The next time Vince Vaughn visits the set of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” things could get awkward.
Vaughn is a skilled interview subject with a quick mind. He’s also responsible for some of the best comedies in recent memory, like “Swingers,” “Old School” and “Wedding Crashers.”
That isn’t the issue.
It’s what he shared this week on “This Past Weekend,” the podcast hosted by comedian Theo Von, that could be a problem.
Vaughn. promoting his new Hulu original “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice,” told some hard truths about Kimmel’s show and that of his late-night competition. The film finds Vaughn playing two version of his character in a time-travel romp brimming with action and plot twists.
What he shared with Von is something 99 percent of Hollywood dwellers would never admit, but Vaughn spoke it plainly.
These late-night shows are akin to taking your medicine. It’s agenda theater that’s indistinguishable from the other shows.
The proof is undeniable, from Kimmel misleading viewers about the man suspected of killing Charlie Kirk to both he and Stephen Colbert hosting DNC fundraisers.
The rest of the evidence can be found in their nightly monologues, and that includes “The Daily Show,” “Last Week Tonight” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers.”
Von says late-night TV shows limited their potential targets to a select few, including the obvious ones as well as “white redneck kind of people.”
“The podcasts have gotten so much more popular with less production, less writers and less staff,” Vaughn said. “People want authenticity. And the talk shows, to a large part, became really agenda-based.”
Raw, unplanned banter is missing on too many broadcast shows, they argued.
“People rejected it because it didn’t feel authentic. It felt like they had an agenda. It stopped being funny, and it started feeling like I was in a f***ing class I didn’t want to take,” Vaugn added, noting the subsequent ratings droop across the late-night landscape wasn’t an accident. “I’m getting scolded.”
“They always blame technology, but the reality is the approach,” Vaughn said, advocating for live stand-up performances which offer a funnier, more surprising experience.
A lack of spontaneity is all too obvious in today’s late-night landscape, he argued.
“They all became the same show. And they all became so about their politics and who’s good and who’s bad. Imagine sitting next to someone like that on a f***ing plane. You’d be like, ‘how do I get out of this f***ing seat?’”
“I would fart right next to them,” Von quipped.
