I need to open this thread with a bit of an apology, since I can’t remember the circumstances behind the title claim. It was on a Seinfeld DVD commentary. One of the writers (I think Max Pross? Or his partner?), noting how Jerry Seinfeld was acting like a jerk in one particular episode, said something like:
(Paraphrasing) “The Seinfeld cast was always willing to play the jerk for the sake of comedy, even though in real life they are great people. We’ve worked on shows where the comedian would always tell us, “I want to be a real family man, I want to be super nice to my wife and kids” and that was the guy who was an ass in real life, a cheater or a drinker or whatever, and he cared so much about creating a fake good image.”
Is this at all a valid judgment? Do people (or just comedians?) who are not willing to be the bad guy on camera and play morally upstanding good family men/women tend to be the bad guy in real life? Do people who revel in playing jerks on stage actually tend to have better than average reputations off of it?
I’m sure there are ample examples but there’s probably no mathematical correlation.
Most comedians have reputations for being very serious off-camera. Steve Martin comes to mind- almost morbid in some of his interviews.
Tim Allen seems to fit the mold. He played a family man whose worst fault was being a doofus but IRL there are many stories of him being a raging asshole.
Redd Foxx: selfish old man who had a definite soft side in his sitcom, hard partying drug using not-as-old-as-his-character man with a definite soft side in real life. (His generosity was one reason he wound up so broke.)
Bill Cosby played the world’s nicest guy on camera. Accounts of him off camera are very varied- some say he’s super nice, some say he’s a creep. Definitely extremely generous in terms of money given to educational charity whatever the case.
Drew Carey’s on screen persona was sort of sarcastic average Joe. Off camera his reputation was nice guy with a dark side as well as a sleazy one.
OTOH there’s Roseanne. Her sitcom character was a bossy whining bitch. IRL she was a bossy whining bitch.
On the other hand, Charlie Sheen’s character on Two and a Half Men is a substance abusing self absorbed womanizer. I’ve read that in real life he’s a teetotaller and celibate.
Seinfeld did date a 17 year old when he wad forty, and then started dating Jessica Nederlander soon after she returned from her honeymoon! I wasn’t too fond of those actions, but Jessica got a divorce and Jerry married her. They now have three children and seem to be doing okay.
Going back a little further you have Danny Kaye. He always played the sweetest guy in the world, and his charitable efforts were noble. OTOH, he was widely considered to be a tyrant to his subordinates.
Jack Benny, of course, worked hard to perfect his image as a cheapskate and incompetent violinist. In real life, he was neither.
I have NEVER understood how he largely got a “pass” for this reprehensible behavior from both the media and the public at large, when other celebs have been eaten alive for other similar, yet less egregious actions…
It could be more true of non-actors who play (a version of) themselves.
Example: Not an actor, but I think the worst reputation in TV history for off-camera behavior was Allen Funt. He’s one of a small club of celebrities that I don’t think I’ve ever heard a single nice story about: tyrannical, cheap, belligerent, paranoid- both Fannie Flagg and Joan Rivers said Candid Camera was like working in the Fuhrerbunker.
There are similar horror stories about folksy talk superstar Arthur Godfrey (one of the inspirations for Andy Griffith’s Lonesome Rhodes in A Face in the Crowd), and comedy variety superstar Sid Caesar was all of the above and add violent and substance abusing during his 50s heyday. (It’s amazing he’s still alive.) Johnny Carson was also notoriously reserved and did not like to interact with fans.
OTOH, I’ve heard Howard Stern’s a nice guy who’s often willing to sign autographs and pose for pictures on the street, and I know for a fact Jerry Springer- in spite of the sleazy and condescending persona- is super nice in person.
I’ve heard this trope invoked quite a bit in professional wrestling. Locally in the Nebraska scene (say up to the mid-1960s) there were two leading families: the Duseks and the Peseks. The “Dirty Duseks” were horrible heels, while the Peseks were, more or less, respectable faces* who got good press in the mainstream papers.
In real life, the Duseks were above-board promoters who had a reputation for treating people very well by pro wrestling standards (everybody got paid, and youngsters were often invited to dinner when the Duseks knew that times were tight). The Peseks, on the other hand, tended to be thoroughly crooked and irresponsible. The family patriarch was known as someone you could bribe to purposefully injure someoone during training, and a friend of mine (who was briefly married into the family) claims that the entire clan were abusive alcoholics.
*For the uninitiated, “heel” = bad guy; “face” = good guy
It can even apply to reality television. I was never a fan of Orange County Choppers but I lived in the area and I knew people who knew the Teutuls. And one thing I’ve heard from several people is that Mikey Teutul, who appears as a doofus on the show, was actually the brains of the outfit. His father and brother were good mechanics and designers but it was Mikey who ran the business end of things and made them successful. He was the one who came up with the idea of doing a TV series and negotiated all of their contracts and promotions.
From what I’ve heard William Frawley, who played Fred Mertz, was a real POS in real life, similar to his Fred Mertz character. I heard Vivian Vance (Ethel Mertz) opened a bottle of champagne when she found out he died.
Of course, part of her (and Lucy’s) hatred for him is what made the show work.
Well, according to several various posters here on SDMB over the years, the dislike between Frawley and Vance was totally mutual, as neither one could stand the other, so it’s entirely possible that Vivian Vance had her own part of the blame in their longtime feud…
William Frawley was a big boozer and a hardcore gambler, but those don’t necessarily make someone a terrible person. (maybe a terrible co-star)
Also in the golden age of TV, there are many stories of how tyrannical and controlling Ozzie Nelson was, and how guests actors on Ozzie & Harriet were shocked at Ozzie’s micromanagement, which even extended, on occasion, to demanding changes to actors’ delivery of individual lines of dialogue.
Now that is funnier than any episode of Seinfeld, excepting The Contest.
I’ve never understood it either. Jessica marries a guy from one of the richest theatre families in the world and leaves him for that guy. I suspect there must be a huge story there that the Nederlanders paid beaucoup bucks to cover up.
There’s Bill O’Reilly, who comes off a major prick on TV, and by all indications is a major prick off camera.
Sean Hannity, on the other hand, I’ve heard is actually pretty cool, at least toward those who work for him anyway.
I had a conversation with him once, or rather tried to have a conversation with him. He was nice enough, but he’s one of those people that if you ask him something, he’ll ramble on and on and go off tangents that have nothing to do with what you asked him about. Kind of reminded me of Abe Simpson.
I’m not in show business but isn’t stuff like that a fairly normal practice? I thought telling actors how to deliver their lines was a producer/director’s job.
I don’t know about Pawn Stars but I know is was Chumlee who would have to figure out what to do whenever one of Tennessee Tuxedo’s wacky plans got them into trouble.
The director yes, but only to an extent. At some point you have let the actors act.
The problem, as I’ve understood the reports on Ozzie, is that he gave his family – who were not trained actors, especially the boys, who were quite small when the show began – what are known as “line readings.” That is, he recited their lines of dialogue and told them to deliver them with the exact same emphasis, inflection and so on that he did. They weren’t acting as much as they were miming him.
But that’s not something you do with real actors, especially not when you have full control on who is hired and can choose people with actual skill, training and talent. But he did, to the extent that a number of actors refused to ever work with him past their one guest spot, and more than a couple either walked out or were fired when they balked at his unprofessional control demands.
I have a counter example: I met Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy of MST3K fame when they were presenting at a local film festival. I spent several minutes talking to them, and both were just as any fan would hope – very funny and friendly in real life, happy to sign autographs and chat with fans. They also seemed to get along well with each other and were bouncing jokes back in forth. At one point Murphy started singing improvised lyrics to “Smile”.
From the non-performing arts, I once saw Neil Gaiman speak at a book festival and Gaiman made a remark similar to that in the OP. He said that in his experience horror writers tend to be lovely, well-adjusted people with good senses of humor. He added that if you want to meet really creepy, messed up authors, you should look for those who write self-help books.
