Revisiting James Lipton's scrumtrulescent impact on pop culture
James Lipton, the loquacious, charming, and often hyperbolic host of Inside The Actor’s Studio, has died, leaving behind a career and a legacy that’s wholly unique. A performer before he found his way onto the Actor’s Studio stage, Lipton enjoyed a late-career renaissance after his larger-than-life hosting style served to inspire a number of popular parodies, the most ubiquitous of which being Will Ferrell’s recurring, bug-eyed turn on Saturday Night Live.
The satire more or less remains the same in every parody: Lipton’s eagerness to lavish praise upon his guests borders on the absurd, with the host gushing over the most basic of actors (and films) as much as he would the most refined. It’s an amusing indictment of celebrity worship and our tendency as a culture to flood the pockets of people who recite pre-written lines for a living instead of, say, teachers or social workers. But what made it all so gloriously palatable was Lipton’s enthusiasm, which not only made him such a feast for impersonators, but also served to endear the viewer to him.
Ferrell’s Lipton is all sharp movements, robotic bursts of laughter, and halting, dramatic vocalizations, the likes of which make him citing a movie like Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style to Tobey Maguire’s Dustin Diamond that much funnier. And Lipton, for his part, was a huge fan of Ferrell’s impression. “I love it, it’s very flattering,” he said. “I think he’s got me cold.” On a 2016 episode of Watch What Happens Live, he went so far as to say he’s “never been so grateful in my life as I am to Will Ferrell.”
Ferrell, however, wasn’t the first to lampoon Lipton on a popular sketch comedy show. David Cross offered up a tighter, more terrifying version of the host on a season four episode of Mr. Show, during which he reverently washes the feet of a young actor named Ryan Dorn before, in an Innerspace-style twist, being shrunk down and inserted inside his body, where there are dinosaurs. If it feels more mean-spirited than Ferrell’s take, that’s because it is: Cross was not a fan, but his impression (and the sketch) remains hilarious.