Compiled Transcripts
Madeline: Do you remember the audition day for The Midnight Show?
Sam Petrosian: Vividly! I still have nightmares about it, the way other people will dream about taking a test they haven’t studied for.
The dreams are worse than the reality, I should note.
There were jitters, for sure, but we managed them.
We all drove in together that morning, a one-day quick turnaround thing.
Lillian rode shotgun, looking out the window.
Stevie and I were in the back, relentlessly mocking New York City the whole way, calling it a shithole, excuse my French, because one, you have to if you’re from Boston, it’s the law, and two, New York was a shithole.
And us parking in Times Square, jeez Louise, it was apocalyptic.
Peep shows open at ten in the morning, girls out front trying to get you to come in, strung-out junkies harassing you for change.
We thought, hey, if this gig doesn’t work out for us, at least we can get back to a decent city.
But then we went inside One Astor. It was a brand-new skyscraper, shiny as tinfoil.
The network didn’t own the whole thing—they do now, but back then it was about half ownership.
Even so, it was branded as if these were the gates of heaven and heaven was the network.
The desk, the security, the gleaming lobby, the enormous network sign, our footsteps echoing.
Immaculate. Stevie and I shut right up. No more smack talk about New York, not in that sacred space.
That’s when the nerves really hit. Whoo boy.
Even Kent, who was doing his best to pretend his family owned the building, I could tell it affected him.
This was the real deal. We’d been playing at being pros this whole time, thinking we had buzz, we were the avant-garde, everybody wanted to be us.
[He shoots goofy air guns in demonstration.
] And just by checking in at that security desk, we realized we’d been kids having a good time in our little after-school club up until now.
This was adulthood. This was professional. This could change everything.
Now, the only one who wasn’t cowed, not at all, was Lillian.
She didn’t really understand the Boston–New York dynamic, so the whole ride down, she’d been trying to reassure us in her very Canadian way, like, “Don’t worry.
I’m sure it isn’t as bad as you think.” And in that grand gray lobby, she turned to me and beamed and said, “See? This is nice! I told you!”
Gina Ross: If you’re craving an inferiority complex, a quick masochistic hit straight to the veins, take a stroll through One Astor’s lobby.
It’s show business incarnate, marble columns and slick slate floors and gilded elevators.
Walking in that summer, I would’ve bolted, I really think I would’ve, if not for the Carson debacle, which I know sounds counterintuitive, but put it this way: If I’d gone into my audition on top, I would’ve had everything to lose.
As it happened, I was already swimming at the bottom of the world.
Nowhere to go but up to the fifteenth floor.
Stevie Doyle: We rode in the elevator with Gina. I’d seen that kamikaze stunt she’d pulled on Carson, everybody had, but I didn’t make the connection right away. I figured she was somebody’s secretary. I probably sound like a jerk saying that, but…she had really big hair back then.
Gina Ross: My first impression of the Townies?
Bush-league Rat Pack. Kind of cute, but like…
forgettable. I mean, Kent, of course, had star quality, this sort of unplaceable appeal—was he Latino?
Italian? Persian? Wherever he was from, you wanted to say thank you for the donation, because my God, was he hot.
And he knew it—I can still picture that shit-eating grin he sported the entire elevator ride.
Which, of course, became his calling card.
He’s got a kiss-me-or-punch-me face, doesn’t he?
Even so, he was nervous that day, they all were, it was obvious.
Stevie, in particular, looked like he was seconds from shitting his pants.
Not sure if you’ve met Stevie yet, but he’s set to a higher frequency than even your average neurotic comedy writer—anxious bugger, teeth always clenched—so maybe it’s more accurate to say he looked like he was right in the middle of shitting his pants.
I didn’t even register Lillian until the doors finally opened and a few PAs accosted us in the fifteenth floor’s elevator lobby, funneling us into a jam-packed waiting room, which had been filled for quite a while, judging from the scent of disgusted annoyance in the air.
Madeline: What did you first think of Lillian when you did see her?
Gina Ross: I dismissed her. She was such a waif of a thing, the antithesis of a presence, really.
Long, long dark hair to her waist, totally barefaced, and wearing all black, an emo teen before it was in vogue.
I can still picture her now, perched on the edge of her folding chair, leaning around Sam, hanging on Stevie and Kent’s every word.
And I think, okay, a chuckle fucker, yeah?
A comedy troupe groupie—all she needs is a floppy hat and we’ve got late night’s Yoko Ono.
But then they call Kent’s name, then Sam’s, then Stevie’s, and then “Lillian Martin,” and this brunette Twiggy stands right up.
Jumps up, really, like an eager student about to solve a quadratic equation on a blackboard.
Stevie Doyle: I can’t remember if it was Kent then Sam, or Sam then Kent, but I went after the two of them.
Had a little material from one of our shows that I’d worked into a sketch.
It went great—from my perspective, anyway—and then it was Lillian’s turn.
Sally called her name, and Lillie went deer in the headlights.
Looked like she was being called for a deposition.
I thought, “Oh shit. We didn’t prep her.
We didn’t tell her anything.” We were clueless, too, the three of us, but we’d assumed we were going to work on some bits to bring in, and never thought to tell Lillie, you know, you might want to prepare something.
I mean, like, she hated wearing makeup, right?
But this seemed like a moment for an exception.
She hadn’t spruced up at all. Nothing. She was about to fall flat on her face, and I wanted to strangle Sam for putting her in that position, to fail like that, which was bound to blow back on the rest of us.
I paced around in that waiting room, clenching my jaw to keep from saying, I fucking told you so.
Worst case, she was going to be so green, they’d rethink including the Townies altogether.
Lillian was about to cost me my big break.
[Not sure if Stevie’s wincing or smiling.]
I was right about that. Wrong about everything else.
Sally Schumacher: Lillian had done zero preparation for the audition and didn’t seem to be particularly intellectual, but it was so obvious she was this live wire of talent—I mean, watch her tape, and you’ll understand why I was not going to let this show go on the air without Lillian Martin—whereas Stevie Doyle, who Aaron had talked up to no end, was a nonentity on camera.
His material was all right; I could see how on paper it would work.
But if you watch the footage, he was a vacuum into which humor disappeared.
You know that expression “all hat, no cattle”? He was all clever, no funny.
Madeline: And what about Bobby Everett? Do you remember the first time you met him?
Sam Petrosian: I don’t think any of us actually spoke to Bobby that day.
Not until our first actual day of work, when we all joined the writers’ room for the first time.
But that audition day, we saw him in the waiting area, this kind of bare-bones greenroom just off the studio.
Like a hospital waiting room but with a fruit bowl, to make us feel fancy.
Which worked, by the way. I did indeed feel fancy.
Bobby’s turn to do his screen test was right after Lillian’s.
When Lillie came out, she ran up to me and gave me this big hug, and Bobby’s eyes did not leave us, which obviously attracted my own attention.
I remember he looked startled when they called his name, like he was waking up from a trance.
I don’t blame him. Lillian had that effect on everybody.
Kent Romero: I knew of Bobby Everett, tangentially.
He did the talk show circuit in New York and LA, his literal song-and-dance routine, the mamarracho.
He tap-danced, played the guitar, I can’t fucking remember.
He was older than me, but I thought he was a kid; that seemed to be the whole gag, like, look at this sweet little ultra-white ghost child singing outrageous things.
Even for the audition, he’d brought in this miniscule twee piano.
He was sitting in the waiting room holding it on his lap like a pet.
Completely bizarre—so, of course, Lillian noticed.
I saw the way she looked at Bobby and thought, “Uh-oh. Here we go.”
Gina Ross: That stupid fucking piano. If he’d brought a bassoon, who knows, Cohen? Maybe Lillian would still be alive today.
Kent Romero: When Bobby went in to test, I got a pit in my stomach, thinking, “Huh. Maybe this show isn’t going to be at the level I expected.
” But I don’t give a shit what people say, this is the truth—I decided to reserve judgment about Bobby.
Right then and there, I said to myself, give him a chance, get to know the guy and then see what you think. And I did. I got to know him.
[Kent sits back, smiling tightly.]
Madeline: Can I take that to mean…you did not grow to like him?
Kent Romero: You can take it to mean whatever you want. There are a lot of rumors out there. I want to make it clear that at that point in our relationship or whatever you want to call it, I was more than willing to befriend Bobby Everett.
Sally Schumacher: We needed Bobby. The show, in that first season, wouldn’t have worked without him.
He walked in very comfortable because I think he knew Aaron a little socially.
They were both in this sort of New York oak-paneled-drawing-room scene that bridged…
how shall I put this? Smart people and rich people?
Like, the late ’70s version of salons. Old ladies loved Aaron.
Still do, actually, which is another thing he pretends not to notice.
Back then, Aaron was good at working all kinds of rooms, making the right friends. That’s what got him up the ranks of the network so quickly. Don’t get me wrong, he had killer ideas—he was a great producer and a solid guy—but he was also very good at becoming the darling of whoever held the power.
Bobby wasn’t dissimilar. He was rich and smart, like Kent, but Bobby came from one of those Manhattan families that can trace their lineage back to specific Dutch merchant lords and—unlike Kent—he never really came across as arrogant.
He was boyish. Again, nowhere near as handsome as Kent, or even Sam in his prime, but he sort of radiated wholesomeness, which in terms of comedy worked most effectively when he was being subversive.
Bobby was relaxed in that screen test, no doubt about that.
He’d been in front of cameras, unlike our Townies kids.
But it wasn’t his experience we needed. It was the adorable factor.
If we had Bobby and Lillian, we’d have “likable” kind of covered enough to be edgy and push the line in other ways with the rest of the cast. It’s sort of funny to think about it now, because I don’t know if they even met in the hallway or in the greenroom on that first day, but I was already saying “Bobby and Lillian.” Like they went together.
Anyway, it was obvious to me after her audition that Lillian was a keeper. But she left the room and Aaron gave me this noncommittal, “Hmm. Maybe as a backup,” and I swear, I considered violence right then and there. Chucking a boom mic at him or something.
Aaron Adler: Sally did fight for Lillian in the room.
That’s accurate. I would say what gave me pause that day was that I saw in that audition some of the vulnerability that would later haunt her.
She was like a fledgling bird. Incredibly fresh.
But of course, that was the same quality that Sally rightly recognized as brilliance.
[Interview Note: Aaron and Phil need to wrap up before Aaron’s next meeting, but Phil kindly obliges my request for the first class’s audition tapes.
He sets me up with a private viewing room on the fourteenth floor and then goes one better, asking a PA to grant me access to The Midnight Show archives in case anything there may also be of use. ]