Reporters scrambled on stage last July at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles following the formal session for the new comedy Mulaney.
A number of us gathered around Martin Short, co-starring on the series, which premieres Sunday, as egocentric game show host Lou Cannon. Cannon is the Hollywood big shot who hires up-and-coming comedian John Mulaney — played by up-and-coming comedian John Mulaney — to be his assistant.
Up close, it was evident that the native of Hamilton, Ont., was proudly wearing his Order of Canada pin on his lapel. Short received the honour in 1994. “Thank you. Canadian knighthood,” he overstated to the American reporters. “But, listen, I wanna hear about you people!”
Short’s character, Lou Cannon, hosts something called Celebrity You Guessed It. He agrees the title sounds like a Canadian game show. “Oh, completely,” says Short. “Even the title is kind of perfect.”
The comedy chameleon got under the skin of everybody from Jerry Lewis to Katharine Hepburn during his glory years on SCTV and Saturday Night Live. Was he borrowing traits from any real-life game show personality, say, fellow Canadian and longtime Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, in portraying Cannon?
“No, there’s no Trebek,” Short says with a laugh. “But, you know, we’ve seen all types, especially if you’ve been in show business as long as I have, you’ve met a lot of narcissists.”
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Short says he was a big fan of the “Stefon” sketches Mulaney wrote for Bill Hader on Saturday Night Live but didn’t meet the standup comedian when he last hosted NBC’s comedy showcase in 2013. That didn’t happen until Short’s fellow Order of Canada colleague, SNL boss Lorne Michaels, hosted a meeting at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
That’s where the idea for the series — loosely based on Mulaney’s real-life adventures as an SNL writer — was laid out. Short was happy to climb aboard. Mulaney’s SNL colleague Nasim Pedrad and Elliott Gould are also in the series, seen on Global.
Short says he’s happy to be the side dish on Mulaney, not the series’ main star.
“What I love being is an actor,” he says.
He’s found the creative process to be very collaborative on the comedy. There was no defensiveness, Short found, when it came to suggestions about his character.
Trim and remarkably youthful-looking at 64, Short’s first American TV series was the law drama The Associates way back in 1979. One of the creators of that series, the great Jim Brooks (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Simpsons) told him the secret to television is “make it to the second season so you can figure out what it should be.”
Short was told that it took until the “third season, second episode,” of Mary Tyler Moore before Brooks turned to Toronto-born writer-producer Stan Daniels and said, “I think we’ve got it.” He expects Mulaney, a show where there’s a fair bit of improvisation among the actors, to take some time to find its stride.
Short, who enjoyed a meaty dramatic turn on Damages, says he rarely watches much of anything on TV these days. “I’m amazed at how everyone has time to watch all these things,” he says, dropping names faster than his unctuous movie critic sketch character Jiminy Glick. “Steven Spielberg tells me he hasn’t missed an episode of Breaking Bad. ‘Really? How do you have the time?'”
While he still summers in Ontario’s cottage country, Short didn’t sound like he’d be returning to Toronto to host the Canadian Screen Awards, or “Screenies,” again this March. He hosted the revamped Gemini and Genie Award presentations in 2012 and 2013. “I think, you know, two could be enough. We’ll leave them asking for more.”
When a couple of American reporters ask, “What the heck is a ‘Screenie’ Award?” Short explains it as Canada’s Emmys and Oscars all rolled into one.
He modestly put forward another name for them: “The Martys.”
Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.
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