November 22, 1999: A somewhat nerdy-looking Nicole Sullivan commences her hosting duties on Later.

Having appeared on the NBC late night show Later last September as a guest, Nicole Sullivan returned to Later during the week of November 21, 1999 as a host. The guests were Julie Warner, Wilmer Valderrama, John Ducey and Daisy Fuentes (one guest appeared each night; she hosted four shows). If you missed these shows, it's your loss, since Ms. Sullivan displayed a depth of knowledge and perspicuity which hitherto she has not been given an opportunity to show on her other television appearances. Despite the absence of a monologue (which I had thought would be a prerequisite for any comedienne hosting this show), Ms. Sullivan did not disappoint and sedulously carried out her hosting duties with great aplomb (not to mention an effusive enthusiasm).

The fact that Ms. Sullivan did not do a monologue surprised me somewhat. This, however, helped set the tone for the show, as she dropped her wacky comedic personna (as exemplified by her Late Show and Tonight Show appearances) and approached her task as host essentially as an actress. The approach paid off in the first show, in which Julie Warner was the guest: in spite of the fact that she didn't instantly remember who the director of Doc Hollywood was and in spite of the fact that Warner was apparently the only guest of the four that week that Ms. Sullivan never met beforehand, the rapport between Warner and Sullivan was quite lively. The segment where Warner talks about how she got her big break playing the love interest in Doc Hollywood illustrates this quite well; when Warner elaborates on the rigorous audition process, Sullivan, addressing the audience says: "Do you see, folks, the hoops they make you jump through?" When Sullivan says this, of course, it's convincing because she's been through the same process herself; the viewer can sense the empathy between Sullivan and Warner. [In fact, it would not be inaccurate to say that the careers of Sullivan and Warner have developed along parallel lines, both having been born and raised in New York City, both graduating from prestigious colleges, and both taking about four years after moving to Hollywood to get their first big break - the primary difference being that Warner is slightly older.]

Of course, it the selection of guests for the week's show worked heavily in Sullivan's favor. The fact that the youngest guest was nineteen and the oldest guest was thirty-four (I'm assuming that Warner was the oldest of the bunch) meant that the age differential between Sullivan and her guests was not that great and therefore she would not face the pressure, for example, of having to interview someone twice her age. Most of the guests, while interesting, were not A-list guests, which probably helps if one is just starting out as a host. Yet this does not in any way diminish Sullivan's accomplishment here. It's now more than four years since Sullivan first became known to the general public through her work on Mad TV, over eight years since she first embarked on her television career, and over twenty years since she first took up acting. Yet in spite of it all she does not seem jaded like so many Hollywood celebrities. For example, she can barely control her glee when she mentions that Wilderrama is a good salsa dancer and has salsa music piped into the studio, noting that she researched this because she's that good of a host - suggesting that she approaches her hosting duties with a certain level of enthusiasm, or at least lacking the ennui of more established hosts. She still carries the exuberance of a relative newcomer even this far into her career, which is a refreshing change from the "been there, done that" attitude of many talk show hosts in particular and celebrities in general. If she were able to maintain this ebullience while further refining her interviewing skills, Sullivan would undoubtedly be able to carve out yet another niche on late night television. Furthermore, given the fact that the late night talk show circuit is still mainly a man's game (witness Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Charlie Rose, with Joan Rivers' short-lived foray into this realm in 1986 as the exception to the rule), the fact that so many of the Later hosts are women ensures a refreshing change of pace. Nicole Sullivan, who once said that in comedy, women are as funny as men, has proven that the same principle applies to the late night talk show realm.