Getting "Inside the Actors Studio"

This is a late tribute to a television program that fell off of my radar some time ago.  "Inside the Actors Studio" was once the flagship program of the Bravo network, back when they were trying to be a more classy arts channel, before the "Real Housewives" era.  It quietly aired for 24 years and amassed 277 episodes.  I knew that the host, James Lipton had passed away in 2020, and I assumed that "Inside the Actors Studio" had ended as well.  However, I didn't know about the show's move to the Ovation Network in 2019, or the final season that featured interviews by a revolving collection of different hosts.  As far as I'm concerned, the show ended in 2018 after 22 seasons, with Lipton's final interview with Ted Danson.  

I watched a ton of "Inside the Actors Studio" in my college years.  It was one of a very few long form interview shows that survived on the air into the 2010s.  The other major one was "Charlie Rose," which ended in 2017.  "Inside the Actors Studio" was more fun, of course, because it featured well-known actors and other celebrities.  Its format was dictated by its origins as a seminar for the Actors Studio Drama School, of which Lipton was Dean Emeritus.  He sat with each interviewee on a stage and went through their whole career, from soup to nuts, intent on provoking thoughtful discussion, and treating acting (or directing or stand-up comedy) as serious artistic work.  Every episode ended with questions from the real students of the Actors Studio seated in the audience, and the famous Bernard Pivot questionnaire.  The show's detractors found it all stuffy and self-serious, but I loved that the interviews were put in an academic context, lending them an air of gravitas and importance that we didn't see anywhere else on television.

Of course, it was very easy to make fun of the show, and to make fun of James Lipton, who took it in stride and gamely played himself in many parodies and guest appearances on other programs over the years.  He became a beloved celebrity, who I was happy to see every time he popped up on "The Simpsons" or "Conan O'Brien."  His professorial persona was so theatrical and larger-than-life, it might have seemed ridiculous if it weren't backed up by those meticulously researched, thoughtfully conducted interviews with everyone from Roseanne to Steven Spielberg.  The comedian interviews were often my favorites, because it was a chance to see silly people like Robin Williams and Mike Meyers take a pause and give some serious, honest answers about their craft, if they were so inclined.  Mike Meyers did, and Robin Williams elected to perform a comedy set for ninety minutes, riling up the audience to the point where it took Lipton more than ten minutes to ask his first question.  Bravo replayed that episode a lot.  

I stopped watching "Inside the Actor's Studio" roughly around the time I stopped paying for cable television.  It was never appointment television for me, but rather a show I watched when the interviewee was someone that I recognized, or it happened to be on when I was channel surfing.  I feel like the show peaked around 2003, when it started doing the group interviews for the casts of television shows, and some stars like Tom Hanks and Val Kilmer started coming back around for second interviews.  The best interviews were with the performers and creatives who had a substantial body of work behind them, and some of the later shows were with interviewees who were only there because they were popular at the time.  Jennifer Lawrence famously turned down a chance for an interview in 2013, around the time the second "Hunger Games" film was released.      

In 2025 the show has largely fallen out of the cultural consciousness.  This was inevitable considering the age of the program, but it's likely also because it's one of those series that is not streaming anywhere officially and is thus difficult to access.  Amongst the data hoarders, it's one of the most commonly sought-after programs, and pirated versions of various interviews are constantly popping up on Youtube and other video platforms.  I'd love to be able to see some of the early episodes myself - a lot of those director interviews with the likes of Norman Jewison and Stanely Donen sure would have come in handy - but the full archive only seems to be available to students of the Actors Studio.   

And finally, yes, no, attention, stress, laughter, leaf blowers, unfuckingbelievable, screenwriter, apiarist, and "Welcome."  

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