Grahan Norton has interviewed many members of Hollywood royalty – but not all of them have been on their best behaviour, with the chat show host revealing his ‘nightmare’ guests
Graham Norton is the king of the British chat show, and has welcomed some of the biggest names onto his famous red couch – from Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise, to Madonna and Lady Gaga. But things don’t always run smoothly, with some guests reportedly failing to impress the Irish star.
Whatever happens on the night, Graham is ready for anything. He has steered his programme through many awkward moments over the years, including the time a Hollywood actor passed out while live on the show.
Revealing secrets from his green room, Graham previously shared: “It is very hard to get drunk on the show. We do give people a drink, yes. They get one, and if there is a break between filming, they might nip in and top up your glass, and that is it.
“The most you get is two, maybe three, drinks in a show. If you want to be drunk on the show, and apparently some people do, you really need to arrive pre-liquored up.”
He continued: “I remember one time I was outside as Hollywood star Mickey Rourke arrived in his car and he stepped out holding a bottle of Jack Daniels. More worryingly, it was half empty. It suddenly became clear where that Jack Daniels had gone. It was a nightmare.
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“But the famous one was Mark Wahlberg, I guess. He was fine when he came on the show. There was not a hint of it and then about 20 minutes into the show it caught up with him. Oh, it was bad. At one point, Mark was asleep on the couch in front of the audience.”
Speaking last year ahead of the launch of a new series, Graham revealed his best and worst chat show guests ever, with both Robert De Niro and Madonna coming up short.
“We have had very quiet guests. I mean, Robert De Niro is no king of chat,” he told the Express. “He is a very benign presence. Once he started to tell an anecdote, but it was so bad.
“He got really quite a long way into the story and lost his way, so we cut it out. It was the most he has ever said on a chat show and it was not left in.”
But the star was full of praise for Lady Gaga, saying: “When she came on our show she was really nice to the audience and to fans who had made dolls of her. It was a really beautiful moment.
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“But when Madonna was on, we had someone who had painstakingly made dolls of her in each outfit from red carpets.
“We showed them to her and she just went, ‘Those glasses are wrong.'”
The broadcaster added that Pretty Woman star Julia Roberts had been his favourite guest from the previous series, recalling: “She was on with Cher and Tom Hanks, and she was the secret sauce and kept everybody talking. She talked to the audience and cracked jokes.”
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