WASHINGTON — You know him from E!’s “The Soup” and NBC’s “Community.”
Now, actor and comedian Joel McHale shares his hilarious secrets to success in the new memoir “Thanks for the Money: How to Use My Life Story to Become the best Joel McHale You Can Be.”
“The book is half memoir,” McHale told WTOP. “I feel like most celebrities don’t have enough to say to fill up an entire book. Their lives are just not that interesting. But half of a book? I figured that was about right. Then, why not take the rest of it — self-help books are very popular. My name is Joel, just like Joel Osteen, so if you see the name ‘Joel’ and don’t read any further, maybe you’ll grab my book.”
Right from the start, you can sense McHale’s dry sense of humor on the book’s dedication page: “Note to Book Formatter: This might be a nice place to include a dedication to my wife and children. However, if the typesetting and printing of the page would incur an extra cost, just leave it blank.”
From there, the chapters range from celebrity encounters to cultural musings.
“There’s a chapter called ‘How to Survive a Chevy Chase Attack,'” McHale said. “I have a fold-out pamphlet, much like what’s in your airline seat in the front-seat pocket, that laminated cardboard. … It also shows you how to start a celebrity feud … about my long-running feud with Robert DeNiro. And there’s even a chapter called ‘Why I Left Scientology.’ I never have left it and I never was in it.”
Born in Rome and raised in Seattle, Washington, McHale writes about his upbringing in the opening chapter, “The Beast Awakens,” but he doesn’t quite remember the first time he got a laugh.
“I was getting laughs in the womb, dude,” McHale told WTOP.
He urges readers to differentiate the truth of his childhood memories from the jokes sprinkled in.
“The stories in it are definitely true, but I definitely make jokes,” McHale said. “I was on the stage in Seattle doing a book reading and the host said, ‘There’s a story about your dad being cheap. … It says here when your little brother was born, [your dad] didn’t want a third kid, so he put him on the lawn with a sign that said, ‘$5,000 or Best Offer.’ Now, that is not true, but the person thought that it was, that my father would actually try to sell my brother. My dad is cheap, but he is not a human trafficker.”
He says the notion of overnight success is another misconception.
“Everyone’s always like, ‘When did you get your big break?’ And I’m like, ‘It wasn’t really a break, it was a slow cracking of ice,” he said. “I could not get my foot in the front door, or back door, or window, or the doggie door, or any other crack in the Hollywood home — what the hell am I talking about?”
That ability to stop on a dime with self-deprecating quips is part of McHale’s enduring charm, which he showcased for more than a decade (2004-2015) as host of “The Soup” on E! Originally called the “What The…? Awards,” it was quickly changed for name recognition from the prior show “Talk Soup.”
“Thirteen years ago, I auditioned for it. At that point, it wasn’t ‘The Soup,” it was a pilot presentation,” McHale said. “E! saw it because they had success with ‘Talk Soup,’ but they did not want to bring that show back. … They saw how cheap it’d be to make — me, a green screen and like three other people — and went, ‘Great! We’ll pick it up.’ They put us on Friday nights, which was a ghost town on cable, and it just slowly built from there. … It was so cheap that they just left it on and finally it got an audience.”
As viewers began rapidly consuming “The Soup,” other opportunities started to come his way.
“I didn’t have a real agent at the time; I couldn’t get one,” McHale said. “Then because of ‘The Soup,’ I started getting all these auditions that I had always wanted … and eventually, it led to ‘Community.'”
The NBC sitcom “Community” (2009-2015) gained a loyal following, as McHale starred alongside Gillian Jacobs (“Love”), Donald Glover (“Atlanta”), Ken Jeong (“The Hangover”), Danny Pudi (“Star Trek: Beyond”), Alison Brie (“How to Be Single”) and Jim Rash (“The Way Way Back”). Most importantly, it allowed him to work with a childhood comedy hero: “Vacation” alum Chevy Chase.
“I worked with him for five years, the living legend Chevy Chase,” McHale said. “I get asked about him every time I am ever interviewed. … He does have a bit of a reputation [on set]. That doesn’t mean I don’t like the man, I do, I’m actually very fond of him. But he’s got a very specific way of operating.”
Beyond the cast, McHale most attributes the show’s success to creator Dan Harmon.
“Thank god Dan Harmon cast me in it,” McHale said. “Dan liked the world of misfits and people that are kind of broken. For whatever reason, that spoke to a lot of people out there. … I think the whole show was through the lens of Danny Pudi’s character, Abed, who had a hard time understanding the emotional intelligence of other people, and Dan wanted to champion that, and that’s what people could relate to. And also, Dan’s one of the best joke writers you’ll ever come across in your life.”
Fans were crushed when the Emmy-winning show was canceled in 2015 after six seasons. Will the show ever make a return on Netflix, Amazon or Hulu? What about recent rumors of a movie version?
“It will come back as soon as somebody gives us a lot of money,” McHale said. “There is a world where a movie gets made, it just has to get funded. I know it’s doing very well in streaming. … I was just talking to Lauren Graham — now I’m name dropping! — whoever thought ‘Gilmore Girls’ would get rebooted? And it’s a wild hit! So who knows? I think the cast would do it, but now Donald Glover is Lando Calrissian [in the upcoming ‘Star Wars’ Han Solo film], so he’s gonna be in London forever.”
The success of “Community” has propelled McHale to star in the CBS sitcom “The Great Indoors” (2016-present) and to host such events as the 2014 White House Correspondents Dinner.
“I’ll never be nervous again,” McHale joked. “It was such a nerve-wracking and wonderful evening. It’s gotta be similar to doing a moonshot or something, because it was so strange and wonderful. I’d do it again, but boy, it was like getting in shape for a marathon. I pored over my jokes for weeks and weeks.”
He says expectations for the MC are through the roof after such distinguished opening acts.
“It’s just very weird, because you eat dinner with the first lady for an hour and a half — which, it turns out, she’s the coolest woman of all time next to my wife and mom,” McHale said. “You’re there for four hours, so you don’t have any prep time to get ready to perform, then the president goes up. No matter what your politics are, President Barack Obama is probably the best joke-telling president we’ve ever had. Then you’ve gotta follow that. So the president opens for you — and he kills! It’s very strange.”
Not only is the format different; the black-tie crowd is a lot more formal than most comedy shows.
“You look at the crowd and it’s like a wax museum,” he said. “Wax figures are more responsive. You’re like, ‘Oh, look at all the famous people, including the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World!”
Does McHale have a shot at taking over the title of World’s Most Interesting Man?
You’ll just have to read the memoir.
“Pick up a copy of the book!” McHale said. “It’ll be the best gift you’ve ever given someone or to yourself. Just wear a girdle, because you might split a gut open.”
Listen to the full conversation with Joel McHale below:
