“I’m the host to show you as an audience all the cool things that we’re doing, that we’ve done, and that you’re going to be a part of”, Harris continued, also specifying that he’s trying to go after the “Sarah Silverman, Louis C.K.” crowd.
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However, Harris is quite confident about “Best Time Ever” as the show is based on British series “Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway”.
Harris revealed at the Television Critics Association Press Tour that Witherspoon will be the first celebrity guest announcer, and that Martin will participate in a game where he will sing one of his hit singles. “It’s essentially producing six or seven shows simultaneously”, he said, listing off a few aspects: game show elements, celebrity pranks, involving the audience in the series, etc. “We’re holding a lot of cards close to our vest because that’s what’s going to make it exciting”.
Harris said he signed on for Best Week Ever because it’s a well-established and popular show in the UK, and Siobhan Greene agreed to come from that iteration to EP his.
Incidentally, the show comes on the heels of Fox yanking Ryan Seacrest’s at-home quiz show “Knock Knock Live” after two episodes last July.
He also shared about the pressure of delivering, “It feels to me more pressure in anticipation because it’s a blind commit in some ways. I did not know it was on or happening”, he explained in earnest. “I think what they did was ambitious, but it’s a hard conceit to do those things as a new idea”. He also revealed that the season will be eight episodes in a row because “I think something like this deserves to be an event”.
Best Time will debut the week before premiere week, on Tuesday, September 15, in its announced 10 PM time slot, behind the season finale of America’s Got Talent. In so saying, he was re-iterating what he told CBS’ then-Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson: “I want to do an Ed Sullivan-y kind of show, with all the variety acts”.
“I was so honored to have asked to be a part of it truly”. “I think an audience needs to be entertained, as opposed to [being] a litmus test for entertainment”. It’s a very rare ask, and it’s a lot of effort that goes into something that at the end of the day becomes inconsequential. That’s the interesting dynamic and the dualities of the hosting those. You spend an asinine amount of time overthinking it and as soon as it’s done it just sort of vanishes.
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Best Time Ever is one of many live plays NBC is making this fall.
