's nice to have one of us home
to catch the other. You know,
cook and do housekeeping and all that stuff,
which I'm actually really good at.
-You're good at housekeeping, in general?
-Yeah. Yeah. I have no idea why.
My dad used to do it.
I find it very satisfying to make something dirty, clean.
-So this is not -- By the way,
you know my wife, Alexi.
This is very much a quality she has that I don't have.
But you're claiming this is something
that's always been true of you.
-Yes. Yes. Before I had a -- [ Laughs ]
before I could afford a vacuum cleaner,
I would go around on my hands and knees, picking up, you know,
lint and little pieces of something from the carpet.
-[ Laughing ] -This is really kind of sad.
Can we change the subject?
-No. I'm just happy you finally got that vacuum money.
[ Laughter ]
Hey, so, I'm also happy, you know,
"The Good Place" ended this wonderful run,
tied a bow on a fantastic show.
And I think myself, everybody in the industry,
was very worried that you were not going
to land on your feet and, yet... -[ Laughing ]
here you are, right away, doing another sitcom.
How quickly after "The Good Place"
were you aware of this project
and the fact that you would be doing it?
-Actually, before we finished shooting
because Mike Schur, our creator, knew, before the season started,
that this would be the last season of "The Good Place."
So he let us all know, so we really had, you know,
five or six months of preparation,
of being able to say goodbye and also move on.
-Mike Schur, who I got to know, working with him at "SNL,"
and now, of course, you're working with Tina Fey
and Robert Carlock, who I knew the same way.
They're all friends with Mike, vice versa,
but "Mr. Mayor" is a very different kind of show,
don't you think?
-Yes. Yes.
It's a lot sillier and, boy, do we go fast.
You know, I kind of grew up in the "Cheers"
"Here's a joke. Really funny, wasn't it?
-[ Laughing ] -Great. Let's have a laugh.
Okay, we're going to move on now," you know.
And this is like you just tear through the jokes
and, you know, buckle up.
You can always rewind it, if you want, and check it out,
but they don't stop for the laugh, so.
Yeah, at 73, I'm having to learn how to speak quickly.
-Well, it's interesting because, you know,
the main difference, of course,
is that, "Cheers," there was a live studio audience
that was reacting to very funny jokes.
As somebody who watched "Cheers,"
I greatly appreciated watching you all in the laughter,
but, especially on a show like "Cheers,"
it must've been weird, figuring out what to do
while the audience was laughing.
I read -- and please tell me this is true,
because it made me very happy -- that you also didn't know
what to do, as an actor, and they gave you a note
on what to do while the audience was laughing.
-Yes. It started out, "Just eat a peanut.
Just say your joke, eat a peanut."
And then, we found out that wasn't funny,
so we moved to pretzels.
[ Laughing ] Ate a lot of pretzels.
You know, it's funny,
but you do need, with a live audience,
you do need that, in case your joke isn't that funny
and you thought it might be,
you do need that thing to go to, so you don't just go...
you know? "Oh, no. It wasn't funny."
[ Laughter ]
-That's -- I mean, I was going to say,
what an interesting thing, I would love to experience it,
but you might know I used to do this show with an audience.
So I'm kind of finding out in real time what it's like
to go from a "Cheers" to a Carlock/Fey project.
-Ah, it's -- it's crazy.
And now with COVID, they're -- before -- we started --
it took us a year to shoot nine episodes
because of this doggone pandemic.
It started out that they were on the floor,
you know, in Video Village watching,
and you could go around the corner,
and you could see that they were enjoying it
or it was funny or it needed work or whatever.
And then, we had the nine-month hiatus
because of COVID, the shutdown,
and when we came back, things were vastly different.
They were in New York on a computer screen Zooming with us,
and we had masks and shields.
So you'd come up -- You know, "Is that Tina?
I guess so." -[ Laughs ]
-"She's giving me a note, and I'm don't -- like, okay."
You know, it was not as much fun, I'll have to admit.
-One thing, though, that Bobby spoke about
and I actually moderated a panel with you and the cast,
and it seems to be true
is that because you had this very long gap
from shooting the pilot to going back to work
and then another gap
from when you started shooting the first episodes until now,
you did get very close as a cast.
That must be nice.
-It was. It was very nice.
I think the first three episodes --
I know I was just, "Can I do this?
What am I doing? Learn your lines."
And then we had that nine months,
and it was, I mean, obviously so intensely scary, disturbing,
all those things, the shut-ins,
that we started to Zoom with each other
just for no reason and catch up with each other.
And you kind of really learn some --
You know, probably you had a deeper cut
at who these people were if you hadn't done it.
We went through Black Lives Matters,
and we went through so many different phases
of this astounding, you know, time that we're living in
that by the time we came back, we were much closer.
Yeah. I really love these people.
-It's a -- It's a wonderful cast.
Ted, one of the prices of being as excellent
for as long as you have been
is that it's impossible for you now to be a revelation, right?
Nobody is watching a show, being like, "You know who is funny?
Ted Danson." You've established that.
Holly Hunter is kind of a revelation.
She's so wonderful in the show.
I mean, I've seen her be funny before,
but to see her be funny on TV like this
is just such a delight.
-Yeah, she's -- she's intense in this wonderful way.
You know how when you play tennis with somebody
and if they're better than you, your game comes up?
Man, she hits the tennis ball back so fast, it is incredible.
And she's ferocious and relentless, and --
Yeah, I'm really tickled to be able to work with her
because I love her and have loved her acting for so long.
And then, speaking of -- I don't know if it's a revelation.
We've always known that Bobby Moynihan
is -- is just out-of-the-gate funny,
but oh, my God, he's wonderful on our show.
-It's really -- It makes me genuinely happy
knowing you both personally and what nice people you are.
It makes me genuinely happy to see you guys working together
because you're great together.
-Yeah.
He is just the sweetest, kindest, happiest daddy.
You know, he's incredible.
-I should note you are playing the mayor of Los Angeles.
It's a fictional mayor. It's not based on anybody.
But it does seem nice to, in this day and age,
show people that anyone can be an elected official,
because that really strikes me as what your character is.
-Yeah. No, I am that 73-year-old very white, very rich guy
who should not be still in the game.
He should be irrelevant and somehow lucks into it.
And there's this great line that's actually true
where my staff is saying, "Don't tell him,
but the truth is that he got 67% of the vote,
but only 18% of Los Angeles
votes in the mayoral elections on an off year,
if it's not a presidential election."
So I -- You know, I got 8%, maybe, of the vote.
So -- And that's true. That's literally what happens.
-Well, you're both --
your character's both incredibly underqualified,
but I still think you're better than most.
And it is always just such a delight to see you, Ted.
Thanks so much for making time for us today.
-Thanks for talking about the show.
Much love to everybody.
-And Mary did ask me to tell you it's time to start cleaning up.
[ Laughter ]
"Mr. Mayor" airs Thursday nights at 8:00 right here on NBC.