‘Fox & Friends’ Tried to Book the Late Kirstie Alley to Talk About George Wendt
It's come to this — Jimmy Kimmel has a mole at Fox News.
That’s what he told the studio audience last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, transitioning from jokes about fake news to punchlines about the dumb people behind the actual news. Kimmel shared an email — allegedly real, folks — that someone on the inside at Fox News forwarded to him yesterday.
Apparently, a talent booker on Fox & Friends was looking for a guest to pay tribute to George Wendt. The actor, who played wiseass barfly Norm on Cheers, passed away earlier this week. Several of Wendt’s former castmates have been sharing their memories, so booking one of them on the show made sense — but who? Certainly not climate activist Ted Danson, who’d probably want to discuss nonsense like recycling or cleaning up the ocean. Libertarian Woody Harrelson is a noted wild card, and he might show up for a guest spot in a chemically altered state. Much better for a Fox & Friends audience would be Kirstie Alley, the Cheers star who publicly endorsed Donald Trump in 2016.
Don't Miss
The booker (Kimmel kindly blurred the names on his graphics to protect the stupid) sent an email to Alley’s representatives with the subject line, “Fox & Friends Interview Request for Kirstie Alley — May 21.”
“This is (redacted) from Fox & Friends,” said the message. “We would love to have Kirstie Alley on tomorrow morning’s show, May 21st, talk about George Wendt. It will be a 3-5 minute interview and some time between 6-9 am ET. Please let me know if she’s available.”
Alley wasn’t available, and not because she wasn’t fond of Wendt. After all, he and John “Cliff” Ratzenberger once bought her a shotgun to commemorate her first day of filming on Cheers. “When the cast found out that that’s what we got, I mean, everyone was horrified,” Wendt told Steve Kmetko last summer. “Kirstie, of course, loved it.”
But Alley still no-showed Fox & Friends, for a good reason. “She passed away three years ago, just like most of the viewers at Fox News,” Kimmel joked. “So she’s sharing her thoughts with George in person.”
