When I start my conversation with Joel McHale, he’s just returned from getting an expedited work visa to promote his show in Australia. The Soup is big Down Under, you see. As well as in England, France, and it’s absolutely huge in areas of Central America.
He has no idea why this is the case, or why in other parts of Europe they couldn’t care less about the witty and cutting insights into pop culture and reality TV that he serves up Sundays on E!.
In showing the most outrageous clips that talk shows, reality TV and the occasionally odd local-news program have to offer, McHale cheekily believes he’s doing a public service, helping many viewers indulge in certain guilty pleasures they might not otherwise admit to.
“I get a lot of people saying, ‘Thank you. Now I don’t have to watch those shows because of your show,’ which is great,” he says. “But it also might make people think, ‘Hey, this Rock of Love Bus looks interesting,’ and then I would create new viewers. … I guess it would depend on the person. If they really think, ‘Well, I really do want to see skanks on a bus,’ … they would have found that eventually.”
Some of McHale’s most prominent targets have been from his own network. His jabs at Ryan Seacrest might be what he’s most known for — McHale insists the American Idol host and E! on-air talent is a dwarf. He has also been merciless toward former Girls Next Door star Kendra Wilkinson and various members of the Keeping Up With the Kardashians clan, who he’s referred to as “dead behind the eyes.”
McHale says the show would suffer without that freedom, because the absence of E! shows “would be such a huge elephant sitting in the room.” This is the network that gave tabloid favorites Pam Anderson and Denise Richards their own shows, after all.
The only time he recalls the brass reining him in is when Dina Lohan (Lindsay’s momager) had said she would not do Living Lohan — which featured her trying to get young Ali Lohan’s career off the ground — if The Soup were allowed to make jokes about the show.
Still, there was a way around that.
“We just never showed any clips, but we made fun of her anyway,” he says. “Basically we were like, ‘If we had a clip, we would say something like this.’ It’s like in those Bugs Bunny cartoons, ‘If there was a man inside this oven, would I be dumb enough to do THIS?’ … [But Living Lohan] is not coming back. No one cares. No one watched it.”
After nearly five years of immersing himself in shows that lend themselves to multiple punchlines, McHale has noticed a change not just in what he watches, but how he watches. Unless he’s rummaging for Soup jokes, he can’t stomach sitting through Big Brother (“It’s just people in the same room slightly whispering to each other and conspiring. It drives me out of my gourd.”). And while he is more appreciative of the stuff he does enjoy (Survivorman, Deadliest Catch), he says it’s much more difficult to lose himself in shows after spending so much time looking at them as objects to be mocked.
“I just watch shows for the moment when someone accidentally farts,” he says.
But it wasn’t always like this. Before his Soup days, McHale was just another struggling actor scoring the occasional guest spot, as well as working the standup comedy circuit. TV host wasn’t really a job that was on his radar, but after landing the gig in 2004, he says he was confident it wouldn’t pigeonhole him, pointing to Talk Soup predecessors like Greg Kinnear, John Henson, Hal Sparks and Aisha Tyler, all of whom have gone on to successful careers.
And it seems to be working. McHale maintains a thriving standup career, peddling a routine that peppers in Soup-style celebrity snark alongside material about his family life (McHale has a wife and two young sons). He also has a role in director Steven Soderbergh’s upcoming dark comedy The Informant, playing straight man to Matt Damon. Elsewhere on TV, he has begun production on a pilot for NBC called Community, in which he’ll play a lawyer who finds out that his college degree is null and void, forcing him to enroll at community college to get the credits he needs. Joining him is one of McHale’s comedy idols, Chevy Chase, as a fellow student.
“It’s a dream come true,” he says. “Whether the pilot makes it to series or not, just to be able to work with that guy, a comedy legend … for the few weeks that we’ll be working together, I just feel so blessed. His part is so great, and I can’t wait to have my scenes with him.”
But even if sitcom stardom awaits, McHale has committed to being on The Soup for at least two more years. Here’s hoping he’s not called on to make fun of his own show someday.
