If You Ask Me (3 page)

I’m so fortunate that I not only have a passion for my profession but that that profession allows me to indulge my other passion—for animals—and work for their welfare. If I was in any other profession, people might not listen to me.

I know I’m fortunate, and boy, am I grateful.

I rarely hear the alarm clock. Even when I have to get up early, I’m usually awake before it goes off. I need about four hours’ deep sleep and I’m good to go. I chalk it up to my passions and enthusiasm. I can’t imagine living any other way.

With Bandit, aka “Bandy”
—
I later named my production company after him!

GLOBE PHOTOS

At the 2011 Screen Actors Guild Awards with the girls from
Hot in Cleveland—
Valerie Bertinelli, me,
Jane Leeves, and Wendie Malick.

LESTER COHEN/WIREIMAGE

S
ixty-three years in this business and I still find it difficult to refuse a job offer. That could be a hangover from the early days when jobs were hard to come by and I always thought each one might be my last.

I do manage to utter the “NO” word if the schedule is on overload or if the script doesn’t appeal to me—the latter being the real issue.

Not long ago, I agreed to do a guest stint on a new pilot, and I insisted on the proviso that I would not be involved if it got picked as a series. It was to be a one-shot only, because my schedule was packed.

The pilot was called
Hot in Cleveland
, starring Valerie Bertinelli, Wendie Malick, and Jane Leeves. Now, it can often take months to learn the fate of a pilot, but after only three weeks the show got an order for ten more episodes from TV Land network. It was the first original scripted show TV Land had ever done—they were best known for rebroadcasting many of the old classics.

When the producers asked me if I would do a couple of additional episodes, I reminded them of our agreement and reluctantly explained that my calendar was just too full, but thank you
so
much.

Of course, I wound up doing all ten shows! Actually, the pilot had been a delightful experience. The girls were a joy, the writing was fun, and it had been a very happy set. What’s to walk away from?

The TV Land folk were very pleased at the warm public response to the show. So pleased that as we finished the tenth show, I got a call from my agent, Jeff Witjas.

“Betty,” he said. “Great news! They’ve picked up
Hot in Cleveland
for twenty more shows!”

I remember holding the phone for a moment. Then I said, “No, Jeff, that wasn’t the agreement. My schedule hasn’t let up. I don’t know how I could possibly do it!” Here I should mention that the taping schedule for a television series is four or five days a week, requiring me to be on set sometimes for ten hours a day! “Much as I love the show and the company, I’m still on overload,” I told Jeff. “There’s no room whatsoever to work in a series!”

P.S. Guess who signed on for all twenty episodes?

I have the backbone of a jellyfish.

I’d say I was a pushover if I wasn’t so delighted.

And that was before the show received two SAG nominations and was rated the number-one television show on cable.
[Editor’s Note: Sorry to be a ratings-dropper.]

What absolutely boggles my mind is that I find myself in yet another hit series, having a ball with a
wonderful
cast and crew. One of those in a lifetime is a blessing, two of them is a privilege, but three out of three?

I owe Someone, big time.

D DIPASUPIL/FILMMAGIC.COM

Hosting
Saturday Night Live.

NBCU PHOTO BANK

B
etween doing a Snickers commercial to be run during the Super Bowl, hosting
Saturday Night Live
, and starting a new series,
Hot in Cleveland
, 2010 turned out to be, as they say, a very good year. As a result, people keep congratulating me on my big “comeback” or “resurgence.” Thanks, guys, but I haven’t really been away—I’ve been working steadily for the past sixty-three years. Granted, since those gigs, some folks may feel they’ve gotten something of a Betty White overdose.

It was a huge and wonderful surprise when the Snickers commercial turned up as the first spot on the Super Bowl. We didn’t expect that when we filmed it one early, cold California morning. The idea was, I was playing football with a group of nice young men. (Tough duty!) It wound up with me being tackled into a pool of icy, muddy water. A great stuntwoman took the actual tackle, and I just lay down in the puddle in the same position where she had landed. She took the dive, but I got the laugh. Sure doesn’t seem fair, does it?

At nearly the same time that the Snickers ad was making waves, I was hit with another surprise. Years ago, I had turned down the hosting job on
Saturday Night Live
—three times! I feared that this Californian would be like a fish out of water on such a New York–oriented show. I said “No, thank you,” and never gave it another thought.

All these years later, seemingly out of left field, in January 2010 there was a campaign on Facebook called “Betty White to Host
SNL
(Please),” started by a young man named David Matthews. By March, apparently almost half a million people had voted! And that’s when Jeff Witjas came to me with the hosting offer from
SNL
producer Lorne Michaels.

My reservations hadn’t changed a whit, but Jeff, who is not only a dear friend but has judgment far better than my own, would not take no for an answer. He insisted I
had
to do it. Over my strong (and desperate) objections, off we went to New York.

With the great ladies of
Saturday Night Live.

NBCU PHOTO BANK

It was a terrifying proposition from the word “go,” but Lorne Michaels brought in the wonderful Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, Molly Shannon, and Amy Poehler (at the time, as pregnant as you can get) for the show, and they could not have been more supportive or more fun to work with. Ditto Lorne Michaels.

At the start of the rehearsal week, there are maybe forty or more sketches in the mix. These gradually narrow down to the five or six that make the cut by show-time on Saturday.

Normally, I memorize my lines. But with forty-plus sketches to weed out, that was impossible, and I was told we’d be using cue cards (anathema to me). That only added to the panic.

In fact, I think that scared me more about
SNL
than anything else, because I don’t use cue cards and I don’t use teleprompters. (Maybe for a commercial, which is a whole two pages long. Then the teleprompter is wonderful, because you look right into the lens.) But cue cards I hate, because it usually means your eye switches as you look from the camera lens to the card, lens to the card.

More scenes from
Saturday Night Live
.
Note the costume changes!
NBCU PHOTO BANK

So when it came to
Saturday Night Live
, I thought,
How am I going to do that?

Well, they have this wonderful card man who knew my reservations. He stood a little above and behind her with the cards, and said, “Keep your eyes on me and the cards. Don’t look at Tina Fey.”

I’m thinking,
How can you play a scene with Tina Fey and not look at Tina Fey?

“Don’t look at Tina and your eyes won’t move and you’ll be fine. And she’s doing the same thing,” he said. “Trust me.” I did, and it made all the difference.

If you watch the show, you’ll see that even some of the most accomplished actors around have that eye switch that is just so distracting. And these are stellar actors!

But the cue cards were just one part of the elaborate production that is
SNL
.

The week before, you fly into New York and go to the studio, and you sit around the table with all the cast and read forty-one sketches. You’ve not seen a script—this is your first look at the material. Everybody reads their parts, and as you go through them, some are naturally weeded out because they’re just not working. Then Lorne Michaels does his edit and weeds more out. Maybe twenty make the blocking stage.