In 2011, Fred Willard took us through his career in the most delightfully Fred Willardian way. Revisit our interview with the late comedian
Photo: Vince Bucci/TV/Getty Images This interview originally ran on April 8, 2011. It’s being republished following Willard’s death at age 86 on May 15, 2020.
But you also did Ed Sullivan, The Smothers Brothers — a lot of those comedy-variety talk shows over the years. What was your feeling about the pioneering foul-mouthed comedians like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor? I played a real-estate salesman, and at one point, I’m supposed to leave my office and go across the street to talk to James Mason, who’d moved into the big mansion with what looked like caskets. And he said, “Okay, you run across the street with whatever little funny walk you’ve come up with.” And I thought, Ohhh, he wants a funny walk. He wants me to be funny. So that made sense.
Oh, Jeffrey Tambor, who’s a very funny man. He just got signed to do La Cage Aux Folles on Broadway to replace Kelsey Grammer, and then I read that he left the cast because he had some physical problem or something, and I have a feeling it’s because he found out how much work it is to do a Broadway show. And my first two thoughts were, Oh, what a shame, that’s too bad, and Oh, hell, now he’s back out here and he’s going to take a job away from me.
How much setup do you get for a particular scene? Do you guys do a lot of character-building stuff beforehand?
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