'The Days of Yore' talks to Executive Producer Tom Purcell

 
‘The Days of Yore’ a website that interviews artists about the years before they had money, fame or road maps to success, talks to Tom Purcell executive producer of ‘The Colbert Report’ about life before ‘The Report’ came along, including his years writing for ‘Cosby’ and ‘Grounded for Life’, and his time spent at the Second City as both a student, director and teacher.

So then, a few years later, the Colbert job. How did you score that, initially?

I had been working in New York on the other Cosby show [Cosby, the one that ran in the late 90s] and then I didn’t work for over a year. But I was writing pilots, and I wrote this pilot about young republicans. I pitched it to Comedy Central and they liked it, but I wasn’t really enough of a somebody for it to go anywhere. But then my agent goes, “Do you want to submit to a show in New York? It’s cable, it’s half your rate.”

I was living in L.A, and I didn’t want to go to New York, I didn’t want to make half my [previous salary.] But then my agent says, “It’s Colbert.” And I was like, “Agh.” Because I had tremendous amount of respect for this guy. I didn’t really expect to get the gig. I thought, I’ll sell him a couple ideas and we’ll just see. I knew him very casually at Second City, but everyone always liked him.

What were you doing for work in L.A at the time?

I was directing and teaching improv at the Second City out there. Teaching teen classes in improv. I actually did my Colbert interview on the phone, sitting in the Second City parking lot. There’d just been a performance of these kids at the theater, and they called me on the phone, I did the interview, and then I went back and gave these kids my notes [on their performance]. A twenty minute interview.

Was there a period early on where you weren’t sure if that show was for you?

Turns out the thing with Stephen is… I think just about anybody who knows him would walk through a wall for him. I thought I’d maybe be on the show for a year, help him get the show going, and then do something else. But then everyone who knows me was like, as soon as they saw the show, they were like, “That’s the show for you. You’ll never leave.”

Is it a collaborative vibe on set?

Yeah, it’s kind of a dream gig in a lot of ways. There’s this feeling where everyone’s pulling the same rope. We’re all coming together to make the show better and not to make themselves look good. Nobody’s jealous of whose joke gets in. If you keep writing consistently good stuff, it’s going to get on the show. Being an [executive producer] now, it’s like directing an improv show. It’s corralling energy and helping things look better. It really does feel like everyone from our prop guys to our non-writing producers are working on this together. Even our footage guys improvise, you know? Everyone’s in it for the same reason. There’s a lot of creativity flowing through the entire building.

Full Interview: The Days of Yore.

(Thanks to magdalena for the Tip!)