-Welcome back to "Late Night." We're here with Billy Crystal.
You were saying this is the best building in the world
to walk into -- for a show business job, especially.
-Yes, it is. When I was here for "SNL," I just loved getting up
onto the 8th floor and getting into the studio and doing it.
And our offices were on the 17th floor.
-Yes, 17, and then you do the show on 8.
And this was -- I think this is the first thing
I was aware of you in. -Right.
-Was "You Look Marvelous" and "Fernando."
And this -- I did not realize, you --
this was not heavily scripted. -Not at all.
-Which is shocking to me, because that was
beyond frowned upon in my time at the show,
but I guess it was a different era.
-Yeah, I mean, Fernando was a talk show host
who was wonderfully underprepared.
-Yeah. So that helps the -- -Yeah.
So whoever the guest host was came into the hideaway with me.
And we never rehearsed it, we just put it on the air.
-Yeah. -And I would just --
whatever happened, happened.
-And were the guests game for that?
Did they -- I mean, they would have had to have had an amazing
amount of trust, I would imagine.
-Yes. Some were terrified. -Yeah.
-Ringo -- Ringo was absolutely terrified.
His -- It was like his face was like -- it was, like, beating.
I remember looking at him.
So I ended up talking to Barbara more than I talked to him.
But then one night -- and this is why live TV,
I just love it so much --
we were supposed to have -- Barry Manilow was supposed to be
the guest in the hideaway.
He was playing at Radio City Music Hall across the street.
At 11:10, he calls and says he's not coming.
He's too nervous to do it live.
Can we script something for him?
And we said no.
We're 20 minutes away from the air.
So we had a guy -- I don't know if he was there
when you were there, his name was Bobby Fraraccio.
-I don't know if I know Bobby. -Okay, you'd remember.
Bobby was a large man. -Okay.
-He was about 300, 400 pounds. -Okay, gotcha.
-And he drove one of the cranes in the studio.
So -- And he had a great sense of humor.
So I went to him and I said, "Bobby,
Manilow is not showing up."
And goes, "That son of a --" Bup-bup-bup.
[ Laughter ]
"Would you play him and come into the hideaway with me
and you'll be Barry Manilow?"
Because Fernando said to the audience,
"I cannot disappoint my fans. I cannot disappoint them.
Barry Manilow did not show up, but I promised you an interview
with him and that's what we're going to have."
So -- now you saw him take the headset off,
come into the hideaway.
I actually had to move the table so he could come in,
because he was so big.
And then I just interviewed him as I would Barry, and it was --
he was hilarious. He was absolutely hilarious.
-And did you -- was the audience on board with that
the minute it started? -Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. They saw him. That's -- you know.
And then I said -- I said to Dick Ebersol, I said,
"What if, for the rest of the season, nobody shows up?"
[ Laughter ]
"And it's always Bobby?"
-Yeah. -"And it'll always be Bobby."
He goes, "No, no, no, Mr. C." Mr. C. "I can't do it.
My neighbors killed me, my neighbors killed me.
I can't do it, I can't do it." -That's really funny.
We once had a guest -- you know, this is obviously the era
we live in, where all of a sudden,
somebody tests positive for COVID and we don't have a guest.
And so, we had a whole hour before the show.
So we had our cue card guy, Wally, came out here,
and I interviewed him -- as Wally, it should be noted.
-[ Laughs ]
-But Wally was the opposite of Bobby.
He wants to be interviewed every week.
Like, I feel like --
I feel like he's praying people get COVID at this point.
-And he was getting laughs.
So during it I said, "So, it's so lovely to have you here.
Why don't you sing us a song?"
And he started singing "I Write the Songs,"
and he just started doing it.
So I said, "We'll see you next week," and I put my hand
to stop him, and he just pushed my hand away
and kept singing the song.
-Yeah, classic Barry Manilow.
-No, he was the loveliest of guys.
The loveliest of guys. -And that was -- I mean,
you made quite an impact for a very short period of time
on that show. -We were only there a year.
-Yeah. -But, you know, look who we had.
Christopher Guest, Marty Short, myself, Rich Hall,
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jim Belushi.
-Did you know any of them ahead of time?
-Well, Marty and I and Chris, yeah, and Harry, I knew.
And Rich Hall, I knew a little bit,
but I didn't know anybody else.
But I had hosted the year before.
-Right. -And -- twice, actually.
So I got to meet them then,
but that's different than working with them.
-That's a very surreal path, to host the show
and then get cast on it.
-Five months later. -Yeah.
-You know, Dick called that summer and said,
"Listen, we had such a good time with you.
Would you think about it?"
I thought about it for about two seconds and said, "Yeah."
-And in your head, was it always gonna be a year?
-I thought I'd do it for one year,
but I sort of wanted to do it more.
And then a movie called "Running Scared" happened
after that, and then that sort of started to --
-With Gregory Hines? Is that Gregory Hines?
-Yeah. But as you know -- this is exhausting, what I'm doing.
-Yeah.
-The "SNL" job was even more tiring.
-Yeah. -We wrote, ourselves, a lot,
you know? Marty and I.
And so one night -- this is a crazy story.
It's, like, 3:00 am Tuesday, read-through was Wednesday.
-Yep. -Still? Yeah.
It's snowing really heavy, and you're on the 17th floor,
and you're looking out over everything.
I said, "I got to get home. I got to get home."
So Marty and I, we lived downtown then.
We get in the cab and we're driving down 7th Avenue.
We got to 33rd Street, right near Penn Station.
Red light. And we're talking about how tired we are,
what are we going to do?
And I hear an animal roar.
[ Laughter ]
Like a tiger, or --
Like [ Roaring ]
And I went, "Marty, what the hell was that?"
And I look out the window and through the condensation,
there's a tiger.
[ Laughter ]
And I said, "I know I'm tired, but are we seeing things?"
And Marty goes, "What was it?"
The circus was loading into Madison Square Garden,
and they have all the animals on chains and in cages
loading across 7th Avenue, coming off these huge trucks.
And there they were in the snow, just walking,
and, you know, with their time cards.
[ Laughter ]
"We'll be here for two weeks, come and see us."
It was the most bizarre thing of all.
-I guess that is the -- I mean, people always say --
will ask me if I miss "SNL," and I always say,
"I miss being that age."
Because I feel like, even though I'm blown away
by what you're doing every night,
and the fact that at your age, you're doing a Broadway show.
Like, I feel like there's a certain time where you just
age out of that "SNL" schedule.
It's just impossible to do. -It's just so hard.
And for personal life, it's just really hard.
-Yeah. -We're in rehearsal and --
it's hard.
And we're working -- you know, I'm in eight songs
and I have four dance numbers, and it's thrilling.
And I'm wearing this Apple Watch, right,
because I keep in great shape. -Yeah.
-And so, I'm doing this number and my wrist is buzzing.
What? What? And so I look at it and it says
"Have you fallen?"
[ Laughter ]
And it lists the contacts of the people
that it wants to call.
And it's got my wife and my kids and my doctor.
And I said, no -- I'm talking about -- "No, I'm fine."
Then it starts dialing, because I'm supposed to, like,
turn it off.
And it kept saying, "Have you fallen?
Have you fallen?"
-And you're like, "Fallen? I'm Tony-nominated!"
-Right. -I'm on the way up!
-And I can get up. I've fallen and I can get up.
-Hey, congratulations on the show
and all the nominations.
What an honor to have you here. -Good to be here. Thank you.
-Billy Crystal. "Mr. Saturday Night"
is playing at the Nederlander Theater on Broadway.
We'll be right back with Samara Weaving.