Today, I’m looking to see what you think was the best instance of a celebrity doing a cameo on a TV series playing exaggerated versions of themselves.
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
Frequently, celebrities will make cameos on TV shows playing exaggerated versions of themselves (as opposed to stuff like Don’t Trust The B in Apartment 23, where James Van Der Beek played himself as a regular character). These cameos are typically quite fun. What’s your favorite example of this sort of thing? I’m not counting sketch shows for this, by the way, as that’s too simple. I mean “regular” TV shows.
My pick is Liam Neeson’s cameo on the Warwick Davis comedy series, Life’s Too Short, where Davis visits Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant for help on a new series but they are visiting with Neeson, who wants to get into comedy and so he tries some improvisation with Gervais and it is hilarious in how awful it is…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpKwqiAWWrA
Neeson really plays himself as a buffoon well.
That’s my pick. What’s yours?
And feel free to suggest future Pop Culture Theme Time topics to me at brian@popculturereferences.com!
Randy Travis on King of the Hill. Honestly, if he wasn’t playing himself, he would have sued the writers for slander.
Before they flogged this dead horse to hamburger, James Woods’ cameo on THE SIMPSONS was very memorable. Now of course, an exaggerated celebrity cameo is a feature for the never ending show, but at the time, it was rare and Woods’ appearance was among the best.
MARRIED…WITH CHILDREN did this many times. Some of my faves include Gary Coleman, Edd Brynes, King Kong Bundy, and Joe Namath.
Wayne Newton had a funny turn in an episode of ROSEANNE, before it jumped the shark.
Not sure if it counts, but Stan Lee once did a very funny live action sequence in an episode of MUPPET BABIES. He got sprayed with silly string (which was supposed to be webbing) when a couple of Muppet Babies were interacting with Spider-Man on a comic panel.
That clip is hilarious and hard to beat. David Duchoney on Larry Sanders was good too
I enjoyed James Caan on NewsRadio slowly becoming obsessed with Matthew when he’s supposed to be there learning about radio broadcasting for an upcoming role.
Duchovny really was AWESOME on that show, good call.