Compiled Transcripts
Gina Ross: I couldn’t believe I got that call.
I think TMS’s casting director rang up two weeks after Carson, and she told me I was the only stand-up talent they were looking at.
I assumed it was a joke. She said, no, really, some guy from New York was putting a new ensemble show together, but, you know, edgier than Carol Burnett, skewing younger than everything out there, too. “Anarchic,” that was the word she used.
I don’t even think I caught Aaron’s name at the time.
Nobody back then was leading with “Aaron Adler”—it carried as much weight as “Joe Schmo.” My immediate reaction was I don’t do troupe work.
I am a shark. I swim alone. But after Carson, I’d basically stopped swimming, is the truth.
And when sharks stop swimming, they die.
Aaron Adler: The network wanted Nolan Young, who’d been one of those four cast members on Carol Burnett for two or three years.
My assessment was that the material they were giving him was fairly one-note, that he’d been pigeonholed as the “Black cast member.” They were underpaying him, too, and it was obvious Nolan had serious talent.
Pitch-perfect delivery. A bottomless bag of impressions.
Aaron Adler: He didn’t audition. He was gifted to us from on high, which dovetailed well with the rest of my plans. In fact, I do believe Nolan Young was the highest-paid cast member that season.
[Note: I’ve also included relevant excerpts from Nolan Young’s last interview, published in June 1989 in The Village Voice.]
Nolan Young (TMS cast member, 1980–1985), excerpt from “Nolan’s Final Bow,” Village Voice: I was what you called “offer only.” Those are good words in anybody’s career.
No audition. Make an offer, make me move.
As it happens, I was sick of LA. I’m a New Yorker.
I wanted to come home. I liked Carol Burnett, she really did right by me, but I liked the idea of starting something new.
And I really liked how much The Midnight Show was offering to pay me.
They say I was a name. I wasn’t, but I was “a face.” Like, I’d be walking down the street, or in the airport, you know, and I’d see somebody glance over at me and recognize me with that look, like, He’s somebody, but I have no idea who.
They weren’t sure if they’d seen me on TV or if I’d come and fixed their TV.
But that right there was more famous than everybody else in that cast, except for Brooke [Balsinger].
She was a name; she was doing those magazine pinup photo shoots at the time.
Not Playboy, but just on the line, if you know what I’m saying.
So I was the highest paid, then Brooke, then everybody else.
Might have been the first time in American history the white guys got paid the least.
Aaron Adler: Now, Brooke…that’s the cast member I didn’t understand at first. Of course she had charm—that sex appeal, if you will—but she was also pushing thirty and still playing a snarky teenager on Settle Down.
Kind of a poor man’s Suzanne Somers, I thought at the time.
And when an actress becomes synonymous with a role, it’s hard to see them as anyone else, let alone dozens of new characters.
But the deal was inked; Settle Down was on its last run, Brooke’s contract was ending, and the network wanted to keep her.
Before the show aired, I had no real leverage, no real power to veto their list completely. But, you know, I’d say it worked out.