When celebrities portray themselves

Martin Short and Zach Galifianakis in the fourth season of Only Murders in the Building.

Eric McCandless / Hulu/Disney

It's practically a tradition for famous people to portray a really offbeat version of themselves in TV and movies. The latest season of Only Murders in the Building features Eugene Levy, Zach Galifianakis, and Eva Longoria all playing fictional versions of themselves. So we thought it would be the perfect time to talk about about the many ways actors portray themselves on screen, and why it does and doesn't work.

Transcript

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

LINDA HOLMES, HOST:

When a horny, extremely high Neil Patrick Harris was picked up hitchhiking in "Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle" in 2004, it was still pretty unusual for a famous person to play a really offbeat version of themselves. Since then, it's become practically a tradition.

GLEN WELDON, HOST:

Actors playing themselves as vain; athletes portraying themselves as clumsy; even politicians riffing on at least some elements of their personas. It happens a lot, though it doesn't always work. I'm Glen Weldon.

HOLMES: And I'm Linda Holmes, and today on NPR's POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR, we're talking about when celebrities play themselves.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

HOLMES: It's just the two of us today. Celebrities playing themselves, for the purposes of this conversation - and Glen and I have talked a little bit about this - is a little bit different from a straight-up...

WELDON: Yeah.

HOLMES: ...Cameo, where the celebrity just walks on and the other characters react. This is your old, like, you know, Burt Reynolds shows up at the Peach Pit on "Beverly Hills, 90210."

WELDON: Sure. Good pull.

HOLMES: You (laughter) also have an example of this from when Cher popped up on "Will & Grace."

WELDON: Yeah. This is the old-school celebrity cameo, where they just walk on. They freeze while the audience cheers, and they're just smiling. Everybody's sitting around smiling. In this example, Jack meets Cher.

HOLMES: Yeah.

WELDON: He thinks she's a Cher impersonator, and he tries to out-Cher Cher, which you just can't do.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WILL & GRACE")

SEAN HAYES: (As Jack McFarland) I do a better Cher than you.

(LAUGHTER)

CHER: (As self) You think so?

(LAUGHTER)

HAYES: (As Jack McFarland) Actually, it's, you think so (vocalizing)?

(LAUGHTER)

WELDON: OK, see...

HOLMES: Right.

WELDON: ...That is no take, just vibes. Yeah.

HOLMES: This is also one of those where the celebrity, as a person, is kind of a long-running thing on the show - like, you would know that Jack was into Cher - so it's like a payoff of that. That's similar to, like, when Barry Manilow finally showed up on Murphy Brown...

WELDON: Sure.

HOLMES: ...After Murphy Brown had been making Barry Manilow jokes for many, many seasons. But that's a little bit different from the ones we're talking about, where it is a famous person, but it's clearly a fictional or an exaggerated version of them. There are a couple of recent examples of this kind of thing. Steph Curry is playing a version of Steph Curry in the Peacock series, "Mr. Throwback."

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MR. THROWBACK")

EGO NWODIM: (As Kimberly Gregg) Yeah. When's her birthday?

ADAM PALLY: (As Danny Grossman) Friday.

NWODIM: (As Kimberly Gregg) Two days? That's too much time.

STEPH CURRY: (As self) Just make sure you keep it under seven figs. You know what? Honestly, if you need more figs, take more figs.

(LAUGHTER)

HOLMES: I don't think everything about that show is working, but I do like the lines about taking more figs. Also, the fourth season of "Only Murders In The Building" finds our trio of podcasters being played in a film adaptation by real actors we know. Eugene Levy is playing Charles, the Steve Martin character. Zach Galifianakis is playing Oliver, the Martin Short character. And Eva Longoria is playing Mabel, the Selena Gomez character.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING")

STEVE MARTIN: (As Charles-Haden Savage) I'm Eugene Levy.

SELENA GOMEZ: (As Mabel Mora) I'm Eva Longoria.

MOLLY SHANNON: (As Bev Melon) Oliver, this is Zach Galifianakis.

MARTIN SHORT: (As Oliver Putnam) Oh, yes. Zach Gali-fragilistic - of course.

WELDON: Yeah.

HOLMES: Yeah. I guess, you know, one thing I would ask, Glen, is, do you agree that this sort of thing really took off after the NPH "Harold & Kumar" thing? 'Cause I don't remember it being quite as common before that, although I know there were examples.

WELDON: There were examples. Right. But as we mentioned, for years - for decades, really - like, the celebrity guest star was built into the infrastructure of a show. It was a nonevent.

HOLMES: Right.

WELDON: It would happen exactly like that Cher cameo happened. Like, I kept thinking about "The Lucy Show" and "Here's Lucy" in the '60s. It was just her friends. They'd walk onto set. Real movie stars would be on your TV screen.

HOLMES: Right.

WELDON: And then Lucy would kind of cheat to the camera and go, Danny Kaye.

HOLMES: Right, right, right.

WELDON: And "Will & Grace" did a lot of stunt casting, where they would have celebrities playing characters, and some of that would riff on who they were known for being. Like, Sandra Bernhard played herself. But again, it's all there just so that the celebrity is, like, this thing that stands in the middle, and everybody reacts to them. That is what I call the light-lift celebrity cameo. But right - you're right. About that time, it became an outlier - much more common, much more fun, for them to have a clear take when they go on a show - an unflattering take, often. That says to me the celebrities are in on it. You know, it's clear they can have fun. It's not the '50s anymore. You don't need to worry about your image in the same way...

HOLMES: Right.

WELDON: ...'Cause audiences are a lot more savvy.

HOLMES: Right. I will say, before that, there was "The Larry Sanders Show..."

WELDON: Sure.

HOLMES: ...Which kind of made a lot of its - in the '90s, which made a lot of its bones on these kind of - you know, it was a little bit exaggerated, but I don't feel like it necessarily played against type in the same way. You know what I mean?

WELDON: Yeah. It played weirder, more specific - so David Duchovny has a crush on Larry Sanders. That's a thing. That was a big thing in the show. On "Big Bang Theory," Will Wheaton plays an evil version of Will Wheaton.

HOLMES: Yes.

WELDON: NPH in "Harold & Kumar." I think the clearest, most stark example of this disconnect vibe is "The Chappelle Show." Now, we know a lot more about Dave Chappelle now, but you're not going to find a clearer example of what we're talking about. So in this clip, Wayne Brady plays himself, driving around LA with Dave Chappelle. Suffice to say, he's not the Wayne Brady that you think you know. He's not the guy who improvises parodies of Disney songs on "Whose Line?" He is a straight-up gangster.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "CHAPPELLE'S SHOW")

WAYNE BRADY: (As self) Dave, calm down.

DAVE CHAPPELLE: (As self) What do you mean, calm down? You just...

BRADY: (As self) Dave, relax.

CHAPPELLE: (As self) You just shot people, Wayne.

BRADY: (As self) Dave. Dave.

CHAPPELLE: (As self) Those are people you shot. [Expletive] man, you got a daytime Emmy [expletive]. You ain't supposed to be doing [expletive] like this.

BRADY: (As self) Dave, you're making me nervous. You're making me think that you're going to snitch. Now, you're not going to snitch, right?

CHAPPELLE: (As self) Oh, like, come on, man. I ain't no snitch.

WELDON: So in that example and a lot of examples we're going to be citing today, I think the sketch itself is less funny than what's around it, which is the...

HOLMES: Right.

WELDON: ...Meta-knowledge that this actor is willing to do that. That's the real appeal here.

HOLMES: Yeah. And in a way, we're talking about the difference between a cameo, where the actor is themselves, and something where they are acting and playing a character who is not exactly themselves. It's just their name, and it's their, maybe, history and biography. But it's like, what if this person was like this? So it starts to take on more of a feel of comedic acting rather than just, you know, what Cher did there, which is just be Cher...

WELDON: Yeah.

HOLMES: ...And be charismatic and funny, but in her own skin, really.

WELDON: Yeah, and that's the change. They're given a game to play. So think back to a simpler time, before Ricky Gervais Gervais-ed all over himself. His show "Extras" - would you agree with me that the organizing principle of that show was to avoid the light-lift celebrity cameo? Because anytime a celebrity was featured on that show, which was often, given that the premise of the show was that Gervais' character was a Hollywood extra...

HOLMES: Right.

WELDON: ...The celebrity was given a very clear game to play. So Sir Patrick Stewart and Daniel Radcliffe were super horny. David Bowie (laughter) plays a guy who is incredibly privileged, and yet he spends a lot of time just hurting the Gervais' (laughter) character's feelings.

HOLMES: Yeah.

WELDON: And then there's finally my favorite, the classic example of Sir Ian McKellen playing a fatuous actor who is happy to give Gervais kind of a master class on acting. It's just the dumbest advice in the world.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "EXTRAS")

IAN MCKELLEN: (As self) If we were to draw a graph of my process, of my method, it'd be something like this. Sir Ian. Sir Ian. Sir Ian. Action - wizard, you shall not pass. Cut - Sir Ian. Sir Ian. Sir Ian.

WELDON: Yeah, and what you can't see in that clip is he's doing little - hoppy little things with his fingers there.

HOLMES: Yeah. I mean, I think that that's one where the other thing you're seeing is the person being willing to kind of make fun of their own work, which you can kind of do when people understand that you simultaneously do mean it and don't mean it, in a way, 'cause you wouldn't ever want to do it in a way that would insult the people that you've worked with or whatever. You are sort of making fun of yourself. I was not a big "Extras" viewer. But based on what I know of it, it ran on an engine somewhat similar to "The Larry Sanders Show" idea...

WELDON: Sure.

HOLMES: ...Which is, this is a person who is in a celebrity-drenched environment, and so they would naturally be bumping into celebrities all the time. And that becomes part of the cloth of the show, which is maybe, again, a little bit different from the ones that we were talking about, where it's a little bit more of a one-off, where you don't necessarily expect to see celebrities playing themselves all the time - and then, all of a sudden, there is one.

WELDON: Most of the cameos on "Extras" were just silly. That one, I think, was about something, right? It's about the pomposity of so many actors on things like "Actors' Roundtables" or "Inside The Actors Studio..."

HOLMES: Sure.

WELDON: ...Where it's...

HOLMES: Yeah.

WELDON: They're giving advice on a thing that is on craft - that is - that kind of flies up their own butts.

HOLMES: Sure.

WELDON: But increasingly, I think, sometimes it's just a flat-out unflattering take. Sometimes it's just specific. It's just weird. On "Arrested Development," the great Carl Weathers plays himself as a guy who's incredibly either cheap or very practical. It's up to you.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT")

CARL WEATHERS: (As self) Let me tell you a little story about acting. I was doing this Showtime movie, "Hot Ice," with Anne Archer - never once touched my per diem. I'd go to craft service, get some raw veggies, bacon, Cup-a-Soup. Baby, I got a stew going.

WELDON: It's just specific. It's just weird.

HOLMES: Yeah. Well, and one of my favorites - and I've talked about this performance before - was in the romantic comedy "Trainwreck," with Amy Schumer and Bill Hader - is LeBron James playing himself as Bill Hader's best friend 'cause Bill Hader is playing a sports doctor. And so the idea is, LeBron - he happens to be best friends with LeBron James, and, again, they have a take on LeBron James that is very particular. Here's a little bit of that.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TRAINWRECK")

LEBRON JAMES: (As self) And so you had the salmon.

BILL HADER: (As Dr. Aaron Conners) What are you doing, man?

JAMES: (As self) You had two Cokes.

HADER: (As Dr. Aaron Conners) Dude, are you trying to split the bill?

JAMES: (As self) Look, I told you those refills weren't free.

HADER: (As Dr. Aaron Conners) Yeah, no, no, no, no. We're not splitting the bill. Pick up the check.

JAMES: (As self) Why do I have to pick up the check?

HADER: (As Dr. Aaron Conners) 'Cause you're LeBron James.

(LAUGHTER)

HOLMES: So the whole joke of LeBron James during this whole scene is that he's just sort of stingy. And later, he - they agree, finally, to split the check, and then he does the whole, like, oh, I'm patting my pockets, and, oh, I forgot my wallet. And, like, it's just a very funny idea that LeBron James would not want to pick up the check. And there are also some really great exchanges about his love of Cleveland and how he keeps trying to pitch Cleveland to Bill Hader as a great city. And I like it because, first of all, I think LeBron James is legitimately very funny. He is perfectly capable of pulling off a bit of comedic acting. But also, the way that they think about him is so affectionate, and yet, as you said, it's so specific. And that was also the way I felt - so "Always Be My Maybe" is this...

WELDON: Yeah.

HOLMES: ...Romantic comedy on Netflix with Ali Wong and Randall Park. And they've known each other a long time, and he's kind of somewhat pining for her. And she shows up with a new boyfriend and walks - you know, the boyfriend comes into the restaurant, and she says, oh, there's my boyfriend. And it's Keanu Reeves. And he's playing Keanu Reeves, but, again, with a little bit of a twist.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ALWAYS BE MY MAYBE")

KEANU REEVES: (As self) So Marcus, I hear you're in a band.

ALI WONG: (As Sasha Tran) Oh, they are so awesome. They could be really huge if they wanted to be.

REEVES: (As self) Have I heard of you guys on the festival circuit?

RANDALL PARK: (As Marcus Kim) Oh, no, we're just a block band.

REEVES: (As self) See, that right there is what it's all about - laboring in obscurity.

(LAUGHTER)

HOLMES: And again, I like it because of the specificity of it. I like it because, in a way, they are riffing on this sense that you get from Keanu Reeves in real life - that he's kind of a guy who's kind of interested in spirituality and is kind of a deep-thinking kind of dude. And they kind of play that into him making this speech about the man who embraces his mediocrity. And it so effectively plays both with that element of his persona, but also the idea that, you know, what if you had somebody that you had a crush on, and their new boyfriend was Keanu Reeves?

WELDON: Exactly.

HOLMES: It's just funny. It's a funny idea.

WELDON: Right. I mean, you're drafting on the fact that this celebrity is a known quantity, has a persona that is public. And so you can either go weird with it, you can go deeper with it, like this is what Keanu Reeves is like all the time...

HOLMES: Yeah. Yeah.

WELDON: ...Or, like in my next example, the show "Staged" - that's a show where David Tennant and Michael Sheen play versions of themselves who regret agreeing to appear in this one play together, and they get a stern talking-to over Zoom by Dame Judi Dench. Now, here, it's not an unflattering, necessarily, portrait of Dame Judi, but it is directly referencing something that she has become known for, which is the fact that she hoovers up every part for a woman of her age. Have I made you watch the documentary "Tea With The Dames," Linda?

HOLMES: You have not, but I know of it.

WELDON: OK. It's just Dench, Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright and Eileen Atkins sitting around Plowright's cottage, talking about their lives and careers. And at one point, Maggie Smith says that Judi takes all the parts, and then Joan Plowright agrees in a very funny way. And in that scene, you can see Dench, in real time, being incredibly uncomfortable and cringing, and not wanting to admit it, and feeling like...

HOLMES: Yeah.

WELDON: ...Oh, no, that's not true. But on "Staged," she gets to own it.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STAGED")

JUDI DENCH: (As self) No matter how often I say no, they never do. They keep on and on. Do this. Do that. Play a queen. Play a spy. Play a cat. Do you know how tiring it is to be everyone's first choice for every bloody role?

MICHAEL SHEEN: (As self) I do.

DENCH: (As self) No, Michael, you don't.

SHEEN: (As self) No, no.

DENCH: (As self) We're told in...

WELDON: So there it is. I mean, it's riffing on something that is known, but it's getting this extra energy from their, just, natural ability.

HOLMES: Yeah, and I think the important thing that we're sort of coming around to is that it's less about what the take is, and it's more that you have to have some kind of take on the person and the persona - whether they are, you know, very kind, which Steph Curry is, saying, like, take all the figs (laughter). If you need more than seven figs, just take more figs. That's kind of the gag in that show - is that he's this really super nice guy who always wants to extend himself for other people.

And I think this is one of the reasons why this is really hard to do with politicians, and it has certainly been attempted with a lot of politicians. But it's difficult because there's only so far that they're going to go in lampooning themselves. And so you get - like, even on "Parks And Rec," they had really, like, fun cameos from politicians, including Joe Biden. But he was just sort of being Joe Biden, who Leslie Knope had been in love with for the entire show. That's another one of those we talked about, like with Cher, where it's a payoff of a joke where the person on the show has always been kind of fixated on this celebrity, and you finally get the cameo.

With politicians, it's very, very difficult, I think, to get them over the hump where they're - John McCain was also on "Parks And Rec." There have been some other ones. But it's difficult to do, particularly when they're still in office. And one of the few that I can remember being successful was Al Gore on "30 Rock."

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "30 ROCK")

AL GORE: (As self) And recycle everything, including jokes.

JACK MCBRAYER: (As Kenneth Parcell) I'm sorry, sir, what?

GORE: (As self) Quiet. A whale is in trouble. I have to go.

HOLMES: And that was, of course, because he says recycle everything. That was the second time they had done that same thing where he said...

WELDON: Exactly.

HOLMES: ...A whale is in trouble. I've got to go. But the way that he delivers a whale is in trouble is really funny. And he does a really good job, and they wrote that in as - you know, he doesn't have to carry a ton of, you know, hard comedy. But - it's funny, but it's also sort of admiring in the sense that people know him as somebody who was deeply interested in the health of the Earth. And this was kind of an episode that was themed around all of that kind of green work by corporations and stuff like that. And so they managed to make it funny, but not mocking, which I thought was a very interesting balance because, like, you're not actually saying anything negative about him when you say he runs out of the room because a whale is in trouble. And yet, it's funny.

WELDON: And importantly, he did these parts in his post-political career. So...

HOLMES: Sure.

WELDON: ...He didn't have to worry about getting votes or having anything used negatively against him in the electoral process. And so, yeah, he could afford to play a little bit and tweak himself a little bit.

HOLMES: You know, we did an episode, a different episode, about guest stars in general. And "Only Murders" is a great example of this because, on "Only Murders In The Building," you also have a ton of people who are playing regular characters, right? And then you have this little group of people who are playing themselves. And it's interesting to think about - like, which is the higher-value use of somebody like Zach Galifianakis, you know? Is it having him play Zach Galifianakis, or would it be having him play somebody else? And I think, in that case, they both can work, you know? And they can work together, although it does create some funny situations where you're kind of like, well, if this person is a real person in - then we're in a universe where then this person would have to be a real person if you connect...

WELDON: Yeah.

HOLMES: ...People through, you know, who has worked together. It's, like, if we're in a universe where there's the real Zach Galifianakis, then you can pretty easily conclude that the universe has to also have a real Paul Rudd or...

WELDON: Yeah.

HOLMES: ...Whatever.

WELDON: Yep.

HOLMES: You know?

WELDON: But I was fascinated to see in this season of "Only Murders" that of those three people who are playing the celebrity versions of the three main characters, it's Eva Longoria who gets the most to do - who gets to have the hardest take on her character and gets to be the weirdest one in a really interesting way. It's not how I would have imagined it playing out.

HOLMES: I actually thought Galifianakis had the most take on kind of how this guy is feeling and acting. But that's a show where they've done that before. You know, they did that in the first season with Sting. There was...

WELDON: Yeah.

HOLMES: ...The bit where they went and they had to go to Sting's apartment. So it's not new to that show, but that's one where they've really integrated those, like, regular guest-star appearances with these other ones. But I do think that, for whatever reason, it has become a really sort of standard thing for people to do. You know, we saw this with James Marsden in "Jury Duty," which, in a way, is a - is one of a particularly high level of difficulty because he was pulling it off in front of a real person because there was the one guy, Ronald, who thought that the jury duty was all real, and this was really James Marsden, this was really how he acted, going around making all these snotty comments about whether Ronald had seen "Sonic."

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "JURY DUTY")

JAMES MARSDEN: (As self, whispering) And I'm in the movie "Sonic."

RONALD GLADDEN: (As self) S***, you're in the movie "Sonic?"

MARSDEN: (As self, whispering) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GLADDEN: (As self) Really? That's the one with - the new one with Jim Carrey, right?

MARSDEN: (As self, whispering) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

GLADDEN: (As self) I heard that was not a good movie. Is it funny, or is it supposed to be action?

MARSDEN: (As self, whispering) It's like action and funny - like, you know, a road trip buddy movie. It was like he and I and then...

HOLMES: But for whatever reason, it seems to be something that now is a pretty standard kind of - you know, if you're famous enough, you're eventually going to do this. And it's almost always in comedy. The only one I could think of where it was emphatically not comedy was Kevin Garnett in "Uncut Gems."

WELDON: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

HOLMES: The basketball player who is in "Uncut Gems," which is not a comedy. And his part in it is not comedic, but he is playing himself and, I think he would say, an exaggerated version of himself.

WELDON: (Laughter) I think he would. So the days of telling a Cher, look, Cher, it's half a day. You come in, you hit your mark, you say your line, you're home. You're back in Malibu in time for dinner. That's done.

HOLMES: I think that's right. I mean, I think - and maybe it has to do with the way that we're thinking differently about celebrity - you know, we've talked before - you and I - about the fact that we don't see celebrities on game shows and stuff as much anymore. You don't have that kind of Betty White being really good at Password and that kind of thing as much because celebrities - I have theorized that it might be because celebrities have so much access to people through their own social channels and...

WELDON: True.

HOLMES: ...Stuff like that. This is the kind of stuff that I like thinking about, Glen...

WELDON: (Laughter).

HOLMES: ...You know? Well, we want to know what you think about when celebrities play themselves in pop culture. Find us at facebook.com/pchh. That brings us to the end of our show. Glen Weldon, thank you so much for being here and, as always, playing yourself.

WELDON: A version of myself anyway. Thank you.

HOLMES: (Laughter) This episode was produced by Rommel Wood and edited by Mike Katzif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy, and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all tomorrow.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.