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| Nicole Sullivan on The Tonight Show, August 3, 2001. |
When Nicole Sullivan first appeared on The Tonight Show in September
1998, she elected not to discuss her status vis-a-vis Mad TV, even
though she was conspicuously absent from the first five episodes. As
a result, the fluff-to-substance ratio was rather high. On Ms. Sullivan's
third Tonight Show appearance, however, there was a surfeit of
superfluous content - most of the six minutes or so was devoted to a
dialogue focused on the remodeling her house and on Survivor
parties she hosts - but there was also some useful information tacked
on at the end. Most notably, she announced that she would be returning
to Mad TV for a seventh season "part time" (probably as a
recurring guest star). She also announced that she will be appearing
in a new VH1 movie, The Way She Moves (scheduled to premiere
on August 29), which was described as a Dirty Dancing-type
movie with salsa music (a movie which is "very Latin, very sexy" - or
perhaps more accurately, as sexy as VH1, which censors almost all the
movies it shows, allows) and will be making (additional) appearances on the
CBS sitcom The King of Queens.
Nicole Sullivan on The Tonight Show, August 3, 2001.
The news that Ms. Sullivan will be returning to Mad TV contravened information from other sources which stated that she would be leaving the show after the sixth (2000-01) season, but it was not surprising. With her pilot Me and My Needs on the back burner (ABC did not put it on the fall schedule, although there remains a possibility that it will surface later), leaving Mad TV would leave her without a regular series (with the exception of Buzz Lightyear, for which she provides the voice of Mira Nova); thus it made sense not to burn her bridges to the show that made her into a (mid-level) celebrity in the first place. Yet being on the show full time might prevent her from seeking other work. Her part-time status thus allows Mad TV to retain its biggest star while Ms. Sullivan can pursue various side projects, such as the aforementioned VH1 movie and King of Queens.
The rest of the segment was somewhat vacuous, but served as well-deserved escapism on a Friday night. She discussed the remodeling of her house - apparently some of the walls didn't have studs (I hate to seem biased, but it seems that the quality of house construction outside of the Northeast is somewhat inferior). She also said that Survivor was "groundbreaking" television, thus reinforcing her image as essentially a populist on matters of aesthetics (her picks for "Sexiest Male Artist" on VH1's The List were Dave Matthews and Sting, singers who were dominant in their respective eras). She also revealed that she hosts Survivor parties, which mimic the TV show with immunity challenges and voting people out of tribes ("[s]ome people haven't come back...I won't lie").
Overall, the segment was relatively informative. Most of the segment didn't rise above the morass that is late night television but Ms. Sullivan seemed her usual gregarious self. I would not recommend watching the rest of the episode - it is tedious for all except possibly die-hard Leno fans - but Nicole Sullivan fans will likely want to survey this appearance.
Video Clips (in Quicktime 4.0 format):