Deny it if you will, but I know you’ve all had those fantasy moments in front of the bathroom mirror, accepting your pretend Oscar that’s actually a bottle of shampoo. Deep down, we all know that those kind of Hollywood fantasies rarely, if ever, come true. Which is why, when something like that actually did happen to me, it felt like a freaky, out-of-body experience. I know it sounds so clichéd, but it really was like watching a play, and the main character was me.
I was sitting across from Joe, the Tonight Show head writer. When he first asked me what should have been a simple question, it was as if he was speaking German. It just didn’t compute. Confused, I asked, “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”
He leaned back in his seat, folded his arms across his chest and repeated the question so casually, he might as well have been offering me a breath mint. “What would you think about coming out on stage during tonight’s taping, meeting George Clooney, and leaving with him to be our correspondent at the red carpet premiere of Ocean’s Eleven?”
This time I heard him loud and clear. “Yes, I would very much like to do that.”
You’d think I would’ve totally lost my shit, but instead I remained calm and had a moment of absolute clarity. The thought simply occurred to me: Oh, this is how it’s all going to happen. This will be my story. Remember this for the book you’ll write one day.
I later learned that a professional comic was originally scheduled to cover the premiere but had dropped out at the last minute. In what I consider a stroke of pure genius (if I do say so myself), another writer named Larry Jacobson half-jokingly suggested that they send “the intern with that voice” instead. I don’t know if Larry will ever really know the impact his offhand suggestion has had on my life. If you’re reading this, Larry: thank you, like a lot.
Of course, I had a ton of questions. “What should I wear?”
“What you’re wearing is fine.”
“What do you want me to ask the celebs?”
“Don’t prepare anything, just ask the first thing that pops into your head.”
I could certainly do that. “Will this really be on TV?”
“Maybe. We don’t know for sure. First, we have to see if what you tape is good or not.”
Um, no pressure.
I was told that I had one hour before heading out to the premiere, which was just enough time to call my mom and deliver the big news. I figured I’d play it cool at first, you know, for dramatic effect. I sounded totally blasé when she picked up. “Hey Mom. How are you? What are you doing?”
“Hi, sweetie! Oh God, well, I had a hell of a day. First, your dad wanted me to make tacos for dinner tonight, but Thrifty Foods was out of the lean ground beef that I like, so I think we’re just gonna go to the Mexico Café instead.”
Okay, enough taco talk. I interrupted her and broke my big news. I could almost hear her heart beating through the phone. “Oh, dear God. Just a sec, honey. I’ll call you right back.”
My mom’s going to kill me for this, but I made a promise to you, dear reader, to be honest and this is just too good not to share. My mother’s reaction to any big news, be it good or bad, is always instant diarrhea. I wouldn’t lie to you, because if I did, I would have just wasted thirty seconds looking up how to spell diarrhea.
Minutes later, after doing her business, she called back. “Oh my God. Oh my God! Honey! This is huge. If you do half as well at this as you did when you starred in The Hobbit in the seventh grade, you’re going to knock it out of the park, I just know it!”
God bless my mom. I was really good in The Hobbit.
I spent the next forty-five minutes just thinking by myself as the enormity of the situation began to sink in. I knew I was getting the chance I had always hoped for, but I was also aware that I was exposing myself to possible rejection and ridicule on a national level. I mean, I got it. I knew who I was. That childhood moment with the bully in the spinach field wasn’t an isolated incident. As a proud, high-pitched, grown-up oddity, I had faced homophobia on a daily basis, and for a split second, I questioned whether or not this was a risk I was prepared to take. The Tonight Show may have been willing to celebrate my eccentricities and give me a chance, but would the show’s middle-American audience do the same?
I knew initially, the viewers were probably going to laugh at me. Why wouldn’t they? Who was this over-the-top cartoon on their TVs? But I also knew that a person couldn’t sustain a career by constantly being the butt of the joke. I had so much more to offer than that, and I felt I really had the skills needed to be a bone fide broadcaster. So, if I wanted this to work, I had to find a way to get the audience to laugh with me, not at me. That is, if I wanted this to be more than just a onetime thing.
What happened next was surreal. Suddenly the very same people whose coffee I had just delivered earlier in the day were prepping me to go on air to meet the sexiest man alive, George Clooney (and that’s not just my opinion—People magazine made it official in both 1997 and 2006, thank you very much).
Minutes before the big moment, I was standing backstage in the blue zip-up fleece jacket I had found just days before on the clearance rack at JCPenney, taking in my surroundings. I stared at the doorway where every celebrity I could imagine had walked through to greet Jay Leno on the Tonight Show stage and couldn’t believe I was just about to walk through it myself. I heard the audience laughing as Jay and George chatted mere feet away from me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to shake off my nerves and focus, when I suddenly heard Jay Leno saying my name.
“We have this young intern, Ross Mathews, who just loves all things Hollywood.”
Okay, this is bonkers. Jay Leno just said my name on TV. There was no turning back now.
He continued, “Would you mind, George, if he went with you to your premiere tonight and interviewed the other stars of the film?”
This couldn’t possibly get any more bizarre. Jay Leno and George Clooney were having a conversation about me. Whoa.
George replied, “Sure.”
“All right,” Jay continued, “Come on out here, Ross.”
Roberta, the stage manager, shoved me through the doors and onto the Tonight Show stage for the very first time. I was so captivated by the lights and cameras and audience, I barely even noticed George (and you know your head is spinning when you don’t notice George Clooney right in front of you).
I said quietly, almost to myself, “Wow, so this is what it looks like from here.”
Those were my first words on national television.
In a Hollywood minute, I was in an NBC van headed to the famous Village Theater with a production crew consisting of Kevin the cameraman, Kenny the audio engineer, Scott the talent coordinator, Izzy the production assistant, and Anthony the writer (yes, the same Anthony whose brain I had picked just weeks earlier). These people were basically strangers to me then, but they have continued to work with me on all my Tonight Show segments and I now consider them family. But back then I was just a kid in a van with a bunch of scary grown-ups.
I attempted small talk. “So, this should be a lot of fun, right?”
Anthony looked up from his notes and tried to calm my nerves. “Relax, Ross, and have a good time. We just thought it might be funny to see what happened if we sent someone from the office out to talk with celebs. Just be you and it’ll be fine.”
“Oh, I get it. Like ‘Ross the Intern meets the stars’ kinda thing?”
“‘Ross the Intern’…” Anthony repeated. “I like that.”
The Ocean’s Eleven premiere was about as star-studded as you can get, and the scene at the red carpet was insane. Westwood Boulevard was closed down for the event and, by the time we got there, hundreds of fans were lining the sidewalks behind barricades, media outlets from all over the world were crowding the press line, and security was being a real pain in the butt. It was such a tornado of chaos that even though our entire crew had the proper credentials, we were all denied access to the red carpet.
“What the hell?” I asked Anthony. “We can’t even get in!”
Laughing, he yelled to Kevin the cameraman, “Start rolling now!”
Then he turned toward me and gave me some directions. “Okay, Ross, just talk to the camera and describe what’s going on.”
I looked into the camera lens, took a quick breath, and just pretended like I was talking to my mom. “It’s nuts! There’s security here and they’re not letting me in, but George Clooney is right over there and I promise I’ll get to him no matter what.”
“Good!” Anthony yelled.
When security finally granted us access to the press line, we muscled our way into position. I stepped to the edge of the red carpet, took a quick glance at my microphone with the Tonight Show logo, and looked back up to see someone familiar standing in front of me. It was David Duchovny from The X-Files waiting for me to ask him a question.
I don’t even remember what we talked about, but I do remember turning to the camera with a devilish smile as he walked away and saying, “David Duchovny was my first.”
I could hear Anthony and the crew gasp and burst into laughter. I knew I was on to something and made the decision to just trust myself to say the first thing that came into my mind.
From there, the interviews got even better. I shed all inhibition and fell into a natural rhythm and creative zone, losing track of time while chitchatting with one huge celeb after another. When I saw George Clooney making his way down the press line, I yelled out his name, purposely pronouncing it the Spanish way (“Jorge, Jorge my man!”). I shared an awkward moment with Matt Damon while having him hold up a picture of Carolina, a fellow Tonight Show intern who had a crush on him. I got into a minifight with Casey Affleck when he called me a toad (we buried the hatchet a few minutes later), and left Brad Pitt virtually speechless by shamelessly flirting with him.
It felt amazing, like I was in some kind of autopilot mode. It was like something was in control of me, and I said and did things I would have never normally said or done. I mean, when I see a famous person in my everyday life, I don’t run up to them and make a scene. But when I was on that red carpet that night, nothing was off-limits and my only goal was to create a funny and memorable moment with them. To this day, that’s what always happens when I’m on the job and have a microphone in my hand. I’m still me, but I’m an amped-up, heightened version of myself. Think Beyonce as her alter-ego Sasha Fierce, if you know what I mean.
When the red carpet finally wrapped up, I let out a huge sigh of relief. Pushing up the sleeves of my fleece jacket, I turned to the crew and asked, “How was that?”
Anthony was the first to speak. “Where in the hell did all that come from?”
“Was it okay? Did I talk too much? I know, I can be annoying.”
“No, not annoying. I feel like I just saw a career being made.”
I know what you’re thinking. This sounds too cheesy to be true, like the end of Rudy. But I’m not kidding, this is how it really happened. I’m not trying to toot my own tooter. Anthony really did say that, and the crew really did hug me afterward and told me they were thrilled to have witnessed that moment.
After seeing the footage the next day, the producers immediately asked me to cover the upcoming Vanilla Sky premiere. Next, they sent me to Salt Lake City for a month to cover the Winter Olympics, and then to the Academy Awards, and so on. Now, somehow, it’s over eleven years later and I’m the longest-running correspondent in Tonight Show history.
Some people call what happened to me a lucky break. Kind of, but I don’t really believe in luck. I believe in Oprah, which is why I quote her all the time. I once heard her say (and I’m sort of paraphrasing, here), “There’s no such thing as luck. Luck is when opportunity meets preparation.”
I was prepared for my opportunity, and I made the most of it. I think that’s why my dream of being on TV has, and continues to, come true. Whatever your dream may be, make sure you’re prepared, because you never know when your own George Clooney might come a’knockin’.