The Late Late Show Special Extravaganza, August/September edition

It's a great day for SpoilerTV, everybody !

To bring to light Craig Ferguson's show (airing weeknights at 12:30am on CBS) and perhaps convert you to what really is appointment TV to me, I decided to gather interviews from stars of our favorite TV shows that went by Craig's basement over the past 2 months (many of them coming from the TV's Craig Ferguson channel, thanks Malinky).

You'll notice there are not many interviews in August, that's because the Late Late Show crew was on vacation from July 29 to August 21 — during that period of time, only the 5 shows Craig taped in France were not reruns. But they're back since August 22, and since then many TV stars were interviewed by the cranky, creepy, cursing scottish dude and his gay robot sidekick in their poorly-lighted studio with a nonexistent budget. I hope you'll enjoy them, and perhaps get hooked to the LLS like I am.

After all, it always starts with the interview of a personality you like, then you're thinking the host is cool so one day you start watching a monologue (with Ferguson it truly is a monologue, not a succession of jokes on many subjects like other talk show hosts, that's another thing i like about the Late Late Show), and then the next day you watch the cold open and the segment following the monologue (the Tweetmails, where Craig reads our emails and tweets and pretend to give a crap about our problems to stall time because they have no material — and that's Craig or Geoff speaking).

To me, the fact that they pretend they don't give a crap makes this show awesome. The fact that Craig and Geoff don't seem to rehearse most of it and improvise along the way, raving on various topics they happen to tackle inadvertently, that's what I like. They don't care about censorship, they say what they want... they really seem to have carte blanche (even though the cursing is always bleeped (in a funny way, with flags) and the show is edited sometimes (but Craig is told when it will be edited so he pokes fun at it). All that makes the Late Late Show such a unique, original, bold, very funny show.

Without further ado, here are 15 interviews from TV actors/actresses led by the former alcoholic/drug addict turned talk show host over the past 40 days :

Hugh Laurie from House (on August 22) :



Bianca Kajlich from Rules of Engagement (on August 29) :



Peter Krause from Parenthood (on September 2) :



Lisa Kudrow from Web Therapy (on September 6) :



Lauren Graham from Parenthood (on September 13) :



Danny DeVito from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (on September 14) :



Kelly McDonald from Boardwalk Empire (on September 19) :



Kathryn Kahn from Free Agents (on September 20) :



James Spader from The Office (on September 21) :



Billy Gardell from Mike & Molly (on September 22) :



Kat Dennings from 2 Broke Girls (on September 23) :



Mary Lynn Rajskub from How to Be a Gentleman (on September 27) :



Rashida Jones from Parks and Recreation (on September 28) :



Jonathan Ames from Bored to Death (on September 28) :



Judy Greer from Two and a Half Men (on September 30) :



And this week, other actors and actresses from TV shows on the air this fall will show up : Ioan Gruffudd (from Ringer), Jessica Lange (from American Horror Story), Joel McHale (from Community), Jason Schwartzman (from Bored to Death) and Eliza Coupe (from Happy Endings). I seem to remember that Joel McHale is good friends with Craig (Craig even lent Geoff to The Soup once), so it will be a lot of fun, and I'm sure the others will be pretty cool to watch as well.

That's the thing with Craig, more than any other host, he often seems to be friends with many of his guests, they talk like friends anyway. For instance, I love Conan O'Brien's show and he's terrific at his job but when I see him going "I've heard that you blablabla" and then the guest tells a story, it bugs me a little because the various subjects of the interview have all been planned out and most of the time you can tell, whereas all feels natural on Ferguson's show. The fact that he's at 12:30am and that CBS doesn't know he's on the air (that's what Craig claims anyway) might help in having these casual interviews. That's probably why you won't see big movies stars on Craig's show for those who don't know him (and he doesn't seem to be the red carpet kind of guy), the actors who show up on his show often seem to know Craig and like him, and vice versa.

In the 15 interviews listed above, he gets along very well with most of them. Hugh Laurie, Lauren Graham, Billy Gardell, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Rashida Jones, they're all his friends. And when he doesn't know them very well, he finds common grounds (Kelly McDonald is scottish as well, with Katheryn Kahn they talk about their kids, etc). It was Kat Denning's first time 10 days ago, it worked out fine... and the interview was great, too. Btw, if you want to see the grossest interview ever, check out Jonathan Ames' : you won't see that anywhere else on network TV, that's hilarious — for once, Craig is not the creepiest guy on the set. But Craig's all-time favorite guest has to be Kristen Bell (17 appearances on his show). She even went with him for his week of shows in Paris (broadcasted from August 1 to August 5, they were taped from June 13 to June 17). It's a sure thing she'll come back in a few weeks to chat with Craig and badmouth her nemesis (Geoff), with the excuse of plugging House of Lies.