If you were a fan of “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson,” you certainly knew the name Joan Embery, who made numerous appearances bringing live animals from the San Diego Zoo where she was working on the show where Carson reacted and interacted with them. On Oct. 4, some of those appearances became be available in stores in a new DVD set of “The Johnny Carson TonightShow: The Vault Series,” available at Amazon.
We recently spent a few minutes talking with Embery by phone. Here is an edited version of that conversation.
Steve Marinucci: Are you still with the San Diego Zoo?
Joan Embery: Yes, but I don't work there every day. I work as an independent contractor. I do conservation education with them.
Steve Marinucci: How many times did you appear on the show?
Joan Embery: Well, I think we did probably about 70 with Johnny. And if you include Jay, closer to 100 “Tonight Shows” over the years. Quite a few. And I'd say probably on “The Tonight Show” we took over 500 animals over the years, wild animals, many of which had been seen live on TV before.
Steve Marinucci: Was there any preparation with Johnny beforehand?
Joan Embery: No. Johnny wanted it spontaneous. He didn't really want to know what was there. He just wanted to come out and fly by the seat of his pants, so to speak. Which was actually fun because so much of television is totally pre-written, pre-programmed right down to every second. But it was Johnny's show. Johnny ran the show. So the talent coordinator would do a rundown of the order of the animals and where the commercial breaks were most likely to occur. They do questions for Johnny and all of that. But when Johnny came out, he was on his own. He would go as long as he wanted on a segment. Sometimes things would run long and somebody would get cut at the end of the show. One person, which is interesting, one of our shows we did ran long and the person who got cut was Ellen DeGeneres making her first appearance.
Steve Marinucci: Have you ever been on Ellen's show?
Joan Embery: No, I haven't. Maybe that's why. (Laughs.)
Steve Marinucci: What was the funniest incident you can remember.
Joan Embery: The one that most people often refer to – and it was funny I can remember sitting there being hysterical myself – was when the marmoset jumped from my hand to Johnny Carson's arm, then to his shoulder than to the top of his head and sat up with his tail wrapped around his ear. And then I remember being worried it would jump to the mike or get loose in the studio. And I remember trying to decide whether to try and grab it, but Johnny seemed to be in control of the situation so I just let it roll. And then when it marked its territory on top of his head, you know, his acceptance and his response was so memorable that to this day people will describe that in great detail.
Steve Marinucci: The one I remember was with the tarantula.
Joan Embery: You know the talent coordinator had come to the zoo and seen that and wanted me to take it to the show. And I said, 'I don't really like to do big insects, large insects.' And he said, 'Oh, come on, Joan. You can do it.' So when I got up there, knowing Carson's game for anything. I took it out in the box and then I told Johnny he could take it out. And at some point in the conversation, he was letting it crawl up his arm. And I thought, 'Wow, you're really brave, Johnny, because I don't really want to do that.' I didn't say that and I'm thinking 'This is so cool. I'm going to get through this whole segment and I'm not going to have hold that tarantula. And then he picked it up and moved it towards me and I jumped backward. And he said, 'A ha! This is you, Miss Zoo! All these wild animals you work with and you're afraid of an insect. Or actually a spider, an arachnid. But anyway, he had me right there and he took such delight in that. He thought that was so funny.
Steve Marinucci: I remember he was almost panicking.
Joan Embery: It was crawling right up his sleeve. And he was saying, 'Well, what do I do now.' I said, 'You're fine. Just don't agitate it.' And he goes, 'What do you mean agitate? What would I do that would agitate it?' And he actually reached down with his hand. A lot of people would never do that. They'd never pick up a big tarantula with their fingers. I gotta give him credit. He was game. Even if he wasn't 100 percent comfortable, he knew he could have fun with his audience and he loved that.
Steve Marinucci: You really tried to not to laugh during those appearances. That must have been incredibly hard.
Joan Embery: It was, because he was so spontaneous and just would jump on things. Even if I look back at things, I'm in awe because I've sat next to so many hosts who are trying to pay attention to the commercial breaks and the cue cards and the questions that their talent coordinators have written. And a producer trying to get their attention. This is all happening while you're live on camera. And Johnny, when he walked out there, he was in total control of his show. He ran his show. So you never knew. But I think what his audience enjoyed is that so much of TV is pre-written, pre-planned and all detailed out and he just would just go with the flow. So if he was having fun or something was funny or the audience was enjoying it, he'd just roll with it. And you'd just be along for the ride. He would jump in so quickly. He was well read and very intelligent and he had amazing timing. It was hard not to laugh if you were sitting next to him because he was just so darn funny, just spontaneously funny. Not necessarily his written material, but just what came into his mind and how quickly he reacted to things that he saw. I did always appreciate that despite his humor and despite having fun and despite living to entertain his audience, that he was always respectful of me and he always gave me an opportunity to speak to tell everybody about the animals. He never completely ran me over for the sake of comedy. He would always give me my time and I always respected that. I also think he was respectful of the animals that were there. He was interested in them, engaged by them and he wanted to showcase the animals. It was never that they were just props. I think he was genuinely interested in learning about them. I think he liked animals. Some of the memorable times that some of the young apes we brought on, like a chimp or a baby gorilla, and his crew would always be in awe because he would pick up that baby orangutan and he would just look him in the eyes. And as they would say, he would just melt. And you would see a whole different side of Johnny.
Steve Marinucci: Now I know from sitting in the audience for the show that during the commercials he would do stuff they could not broadcast. Was there anything that happened that maybe happened during the commercials that we didn't see?
Joan Embery: I think the funniest commercial break for us was when we took the Galapagos tortoise that weighed about 500 pounds. And then he dropped down on his shell and was happy under the lights and had his food and decided he was just going to rest there. It's a big animal to try and get off stage. So we went to commercial break because we weren't going to be able to do it very quickly. And when we cut to commercial, they brought the forklift from NBC and that's how we got him off the stage.
No comments:
Post a Comment