British comedian Russell Brand went on MSNBC’s Morning Joe last month to try to promote his new international stand up tour, but the interview went viral because of the way he was treated by the hosts and his response. Brand wrote an oped about his experiences on the show, noting that it wasn’t just the hosts who were rude to him, but the crew as well.
During the interview, Brand grew increasingly annoyed as the hosts kept talking about him in the third person as if he wasn’t sitting right next to them. He took control of the situation, though and criticized the media during the live interview.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Brand wrote an oped in the Guardian last week, in which he explains that the crew had mistreated him before he even went on air.
“I was surprised by the soundman's impatient intrusiveness and yet more surprised as I stood just off set, beside the faux-newsroom near the pseudo-researchers who appear on camera as pulsating set dressing, when the soundman yapped me to heel with the curt entitlement of Idi Amin's PA. In response I wandered calmly from the studio and into the corridor, where a passing group of holidaymakers were enjoying the NBC tour,” Brand wrote.
The moment he sat down, Brand had the anchors pegged - “a typical trident of blonde, brunette and affable chump” - and “it became clear that, in spite of the show's stated left-leaning inclination, the frequency they were actually broadcasting was the shrill, white noise of dumb current affairs.”
He added, “One of the things that's surprising when you go on telly a lot is that often the on-camera ‘talent’ (yuck!) are perfectly amiable when you chat to them normally, but when the red light goes on they immediately transform into shark-eyed Stepford berks talking in a cadence you encounter nowhere else but TV-land – a meter that implies simultaneously carefree whimsy and stifled hysteria.”
Brand goes on to describe how these anchors are just spewing news and information out with little context. He also claims that this is by “no means an exclusively American phenomenon” and that it happens in the U.K. as well.
Brand is performing in Lake Tahoe, Nevada on July 27.
image: Twitter